Few people think about getting a good, healthy night’s sleep. Although sleep itself is self-regulating and generally does not require external intervention to kick in. However, if the right amount of attention is paid to sleep, and sleep is taken care of like skin care, then sleep will take it to the next level and have an unexpected effect on one’s physical and mental health.
The truth about sleep, beyond imagination
Sleep as a physiological activity is an instinct. Sleep appears to be natural and calm on the surface, but in fact it is not simple. When sleep is initiated, a person first enters a light sleep state, which lasts for some time and then enters a deep sleep state, and the muscles become more and more relaxed. Then from deep to light, the person next enters another state of sleep, the sleep with dreams. At this time, you don’t know you are dreaming unless you are woken up.
After dreaming for a quarter of an hour or so, the person will return to the light sleep state again. In this way, sleep from light to deep, from deep to light again, and then dreaming, constitutes a sleep cycle. A night usually involves 4-5 such sleep cycles, which means that a person actually dreams for at least 4-5 hours a night. It is only when one wakes up during the dreaming periods that one realizes that one is dreaming, otherwise the night feels dreamless.
The overall trend of human sleep time, as we age, is to become less and less. Shorter and lighter sleep in older people is, in many cases, a normal and natural phenomenon and there is no need to be nervous or afraid. Some people say that the normal sleep is 8 hours, but this is actually a misconception or not accurate enough.
Everyone has different needs for sleep time due to physiological and psychological differences, and generally speaking, it is mostly within 6-9 hours. As long as you compare yourself with yourself, before and after a certain period of time, there is no significant difference in the length of sleep is a more healthy performance. Don’t compare yourself with others too much, and don’t blindly envy people who have a long sleep time.
The meaning of sleep is not only to restore energy and strength. In sleep, the human brain is like a computer server, but also in the background silently processing a lot of information, including the processing of memory information, integration, etc.. Some people like to stay up late to study, which is actually the most uneconomical strategy. Deprivation of sleep time is tantamount to disrupting the brain’s opportunity to process learning material, which in turn reduces memory function.
In addition, some endocrine changes occur during sleep, including the secretion of growth hormone. Some children grow very tall during adolescence, and sleep is responsible for this. In addition, sleep has many functions, such as improving the body’s immune system.
No darkness, no sound sleep
In summer, the days are long and the nights are short, and it gets dark later in the evening and light earlier in the morning. The body’s sleep center is regulated by light, and many people sleep late and wake up early in summer. Therefore, in order to eliminate the influence of light, attention should be paid to indoor shading. Curtains should preferably be made of dark, non-translucent material, and the windows should be completely covered.
Half an hour before going to bed, you should go into “sleep mode”. Turn on the lights at home to a minimum. If you can turn on a low light, do not turn on a high light. Light has a greater impact on the regulation of human sleep. The more light there is, the more signals are input to the cerebral cortex through the eyes, and the easier it is for people to become aroused, rather than shift into a state of inhibition.
Some people who are sensitive to light wake up early in the summer. However, most people are able to fall back to sleep. Some people are disappointed, dissatisfied, or anxious about their sleep after waking up early. With such a feeling, the mood is no longer calm and it is more difficult to fall asleep again. If you encounter such a situation, there are several approaches you can use to relax yourself.
A useful and simple way is to do a little deep breathing. There are no special requirements for the specific operation, do let their breathing deeper and deeper, slower and slower on it. After a few minutes of this practice, most people will calm down, and then be able to fall asleep again. Even if you cannot fall asleep again, you will not be irritable. During the time when you don’t need to get up, you can just let yourself close your eyes and rest. In addition to deep breathing, you can also put on headphones and listen to soft music.
Those tunes that are calm and have no lyrics will also relax people. In addition, self-massage is also a good method of self-calming. Feel free to use the palm of your hand to caress the opposite side of the brain. By massaging in this way for a while, the skin gets repeated simple stimulation and the cerebral cortex is inhibited, which in turn leads to sleepiness.
