How the habit of sitting on the phone affects sleep, and what temperature in the bedroom is most comfortable

How the habit of sitting in the phone affects sleep, how light alarms are useful and what the temperature in the bedroom is most comfortable for a night's rest - these and other questions were answered by a somnologist Olga Vlasova.

The photo is illustrative in nature

Alarm lights vs professional lamps

The gray sky outside the window and the short daylight hours often encourage you to buy alarm clocks and special lamps. When choosing, it is important to distinguish between medical devices and household gadgets.

- There are special high-power daylight lamps - light boxes or SAD lamps for 10,000 lux, Vlasova said. They are used to treat seasonal affective disorder and depressive episodes. Such lamps are installed at a certain distance just to the side of the eyes for about 30 minutes immediately after waking up. An ordinary table lamp with the inscription “daylight” has nothing to do with them.

The somnologist reminded that light therapy with powerful lamps is a full-fledged medical intervention. It can give side effects such as headache, strain in the eyes or overexcitation. And for people with bipolar disorder, such procedures can be carried out only after consulting a doctor.

But home alarm clocks will be a great purchase for everyone. They simulate the dawn, smoothly transitioning from soft red light to bright white. Serious disorders they will not cure, but will help to comfortably survive the gray autumn and winter.

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Phone before bed: where the real danger

There is an opinion that a couple of hours before bed it is better to give up the phone. However, according to the somnologist, such categoricalness is not necessary.

- Limit the smartphone for a couple of hours before bedtime is only for those who suffer from insomnia, said O. Vlasova. The blue-blue spectrum of the screen actually reduces melatonin levels. But the contrast is even more powerful. We already live in conditions of constant light pollution, and the worst thing is to look in a bright display in a completely dark room.

The sharp contrast between the darkness and the flashes of the screen greatly excites the nervous system. Therefore, the somnologist advises to turn on the night mode on devices and an hour before bedtime to arrange a “simulated sunset” – to dim the upper light in the room.

- But there is a factor that affects us stronger than any light — information stimulation, — said the doctor. Reading disturbing news or endless scrolling feeds stimulate the dopamine system. Consumed content before bedtime should be as calm as possible: instead of an action-packed detective - a light series, instead of working emails - a fiction book.

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Sleep and hot batteries

The microclimate in the bedroom directly affects the quality and duration of night rest.

- Excess heat leads to overheating, increased sweating, and sleep becomes fragmented, Vlasova warned. The optimal temperature for the bedroom is about 20 ° C. Although everything is individual: someone is comfortable at 17 ° C under a warm blanket, and someone - at 22 ° C under a light sheet.

No less important is the humidity, which the expert recommends to maintain at 40-60% with the help of humidifiers. The air, overdried by central heating, dries the mucous membranes of the nose and throat. Because of this, swelling, congestion and dry cough appear, a person begins to breathe with his mouth, because of which the quality of sleep drops sharply.

“Dry air aggravates snoring,” the somnologist added. But, if a person snores constantly, do not write off everything only on batteries. Behind snoring can hide a dangerous pathology - obstructive sleep apnea (sleep disturbance, in which breathing periodically stops during rest due to closure or narrowing of the soft tissues of the upper respiratory tract.) If snoring is accompanied by pauses in breathing, a person wakes up with a feeling of suffocation or feels chronic drowsiness - you need to urgently undergo an examination.

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Why smart gadgets can lead to insomnia

The market has a huge range of smart watches and fitness trackers that promise to analyze sleep in detail. However, O. Vlasova urges to treat their conclusions with great skepticism.

- The only accurate method of assessing sleep is polysomnography in the laboratory, which records the electrical activity of the brain, eye movements and muscle tone, the doctor explained. - The wrist bracelet doesn't see any of this. It measures the heart rate, movement and oxygen saturation of the blood, and then calculates the expected phases of sleep using mathematical algorithms. These are indirect data, and they are often wrong.

Trackers record the time of falling asleep and the total duration of night rest, but you should not trust their assessment of deep phases. Moreover, such gadgets can provoke orthosomnia - an obsessive anxiety for the quality of sleep.

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Melatonin in jars and sleeping pills: myths about addiction and the rules of taking

In the autumn, the demand for melatonin is growing in pharmacies. O. Vlasova dispelled a popular myth – taking melatonin will not deprive the body of the ability to produce its own hormone.

- But at the same time, melatonin is not a classic sleeping pill, and you can not drink it uncontrollably, the somnologist warned. - It's a circadian rhythm regulator. It should be taken strictly 30-40 minutes before the desired time of withdrawal. If you want to teach the body to fall asleep at 23:00, you need to take a pill at 22:30 - regardless of how much you really fall asleep. The hormone is just a signaling point.

The doctor noted that in chronic insomnia, melatonin is most often useless, and its alleged effectiveness is often explained by the placebo effect, when a person simply calms down from having a plan B.

“Melatonin as a therapeutic agent is officially recommended for people over 55-60 years old,” Vlasova said. With age, the natural level of the hormone falls, and prolonged-release drugs give an excellent result. However, do not forget about the side effects: morning sleepiness, headache, dizziness and incredibly bright, sometimes nightmare dreams. Therefore, treating melatonin carelessly is not worth it.

As for sleeping pills, then, according to the expert, they do not need to be demonized. This is an important achievement of modern medicine.

- Problems begin when a person takes them uncontrollably for months, arbitrarily increases the dosage or tries to drown out the problem with a daily pill instead of searching for its true causes. This is especially true for benzodiazepines and Z-drugs (for example, zopiclone), which are strictly prescribed. With their regular intake, physical dependence is quickly formed, and a sharp cancellation provokes a severe ricochet syndrome, when insomnia returns with a vengeance. In addition, they cause daytime sleepiness, reduce concentration and reaction speed, which is deadly, for example, while driving a car. And in the elderly, such sedatives significantly increase the risk of dangerous falls and fractures.

Another serious threat the doctor called attempts to self-medicate insomnia with alcohol and dietary supplements.

- Many for some reason believe that dietary supplements are harmless, although they can also have toxicity, cause severe side effects and enter into dangerous reactions with other basic drugs, for example, for hypertension. - Alcohol is pure poison. Trying to put himself to sleep with alcohol, a person drives the body into a cruel vicious cycle: alcohol really makes it easier to fall asleep, but at the root destroys the architecture of sleep and causes awakening in the middle of the night. In the morning, a person wakes up completely broken, pours in liters of coffee to live until the evening, and at night again can not fall asleep without a glass. Breaking this vicious cycle is extremely difficult.