Staying up late = unhealthy? Not getting enough sleep for 8 hours is bad for your health? It's not that simple

Workers usually stay up late to work overtime, and as a result, news about young people dying suddenly in the company appears in various media from time to time. This makes many people who stay up late for a long time often worry about their health.

So the question is, is it really harmful to your health if you just go to bed late? How many hours of sleep should you get every day to not be at a disadvantage? If we can figure out these questions, perhaps we can help us reduce a lot of unnecessary anxiety.

01

If you were Robinson

Staying up late is not a problem!

First of all, to answer the question "How to solve the problem of staying up late" is equivalent to acknowledging that "staying up late" is a problem and needs to be solved. But is "staying up late" really a problem?

What we call "staying up late" is actually a relative concept. The reason for this concept is that most people's working hours are consistent with the model generally accepted by society. In other words, since human society at this stage sets "Monday to Friday, 9 to 5" as social and working time, and the rest is non-working time, such as rest time after 6 pm to 7 or 8 am the next day, and this setting has been recognized and accepted by most people, we have what we call "work and rest time and regularity".

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Since most social activities are limited to the start time of work (i.e. the time of "working"), and the actual "resting" time varies from person to person, therefore, those who are accustomed to "resting" late are called "night owls", and their behavior is called "staying up late".

Therefore, "staying up late" is not the "culprit" of the problem, but the need to survive in society is! If a person lives alone on a deserted island, there will be no such sleep problem. Think about it from another angle. If you don't want to change your work and rest routine, you need to change the work and rest routine of most other people who are inconsistent with yours, so that this routine becomes recognized and accepted by society (such as going to work at 12 noon and leaving get off work at 8 pm). This... is much more difficult than changing your own work and rest time, so change yourself!

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02

Go to bed late and get up late and wake up naturally?

There’s nothing wrong with being able to maintain it for a long time!

The reason why we generally believe that staying up late is bad for our health is that most of us need to get up and go to work at the conventional time set by society.

On the premise of ensuring that individuals get enough sleep, going to bed late will inevitably lead to getting up late. This problem will not cause any trouble to our lives on rest days when we don't need to get up early; the main contradiction is on weekdays - going to bed late and getting up on time is equivalent to artificially causing insufficient sleep. If you continue to work and rest like this for a long time, corresponding sleep problems will arise.

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Whether or not you can get enough sleep later has nothing to do with whether you stay up late, but it has to do with whether you need to work on time (i.e. whether you need to get up on time to go to work). In other words, if you don’t need to go to work or participate in social activities like most office workers, like some completely freelancers, and you don’t need to consider social activities according to other people’s working hours, you can live according to your own work and rest schedule, such as going to bed at 2 a.m. and getting up at 10 a.m. for a long time. From an individual level, there is actually nothing wrong with such a work and rest schedule. However, if you stay up too late, or even reverse your day and night, it may affect your physical health, such as endocrine disorders and reduced immunity.

It should be noted that people are social beings, and they still need to follow the work and rest schedules of most people in daily social activities. For example, your job may not require you to get up early and punch in, but when you meet with friends, date your lover, discuss cooperation with clients, go to banks, government agencies, hospitals and other institutions for business, you cannot ask the other party to accommodate your work and rest schedule when engaging in these social activities.

However, once a person develops a completely different schedule from others, and has to make changes frequently for one reason or another, various physical discomforts will occur, resulting in what we often call sleep disorders caused by sleep rhythm disorders.

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So, if you can "go to bed late and get up late, but sleep until you wake up naturally every day", that is, meet your individual sleep needs, it is not considered staying up late. But the premise is that you can maintain this regular schedule for a long time, and your life is not affected by the outside world (including your family's schedule, participation in social activities, and the overwhelming information about "good sleep", etc.). Otherwise, this schedule will affect your health, which is what we often say "staying up late is harmful to your health."

03

From going to bed late and waking up late to going to bed early and waking up early

Adjusting your work and rest schedule requires professional guidance

So, how do we return to a routine that is consistent with social acceptance?

To answer this question, we need to first understand what a "biological clock" is. The human body has its own circadian rhythm system, also known as the internal circadian rhythm timekeeping system, which is what we often call the "biological clock". This system regulates many physiological functions of the body. Disruptions in the biological clock are related to internal abnormalities or external factors. The most common external factors include air travel and shift work.

For most young people, the possibility of internal abnormalities is low, and most of them are caused by external factors. The most common of these is staying up late on their own initiative, and the resulting contradiction between the habit of going to bed late and getting up late and the need to get up on time for work. If this contradiction is not resolved for a long time, a series of problems such as daytime sleepiness, fatigue, and lack of energy will occur, which we call delayed sleep-wake phase disorder.

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The best way to solve this problem is to adjust "late sleep and late rise" to "early sleep and early rise", but this adjustment is a gradual process, and requires behavioral adjustment and sleep-wake time setting treatment under the guidance of a doctor. For specific methods, you can consult the hospital's sleep specialist clinic. For those with simple sleep-wake phase delay disorder, it is not recommended to use hypnotic drugs to help advance bedtime.

04

There is no strict requirement for sleep time

Don't take a nap for more than an hour.

Regarding sleep time, we have always had a misunderstanding, that is, we must sleep for a certain length of time. Some say that 8 hours of sleep is the most ideal, and there are also some "second best" opinions that 7 hours is also fine... But in fact, making rigid requirements on sleep time is as strange as making requirements on people's appetite. Some people are satisfied with 2 taels of rice per meal, while some people are not full if they don't eat 5 taels. Which one is the normal amount of food?

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Even according to the diagnostic criteria of the International Classification of Sleep Disorders, there is no such criterion as "less than a certain number of hours" in the diagnosis of insomnia.

So why do many experts make recommendations on sleep duration? This is because clear numbers are easier for the public to remember. The advantage is that they provide a quantitative reference indicator, but the disadvantage is that many people mistakenly believe that if the duration is not met, it is abnormal.

Back to the point, even if experts do not make specific sleep duration recommendations, everyone's sleep needs will not differ too much. For adults, it is common to be in the range of 6 to 8 hours, teenagers may be longer than this, and the elderly may be shorter than this. However, sleeping too little, such as less than 4 hours, or sleeping too long, such as more than 10 hours, is not good for health.

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For individuals, in addition to referring to the above-mentioned sleep duration, another thing to consider when determining whether you have gotten enough sleep is whether your daytime functions are normal, that is, whether you experience fatigue, drowsiness, lack of energy, etc. during the day. This is what we often call sleep quality assessment.

Similarly, there is no rigid requirement for taking a nap. The level of "sleep time + sleep quality" determines whether we need a nap. In addition, naps are also related to individual living habits. However, in order not to affect nighttime sleep, for people who have the habit of taking a nap, we recommend that the nap time should not exceed 1 hour.

Author: Hou Yue, attending physician, Department of Neurology, Xuanwu Hospital, Capital Medical University

Review | Huang Chaoyang, deputy chief physician, Xuanwu Hospital, Capital Medical University

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