【卫报】睡眠焦虑症，了解一下？

作为新养生风潮的大热门之一，睡眠追踪记录也成为了大家乐此不疲讨论的话题。不过睡的好不好，你的手环说了不算。希望本文能帮助各位缓解些烈酒泡枸杞式的养生焦虑。

睡眠焦虑症，了解一下？

译者：李玉婷

校对：刘   璠

策划：刘   璠

本文选自 The Guardian | 取经号原创翻译

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‘Any less than 10 hours and I feel grumpy’: meet the clean sleepers

纯净睡眠人群：假如睡眠少于十小时我就会莫名暴走

Evenings are something of a rush for Megan Hobbs. The 29-year-old solicitor doesn’t finish work until 6.30pm and it takes her 45 minutes to travel home from central London to the flat she shares with her boyfriend. “I go to Pret a Manger or somewhere about 5pm and grab a soup and a sandwich to eat at my desk,” she says. “Otherwise there’s no way I can get to bed by 8.30pm. I’d rather eat at home, but I can’t sleep on a full stomach.”

梅甘·霍布斯的夜晚总是匆匆而过。她今年29，是一名职业律师，每天晚上6：30才下班，而且还得再花45分钟从伦敦市中心回到与男友同居的公寓。她说：“下午5点钟左右我会去Pret a Manger（一家简餐店）或其他地方买份汤和三明治回办公室吃，不然我就没法儿在8.30之前睡觉了。我也想在家吃晚饭，但是饱腹使我难以入睡。”

It takes a lot of work and organisation for Hobbs to get what she describes as “the right amount” of sleep. For her, a late night is getting into bed at 9.30pm; by that time, she admits to feeling “stressed”. On a good night, she keeps her room cool, quiet and dark and usually switches off her phone by 8pm. There’s a pricey milkshake containing hops to be consumed before bed, and a magnesium-infused sleep-aid spray she uses on her wrists and neck. For the past year, Hobbs has also worn a fitness tracker in bed to analyse the amount and quality of her sleep.

为了获得所谓的“充足睡眠量”，霍布斯花了不少功夫。对她来说，九点半睡觉就算熬夜。而到那个点时，她会感到“紧张”。一个理想的夜晚状态，是保持房间凉爽、安静、无光，手机通常在八点之前关机。睡前要喝一杯价格不菲的蛇麻草奶昔，还得在手腕和脖子处喷上含镁的助眠喷雾。过去一年中，梅甘也一直戴着健康追踪设备睡觉，以分析睡眠时间与质量。

“Before I got this device, I was only getting about seven hours of rest per night. It’s shown me I need to be in bed for 10 hours to achieve enough restorative deep sleep – any less and I feel grumpy.” She admits her relationship with her partner and her friendships have suffered, but Hobbs doesn’t think she’s fetishising sleep. “I choose to prioritise my health,” she says.

 “穿戴追踪器之前，我每晚只睡7小时左右。仪器显示我需要睡十小时才能拥有足够的深度睡眠来恢复精神，少于这个时长我就容易暴走。”她承认与伴侣和朋友的关系因此变差了，但她不觉得自己是在盲目地执着于睡眠。她说：“我选择把健康摆在第一位。”

The quantity – and quality – of sleep we get has been eroded over the past few decades, due almost exclusively to the increasingly frantic pace at which we live our lives. The internet, social media and technology that enables us to be available 24/7 means most of us are desperate for more hours in the day; and for many, it’s sleep that gets sacrificed.

过去几十年中，我们的睡眠时长与质量被不断侵蚀，主要还是归结于人们日益忙乱的生活节奏。网络、社交媒体和科技让我们全天候在线，大家都恨不得一天能多出几个小时。如此一来，许多人就选择牺牲睡眠时间。

The term clean sleeping was coined by Gwyneth Paltrow (who else?), who in 2016 announced that she gets between seven and eight hours of “good quality sleep” each night, “ideally 10”. “The lifestyle I lead is based not just on clean eating, but also on clean sleeping,” she said. “It goes without saying that poor sleep is terrible from a beauty perspective.”

