Sleep healthy ants

The so-called "healthy sleep ants" are not insects that actually crawl into the bedroom. They are tiny habits, environmental variables and cognitive misunderstandings that you don't even notice at ordinary times and eat away at your sleep quality like ants chewing on old tree trunks. The damage accumulated over a long period of time is far greater than staying up all night. 90% of people who have no organic disease but do not sleep well for a long time have the root cause of their problems caused by these inconspicuous "little ants".

I have met my friend Xiao Zhou who is an Internet operator before. His 27-year-old physical examination was all normal, but he still felt groggy when he woke up after sleeping for 8 hours a day. There were three empty melatonin bottles stacked on his desk. After almost half a month of troubleshooting with a sleep consultant, the problem was finally discovered. No one believed him when he said it: he had a habit of stuffing his charged mobile phone under his pillow, making sure to watch 10 minutes of funny short videos before going to bed, and always leaving the electric blanket on all night in winter. These three trivial things together were not considered "bad habits", but they were just three ants that gnawed at his sleep for two years.

It is also interesting to say that there is no unified conclusion in the academic community regarding the influence of these small factors. Take the matter of checking your mobile phone before going to bed. Some laboratory studies believe that as long as the mobile phone is set to night mode and the brightness is lowered than the ambient light, the inhibitory effect of blue light on melatonin secretion is almost negligible. However, many doctors in the clinical sleep department insist that even if blue light is completely blocked, as long as the dynamic switching content is watched 15 minutes before falling asleep, the cerebral cortex will continue to remain excited. The effect is no different from drinking half a glass of ice cream before going to bed. I have been keeping a sleep diary for almost two years. My personal experience is that even if I turn on the night mode and watch short videos, it will take at least 20 minutes longer to fall asleep while lying down. However, if I switch to reading a static e-book, even if the brightness is slightly higher, I can enter a state of confusion within 10 minutes. The impact of individual differences is sometimes much more real than research data.

These "ants" are often more hidden than you think. I was on a business trip and stayed in a five-star hotel. No matter how comfortable the bedding was, I couldn't sleep well. Then I accidentally turned the air conditioner to face the wall, and I slept soundly all night. It turned out that the weak wind from the air outlet had been blowing on my pillow. Even if the wind was so light that I couldn't hear it at all during the day, it would repeatedly pull me out of the sleep cycle when I entered the light sleep stage. There was also an elder who couldn't adjust his sleep well after taking soothing traditional Chinese medicine for more than half a year. Finally, he moved the Dripping Guanyin that had been beside his bed for three years to the balcony, and he slept soundly. Later, it was discovered that he was slightly allergic to the volatile substances of the Dripping Guanyin. He didn't feel it when he was active during the day, and he lay down to breathe at night. The weak stimulation would always interrupt his deep sleep. Oh, by the way, there are also many people who firmly believe in "drinking before bed to help sleep", which is also a very controversial "ant": health accounts always say that the melatonin in red wine can help people fall asleep quickly, but neurology research has long confirmed that alcohol can directly interrupt non-rapid eye movement sleep The third stage of sleep is what we often call deep sleep. You may fall asleep after lying down for 10 minutes, but you will frequently drift into light sleep in the second half of the night. The deep sleep time is not even half of the normal standard. When you wake up the next day, you still have backache and brain confusion.

In fact, just like no two trees gnawed by ants have exactly the same hole location, the "healthy sleep ants" in each person are also completely different. There is no need to copy the "10 good sleep habits" listed online. If you really have trouble sleeping for a long time, don’t rush to buy a thousands-dollar sleep aid or stock up on a bunch of health supplements. Spend a week waking up every day and taking 2 minutes to write down two things: what you did an hour before going to bed the day before, and whether there is anything different in the bedroom from usual. Score your sleep quality. In a week at most, you can catch those little ants that are just for you. Some people can sleep soundly only by turning on a night light, some wake up when there is a little light, some listen to white noise before going to bed to help them fall asleep, and some find it noisy even when they listen to the sound of rain. Sleep is a very private matter, and there is no unified standard answer.

Oh, by the way, I just moved the lavender scented candle that had been sitting next to my pillow for half a year to the living room last week. I did wake up a few times this week. You might as well scan around the bedside tonight, maybe you can see a few little ants lying there nibbling on your sleep.