🌿 Folk Prescriptions

In modern society, sleep issues are increasingly drawing attention from more and more people. You may always feel that you haven't slept enough, yet even after sleeping sufficiently, you still feel your sleep was poor. Kate Fox, from the Oxford Centre for Social Issues, suggests that people's perception of insufficient sleep is largely due to psychological factors.
The World Window cited foreign reports stating that Kate Fox herself only needs a nap of one to one and a half hours to feel fully refreshed, and on most nights, she gets by with just 5 hours of sleep. For most of us, less sleep the previous night leads to fatigue and anxiety the next day, but Kate claims she has adapted well to this sleep pattern because it gives her more time to read extensively. Should everyone imitate Kate’s approach? There are now two opposing views. One holds that most people suffer from lack of sleep, which is causing varying degrees of harm to physical and mental health—increasing risks of hypertension, coronary artery disease, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and obesity. The other view argues that only a very small number of adults truly need at least 8 hours of sleep, and constant worry about insufficient sleep may actually trigger habitual insomnia.
Reassuringly, an early-year survey revealed that people actually require less sleep than commonly believed, and excessive sleep can actually harm health—it is the true cause of insomnia. Researchers from the University of California, San Diego, and the American Cancer Society conducted a six-year study on the sleep habits of over 1 million Americans. They found that those who typically sleep 6 to 7 hours per night (which is also the case for most people) live longer than those who sleep at least 8 hours. The study showed that individuals with the longest sleep duration had up to a 15% higher risk of death compared to others, while even those sleeping only 5 hours lived longer than those meeting the standard healthy sleep duration of 8 hours. Furthermore, although many believe women sleep more, the survey shows that under similar short-sleep conditions, women live longer than men. In summary, regardless of gender, one consistent conclusion stands: the longer the sleep duration, the higher the risk of death.
Attempting to extend sleep duration through medication is especially dangerous. People claiming to have insomnia often live as long as healthy individuals, whereas those who frequently take sleeping pills face up to a 25% higher risk of premature death. Thus, relying on sleeping pills to prolong sleep offers no benefit to human health.
Naturally, genuine sleep deprivation does negatively affect the immune system. Industrial accidents such as nuclear leaks and oil spills caused by operator fatigue have already served as warnings. However, an increasing number of experts in sleep research believe that public over-concern about sleep deprivation is a double-edged sword, carrying both benefits and drawbacks.
Even if you genuinely feel you need longer sleep, the latest advice for improving sleep quality is to actively resist drowsiness and stay awake. This advice may seem absurd, but if you stop forcing yourself to fall asleep and instead strive to remain alert and cease worrying constantly about insufficient sleep, you will find that your brain’s sleep regulation system is fully capable of automatically adjusting to suit your sleep needs.<insomnia>