Sleep is the most basic life process of biological evolution. About 1/3 of a person's life is spent in sleep.

According to relevant surveys, the average sleep time of Chinese residents is 6.75 hours, and young people, especially the post-00s, have become the largest group of staying up late. How can I sleep well and deeply? Do the various smart sleep aid devices that have been popular recently really work? This reporter conducted an interview.

Sleep quality needs to be improved

"Lying awake in bed feels like flipping pancakes. It's a long night. It's really hard."

Yao Yu, a 25-year-old woman from Henan Province, has had trouble falling asleep for four years. She is not alone in her poor sleep. According to the "White Paper on the Sleep Health of Chinese Residents 2024" released by the China Sleep Research Society, the surveyed residents wake up 1.4 times at night on average and sleep for an average of 6.75 hours. The "Healthy China Action (2019-2030)" advocates that adults should sleep 7-8 hours per day.

According to the "China Sleep Research Report 2024", the sleep index of Chinese residents in 2023 was 62.61 points, the lowest in nearly three years. At the same time, the participants had worse subjective sleep quality, more severe sleep procrastination, and more use of sleep medications.

Why does sleep quality decline? Wang Junxiu, director of the Social Psychology Research Center of the Institute of Sociology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that dependence on the Internet and mobile phones is one of the main reasons.

Relevant data show that digitalization has affected residents' sleep to some extent: from the perspective of occupation, the proportion of occupational groups with different degrees of involvement in the Internet has an average sleep time of 8 hours or more per night is less than 50%; In terms of age, 56 percent of college students use mobile phones for more than eight hours a day, and 52 percent fall asleep after midnight.

"With the popularity of electronic devices such as computers and mobile phones, people are more likely to be exposed to stimulating light sources such as blue light before going to bed, and the biological clock is disturbed; At the same time, excessive use of electronic devices can lead to mental dependence, which can also cause difficulty falling asleep or problems with sleep rhythm." Lu Lin, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and president of the Sixth People's Hospital of Peking University, told reporters.

In addition to bad habits such as Internet dependence, mood and stress are also "roadblocks" to sleep.

"When I first suffered from insomnia, it was when I was under a lot of pressure to take the postgraduate entrance exam. It got so bad that I couldn't even stand the sound of the air conditioner running or my roommate turning over at night." Yao recalled that the difficulty in falling asleep was alleviated only after she "landed" and the pressure was reduced.

"Clinical findings suggest that more than half of patients may have sleep disorders caused by psychological factors." Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine affiliated Longhua Hospital sleep medicine center doctor Tang Kangmin introduced that the cause of insomnia in addition to genetic and other congenital factors, as well as pressure, psychological anxiety and other acquired factors.

Can't sleep well, what to do? More and more people are turning to professional help.

Ms. Wang of Jiangsu, after entering menopause, always dream, easy to wake up, and intend to go to the hospital for treatment in the near future, but in this step of registration, she is somewhat at a loss. "Some say neurology, some say endocrinology, some say respiratory, and only a few hospitals have a separate sleep department."

"China's sleep medicine started late, and there are still few high-level sleep medicine talents." Lu Lin suggested that in the future, it is necessary to strengthen the training of sleep medicine professionals, and through common exchanges with psychiatry, neurology, respiratory and other professional departments, in-depth research on the mechanism of sleep occurrence and development, and develop new intervention strategies to better serve patients.

It is reported that a number of hospitals and universities across the country have established sleep centers, sleep monitoring rooms, sleep clinics and so on. At the same time, the industry has compiled the "China Guidelines for the Comprehensive Prevention and Treatment of Insomnia Disorders" and "China Guidelines for the Standardization of Sleep Medicine Centers". "We need to raise the level of development and influence of sleep medicine by letting patients who want to solve sleep problems know that there are sleep departments in hospitals." Lu Lin said.

"Trapped" hidden business opportunities

Today, the sleepless night has spawned a huge blue ocean of "sleep economy".

Smart mattress, sleep instrument, sleep aid aromatherapy, sleep aid music, sleep monitoring APP... There are a wide variety of sleep aid products. The data show that in 2023, the turnover of smart electric beds and smart mattresses increased by 125% and 82% respectively. On the music APP "NetEase Cloud", there are more than 300,000 collections of light-sleep music songs; On Bilibili, a short video platform, a video evaluating a sleep aid product has been viewed more than one million times.

Under the tuyere, more and more enterprises have joined the "nuggets" team. According to statistics, from 2016 to 2020, the overall scale of China's sleep economy has increased from more than 260 billion yuan to more than 370 billion yuan; At present, there are more than 9,000 sleep economy-related enterprises in China, of which 37.3% were established within 1-5 years.

Can products labeled as "sleep AIDS" really achieve a "good dream"?