纯净睡眠这个概念是由格温妮斯·帕特在2016年提出来的，据她所说，她每天能有七到八个小时的“高质量睡眠”，“理想状态下有10小时”。她表示：“我引领的生活方式不仅是净化饮食，还有净化睡眠。不言而喻，睡眠不足和美丽背道而驰。”

More recently, the hit 2017 book Why We Sleep propelled its author, the sleep scientist Matthew Walker, into the (terrifying) headlines. Walker argues that “a chronic lack of sleep is one of the biggest public health challenges we face in the 21st century”. There is almost no health condition that couldn’t be improved by more shuteye, he writes: it will boost your career, intelligence and your looks, improve your immune system, aid weight management and improve your cardiovascular health.

最近以来，睡眠科学家马修·沃克也因为他2017年度的畅销书《我们为什么睡觉》而频频登上头条。沃克表示：“慢性睡眠不足是我们21世纪面临的最严重的公众健康问题之一”。他在书中写道：补充睡眠几乎能改善所有的健康状况。它能提升事业与智力，还能美容，强化免疫系统，帮助体重管理以及改善心血管健康。

It’s no wonder a good night’s sleep has evolved into the new status symbol. While bragging rights used to be attached to being a member of the macho “sleepless elite” – think Margaret Thatcher’s four hours a night and fashion designer Tom Ford’s purported three – today the wealthy and privileged boast about being well-slept. It’s a lifestyle encouraged by the Silicon Valley set, many of whom are spending millions of dollars – and hours – designing data-capturing devices to help people quantify how much rest they are getting (and, ironically, missing out on rest themselves to do it).

这也难怪一夜好眠已经演变成新的身份象征。尽管以前吹嘘的资本通常是成为大男子主义式的“不眠精英”之一——想想每晚只睡4个小时的玛格丽特·撒切尔和传闻只睡3小时的时装设计师汤姆·福特——现在权贵们鼓吹优质睡眠。硅谷推动了这种生活方式，其中许多人花费数百万美元和大量时间来设计数据抓取设备，以帮助人们量化他们的休息程度（讽刺的是，他们自己却错失了休息时间）。

Being able to prioritise sleep over a neverending night-time to-do list, anxieties about finances or workaday stresses is a luxury it seems money can buy. Almost overnight, the most basic of human functions has become aspirational. Researchers have even come up with a term to describe this obsession with sleep: “orthosomnia” Aided by technology and encouraged by big business, sleep is becoming something we feel we can control.

面临永无止境的夜间待办事项清单、对财务状况的担忧和工作压力，能将睡眠放在首位似乎成了一种可以花钱买到的奢侈。几乎在一夜之间，人体最基本的生理机能变成了大家梦寐以求的东西。研究人员甚至提出了一个术语来描述这种对睡眠的痴迷：“睡眠矫正过度”。有了技术支持和商业鼓吹，睡眠正在变成一件我们觉得我们能够控制的事。

Luke Sherwin is chief creative officer at hip American bed company Casper. He says the company has seen a growing awareness of the importance of sleep among their consumers. “In the past two years, fitness trackers and quantitative self programmes have really increased awareness,” he says. “That’s both a good thing and a bad thing. We did a bunch of behavioural research a year ago and one of the main things that came up was a big anxiety around sleep. That was a key problem for people.”

卢克·舍温是美国时尚床品公司Casper的首席创意官。他说，公司已经观察到消费者越来越重视睡眠。“在过去两年中，健康追踪设备和量化自我项目的确提高了消费者意识，”他说，“这既是一件好事，也是一件坏事。我们在一年前做了一系列的行为研究，主要发现之一就是关于睡眠的严重焦虑。这是人们面临的关键问题。”

But isn’t the notion of “good” sleep subjective? Restorative levels are almost impossible to quantify outside a laboratory with the capability to analyse brain waves.

