關於睡眠你有必要知道的十件事(下)

hol Doesn't Help You Sleep Better

5.喝酒不會讓我們睡得更好

Alcohol makes a lot of us drowsy, so having a shot or two before you go to bed seems like a logical, tried-and-true way of falling asleep fast. Unfortunately, you actually end up making yourself worse off than you would have been without a drink. Studies that have examined the effects of alcohol on the sleep habits of more than 500 people came up with some disturbing news for those of us who swear by our hot toddies.

喝酒會讓我們昏昏欲睡，所以在睡覺前喝一兩杯似乎是一種符合邏輯又靠得住的讓人更快入睡的辦法。但很不幸，相比不喝酒而言，喝了酒之後你的睡眠會更加糟糕。科學家們對500多名志願者進行研究，以調查酒對睡眠習慣產生的影響。結果對於那些極度相信香甜熱酒的人來說是非常不安的消息。

Alcohol will, indeed, make you fall asleep faster and will make your initial sleep much deeper, but the difficulties that come later in the night negate any positive effects you might get from this. REM sleep is greatly reduced with as few as just two drinks. In addition to a greater tendency to wake up more often, those sleepers that do manage to fall into REM sleep are more likely to suffer from nightmares. They are also more likely to keep waking up in the middle of these nightmares. This increases the likelihood of the later part of the night being broken up by some pretty uncomfortable feelings. Women feel this more than men, as their bodies tend to process alcohol faster. Even a drink or two is likely to make you get up and hit the bathroom in the middle of the night. It can also worsen any preexisting conditions like acid reflux, insomnia, and sleep apnea.

喝酒確實能夠讓你更快入睡，讓你在睡眠初級狀態時睡得更加深沉，但是之後喝酒帶來的困難會把之前你所得到的所有積極效果都統統抵消掉。一兩杯酒雖少卻會大大減少快速眼動睡眠。除了更有可能時常醒來以外，快速眼動睡眠受損的人還更容易做噩夢。很可能，噩夢之後會常常驚醒，這樣後半夜裏的寧靜就會被這種不安的情緒所打破。女人的反應會比男人更強烈，因爲酒精在女人體內吸收得更快。甚至一兩杯酒也有可能讓你在三更半夜起牀上廁所。不僅如此，它還會加重之前的病情，比如胃酸反流，失眠和睡眠呼吸暫停。

t Theories Of Sleep

4.睡眠的最早理論

Sleep really is a pretty weird thing. We spend a third of our lives asleep. That's a huge amount of valuable time we could be devoting to other things, like learning, reading, or generally making the world a better place. At a glance, it doesn't seem to have any usefulness, so it's not surprising that early scientists, physicians, and psychologists had a tough time trying to explain just why we fall asleep.

睡眠的確是件怪異的事情。人的一生大約有1/3的時間是在睡眠中度過的。這段大量的寶貴時間我們可以致力於其他事情，比如學習、閱讀或者寬泛地說就是讓世界變得更好。乍一看，睡眠似乎沒有什麼用處，所以理所當然早期的科學家、物理學家和心理學家想要解釋“爲什麼我們會睡覺”都感到困難重重。

One of the first theories of sleep comes from the Greek writer Alcmaeon. His theory stated that sleep happened with the flow of blood through the body. As vessels carried blood away from the skin and toward our core, we fell asleep until the flow was reversed. About 100 years after Alcmaeon, Aristotle also took on the question of sleep. He determined that it was the opposite of waking, that it was centered around a person's heart (as this was the center of other types of perceptions), and that it was tied closely to digestion. He hypothesized that the act of digestion would put a person to sleep, and that when it was finished, they would wake. The Greeks had a mythological explanation for sleep, in the form of Hypnos, god of sleep; he lived in Erebos (eternal darkness). Every night, he traveled the land in the company of Nyx (Night) and his brother Thanatos, who was the spirit of peaceful death. In ancient Egypt, sleep was something that people had little control over. When they fell asleep, they were entering a place between the lands of the living and the dead. Dreams and nightmares were the work of spirits, and sometimes sleep was a way for the dead to communicate with the living.