"Melatonin, for example, does regulate the sleep cycle, but it may be better suited for people who have disrupted melatonin production from staying up too long, or people who have jet lag." Lu Lin said that the efficacy of sleep products often varies from person to person, such as insomnia caused by stress and anxiety, taking melatonin has little effect. At the same time, most of the sleep instruments on the market, its main principle is the stimulation of micro-current, the effect is not clear, pregnant women and special groups such as heart pacemakers should not use such products.

"After waking up, the habit of looking at last night's sleep data has become my 'morning wake up ritual'." Some consumers said that they have bought wearable sleep monitoring devices such as smart bracelets, which can listen to music, practice meditation, and collect sleep data such as breathing, heart rate and blood oxygen.

Lu Lin introduced that wearable sleep monitoring devices can assist in understanding sleep conditions and provide personalized sleep recommendations, but compared with medical polysomnographic sleep monitoring devices, its technology and algorithms are still inaccurate and cannot be regarded as the "gold standard".

"We often see a phenomenon in clinical practice, not wearing a bracelet to make you sleep better, but you sleep very well, and the result is that when you look at the data the next day, the deep sleep time accounts for only 3%, and slowly become anxious, but not sleep well." Han Fang, director of the Sleep Research Center of Peking University, believes that there is no need to rely too much on indicators and parameters of sleep products, as long as the next morning can be "full of blood resurrection", it is a good sleep.

The reporter browsing the e-commerce platform found that for the efficacy of sleep products, many businesses play "one second to fall asleep", "challenge 30 minutes to fall asleep" and other propaganda words. Industry insiders remind that "Prozac" does not exist, and the more sweeping the publicity effect, the more likely the "IQ tax" is.

The "Sleep products Market Development and Consumption Trend Insight Report" released by Epps Consulting pointed out that the current development of China's sleep economy industry is more dispersed, and various types of enterprises such as home, food, technology and the Internet are involved. While ensuring the high quality and efficiency of products, businesses should also refuse to exaggerate propaganda and inflate prices to avoid a crisis of consumer trust.

It is estimated that by 2030, the overall market size of China's sleep economy is expected to exceed one trillion yuan. Huang Li, chairman of the China Sleep Research Society, said that technological innovation will be an important direction for the development of the sleep industry in the future. "With the progress of science and technology, sleep products are changing with each passing day. How to use new technologies such as AI to improve sleep through sound, light, electricity, magnetism, vibration, temperature control and other principles is worth looking forward to."

Forming good habits may be the beginning of a good dream. Yuan Yue, an office worker who has long stayed up late swiping his mobile phone, recently decided to change.

"Whenever the phone emits a faint blue light, my heart always has a black and white two villains pulling back and forth." Over time, staying up late to brush the mobile phone has brought me not satisfied sleep, but indulgent guilt." Yuan Yue said that because of staying up late, he began to appear late, nap, distraction and other situations, playing mobile phones before going to bed seems to be a kind of "time autonomy", but it is actually appropriating the time in the normal order of the day at the cost.

Too busy during the day, reluctant to sleep at night, this is many young people "revenge stay up late" reason. Experts believe that in addition to "quitting Internet addiction" on their own, reducing the pressure of workers during the day, ensuring sufficient rest time, or avoiding retaliatory media use before going to bed from the root.

The "China Sleep Research Report 2024" pointed out that the office location, time and way of Internet digital workers are relatively flexible, and the boundary between work and life is not clear, and sleep conditions are more likely to be affected by work. Lu Guoquan, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and director of the General Office of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, suggested that the concept of "offline rest rights" should be introduced to give workers the right to refuse to contact and process work through digital tools outside working hours to ensure adequate rest.

If you want to sleep well, you must not only have the "correct action", but also the "correct cognition" of sleep.

"Imagine that insomnia is like a pillar, and the anxiety and worry associated with insomnia is like a rope around your neck, and all you do is circle around the pillar." On social media site Douban, a long-time insomniac shared that his fear of insomnia is sometimes worse than the insomnia itself.

"As sleep doctors, we tend not to emphasize or exaggerate the dangers of insomnia, which can lead patients into a misunderstanding and make them constantly focus on insomnia, which can worsen insomnia." According to Wang Yang, chief physician of the Department of Neurology of Shenzhen Second People's Hospital, incorrect sleep cognition may lead to acute insomnia upgrading to long-term insomnia. Therefore, we should get rid of the myths about the causes of insomnia, excessive rumination, and excessive sleep expectations.

"In the past, many people took an avoidant attitude to sleep problems, but the good news is that with the spread of schools, community counseling rooms and sleep clinics in hospitals, more and more people are beginning to recognize the importance of sleep." Lu Lin suggested that patients with serious sleep problems should seek medical attention in time, while developing good living and sleeping habits in daily life, including relaxing before going to bed, scientific and reasonable diet, moderate exercise and exercise.

"I'm now running, sunning myself and doing some peaceful meditation training." Yao says she can sleep more easily now that she has regained control of her life. At the end of the interview, she showed reporters her mobile phone wallpaper, which is a sentence - "Don't be swayed by the night, to be the aurora in the night."