但是，“好”的睡眠难道不是主观概念吗？除非在具有脑电波分析能力的实验室里，否则精神恢复的程度几乎不可能量化。

Nevertheless, helping people to sleep better has become a multibillion-pound industry. Forecasters predict the global market for at-home tech products (body-responsive mattresses, temperature-regulating bedding and pyjamas, smart lighting) will be worth more than £55bn by next year. Practically every wellness brand has a sleep-aid product, from diets to lavender pillow sprays and melatonin-infused waters, bedtime teas to soporific milkshakes, scented candles to magnesium bath soaks. Then there’s the cost of sleep aids to the NHS and private sleep clinics, as well as prescription medications.

然而，睡眠优化已经孵化出一个价值数十亿英镑的产业。预测者表示，到明年，家用科技产品（体感床垫、可调节温度的床上用品和睡衣、智能照明等）的全球市值将超过550亿英镑。几乎所有的保健品牌都有睡眠辅助产品，从饮食到薰衣草枕头喷雾和褪黑素饮品，从晚安茶到催眠奶昔，从香薰蜡烛到含镁浸浴等等。无独有偶，睡眠辅助的风潮也增加了国民医疗保健系统的成本，私人睡眠诊所和处方药也更贵了。

On the telephone from his sleep clinic in Berkeley, California, Walker sounds as if he is carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. The sleep scientist has called for a public awareness campaign to encourage people to sleep more, and even for sleep to be “prescribed” and treated like a preventative medicine. Just one week of reduced sleep, he writes, alters your DNA.

在沃克从加利福尼亚州伯克利的睡眠诊所打来的电话中，他听起来就像肩负着整个世界的重担一样。沃克发起了一场提高大众睡眠意识的运动，鼓励人们多睡一点，甚至“规定”睡眠时间并要求像预防药一样按时服用。他写道，只要持续一周降低睡眠时间，基因就会发生改变。

“The genes that are changed are the ones associated with cardiovascular disease, stress, chronic inflammation and cancer tumours,” he tells me. “Just one week of short sleep – five or six hours every night – would tip someone’s previously normal blood sugar levels into the pre-diabetic zone. Mother nature took about 3.6m years to put this thing called eight hours of sleep in place and within the space of 70 or 80 years, through modernity and the industrial revolution, we have lopped off almost 20%. How could we not imagine that there would be catastrophic health, disease and neural consequences to that?” he asks, sounding slightly panicked himself.

 “改变的基因与心血管疾病、压力、慢性炎症和癌症肿瘤有关，”他告诉我。“只要一周的短时间睡眠——每晚五、六个小时——就会将人原本正常的血糖水平提高到到糖尿病前期的范围内。大自然母亲用了大约360万年的时间建立起了8小时睡眠机制，而在短短七、八十年间，通过现代化和工业革命，我们已经砍掉了近20％的睡眠。我们又怎么会想不到因此而导致的健康、疾病、神经相关的灾难性后果呢？”他反问道，听起来他自己也略感恐慌。

He describes a University of Colorado study in which cardiologists found a 25% increase in the number of heart attacks in spring, when we lose an hour’s sleep, but a 21% decrease in autumn, when we gain an hour. “There is a global experiment that is performed on 1.6bn people across 70 countries twice a year and it’s called daylight saving time,” he says. “I think that emphasises how fragile and vulnerable and dependent on sleep our bodies are.”

他介绍了一项科罗拉多大学的研究。心脏病学家发现，在我们少睡一小时的春季，心脏病发作次数增加25％，但在我们多睡1小时的秋季则减少21％。他说：“这项全球性实验由来自70个国家的16亿人完成，每年两次。这就是夏令时。我觉得这强调了我们的身体是多么脆弱且依赖于睡眠。”

Does he worry that the attention given to how much or little we sleep causes anxiety? “I give talks, I do radio and television, and when I get emails from people saying: ‘I heard you on the radio and I struggle with sleep and now I am more concerned than ever,’ I realise that perhaps what I’ve done is in part escalate the problem. I do write back to them and give them the resources to hopefully help their problem. But I struggle with that. I think I am still errorful in how I surf that line, between giving the hard science and ensuring I don’t upset people too much.”