Of course, if there are persistent early awakenings and difficulty in falling asleep again, and the mood during the day is not good, such as the presence of upset and happy, you need to be alert to the possibility of depressive episodes. This is because one of the biological manifestations of depression is early awakening. If early wakefulness is accompanied by depressed mood, it is important to visit a specialized hospital to rule out depression.
Lunch break napping
Some people have the habit of taking a nap at noon. Many studies have found that if you can take a break at noon, the afternoon mental state and work life, are very beneficial, and very good for the health of the body. However, the lunch break is not the same as a nap. That is, the lunch break sleepy on a nap, not sleepy on the eyes closed to rest, but this can not be called the standard sleep, and sometimes may bring the opposite effect.
Snooze time is generally appropriate in about a quarter of an hour, preferably not more than half an hour. If the nap time is long, then after waking up, most of them will have a period of confusion, not clear mind, do not do things well, easy to make mistakes. This condition is professionally known as sleep inertia. Need to continue to rest for a period of time, the mind to fully regain clarity. Moreover, with more sleep during the day, it is easy to have difficulty falling asleep at night.
If you are not sleepy at noon, but in order to guarantee a good mental state in the afternoon, there is a simple operation that will allow you to rejuvenate and multiply your energy. The specific method is to slightly bend the two hands into a boat shape, respectively, clasped on the two eyes. But do not cover the nose and mouth to ensure unobstructed breathing. Take care that the fingers fit closely together and do not leak light between the fingers and between the palms of the hands and the face. In this way, artificially creating a light-free environment for short periods of time can reduce stimulation and better rest the brain. This method can be performed for five or six minutes at a time.
Love to work and sleep deeply
Many people in the workplace after work, they want to be able to sleep well, but after waking up and do not feel relieved, this situation is related to the lack of physical activity during the day. This is because the body produces many sleep-promoting substances during the day when it is active. With the accumulation of these substances, at night, it is difficult to stay awake. After a night’s sleep, the body gradually consumes these sleep-promoting substances, and the mind will gradually wake up with it.
Many manual laborers sleep well for this reason. Therefore, after work or on weekends, whether you have energy or not, encourage yourself to be active. From playing ball, swimming, to taking a brisk walk, you can do it all. As long as you like it, you can also stick to it. Each time preferably in half an hour to an hour. But don’t do strenuous exercise within two or three hours before bedtime, so as not to make yourself too excited and difficult to fall asleep. It is still possible to take a walk after dinner or before bedtime.
Of course, to sleep well, the main thing is to meditate. “If there are no idle things to worry about, it is a good time of life!” Many people in the workplace insomnia are related to psychological factors, especially intimate relationships if something goes wrong, more impact on sleep. For example, the relationship between husband and wife, lovers, parent-child relationship, etc.. The resulting insomnia is a result of the above problems, not a problem with sleep itself.
Therefore, in order to sleep well, you cannot help but actively face these problems during the day. Of course, some problems may not be solved for a while, but as long as in the mind to come up with some response, even if it is hypothetical, planned, will enhance the person’s sense of control over the problem, thus to a certain extent to calm the mind, to a certain extent to alleviate the “sleep crisis”.
Some corporate executives will use the method of drinking before bed to get themselves to sleep as soon as possible, although the amount of alcohol consumed is generally not large, but it is never a good method. Because although alcohol produces a sedative effect, it can disrupt the normal sleep process and inhibit certain necessary sleep stages, and sleep after drinking is also easy to awaken.
Others are too worried about the dangers of insomnia and over-exaggerate the role of sleep, and will rely on drugs to help them sleep. There are also some people who will be afraid of drugs and consider sleeping pills as a flood. In fact, these are inappropriate attitudes. On the basis of medical advice, the effect of taking some new sleep-aid drugs in small doses for a short time is still very certain. However, do not abuse sleep aids because of the small side effects. Otherwise, in the long run, it will reduce the auto-regulation function of sleep itself and affect the sleep structure and process.
In short, the above methods are in compliance with the physiological and psychological laws of sleep itself, thus producing the effect of promoting sleep. If you insist on such maintenance of sleep, your energy, strength and mental health will be improved.