Why are children always sleepy?

Many parents always encounter situations where their children are very sleepy in their lives. Some parents think that their children are sleepy because they are avoiding studying, or they did not sleep well at noon and have poor sleep quality at night. In fact, there are always many reasons for children's sleepiness, such as poor rest, seasonal changes, staying up late, and physical conditions. We must not relax our vigilance for children who often feel sleepy and need to pay special attention.

In addition to the common reasons for feeling sleepy, such as poor air circulation, lack of oxygen in the room, and late schedules, long-term sleepiness is not only due to lack of sleep, but it may also be that the body is sending out warning signals.

Especially when you clearly get enough sleep, you still succumb to sleepiness and feel drowsy the next day. The most famous sleepyhead can be traced back to Zai Yu, who lived thousands of years ago and was scolded by Confucius as a rotten wood that cannot be carved because he often fell asleep in class.

Redress for Zai Yu

"In traditional Chinese medicine, frequent dozing off indicates poor spleen and stomach function," said Wu Changxin, who has been dedicated to traditional medicine for more than 30 years and was once employed as a visiting professor at Beijing and Hunan Colleges of Traditional Chinese Medicine. He laughed and said that Zai Yu was not lazy, but his spleen function was poor, and it was time to vindicate Zai Yu.

Ancient Chinese medical books have long recorded that weak spleen and stomach can lead to laziness and a love of lying down. People feel sleepy in the summer because the heat consumes their energy and is detrimental to their spirits. If they often feel sleepy in the winter, it means that "the body lacks yang energy or the spleen is weak and damp and heat," said Guo Zongzhen, a Chinese medicine doctor at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital.

People who often think too much, use their brains too much or have improper diet control often damage their spleen and affect the spleen's ability to transport and transform food. When the spleen and stomach function poorly, it is easy to suffer from insufficient Qi and blood. The result of deficiency of both Qi and blood is insufficient oxygen supply to the brain, which makes one prone to drowsiness and sleepiness.

The spleen and stomach are like twin brothers, and their functions complement each other. The spleen's function is to digest food and transport nutrients. "The spleen in traditional Chinese medicine is actually the pancreas in Western medicine," explained Dr. Kuo Tsung-chen. As for the stomach, it is responsible for absorbing food.

From the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine, another important function of the spleen and stomach is to metabolize moisture. When the spleen and stomach function poorly and the physical constitution tends to be damp and hot, it is often unable to effectively resolve the moisture, and symptoms such as heaviness, lack of energy, drowsiness or chest tightness will appear.

The characteristics of moisture are stickiness, heaviness and difficulty in removing. Guo Zongzhen suggested that moisture intrusion can be reduced from both external and internal aspects. For example, the living environment should avoid excessive humidity, avoid rain, and eat less damp and cold food, such as ice water.

Beware the potential dangers of excessive sleepiness

According to Dr. Chen Ning-hong, director of the Linkou Chang Gung Sleep Medicine Center, approximately 4 to 5% of people in Taiwan currently suffer from sleepiness. In addition to being unable to concentrate in class or work and suffering from memory loss, there are even safety concerns, such as falling asleep while driving, which is very dangerous.

Frequent daytime sleepiness may be caused by spleen and stomach dysfunction, lack of sleep or depression as described in traditional Chinese medicine, or it may be a sleep disorder that requires further diagnosis.