他是否会担心对睡眠多少的关注会引起人们的焦虑呢？“我做讲座，上电台和电视节目，当我收到人们发来的邮件说：‘我在电台上听到你说的，我也被睡眠问题困扰，现在我比以前更担心了…’我意识到也许我所做的这些在某种程度上导致了问题升级。我确实是回信给他们，给他们提供资源，希望能帮助他们解决问题。但对此我内心斗争激烈。在保证科学的严谨性和确保不造成过度恐慌之间，我觉得我还没有找到合适的办法。”

At the London Sleep Centre on Harley Street, Petra Hawker’s client list is growing. Over the past five years, the sleep psychotherapist has seen a huge rise in young people suffering anxiety issues around getting enough sleep. She says a large part of the problem is the – not unfounded – notion that sleep is a preventative medicine and a fundamental part of a healthy lifestyle.

在位于哈利街的伦敦睡眠中心，佩特拉·霍克的客户名单不断增加。过去五年内，这位睡眠精神诊疗师见证了因睡眠问题而焦虑的年轻群体的大幅增长。她说这个问题主要在于人们相信睡眠是一种预防药，同时也是健康生活的基本组成，这一看法也有据可循。

“People should make positive steps towards a healthy amount of sleep each night,” she says, “but sleep is not something you can completely control. Once the mind gets involved, it affects the actual process.” Too much sleep data, she argues, is putting people into a state of high anxiety. The best thing to do is relax and let it happen. “Ultimately, it comes down to commercialism – companies are monitoring sleep as a business proposition. It means they can sell you things.”

 “晚上人们应该采取积极措施调整到健康的睡眠量，”她说，“但睡眠不是你可以完全掌控的事。一旦把个人意识牵扯进去，睡眠发生的实际进程就会受到影响。”她指出，过多的睡眠数据已经将人们置于一个高度焦虑的状态中。最好的方式其实就是放松，然后入睡。“最后，这要归结于商业主义——企业把睡眠当成公司业务来监测。这样他们就可以向你推销产品。”

Take the Sleep Council in the UK, a body that calls itself “an impartial, advisory organisation that raises the awareness [sic] of the importance of a good night’s sleep to health and wellbeing”. The organisation commissions surveys and issues information on how well – or poorly – we sleep. It recommends a sensible bedtime and a comfortable bed as “key to sleeping well”. Sound advice, but bear in mind that the Sleep Council is the consumer education arm of the National Bed Federation, the trade association for British bed manufacturers. Unsurprisingly, it also recommends that we change our mattress every seven years to help us sleep better – and to help it sell more mattresses.

就拿英国的睡眠委员会来说。他们自称为“一个致力于普及良好睡眠对健康重要性的中立咨询组织。”该组织委员会调查并发布关于睡眠质量的信息，建议合理的就寝时间以及舒适的床作为“睡得好的关键”。听起来不错，但别忘了睡眠委员会是全国床联——英国床具厂家贸易协会——的消费者教育机构。不出所料，它还建议我们每隔七年换一次床垫，为了睡得更好，也为了帮它卖出更多床垫。

Dr Neil Stanley is a British independent sleep expert who has been researching the field for more than 35 years. He also believes orthosomnia is a money-making proposition for big businesses. “Essentially, people want to make you anxious to sell products, devices, books,” he says. “Saying, ‘A lack of sleep is going to kill you’ is a good headline, but there’s not a whole lot of evidence for that. We are being sold a dream that we can be in control of our sleep. It’s a fairytale. But no one’s going to make money out of telling you to listen to your body.”

