Insomnia is quite common in life. Many modern people suffer from insomnia because of stress in life, staying up late, working overtime, etc. Life and work are already difficult, and sleep disorders occur at night. This will have a certain impact on the body and mind in the long run. For this reason, we invited Zhou Xiangxue, deputy chief physician of the Department of Neurology, East Hospital of the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, to tell you what to do about insomnia?

Treatments for insomnia

Dr. Zhou Xiangxue told us that insomnia treatment is a comprehensive treatment. The so-called comprehensive treatment is to combine drug treatment and non-drug treatment together. Drug treatment focuses on short-term intermittent treatment, because the long-term use of drugs will actually make patients bear many drug side effects, so drugs are only a short-term auxiliary process. What is more important is the mental treatment called cognitive behavioral treatment, which emphasizes the cognitive aspect, changing some wrong understandings of sleep, and also making some behavioral adjustments.

1. Cognitive aspects

First of all, you should not have too high expectations for sleep, which will put the patient into a vicious cycle and increase their psychological pressure. In addition, you should not force yourself to fall asleep. Forcing yourself to fall asleep when you are not sleepy will also increase the possibility of insomnia.

2. Behavior

We can use some of the more sophisticated relaxation therapies nowadays, such as lying in bed to relax the body, relax the muscles and relax the mind. For example, adding some imagination, also called relaxation therapy, and increasing your abdominal breathing can also help you fall asleep. If you can't fall asleep after half an hour in bed, you should stand up and do some simple exercises, which is called benign stimulation.

It is not recommended to do these things before going to bed

1. Looking at your phone, watching TV, or doing strenuous exercise before going to bed are all adverse stimuli and are not recommended for patients with sleep disorders.

2. Some intense mental exercises or thinking about some problems are not recommended.

3. In terms of diet, you should not eat too much or stimulating foods before going to bed, such as coffee and tea, which are not recommended.

Insomnia that cannot be self-regulated can be treated by this method

Dr. Zhou Xiangxue believes that if insomnia can no longer be treated by self-regulation, then it is recommended to rely on medical drugs. Many friends are familiar with sleeping pills, which are indeed very effective, but in fact we do not recommend taking sleeping pills for more than two weeks, especially sedative sleeping pills, which will cause dependence on the drug, which is what we often call addiction, so it is not recommended to use sleeping pills alone for more than two weeks.

Generally speaking, if the insomnia lasts for more than three months, we will recommend that the patient receive anti-anxiety and anti-depression treatment. The anti-anxiety treatment is very standardized and takes about three months to six months. So don’t fall into the misunderstanding that if you have insomnia, you take sleeping pills or anti-anxiety drugs, and stop taking them after two weeks when you feel better. These are all wrong. Only through more standardized treatment can the condition be relieved. #清风计划#