Topic: How to sleep better?
Professor Russell Foster is Head of the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology and Director of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford and is author of the Sunday Times bestseller, Life Time: The New Science of Body Clock, and How It can Revolutionize Your Sleep and Health.
Dr Neil Stanley is an independent sleep expert. He has been involved in sleep research for 40 years, starting his career at the Neurosciences Division of the R.A.F. Institute of Aviation Medicine. In the early 1990s, he moved to the Human Psychopharmacology Research Unit, part of the University of Surrey, where as Director of Sleep Research he created and ran a 24-bed sleep laboratory for clinical trials. He is past Chairman of the British Sleep Society (2000-2004) and a member of the European Sleep Research Society; the American Academy of Sleep. Dr Stanley has published 40 peer-review papers on various aspects of sleep research, and psychopharmacology. He is widely quoted by the media as a sleep expert and the author of Amazon’s bestseller, ‘How to Sleep Well’.
In this seminar, Dr. Russell Foster & Dr. Neil Stanley divided the factors that affect people’s sleep into 5 areas, which means we can think about how to alleviate short-term insomnia in these 5 areas.
I. Food
Although it is a cliché, it has to be said that food is a major factor affecting sleep. Whenever people think it would be a shame to miss a good meal on some special occasion, the digestion of food is bound to take up your sleep time.
II. Changes in the seasons
Individual sleep patterns change from season to season, especially during the long summer days when we lack a long enough night, which disrupts our bodies in the dark cycle of natural light, so the season is also a cause of your brief insomnia.
III. Technology
For example, Social media, emails or messages that ring in the early hours of the morning and people feel I need to respond to them, technology erodes people’s sleep when the alarm goes off. Another example is the television, which I strongly advise against having in the bedroom.
IV. Work
Examples include the time taken up by overtime and the anxiety caused by work.
V. Mindset
For modern people, in many cases, sleeping is no longer something to enjoy, but something you have to do. For example, many people are anxious about whether I will die if I don’t get eight hours of sleep a day. But one of the first things to get right is the mindset that “Having a good night’s sleep is not about living longer, it’s about living better!”
Answers on the use of medication for insomnia.
When we consult a hospital for insomnia symptoms, the doctor will usually give us some medication for the treatment. For the patient, they just want to see quick results and for the doctor, he wants to get to the point where the patient can leave without any problems, but I do not recommend this for short-term insomnia.
Face-to-face therapy is an effective method, and we all know how to stay calm, we just don’t bother to do it. It’s important to redefine your sleeping space. People tend to pay a lot of attention to their clothes or shoes when shopping, but neglect to define their sleeping space. The next time you are shopping you can think about which elements are beneficial to your room and rearrange your room. Separation of work and sleep locations is recommended.