Sleep health products

There is no absolute "must-have item", and there is no IQ tax that is all about harvesting leeks. 90% of people fall into this trap. Essentially, they buy blindly based on the propaganda of Internet celebrities without first understanding the source of their sleep problems.

I went through a lot of pitfalls last year when I was helping my dad adjust his sleep. At that time, I saw a blogger who said that the steam eye mask and smart clip-on sleep device are "the savior of middle-aged insomnia." Without saying anything, I spent more than a thousand to buy it. As a result, my dad felt stuffy when wearing the eye mask, and the sleep device clamped on his temples. He could fall asleep after lying down for half an hour, but after lying down for two hours, it got worse. Later, I took him for sleep monitoring and found out that his poor sleep was not caused by eye fatigue or nervous excitement at all, but intermittent hypoxia caused by snoring. His blood oxygen dropped more than ten times a night, so of course he couldn't sleep well. Later, he changed to an anti-snoring pillow that fit the curve of his shoulder and neck, and combined with the doctor's work and rest adjustment plan, he rarely woke up in the middle of the night for half a month.

To put it bluntly, many people buy sleep products, just like when they have a cold, whether it is a cold or a virus, they first buy the most expensive antibiotics, which are of course useless if they are not symptomatic. I felt this very deeply when I went to the sleep department of Peking University Third Hospital to register. The doctor didn't ask me if I had used sleep aid products in the first sentence. He first asked me if I was still checking work group messages before going to bed. Their clinical point of view has always been clear: for 80% of mild sleep problems caused by poor living habits and poor sound and light environment, a few dozen yuan of vinyl blackout curtains and slow rebound silent earplugs are much more useful than a few thousand yuan of smart sleep devices. If it really reaches the level of pathological insomnia, you should first take medicine as directed by your doctor. Any sleep aid product can only be used as an auxiliary and cannot replace treatment.

But I also know a product manager who makes smart sleep monitoring mattresses. He complained to me privately that many people accused their product of having an IQ tax, but they were actually buying it for the wrong people. Their core users are not young people who occasionally stay up late and can't fall asleep. They are two types of people: one is patients who have been diagnosed with mild sleep apnea and feel that wearing a ventilator is too stuffy to bear. The mattress can adjust sleeping positions in real time to avoid airway compression; the other is at home. There are elderly people who live alone. The mattress can monitor blood oxygen and heart rate at night. If there is an abnormality, it will send an alarm directly to their children's mobile phones. Last year, some users relied on this early warning to send an elderly person who had a heart attack to the hospital in time. Do you think this kind of product can be called an IQ tax for the corresponding group of people?

Don’t think that only expensive products are useful. My best friend was suffering from postpartum anxiety. She would lie down for two hours every day counting sheep with her eyes open. The doctor said that it was not suitable to take sleep aids for the time being. She bought a bunch of aromatherapy and sleep aid sprays, but they didn’t work. In the end, I was saved by a white noise bedside lamp worth more than 100 yuan. I turned the lamp to the dimmest warm light half an hour before going to bed every day, and played the sound of pattering rain. In less than half a month, the time it took me to fall asleep was reduced to less than 20 minutes. But the lamp was not suitable for her mother. The old lady felt that the light was shaking and the sound of rain made her irritated. Instead, she tossed and turned and couldn't fall asleep. There is really no way to generalize about individual differences.

The most controversial ones right now are oral products such as melatonin and sleep-aid gummies. Some people say they have immediate effects, while others say they feel drowsy the next day and still rely on them. In fact, this matter needs to be discussed separately. Melatonin is currently classified as a health food in China and cannot replace drugs at all, and the tolerance levels of different races are very different. The commonly used dosage recommended in Europe and the United States is 5-10 mg. In fact, 1 mg per day is enough for us Chinese. I have tested several online celebrity sleep-aid gummies before, and the melatonin content of a single tablet is 6 mg. Some even have unclear ingredients. If you eat it several times in one bite, it will be strange if you don’t have a headache the next day.

Harm, you really need to choose a sleep product that suits you. Don’t believe in the propaganda sayings that it “can be used by the whole family” and “can cure all insomnia.” It’s better to spend dozens of dollars to get a sleep department account first and find out where your problem lies than anything else. If you are afraid of light, buy blackout curtains. If you are afraid of noise, buy earplugs. If you snore, you should first check whether you have sleep apnea. It is really insomnia caused by anxiety. Try throwing your phone in the living room half an hour before going to bed. You said that you hold the phone and watch short videos for two hours, and your nerves are so excited. It’s weird that you can sleep on a custom-made mattress worth RMB 100,000, right?