Why white noise can help sleep

Sleeping with white noise has become a habit of many young people today. When looking for sleep aid software in the mobile phone software library, you can see that white noise occupies the "overlord" position in the search results. In various music playback software, all kinds of white noise playlists are dizzying. However, some netizens who suffer from insomnia said that white noise does not help them, but instead interferes with falling asleep. Can white noise really make people feel sleepy? Is using white noise to help sleep a healthy way? What methods can be used to improve the quality of sleep?

　　 White noise is composed of 20-2000 Hz sound that the human ear can perceive. It is a monotonous and regular sound. Scientists found through electroencephalogram and magnetoencephalogram that the brain will resonate to the monotonous and regular sounds of the outside world, and this resonance will make the brain in a quiet, relatively inactive state, and at the same time produce fatigue and drowsiness. sense.

　　 is not just sound. All monotonous and stereotyped activities can easily cause fatigue in the brain. Many people count sheep when they can’t fall asleep, and fall asleep after counting. The same principle applies. In addition, monotonous and stereotyped vision can also stimulate the brain to produce a sense of fatigue, which is why people tend to feel tired and sleepy after driving on the highways of Yimapingchuan for a long time. When building roads, the intention to increase turns and ups and downs is to avoid accidents caused by driver fatigue caused by monotonous and rigid operations and visual signals.

　　 Among the various kinds of sleep aid white noise, the sound of rain from nature is the most common and used the most. In addition to causing brain resonance, the drowsiness caused by the sound of rain may also be related to the memory left in the genes during human evolution. In primitive society, when it rains, humans are restricted from going out and usually can only stay in the shelter to rest and sleep. Therefore, human genes may retain the conditioned reflex that they want to sleep when they hear the sound of rain.

　　 But in terms of the laws of biological development and life activities, there will always be special cases, and a certain law generally has different degrees of individual differences. Therefore, for most people, white noise can make people calm and cause sleepiness, but for a few people, it may just be noise that interferes with falling asleep. If you think listening to white noise is helpful for sleep, you may wish to continue using it. However, if you deliberately want to use white noise to hypnotize, it is likely that you will be overly concerned about sleep and produce psychological cues, which may cause sleep anxiety.

　　 Marquez portrayed insomnia as a seasonal epidemic in "A Hundred Years of Solitude". Today, this "epidemic" seems to be getting worse. The problem of sleep loss after 90 is the most prominent. The proportion of insomnia after 90 is 36.7%, which is much higher than the average proportion of people in other age groups (16.4%). At a time when sleep disorders have become the “epidemic” of the era, more and more tips about sleep aid are circulating on the Internet. Many people believe that drinking a cup of hot milk before going to bed can make people fall asleep quickly. Some people choose to go to bed before going to bed. Drinking red wine to help sleep, some people will take melatonin products, and some people wear earplugs to fall asleep in order to eliminate external interference and make them sleep more...So are these good methods?

　　 There is no food that has an absolute sleep aid effect. Even melatonin products do not have long-term sleep aid effects, and some people even have trouble falling asleep after taking melatonin. From the feedback of patients, the common performance is that taking melatonin products for the first two days can have a sleep aid effect, and the sleep aid effect has declined since the third day. At present, I have not encountered it in clinical practice. If melatonin products continue to be effective after more than a week. In addition, long-term use of melatonin may also cause negative effects on the endocrine system, and we need to be vigilant. "

　　 Using red wine to help sleep is not a good way. Alcohol has an inhibitory effect on the cerebral nervous system. Individuals' sensitivity to alcohol varies greatly. Some people can fall asleep soon after drinking properly, but some people can't fall asleep after drinking. In addition, alcohol will increase awakening in the middle of the night. Even if some people can fall asleep quickly after drinking, they will not sleep well and have poor sleep quality. There is also a great danger in using alcohol to help sleep, because alcohol is tolerable. If you drink a glass of alcohol at first, you can help sleep. As time increases, the amount of alcohol required may also increase. Alcohol has a high affinity with the brain and nervous system. If you develop the habit of drinking every day, the interaction between the brain and alcohol will become more and more complicated in the long run, and the situation will become uncontrollable after a certain degree. At that time, alcohol not only no longer aids sleep, but also interferes with sleep.

　　 Regarding the method of using earplugs to isolate the interference of external sounds on sleep, earplugs are not a necessity for sleep under normal circumstances, but a conditional use. "When the surrounding environment does have noise interference, such as living near a railway or under an airplane channel, or the living environment has temporary noise interference for a certain period of time, wearing earplugs will definitely help. But in general, if there is no special The noise interference, the behavior of wearing earplugs to sleep means excessive attention to sleep, which may be a manifestation of anxiety."

　　 Even when human beings sleep, the body still maintains the basic perception of external information. When an accident occurs, it will make people wake up in time, which is a kind of protection for humans. Wearing earplugs to fall asleep will shield valuable information from the outside world, and may miss the opportunity to respond in time when certain special situations occur, which is unnecessary behavior.

　　 So, how can we get rid of insomnia and get a good night's sleep? Sleep is the basic function of the human body. It is necessary to treat sleep as a natural process, and do not deliberately pursue a good sleep method. In fact, there is no need to take any measures for a normal good sleep. The most important thing is to respect the rhythm of the human body. The more regular life is, the more beneficial it is to health, and sleep will be in a relatively good state.