睡眠的最早理論之一出自古希臘作家阿爾克邁翁。他的理論闡明瞭人在睡覺的時候身體內的血液在流動。血管將血液帶離皮膚然後流向身體的核心，直到血液流向逆轉我們才陷入沉睡。阿爾克邁翁之後過了100年，亞里士多德開始研究睡眠的問題。他堅持認爲睡眠是清醒的相反狀態，它集中於人的心臟（因爲心臟是人的感覺中心）而且與消化緊密相關。他設想消化的過程可以讓人入睡，消化結束之後，人便會醒來。古希臘人對睡眠有一個神學的解釋：許普諾斯（睡眠之神）居住在俄瑞波斯（終極的黑暗地獄），每晚，他會在尼克斯（司夜女神）和他的孿生兄弟桑納託斯（死亡之神）的陪伴下一起旅行。在古埃及，睡眠是人們無法控制的事情。當人們進入夢鄉的時候，他們就進入了生死之間的地域。美夢和噩夢都是鬼神的傑作，有時候睡眠也是死人與活人溝通的一種方式。

're Programmed For Two Sleeps

3.我們被設定爲兩段式睡眠

If you're one of those people that just can't sleep through the night, don't worry; not only are you not alone, but you're actually sleeping more correctly than those who insist on uninterrupted eight hours. Up until the 17th century, our sleep pattern as a species looked pretty different: We practiced two sleeps. Between the first (or dead) sleep and the second sleep was a period that we used for some downtime—reading, prayer, even visiting family or neighbors. According to some medieval texts, couples who were trying to conceive had the most luck in between the two sleeps.

如果你是那種不能一覺睡到天亮的人，別擔心；你並不孤單，而且事實上你比那些堅持不被打擾睡足八小時的人，睡眠方式更加正確。直到17世紀，作爲一個物種，人類的睡眠模式看起來就非常與衆不同：我們會有兩段式睡眠（在黃昏後先睡兩個小時，然後醒來1到2小時，接着再開始第二段睡眠）。在第一次睡眠和第二次睡眠之間是一段我們用以修整的時間——讀書、祈禱，甚至是拜訪家人或者去鄰居家串門。根據一些中世紀的文字資料，在兩段睡眠的中間一段時間受孕命中率最高。

Studies have shown that the idea of two sleeps is much more in tune with what our bodies actually want us to do. That's why many of us still wake up in the middle of the night. Other studies have proven that our bodies will, in fact, default to two sleeps. Psychiatrist Thomas Wehr regulated the amount of darkness people were exposed to for a whole month. As a result, the people's natural sleep patterns more closely reflected the two-sleep sequence. So why have we moved away from this more natural way of sleeping? With the advent of electric lights, the amount of light we're exposed to has changed. Also, during the Reformation, the darkest hours of the night became associated with holding secret—and illegal—religious ceremonies. Suddenly, the idea of reading, prayer, and visiting others in the middle of the night turned into something scandalous.

研究顯示兩段式睡眠更加符合我們身體的節奏。這就是爲什麼我們很多人半夜還醒着的原因。其他研究證明事實上我們的身體默認爲兩段式睡眠。心理學家托馬斯·維爾進行了一項實驗，該實驗讓一羣人連續一個月每天14小時置身於黑暗之中。結果表明，人類的正常睡眠模式更加接近兩段式睡眠。那麼，爲什麼我們又捨棄了這個更自然健康的睡眠模式呢？隨着電燈的出現，我們暴露在光線下的時間就發生了改變。而且在宗教改革期間，夜晚就和保守祕密——不合法的事件——宗教儀式聯繫起來。突然之間，在黃昏到夜晚之間讀書、祈禱、串門就變成了醜聞。

Moon Can Keep You Awake

2.月亮會讓你醒着

There's all sorts of folklore around the moon, and most of it is just that. However, new studies have shown that while the moon might not make you go crazy, it can make you lose some sleep.

關於月亮各種各樣的民間傳說不計其數，大多數也就那樣。然而，新的研究表明月亮不會讓你發瘋，但是你會損失一些睡眠。

In a study at the University of Basel, Switzerland, researchers looked at just how soundly volunteers slept during different phases of the moon. It was found that, on average, it took people about five minutes longer to fall asleep during a full moon, and their sleep cycle was shortened by about 20 minutes. There were several controls that had been built into the study. In fact, the participating didn't even know that their sleep patterns were going to be studied. The volunteers were originally part of a different, unrelated study, lasting three years. They have spent periods of between three and five days in a lab, where their sleep patterns were monitored. The collected data was only compared to the moon phases long after the study was complete. Volunteers were also monitored in a closed, laboratory environment and couldn't see the moon. This helps rule out the possibility of brightness keeping them awake longer, and supports the idea that there's something else working on our bodies during the full moon.

