What are the five elements of sleep health

The five elements of sleep health generally recognized in the field of sleep medicine are sleep duration, sleep rhythm, sleep depth, sleep onset latency, and sleep continuity. These five indicators jointly determine whether your sleep is "really recharging" or "lying in vain."

Last week I received Xiao Zhou, an Internet programmer who came to adjust my sleep. When I walked in, I was carrying half a glass of iced Americano. I frowned and said that I obviously get 8 hours of sleep every day, but I am still so sleepy at work that I can’t open my eyes. Even when I change the code, I can write the wrong variables. After checking the sleep monitoring, I found that three of the five factors he had failed to meet the standards.

The first thing many people care about is sleep duration. They always think that it is okay to sleep within the adult standard of 7-9 hours. In fact, this is only the most basic threshold. As long as the difference is not too outrageous, its impact on sleep quality is not as big as everyone thinks.

But what many people don’t know is that the constant that really “steals” your energy is often your sleep rhythm, which is what we often call the biological clock. Xiao Zhou is a typical rhythm disorder. He often stays up until 1 a.m. to catch up on projects on weekdays, and sleeps until 1 p.m. on weekends to catch up on sleep. This is equivalent to being jet-lagged across two time zones every week. The biological clock has been changed in a mess, and of course he cannot enter the state when he should wake up. For example, it is like you always adjust the temperature control of the refrigerator at home randomly. The temperature rises and falls, and the food inside is of course easy to spoil.

After the rhythm is stable, it depends on whether the sleep is "deep" enough, that is, the depth of sleep. Normal adults' deep sleep time accounts for 15%-25% of the total sleep time. This stage is the golden period for the body to repair damaged cells and consolidate memory. If the deep sleep time is not enough, even if you lie down for 10 hours, you will still feel as heavy as a piece of wet cotton on your back when you wake up. In Xiao Zhou's monitoring report, deep sleep accounted for only 11% of the time. This was because he was still holding his phone while browsing technology forums before going to bed. His nerves were always in a state of excitement and he could not sink at all.

There is another indicator that many people have not heard of called sleep latency. To put it bluntly, it is the time from when you lie down in bed with your eyes closed to when you actually fall asleep. The normal range is 10-30 minutes. I met a retired Aunt Zhang before. She would lie down in bed at 9 o'clock every day to get ready for sleep. She would toss and turn until 12 o'clock, still thinking about who had taken her place in the square dance during the day. This is a typical sleep onset latency period that is too long, which is a sign of difficulty falling asleep. If things go on like this, it will aggravate the anxiety before going to bed. The more you want to sleep, the more you can't fall asleep.

The last factor is sleep continuity, which simply means whether you wake up frequently after falling asleep. Generally speaking, it is best not to wake up more than 2 times at night, and you can quickly fall back to sleep within 5 minutes after waking up. Just like many new mothers, they have to get up every one or two hours at night to feed their children. They wake up three or four times a night. Even if the total time is 8 hours, they will still be dizzy when they wake up the next day. The continuity of sleep is broken, and each sleep stage cannot be completed completely.

However, there are now different voices in the industry. Many scholars believe that these five are nighttime sleep monitoring indicators, which are not comprehensive enough. "Daytime functional status" should also be included. After all, the ultimate goal of sleep is to ensure normal activities during the day. If all five indicators are up to standard but you are still drowsy during the day, it cannot be considered sleep health. This statement is now recognized by more and more people.

When I make sleep adjustments for everyone, I don’t stick to the indicators. I always adjust according to each person’s living habits. Just like Xiao Zhou, I didn’t force him to change his schedule to early to bed and early to rise. I just asked him to get up at most 1 hour later on weekends than on weekdays.