When your sleep undergoes these three changes, it might indicate that you are truly getting old! Come and see if you have been affected.
At the same time, I will also tell you how to make your sleep better and better and slow down the pace of aging.
01. Many people have a misconception that not being attached to sleep is a good thing. However, getting less sleep and waking up early are actually clear signs of physical aging.
When the melatonin in our bodies starts to secrete in large quantities, we start to feel sleepy as if we have an internal alarm clock. Our core body temperature drops, making it easier for us to fall asleep.
As our bodies age, the secretion of melatonin decreases and the regulation of the biological clock declines. This can lead to problems such as difficulty falling asleep and early awakening.
At the same time, aging of the feet can also make it difficult for us to fall asleep and cause us to wake up early.
This is because the feet are the "foundation" of the body, consisting of 26 bones and hundreds of muscle ligaments. Every day, they bear a pressure that is 2-3 times their own weight.
As we age, the blood circulation and insulation ability of the feet will deteriorate. Especially for the elderly, their feet will feel cold, causing the blood vessels throughout the body to constrict and making it take longer to regulate body temperature.
The decrease in core body temperature will also be slower, directly leading to difficulty in falling asleep and poorer sleep quality.
Therefore, protecting the health of the feet is very important for regulating our biological clock.
how to change :
You can try soaking your feet in water at around 40℃ for 20 minutes 1-2 hours before going to bed.
After soaking, do a foot massage to effectively relieve the pressure on your feet and promote blood circulation, helping you fall asleep better.
If your feet tend to feel cold, you can wear a pair of loose and comfortable socks when sleeping.
In fact, our feet start to age from the age of 20. Therefore, protecting our feet on a daily basis is extremely important. We must also wear comfortable shoes to ensure that our feet are comfortable.
02. Your sleep is intermittent and fragmented, known as "fragmented sleep". This is the second sign of aging that your sleep tells us!
A study from Stanford University has provided the answer: As we age, a type of neuron in our brain - the Hcrt neuron - becomes more prone to overexcitation.
This is like a sensitive alarm that wakes us up from our sleep with the slightest disturbance, making sleep fragmented.
The harm of "fragmented sleep" is numerous.
- It disrupts our rapid eye movement sleep period, easily accumulating negative emotions and causing depression;
- it also interrupts the cleaning work of cerebrospinal fluid on the brain, which is likely to lead to Alzheimer's disease;
- and repeated awakenings will increase the "wake-up burden", and the cardiovascular system cannot withstand it, easily triggering cardiovascular diseases.
So how can we improve this?
First and foremost, the most crucial point is to put down your phone before going to bed.
The blue light emitted by the phone screen can increase our alertness.
Spending just 8 minutes on your phone before bedtime will cause your brain to remain excited for another hour.
Therefore, try to stay away from electronic devices one hour before bedtime and give your brain a quiet time to rest.
Additionally, we can eat more foods containing acetate fibers, such as fruits, whole grains, fungi, algae, and vegetables, which can alleviate the damage to human metabolism and cognitive ability caused by fragmented sleep.
Some people might say: "I didn't wake up early, slept for a long time, and didn't wake up at all during the night, but still felt tired during the day. What's going on?" This brings us to our third point, and the most important one: What you think is "enough sleep" might just be "false sleep"!
03. So we must understand that the quality of sleep is far more important than the duration, especially deep sleep.
Deep sleep is the "golden period of recovery" for the body. During this stage, the brain clears the metabolic waste accumulated during the day, and the body also undergoes cell repair and growth.
A study shows that the proportion of deep sleep can decrease from 18.9% in youth to 3.4% in middle age. This is why as people get older, they feel they can't sleep deeply and are constantly awakened by minor disturbances.
How to improve the quality of deep sleep?
First and foremost, the most crucial point is to put down your phone before going to bed.
We can do some simple sleep-aid exercises within 4 hours before bedtime.
For example, the three movements of deep squats, heel raises, and knee flexion and hip extension, each for 3 minutes, and do one every 30 minutes. This can extend the sleep time by nearly 30 minutes that night.
Overall, aging is an inevitable natural process, but we can slow down its progress through scientific methods. Improving sleep is the best "weapon" we have to combat aging.