The definition of sleep health

It not only covers the physiological indicators of sleep duration, sleep rhythm, and sleep structure, but also covers the subjective feeling that daytime functions are completely normal after waking up. Both are indispensable.

A while ago, I came into contact with the content operation of a major Internet company. He goes to bed at 12 o'clock and starts at 8 o'clock every day. He can snore within 5 minutes of lying down. It is clear that he has slept for 8 hours. However, when he wakes up every morning, he feels that his chest is tight. I stare at the screen for half an hour at work and feel confused. After drinking two cups of coffee, I still can't think straight. After going to the hospital for polysomnography, it was discovered that due to obesity and long-term rhinitis, he had more than 15 apneas per hour at night and more than 30 micro-awakenings. However, he had no memory of these brief awakenings - this is a typical situation where "it looks like he has slept enough, but in fact his sleep is unhealthy."

Many people's understanding of sleep health is still based on the old concept of "sleeping enough for 8 hours". In the early years of health science, most of the health sciences used duration as the only criterion. There are even schools that directly write "if you don't sleep before 23 o'clock, you will stay up late" into the health guidelines. However, clinical data over the years have long overturned this one-size-fits-all judgment: for example, there are 1%-3% of "natural short sleepers" clinically. Because they carry specific genetic mutations, they only need 4-6 hours of sleep a day to meet their physical needs. The proportion of deep sleep and REM sleep is fully up to standard, and they are energetic when they wake up. You can't insist that people's sleep is unhealthy, right? I used to help a 68-year-old retired professor make sleep adjustments. He went to bed at 1 a.m. and started at 6 a.m. every day. He only slept for 5 hours. He climbed mountains, wrote papers, and led students without complaining. The monitoring data was better than that of many middle-aged people who slept for 7 hours. This situation does not require intervention at all.

There is another controversial point: does reversing day and night count as unhealthy sleep? Traditional sleep medicine definitely believes that it violates the body's circadian rhythm and will increase the risk of metabolic diseases in the long run. However, in recent years, more and more applied psychology and occupational health research have put forward different views: For nurses and emergency doctors who need to work night shifts for a long time, or do cross-border business operations that need to connect to European and American time zones, if their work and rest are long-term and stable - such as fixed If you sleep 8 hours a day during the day and work at night, and you don't feel any discomfort after waking up, and you can still complete your work and social interactions normally, then this "stable out-of-phase rhythm" also belongs to the category of sleep health. If you insist on adjusting to a regular day and night schedule, it may lead to more serious sleep disorders.

Oh, by the way, there is another piece of trivia that many people don’t know: Occasional insomnia, staying up late, or lack of sleep for two or three days in a row will not affect long-term sleep health at all. As long as it is not abnormal for more than three days a week and lasts for more than a month, the body can adjust itself. Don't be so anxious just because you stay up until two o'clock at a time, lying down and tossing and cursing yourself for not sleeping. Instead, you will fall into a vicious cycle of "fear of not being able to sleep - even more unable to sleep" for the next three or four days. That is really making a small problem bigger.

In fact, to put it bluntly, sleep health is a bit like our daily meals: it does not mean that you spend enough money (sleep for enough hours) and eat at the specified time (in line with the regular circadian rhythm) to eat healthily. It also depends on whether the nutritional ratio of the food is up to standard (whether the sleep structure is normal, deep sleep, rapid eye movement sleep) (Whether the proportion is sufficient), will you feel gastrointestinal discomfort after eating (do you have any fatigue, headache, or lack of concentration after waking up)? Even if you are used to eating dinner at three in the morning and snacks at noon every day, as long as your stomach can tolerate it and your nutrition can keep up, there is no need to force yourself to change to regular meals.

In the five years I have been working as a sleep coach, I have seen too many people who are made extremely anxious by various "sleep health standards" on the Internet. They obviously sleep well, but when they see others saying they need to sleep for 8 hours and go to bed before 11 o'clock, they feel that there is something wrong with them, and instead they suffer from insomnia. In the final analysis, sleep health has never been a universal standard. All clinical indicators are reference. The core is your own physical feeling, which should be judged based on your long-term health status. After all, only you know best whether you sleep comfortably or not, and whether you can live energetically the next day.