Sleep is a very common thing in our life, but when you have insomnia, it will cause trouble in your life.

What exactly is Insomnia?

"Every night at 10 or 11 o'clock, you'll be staring at the clock and watching the minutes tick by, wondering why you haven't fallen asleep yet. After a while, you'll look at your watch again and realise that an hour has passed. Now that you're still in bed, you start to feel more agitated, anxious, and even furious with yourself for not being able to sleep."

Let's now carefully review this material on sleep that clinical hypnotherapist Mr. Hiro Koo has prepared for us in order to learn the diet and lifestyle practices for a restful night's sleep so that you can regain the peaceful, baby-like sleep that you once enjoyed！

In fact, sleep is divided into four different stages.

The first stage is the period between wakefulness and sleep. During this phase, everything starts to slow down: muscles soften, heart and breathing rates decrease, and brain wave patterns begin to change.

The second stage is the light sleep period. Your muscles relax more, your heart and breathing rates continue to slow, and your body temperature begins to drop.

The third stage is the deep sleep period. At this point, your heart and breathing rates are at their lowest point throughout the sleep cycle. Your muscles are very relaxed and it will be a little harder to wake you up. This stage is an integral part of good quality sleep, and if you don't get enough sleep in this state, you won't wake up feeling fully rested.

The fourth stage (the final stage of the sleep cycle) is called "rapid eye movement" (REM sleep). The first three stages belong to the "non-rapid eye movement" (non-REM, NREM sleep period). In many ways, REM is the exact opposite of the first three stages. Heart beats faster and breathing may increase and become irregular. The eyes move quickly behind the eyelids, and the brain starts to become active. Dreams are often experienced during REM sleep, and your body may actually experience temporary quadriplegia, which is a protective measure that prevents your body from actually performing the movements in your dreams.

These four stages cycle until you wake up. You have to go through NREM and REM sleep to stay awake throughout the day. Without both, memory integration is compromised. As you've experienced, it can be difficult to recall simple things quickly after a night of barely sleeping.

I heard that if you don't sleep well, you will gain weight?!！

It is not so much that insomnia will make you fat, it is better to let you and I improve the quality of sleep together to prevent obesity! Let’s learn about the 2 key points of sleep X obesity together with Dr. Hiro :

【Deep sleep helps improve metabolism】

Simply put, one of the causes of obesity is actually poor metabolism. And if you get deep sleep, your body will actually secrete a lot of growth hormone to promote metabolism, which is very helpful for you and me to maintain a healthy body shape.

On the contrary, staying up late or always in a state of light sleep, the secretion of growth hormone is very likely to be insufficient, causing the metabolism to deteriorate a bit. In this way, even if the food intake does not change, it is easier to form fat accumulation than others.

[Lack of sleep may increase appetite]

Part of the reason for craving late-night snacks when staying up late or when you can’t sleep is that the appetite-suppressing hormone leptin has decreased. Short sleep time will cause low leptin concentration, and it is natural to want to eat to satisfy your hunger.

In addition, in the case of lack of sleep, the concentration of the hormone ghrelin , which stimulates the appetite center, will increase, so that you and I still have appetites despite lack of energy, and the desire for late-night snacks becomes particularly large.

The decrease in leptin, which controls appetite, and the increase in ghrelin, which promotes appetite, are the most normal things under the double "pinch attack" effect.

After learning about the relationship between sleep and obesity, I believe that everyone will focus more on improving the quality of sleep. Teacher Hiro will analyze some tips that can help you with related problems:

Q: How can I improve the quality of sleep?

【Diet】：

It should be noted that foods with a high glycemic index can be reduced at night, such as white foods: refined white rice, porridge, sweets, white bread, white sugar or related manufactured products; this type of food will make the brain more excited and active, The chemistry that this food turns into also makes it harder for an individual to relax into a state of rest. It is also recommended to eat more vegetables, high fiber, and low glycemic index foods at night, which will make it easier for our brains to enter a state of rest and naturally fall asleep.

【Habits】:

Everyone also understands the impact of lifestyle habits on our sleep quality. In fact, blue light is one of the keys. Many people like to play with mobile phones, watch computers and TV before going to bed, but they don’t know the adverse effects of blue light on us. When stimulated by blue light, the brain will run very fast like a fan on No. 3. When it is time to go to bed It is difficult for the brain to directly turn off the fan to No. 1 and No. 0 in a short period of time (can't slow down).

In addition to daily activities such as watching TV and watching mobile phones, it is recommended to do some less stimulating activities before going to bed, such as reading (not recommended to watch the news), simple housework, etc. If it is a night-time exercise, it is recommended that a gentler exercise type such as yoga is better.

[Psychological articles]:

If you always think and force yourself to fall asleep before 11:00 or 12:00, or if you like to wear watches and instruments that track deep sleep, you may have formed a kind of pressure invisibly... The actual situation is very likely to be Continued inability to fall asleep because of early bed rest is already a problem of insomnia, or overly concerned about the sleep data displayed by the device, resulting in a healthy and anxious state of mind, which naturally has an unhealthy impact on sleep problems. The power of suggestion is invisible, don't keep giving yourself wrong suggestions, so as not to become a vicious circle.

About insomnia, Dr Hiro Koo's advice

Sleeping is the most natural thing, so don't take it as a "performance", turn the bed into your "stage", and don't set yourself some performance standards for high-quality sleep, such as when you must go to bed Sleep, be sure to sleep for a few hours, and make sure you have enough deep sleep. Because it puts a lot of stress on our body and mind, making it harder for us to fall asleep. Imagining some beautiful things in life, such as relationships between people, happy pictures from previous trips, will help us reduce stress and deal with insomnia more calmly. If you want to know more, you can also go to the Dr Hiro Koo clinic in BANGSAR SOUTH, and let the professionals give you appropriate treatment and assistance:

Clinical Hypnotherapist, Dr Hiro Koo

New Mind Brain Health Centre

2-3a, level 2, Life Care Medical Centre, Jalan Kerinchi, Bangsar South 59200 KL.

WhatsApp: 0167154419