尼尔·斯坦利医生是一位英国的独立睡眠专家，致力于该领域35余年。他也认为睡眠矫枉过正只是大型企业们赚钱的噱头。“根本来说，他们想把你变得焦虑以便向你销售产品、设备、书籍，”他说，“比如说，‘睡眠不足会致死’就是个不错的标题，不过并没有多少证据支撑。商家向我们贩卖着我们可以控制睡眠的美梦。这只是虚假的童话故事。而如果告诉你听从自己身体的感觉就好，他们则会无利可图。”

“We live in an age where we think having more information is empowering. But the more information we have, the more we feel the need to control things we have been doing automatically for millennia. By trying to exert this control, we lose the connection with our own bodies.”

 “我们生活在一个我们认为信息即正义的年代。但是我们获取的信息越多，对于那些已经存在上千年的自动机能，我们想要控制它们的欲望就更强烈。在尝试去控制的同时，我们失去了与自己身体的联系。”

Neil Stanley adds that the science around sleep trackers is not great. “They can’t measure deep sleep or dreaming sleep. They only measure movement, which gives no information about what’s happening in the brain – and that’s the important place. People are using this information to diagnose themselves with a sleep problem or determine that they need more sleep. It’s concerning. This whole ‘observed self’ lifestyle is pretty pointless. If you wake up and you are too sleepy to drive to Edinburgh, don’t drive to Edinburgh. It doesn’t really matter what a watch says. If you are awake, alert and focused during the day you have had enough sleep. It’s as simple as that. Go to bed when you are sleepy.”

尼尔·斯坦利还指出，睡眠追踪设备的科学性其实并不严谨。“它们不可能衡量深度睡眠或是有梦睡眠。它们只能追踪到身体的活动，却无法反应大脑内部的任何信息——那才是问题的关键。而人们却通过这些信息来诊断自己的睡眠问题或是决定自己需要更多睡眠。情况不容乐观。这种‘观察自我式’的生活方式实在没什么意义。如果你醒了，但实在太困没法开车去爱丁堡，那就别去。手表显示什么并不重要。如果你白天头脑清醒、反应灵敏且注意力集中，那说明你晚上已经睡够了。事情就是这么简单。困了就去睡觉。”

Walker believes that in the next two to four years, the technology around apps and trackers will become more accurate. “What I would say is, ignorance is not bliss in this case,” he says. “The approach can’t be to say: ‘Don’t tell all those people about the problems that come from not getting enough sleep,’ because that does those people a disservice. We need to tell them the hard facts, but figure out a way of dissipating the anxiety.”

沃克相信在接下来的2到4年内，相关的手机应用和追踪设备的技术会变得越发精准。“我想说的是在这个问题上，无知并不代表幸福，”他说道，“解决办法不可能是：‘别告诉那些人睡眠不足导致的问题’，因为那反而是在危害他们。我们需要告诉他们残忍的事实，但同时也要找到办法抚平他们的焦虑。”

That may be easier said than done, however. Graphic designer Mari Wright from London says she has consigned her fitness tracker to the drawer after becoming “obsessed” with monitoring her health on it. “I was a signed-up clean sleeper,” she says, “but to get to bed early I ate ready meals, which was probably counterproductive. No matter what I did, I was regularly measuring six hours or so of sleep on the device and I talked about it every day. Eventually, my sister told me to stop it. I do miss it, but I can’t say I feel much different. If anything, I sleep more.”

不过说起来容易做起来难。伦敦的平面设计师玛丽·赖特表示当健康追踪设备开始给她带来痴迷睡眠质量的“困扰”后，她就把它扔到了抽屉里。她说：“我是一个注册过的净化睡眠拥护者。不过为了早点睡觉我只能吃即食餐，结果可能适得其反。无论如何我的设备测出来的总是6小时左右的睡眠，我还整天把这事挂在嘴边。最后，我姐姐叫停了我。我的确有点小怀念，不过我感觉也没有太大区别。如果有的话，那就是现在我睡得更久。”

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