Rest and Sleep, A Necessity not a Luxury

There is a difference between rest and sleep.

If you wake up, work all day nonstop, going to bed late, not getting a full deep eight hours of peaceful sleep, that will result in your body slowly breaking down and never has a chance to heal and recharge itself.

Do you know that it is during your bed time that most healing take place in your body? Without proper rest, your cells are not given the opportunity to recharge and rejuvenate.

1. The time in which you rest
2. The amount of hours you rest and,
3. Rest and sleep should be deep.

Making enough use of our bed is: A Necessity Not A Luxury

Research has shown that more and more people are struggling with some type of sleep disorder each year. Healthy people are faced with a big temptation to go to bed a few hours later and to wake uo a few hours earlier. To do this you are only putting yourself at risk of reducing your quality of health.

Before Thomas Edison invented the light bulb in 1880, people slept an average of 10 hours a night. These days, most of us average 6.9 hours of sleep on weeknights and 7.5 hours a night on weekends, according to the National Sleep Foundation.

"The group of people getting optimal sleep is getting smaller and smaller," said Dr. Chris Drake, senior scientist at the Henry Ford Hospital Sleep Disorders and Research Center in Detroit. "When a person's sleep drops to six hours or less, that's when a lot of things become very problematic."

While experts recommend seven to eight hours of sleep each night, the amount needed for an individual can vary. But lack of sleep affects a person in one of two ways, First, not getting enough sleep does influence your day-to-day performance of tasks.

If you rob yourself of sleep, you will see the effects immediately. You can make a bad decision. Your tolerance level drops and you become impatient with others. You can miss something. With a moment's inattention, and you're off the road."

Not enough sleep can destroy your health

"Hormones that process appetite begin to get disorganized," said Dr. Drake, who's also an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at the Wayne State University School of Medicine.

There's a decrease in the amount of leptin, an appetite-suppressing hormone, when a person gets too little sleep. At the same time, ghrelin -- a hormone that stimulates appetite -- increases with a lack of sleep".

Too little sleep also interferes with the body's ability to regulate glucose and can cause inflammation leading to heart problems and a rise in blood pressure. "There's a stress response to being in a sleep loss," one Doctor said. The types of people not getting enough sleep also break down into two groups.

First, there are those who make the conscious choice to go without enough sleep. It's sort of part of the culture, they just don't have the time, they are too busy. . These people pride themselves on getting little sleep. You'll hear people bragging, 'I only need six hours a night.' So there's a macho element here.

On the other hand, there are those people who are suffering from sleep disorders. These disorders include:

• Insomnia, an inability to go to sleep or stay asleep.
• Sleep apnea, or breathing interruptions during sleep that cause people to wake up repeatedly.
• Restless legs syndrome, a tingling or prickly sensation in the legs that causes a person to need to move them, interrupting sleep.

You can't sleep and breathe at the same time," Dr. Drake said. "It's a risk factor for developing major cardiovascular health effects." Some people who have trouble sleeping will resort to mild sedatives like Ambien and Lunesta".

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently asked the makers of these sedative-hypnotic drugs to strengthen their warning labels. This action followed reports of dangerous allergic reactions, as well as a host of bizarre behavioral side effects that include sleep-driving, making phone calls, and preparing and eating food or having sex while asleep. Some Doctors consider sleeping pills to be fine for the short term if taken properly.

My recommendation is, if you are having a sleep disorder, you should visit your doctor. You should choose doctors who do not prescribe drugs or surgery. Whatever your sleep disorder is, the solution is not to take drugs for it, but rather to find out the root cause of the problem and treat it.

The first thing you should do without any doctor's advise is to get a full eight hours of solid, restful sleep every night. