Guide to a good sleep in early winter: Do you know the six guidelines?

As we have entered early winter, many people have already taken out their thick quilts and put on thick clothes to prevent colds. In fact, in order to deepen sleep, the quilt should not be too thick. A too thick quilt will affect sleep. In addition, to promote sleep, soaking your feet before going to bed is a good health-preserving method. Therefore, the guide for a good sleep in early winter is: do not cover yourself with heavy quilts and soak your feet frequently. In addition, you should also pay attention to some details in your diet. Let’s take a look at the detailed health care guidelines below.

A guide to a good sleep in early winter: Don’t cover yourself with a heavy blanket and soak your feet frequently

In addition to diet, adequate sleep is also very important for winter health preservation. It is not difficult to find that many people drink a lot of water before going to bed at night, and they have difficulty falling asleep, which leads to poor spirits the next day and inability to devote themselves to work and study with peace of mind. It can be seen that sleep is particularly important for health preservation in winter. Guide to a good sleep in early winter: Don’t cover yourself with heavy quilts and soak your feet frequently. The specific guidelines are as follows:

Guideline 1: Don’t cover yourself with a heavy quilt

In winter, people wear thicker quilts. Some people even cover themselves with two or three layers of thick quilts, which affects sleep and causes damage to the respiratory tract. Moreover, if you cover yourself with a heavy quilt, you will feel oppressed and unable to relax your whole body.

In winter, windows are rarely opened, the oxygen content is relatively low, and thick quilts pressing on the chest can cause slight hypoxia. Thick quilts contain a lot of dust. The dust from several layers of quilts can be inhaled into the respiratory tract, causing a certain impact on the respiratory mucosa. Especially for patients with emphysema, this bedding method can easily cause a recurrence of the disease.

Thick quilts are not breathable either. They are very warm at night, which opens your pores. If you get up suddenly in the morning, you are easily attacked by cold wind. The best bedding in winter is down quilts, wool quilts, etc. If you feel it is not warm enough, you can add a blanket on top.

Guide 2: Soak your feet before bed

Soaking your feet in hot water for 15 to 20 minutes before going to bed can promote foot expansion and accelerate blood flow, while also reducing the brain and helping people fall asleep quickly. If conditions permit, you can add some blood-activating Chinese medicine to the hot water for bathing. It will make people more comfortable, feel sleepy faster, and improve the quality of sleep.

As the saying goes, "All diseases start from the cold, and the cold starts from the feet." Therefore, soaking your feet before going to bed at night can dispel the cold and activate the joints, which is of great benefit to the body. Because the foot is rich in acupuncture points and reflex areas, foot soaking has a very positive significance, especially for preventing diseases such as arthritis, diabetes, and myocardial infarction. Soaking your feet can soothe your mood. After a day of study and work, your body must be very tired. A basin of hot water can give you a full body enjoyment and help you fall asleep faster.

Guideline 3: Reduce Light

Sleeping is related to a hormone called melatonin. In winter, it gets dark at around 5 or 6 in the afternoon, the light decreases, and the body's melatonin secretion increases, making you feel sleepy. Compared to summer when the sun rises earlier, it is more difficult to fall asleep again after waking up because of the suppression of light. Jiang Fan said that the environment in the countryside after dark is very suitable for sleeping, and there are still many light sources in the city. A good sleeping environment should minimize the impact of light. In addition, other environmental factors such as winter temperature are also more suitable for sleeping.

Guide 4: Drink millet porridge

Tryptophan is metabolized in the human body to produce 5-hydroxytryptamine, which can inhibit central nervous system excitability and produce a certain sense of drowsiness. At the same time, 5-HT can be further converted into melatonin in the human body, which has been proven to have a definite sedative and sleep-inducing effect.

Millet is the richest in tryptophan among all grains. It is a good idea to add some millet to your dinner, which helps increase the amount of tryptophan entering the brain. In addition, the tryptophan content in rice kernels, yuba, tofu skin, dried shrimps, etc. is also very high. In addition, tryptophan will smoothly enter the brain through the combination of carbohydrates and protein (that is, eating carbohydrates first and then protein), giving you a good sleep.

Guide 5: Eat walnuts

Walnuts contain a lot of melatonin, which can help you fall asleep. Melatonin is a hormone that regulates the body's sleep rhythm. The human brain secretes a small amount of this substance during the day and more at night. The increase in melatonin at night is an important guarantee for a good sleep. But as we age, many people's ability to produce melatonin at night weakens, which often wreaks havoc on normal sleep patterns.

It should be noted that walnuts contain a lot of fat. If you eat too much before going to bed, it will affect your sleep. It is best to just eat a handful of walnuts, or drink a bowl of paste made from walnut powder and flour.

Don't drink too much soup or water for dinner. It is cold in winter, we don’t sweat much, and the water circulation is less, so we urinate more than in summer. If you frequently get up to relieve yourself during sleep, it will interrupt your sleep, and some people may take a while to fall asleep again. Moreover, the temperature difference between inside and outside the quilt is quite large, so it is easy to catch a cold when going to the bathroom. It is recommended to drink less water after 7 or 8 o'clock in the evening, especially for people with relatively poor kidney function.

It can be seen that the above health guidelines are still very important, and they are also details that people easily overlook. In fact, it doesn’t take much time to soak your feet before going to bed at night, and it can bring you a sufficient sleep and full energy the next day. Why not do it? Therefore, the guide to sleeping in early winter: do not cover with heavy quilts and soak your feet frequently, everyone must remember.