在瑞士巴塞爾大學的一項研究中，研究人員在觀察不同的月相下志願者們的酣睡程度。他們發現，一般來說在滿月的時候人要多花五分鐘的時間才能睡着而且睡眠週期被縮短了二十分鐘。研究中對多個環節都進行了控制。事實上，參與者們甚至還不知道人們在研究他們的睡眠模式。志願者們原本參與的是另外一門不同的、長達三年的、與此毫不相干的研究。他們會在實驗室裏待上三天到五天的時間，在那裏他們的睡眠模式會受到監測。在研究完成很久之後實驗收集的數據纔會和月相進行對比。不僅如此，研究者們還會把志願者們放在一個封閉的、看不到月亮的實驗環境裏進行監控。這樣就能排除因爲亮光他們才醒得更久的可能性並且進一步支持了在滿月的時候有什麼東西在我們的身體裏起了作用。

're Not Sure Why We Sleep

1.我們還不能斷定我們爲什麼睡覺

Seems unlikely, right? Yet it's true: We're not all that much closer to discovering exactly why we have to sleep than Alcmaeon and Aristotle were. There are certainly plenty of theories that can be pieced together, but there's no confirmed, big picture of why we sleep. Much of the problem comes from the fact that sleep just isn't practical. Sleep is considered a primal need that our bodies get pretty vocal about when they're missing it. We get hungry when we don't eat, thirsty when we don't drink, and tired when we don't sleep. But what does sleep do for us, aside from make us not tired?

看起來似乎不大可能，對吧？但是這是真的：現在我們對睡眠的研究和探索其實與阿爾克邁翁和亞里士多德差不了多少。當然我們可以把許多理論都拼湊起來，但是沒有一個準確、完整的觀點來說明爲什麼我們要睡覺。很多問題都來源於睡眠不具有實用性的事實。人們認爲睡眠只是一項基本需求，當身體缺少它的時候就會發出“聲音”。我們不吃飯我們就會感到飢餓，我們不喝水我們就會口渴，我們不睡覺我們就會感到疲倦。但是除了消除我們的疲勞之外，睡眠又對我們有什麼好處呢？

The inactivity theory and the closely related energy conservation theory state that during the night, it's in our best interest to stay pretty stationary; there are other, bigger things out there that want to eat us, and sleeping means we can conserve our energy. But that also brings up the question of whether or not being completely unaware of our surroundings is the best way to stay safe. Other theories run into the problem of being hard to prove. It's been a long-standing guess that our brains use sleep as a way to reorganize information, to synthesize hormones, or to perform something of a system of the most recent theories states that while we sleep, the flow of fluid around our brains increases. This literally performs a physical cleanup of all the debris left behind by the day's thoughts. That doesn't explain the idea of dreams, though; one theory that does explain them is that we need to sleep to give our brains a chance to refresh memories and reinforce what we've learned during the day without using up the brain power we need to run our waking moments. Interestingly, some researchers think that we're asking the question backward. While we're sleeping, we're stationary, we're conserving energy, we're out of harm's way, and we're not likely to hurt ourselves. These researchers argue that a better question to explore is what biological, evolutionary good comes from us being awake.

靜止理論和與此緊密相關的能量儲存理論闡明瞭在夜晚的時候我們最好能夠保持靜止的狀態；外面有其他一些更大的存在想要吃掉我們，而睡眠意味着我們能夠儲蓄能量。但是這又引出了一個新問題：最好的保持安全的方式是完全瞭解我們的外在環境好呢，還是不完全瞭解爲妙。其他理論則遇到了難以證明的問題。人們常常猜測我們的大腦支配着睡眠，讓其成爲一種識別信息，合成荷爾蒙或者對系統進行重新組裝的方式。最近的一種理論闡明在我們睡覺的時候，我們大腦裏的液體流動不斷加強。這實際上是對白天信息留下的殘骸進行一次身體上的清理。儘管如此，這還是不能解釋人爲什麼會作夢；有一個理論卻解釋了這一點：我們需要睡覺是因爲睡眠可以在不耗盡清醒時所需腦力的前提下，讓大腦再次回顧我們的記憶並且鞏固我們在白天所學到的東西。有趣的是，一些研究者們認爲我們把問題繞回到了原點。我們睡覺的時候，我們是靜止的，我們在保存能量，我們遠離傷害，我們不可能傷害自己。他們認爲值得探索的更好的問題是我們醒來之後會獲得什麼生理上的、具有革新意義的好處。

翻譯：高陳影 來源：前十網