科學解答什么時間上床睡覺最合適！不用強迫自己早睡了…

Getting enough shut-eye is one of life’s biggest challenges.

獲得足夠的睡眠是人生最大的挑戰(zhàn)之一。

It’s recommended that the average person get at least 7 hours of sleep per night to stay healthy and alert, but is there a particular optimal time for going to bed?

有人建議稱我們每晚要至少睡7個小時才能保持健康和清醒，但是否有一個最佳睡覺時間呢?

The division of people into ’morning larks’ and ’night owls’ is based on our individual circadian rhythms - the internal body clock that keeps us going.

我們身體的內(nèi)部生物鐘決定著我們每天的清醒與否，基于內(nèi)部生物鐘所表現(xiàn)出的不同個人晝夜節(jié)律將人們劃分為“早晨百靈鳥”和“夜貓子”。

A tiny region in the brain’s hypothalamus, called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), is the control centre of our internal timekeeping, and it runs in roughly 24-hour long cycles. Our sleep and wakefulness are regulated with hormones and neural activity from the SCN.

大腦下丘腦中的一個小區(qū)域，稱為視交叉上核(SCN)，是我們內(nèi)部計時的控制中心，它以大約24小時的長周期運行。我們的睡眠和覺醒均是由視交叉上核的激素和神經(jīng)活動調(diào)節(jié)。

The daily cycle of light and dark plays an important role in our circadian rhythms.

光明和黑暗的日常循環(huán)在我們的晝夜節(jié)律中起著重要的作用。

"If you put a human into an environment without any light/dark signals or any other time cues, they will fall asleep approximately every 24 hours," writes sleep researcher Sally Ferguson from Central Queensland University in Australia.

澳大利亞中央昆士蘭大學的睡眠研究人員薩利.弗格森寫道：“如果你把一個人置于一個沒有任何光/暗信號或任何其他時間暗示的環(huán)境中，他們大約每24小時就會睡著一次。”

"Light is the strongest signal to our biological clock and is critical to [..] keeping us synchronised to the external environment."

“光是我們生物鐘的最強信號，對于保持我們與外部環(huán)境同步至關(guān)重要。

So, should we all be going to bed at sundown and rising with the birds? Not necessarily, although exposure to light is closely linked to the production of melatonin, the hormone that makes us sleepy.

那么我們所有人都需要在日落時上床睡覺，鳥兒叫時起床嗎?這倒不是必須的，盡管暴露在光線中和使我們感到疲倦的激素—褪黑素的產(chǎn)生有密切關(guān)系。

When it’s light, the brain suppresses melatonin, which helps us stay alert. But people have individual differences in how soon after dark melatonin production kicks into gear, and this is why there is no set time for when a person starts getting sleepy.

當有光線時，大腦抑制褪黑素的產(chǎn)生，從而保證我們清醒。但是人們在黑暗環(huán)境下褪黑素大量產(chǎn)生的快慢上存在差異，這也是為什么對于每個人而言，沒有確定的時間開始犯困的原因。

It’s a mistake to go to bed too early, clinical sleep researcher Rafael Pelayo tells The Wall Street Journal. "Trying to go to sleep when your body wants to be awake is like swimming upstream."

“太早上床是錯誤的，”臨床的睡眠研究員Rafael Pelayo對《華爾街日報》表示。“在身體想要保持清醒的時候嘗試入睡就像逆流而上。”

In other words, if you’re fighting your natural rhythm, forcing yourself to go to bed early is only going to make you anxious about not being able to fall sleep.

換句話說，如果你與自己的自然規(guī)律作斗爭，強迫自己很早地上床只會讓你為失眠而焦慮。

As insomnia researcher Allison Siebern from Stanford University in the US explains to Time magazine, the best time for a person to go to sleep is the hour when they feel the sleepiest.

就像來自美國的斯坦福大學的失眠研究員Allison Siebern對《時代周刊》解釋的那樣，一個人去睡覺的最好時間就是他最困的那個時間。

That’s easier said than done, though - particularly for people with inconsistent sleep schedules, such as shift workers.

不過這說的比做的容易——尤其是對那些睡覺時間不規(guī)律的人來說，比如按班輪換的工人。

Still, experts recommend that the best way to get a good night’s sleep is to try and rise around the same time every morning, and go to bed at our sleepiest, which might fluctuate slightly from day to day.

盡管如此，專家們建議，睡個好覺的最佳方法是每天早上嘗試在同一時間起床，并在我們最困倦的時候上床睡覺，這可能每天都會略微波動。

To determine your optimal bedtime, set your alarm consistently, restrict the amount of time in bed to how many hours you normally need per night, and hit the sack 15 minutes before that.

要確定最佳就寢時間，設(shè)置固定時間鬧鐘，將睡眠時間限制為每晚通常需要的時間，并提前15分鐘提示。

"Restricting your opportunity to sleep may actually make you go to bed later but the biologic drive to sleep will help you fall asleep faster and sleep deeper," explains Pelayo.

“限制你的睡眠機會實際上可能會讓你更晚上床睡覺，但生物規(guī)律驅(qū)動的睡眠將幫助你更快地入睡并睡得更深，”

One final note is a warning on sleep quality throughout the night. We sleep in roughly 90-minute cycles, shifting from deep sleep to lighter rapid eye movement (REM) sleep.

最后一點是整晚睡眠質(zhì)量的警告，我們睡眠的循環(huán)周期大概是90分鐘，從深度睡眠轉(zhuǎn)換到瞬間眼動睡眠。

The latter tends to occur more in the second half of the night, closer to daybreak - so if you often go to bed super-late, you may be getting more REM sleep, and less of the restorative deep stuff that makes you productive and alert.

后者往往在臨近黎明的后半夜發(fā)生，所以如果你經(jīng)常很晚上床睡覺，你得到更多的是瞬間眼動睡眠，這時我們不會得到高效和機敏的深層修復(fù)。

英文來源：Science alert

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