Dr. Joe Withengton, 47, was a doctor in the emergency room for two decades, but he could still find it difficult to calm his mind after leaving the hospital.
While he tried to overcome one of the chaotic shifts in particular, he was considering a victim of a motorcycle crash whose vital signs were designed, a patient with blood rot and another suddenly stopped beating.
The tendency to restart the events of the night – and its working hours – often made it difficult for him to sleep. Over the years, try deep breathing, meditation and melanin, before finally stumbled on a technique called cognitive mixing.
“The sleep strategy helps” my mind to get out of that episode and to a situation through which I can finally rest, “said Dr. Witington, who participated at the Instagram account, which includes more than 750,000 followers.
“Cognitive Mix” was You promote social media to YearsBut do you really work? We talked to sleep experts and the world who invented the technique to learn more.
What is cognitive mixing?
Cognitive confusion is a mental exercise that includes the concentration of your mind on words that are not related to each other, as a way to refer to your mind that the time has come to sleep. The task aims to engage enough to distract your attention from the ideas that may hinder sleep, but it is not so interesting that your brain advantages.
You start taking a random word – “Pluto”, for example. Then think about the largest possible number of words that you can start with the same first message, such as: “The plane, the pudding, play, peach”. When you run out of the words “P”, you can move to the next letter of your original word, which is “L”, and does the same: “Love, Light, Limour, Pangger”. Take again or so to imagine each word.
Research indicates Look B. said. Budwin, the cognitive scientist and assistant professor at Simon Fraser University in Canada, that when people drift naturally, their minds often overcome live images or distant ideas. He added that the goal is to help your mind to imitate this process.
“These images do not create a clear story line and may help your mind to break the link from solving problems or anxiety episodes,” said Dr. Budwin, who is marketing an application based on this technique.
How did the idea appear?
Dr. Bodwin has created a cognitive mixing for more than 15 years because he was suffering from insomnia and wanted to find a solution.
In 2016, he and his colleagues I decided to study it. They recruited about 150 students and set one group to mix my cognitive. A second group was asked to spend 15 minutes early in the evening in their fears and any possible solutions, a way that psychologists indicate as constructive anxiety. A third group was said to do both.
About a month later, the researchers found that each of the methods were equally effective. But the participants who both tried were more likely to evaluate the cognitive mixing more useful and easier to use.
The study of Dr. Bodwin, which appeared in 2016 at the Professional Sleep Associations Conference in Denver, learned a journalist in Forbes after that He wrote. Soon the concept of widely distributed online.
Should you try it?
maybe.
There is sufficient evidence to support the use of cognitive mixing as an essential treatment for insomnia.
“We need to study this more to be able to say full, yes, this is a fixed tool, like CBT-I,” said Dr. Mora, in reference to the cognitive behavioral therapy of insomnia.
But there is no harm in giving cognitive confusion, provided that it is used as a supplement Evidence -based methodsExperts said.
“When he works, Wow, some people can really help,” said Shellby Harris, a clinical psychologist in the New York City area specialized in behavioral sleep medicine.
Since this technique has grown popularly, people have created their own unique differences. Dr. Harris sometimes suggests that her patients reach random cups, such as red velvet with vanilla frost or chocolate with cream cheese frost, until they drifted.
If you try to mix the cognitive and the matter did not succeed and you are frustrated – or if you are not asleep after 20 minutes – Dr. Harris recommended waking up and finding something else to calm your mind.
I suggested making a quiet activity in the low light – such as stretching, coloring or working on a panoramic puzzle – then returns to bed when you feel sleepy.
Dr. Harris said: “Until I read the old cooking books – all of them – and the most beautiful things that I want to make in the end.” “It helps pass the time and works as a holder for the place for the crowded brain.”