Millions of adults are short of sleep either because of their work or habit of sleeping late and they accumulate sleep debts like gamblers racking up IOUs. Most people know that lack of sleep makes them punchy and lousy but they are unaware of the risks to their health. New research shows that sleep may be the third essential component of a long and healthy life besides good diet and exercise. Society is being victimized by not getting enough sleep. Our society, our safety, our health are at risk.
The sleep deprived people are cutting short a natural rhythm that begins in the evening when our inner clocks signal that it is bedtime. As the head hits the pillow, breathing slows and the brain relaxes, the rapid beta waves of the daytime will change to slower alpha waves of the night. Then alpha waves disappear, replaced by the even slower theta waves of stage-one sleep. The deep sleep stage is known as the lazy delta waves. In the absence of lights, the natural length for best effect is about eight hours.
Researchers are beginning to understand what we lose by giving up sleep. What happens to people who shortchange their sleep? In 1999, a sleep researcher at the University of Chicago; published a groundbreaking study in The Lancet in which, for six nights, young men spent only four hours in bed. During that week, their blood samples showed impaired glucose tolerance: they were in a pre-diabetic state.
The expert believes that sleep loss is partly involved in the rising rate of obesity. Lack of sleep could drive down growth hormone which controls the body?s proportions of fat and muscle. Another hormone, leptin, tells the body when it should feel full. ?With the low leptin levels of sleep debt, your body will crave carbohydrates even though you have had enough kilojoules? says the expert.
Preliminary studies also associate lack of sleep with changes in immune response. Robbed of all sleep, a laboratory rat will die in about three weeks, apparently from infection. This may indicate that the body is having trouble fighting infection by the changes of white blood cell counts and immune-response modifiers if one is lack of sleep.
Another research revealed that not enough sleep might even boost cancer risk. It also says there may be a connection between the increase in breast cancer and hormone cycles disrupted by late-night light. This may be the answer to why blind women are less prone to breast cancer than sighted women and people should get a dark night?s sleep. Those who were badly sleep deprived performed as poorly or worse on reaction-time tests as those with a blood-alcohol level of 0.08 per cent ? legally drunk in many countries.
It is easy to know if you are sleep deprived. If you can lie down in the middle of the day and fall asleep within ten minutes, you have then shortchanged yourself on sleep and catching up is simple basic arithmetic. For every hour or any fraction of it under eight hours per day you missed, you need the same amount of sleep soon after.
Sometimes a nap in the day can boost your alertness. The worldwide siesta time between 1 and 3 pm are good for napping out. A short nap of not more than half an hour works best. After that, you will be in deep sleep and will feel groggy upon awakening and may look sickly. It is advisable not to sleep more than half an hour in the day.
Sleep resettles us emotionally and recharges our body energy and biological system. What we have used up in the day, we need to be replaced in the night through sleep. It is just good to have a good night sleep. Unfortunately many people have trouble sleeping in the night. Stay away then from caffeine and alcohol late in the day and do not nap longer than half an hour. If you continue having trouble sleeping in the night, do not take nap at all even if you are very sleepy. Make yourself busy with anything or just get out of the house, go to the supermarket or just kill your time anywhere to avoid the nap. By nightfall you should be feeling tired and sleepy and you can catch up what you have shortchanged by going to bed early.
People with insomnia should give themselves a chance not to sleep at all in the day. Any nap in the day can affect our good sleep in the night. Unless your doctor prescribes sleeping pills, you should make yourselves very busy in the day so that your natural body system needs a good rest in the night. If nothing works, and you have to swallow the sleeping pills, then in spiritual sense you may be suffering from the sickness of the karma.
In the teachings of Tao of Heaven, there are two types of sicknesses. One is curable by medicine and it is because of our carelessness in our food, daily life or bad habits. The other type cannot be cured by medicine and it is called real illness or sickness of the karma. It is suffering through sickness to repay what we owed to our spiritual creditors or the unseen creditors of the past lives.
These sicknesses can be very dangerous and eventually many will die after suffering for a certain period. Any sicknesses that cannot be cured even by the best doctor in the world, we classified them as sicknesses of the Karma. Certain of these sicknesses purposely make the sufferers turn very ugly so that they cannot come out in the day. Some give intense pain before they die and there are many evidences in the temple to show proofs. The spiritual creditors can appear in photographs, X-ray etc unseen to the eyes in the form of ghostly figures. Many accidents are also caused by this type of revenge. People may suddenly turn mad or possess by evil spirits. It is just a mysterious world. Revenge is real in this world by the revengeful unseen spirits because their souls are not at rest, just like our souls that cannot sleep.
Author: T.A Chew
T.A Chew has two friends who are suffering from insomnia and they are really a pitiful sight. The best advice is to do good deeds to repay the unseen creditors and through prayers to say sorry and ask for forgiveness from them. Website: http://www.white-sun.com