Sleep is known to be the most important part of a person’s life. This is a complex physiological state during which the work of the analyzers (sense organs) is suspended. At the same time, the brain continues to function, processing information received during the day.
Man’s sleep: phases
There are several phases of sleep, each of which has a specific duration. The combination of all phases is called a cycle. The duration of one cycle is, on average, ninety minutes. Normally, there should be five sleep cycles per night.
The first phase is the most superficial sleep of a person. It lasts only five to ten minutes. At this time, melatonin, the sleep hormone, begins to actively stand out.
The second phase is a slow sleep. During this longest phase, certain hormones are produced, in particular, cortisol, the stress hormone.
The third phase is fast or paradoxical sleep. At this time, a person sees dreams, and his eyeballs move quickly. This phase is most favorable for spilling. Its duration may vary. It will be short for those who have no problems with sleep. Or, on the contrary, long in people who sleep badly at night. In the latter case, its duration may be two-thirds of the cycle. After the slow sleep phase, a person can wake up, get out of bed, walk around the apartment, suffer from insomnia, and then fall asleep again.
What to do before bed?
To ensure a healthy full sleep, you should properly prepare for sleep and create a suitable environment.
It is better if the bedroom will be used exclusively for its intended purpose. It should not have a TV, computer, tape recorder, radio, loud ticking clocks and other similar devices.
The room should be quiet and dark. If at night light from the street penetrates the room (lantern, full moon, advertising sign, etc.), you can hang dark curtains or blinds made of opaque material on the window. The light entering the room at night causes a release of hormones, which prevents a person from falling asleep normally. At the same time, melatonin production decreases or stops altogether.
At bedtime, it is recommended that you ventilate the room. The optimum temperature for sleeping is eighteen to twenty degrees. If necessary, you can hide a blanket. It is worth remembering that it is better to sleep in a cold room under a blanket than in a stuffy one, but without it. The bed should always be dry, clean and fresh.
An hour or one and a half before bedtime you can take a shower. During evaporation, the water gives off heat, and the body temperature is slightly lowered, which is beneficial for falling asleep. In addition, before bedtime, you can put a rubber heating pad between your legs. This contributes to the expansion of the vessels of the lower extremities, causing further heat transfer.
Before going to bed it is important that nothing irritates the analyzers. Otherwise, nerve impulses will flow to the brain, which in turn will perceive and process them. Thus, a person deprives himself of a chance to fall asleep normally.
If you wake up early (for example, in the middle of the night) and if you don’t sleep, you should not turn on the TV, get out of bed, etc. In other words, you don’t need to involve the senses in your work. After waking up at night, it is better to close the eyelids and try to fall asleep again, having entered the phase of slow sleep.
Drugs to sleep
To normalize sleep, there are two groups of drugs. The first group includes first-class antihistamines – blockers of H1-histamine receptors. It is simple and safe. medications that can be taken sporadically to ease sleep and improve the quality of a person’s sleep.
They usually do not have withdrawal syndrome and can be used during pregnancy, including nausea, vomiting in pregnant women, on an airplane flight, etc. In the world, such drugs are available without a prescription and in the treatment of insomnia not included. Although in Russia they are sold by a doctor.
If you have serious problems with sleep, you should consult a doctor who will help you find a cure for insomnia. So, if there are problems with falling asleep, benzodiazepine receptor antagonists or melatonin receptor agonists can be used. In the case where the patient is worried about constant waking up (poor quality of sleep, early waking up), the doctor may prescribe sleeping pills or light anti-depressants. If the problem is “combined”, reception is possible. medication from the imidazopyridine group, zolpidem.
Sleep products
- Cherry
Interestingly, dark ripe cherry is one of the few products that contains melatonin “in its purest form”. Yes, it is melatonin, and even not predecessors and not intermediate forms of this important hormone. For people who have trouble falling asleep, the cherry will be very helpful. However, to achieve the result you need to eat a fairly large dose of the product – four hundred grams. Alternatively, you can make a concentrated cherry juice.
- Walnut
It is known that tryptophan is present in the composition of walnuts. This is one of the eight essential amino acids, which is further transformed into serotonin by complex transformations in the body. And serotonin, in turn, is converted to melatonin. Therefore, in advance before going to bed, you can eat a handful – thirty grams (about five pieces) of peeled walnuts.
- Kiwi
Not so long ago, foreign scientists conducted an experiment. A large group of test subjects who have trouble falling asleep were offered to drink two kiwis a few hours before going to sleep. The study revealed that the delicacy of this exotic fruit improves sleep by thirty percent.
The thing is that kiwi contains a fairly large amount of serotonin, which with the onset of darkness is converted in the body into melatonin. A sufficient amount of melatonin is known to make sleep human quality and allows him to be in the phase of deep sleep necessary time without waking up.
It should be noted that it is necessary to use food-assistants not just before bedtime, but at least two hours before bedtime, but preferably three. The listed products can be included in the composition of the dinner.