Chinese medicine tells you the importance of sleeping in summer.

Sleep is necessary for the human body to maintain normal life activities and plays a very important role in health preservation. For example, Chinese medicine believes that a good sleep in autumn should be the key to ensuring health. Why? Now let's understand the importance of summer sleep.

The solar terms in summer are in the alternate period from hot to cool, and the yang in nature tends to converge from venting, and the rise and fall of yin and yang in human body also changes accordingly. At this time, the daily routine should be adjusted accordingly. The first adjustment of autumn health care is sleep time. The reason why autumn health care emphasizes ensuring sleep time is because sleep has a good health care function. Without normal sleep, normal life activities cannot be well maintained.

The sleep theory of traditional Chinese medicine is based on the unity of physical and mental materialism, which holds that sleep and wakefulness are the functional states of the unity of yin and yang, and insomnia is a normal physiological phenomenon, including:

First, the fluctuation of yin and yang day and night determines the degree of drowsiness of the human body.

Due to the movement of celestial bodies, nature is in the ups and downs of yin and yang, which is characterized by the alternation of day and night, with yang during the day and yin at night. Moreover, the yin and yang of the human body also changes with the growth and decline, so there is an alternation of strangulation and lethargy. Yang is dominant and Yin is dominant. It can be said that since the appearance of human beings, there has been a law of human activities: work at sunrise and rest at sunset.

"Lingshu Nutrition Society" said: "When the sun enters the Yang, it will be exhausted, and the Yin will be bitter. In the middle of the night and the conference, everyone is lying down, and life is called yin; Ping Dan's yin is exhausted and Yang is angry. If there is no self-nature, it is the same as heaven and earth. " Lingshu Kouwen further explains this as: at midnight, "the yang is exhausted, the yin is full, and the eyes are dull"; During the day, "Yin Qi is tired and Yang Qifeng is embarrassed."

Second, the physiological basis of sleep is the operation of camp and health.

The change of people's sleepiness is based on the operation of ying qi (that is, qi that moves in the pulse) and Wei qi (that is, qi that moves outside the pulse and has defensive function), among which Wei qi is the most relevant. "Ling Qi Xing" Day: "Therefore, it is Qi, with 50 bodies a day and a night, 25 weeks for Yang in the day and 25 weeks for Yin in the night". Lingshu Nutrition Health Museum also has the same saying: "It is at 25 degrees Yin and 25 degrees Yang, and it is divided into day and night, so qi starts from Yang and ends in Yin." Here "getting up" means getting up, and "stopping" means falling asleep.

It can be seen that when Wei Qi moves in yin, Yang Qi is exhausted and Yin Qi is abundant, so the body is quiet and sleepy (the human body enters a relatively static state and wants to sleep); Walking in the sun, the yin is full and the yang is full, so the body moves and wakes up (the human body enters the dynamic and wakes up). Therefore, the sleep and wakefulness of the human body are commanded by the heart. When the heart is calm, it will be sleepy, and when the heart is moved, it will be awkward. Too many emotions make it difficult to sleep.

Especially for middle-aged and elderly friends, with the growth of age, the elderly are deficient in both qi and blood and yin and yang, and there will be insomnia that is not refined during the day and not spoiled at night. Ancient health care experts said: "Lack of sleep is a big problem for the elderly." Gu believes that the elderly should "sleep when they are sleepy", which is in line with the viewpoint of health preservation.

In addition, the ancients also emphasized the importance of meridian sleep in sleep health (that is, people take a nap every day), thinking that Yin and Yang meet at noon, and the qi and blood in the body are unbalanced, so they must lie still and wait for the weather to recover. Modern research also found that from 0 to 4 o'clock at night, the functions of various organs in the body fell to the lowest point; At noon 12 to 13, it is the most tired time for human sympathetic nerves. Statistics show that sleeping at noon for the elderly can reduce the incidence of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. Therefore, meridian sleep not only has the significance of disease prevention and health care, but also conforms to the principle of health preservation.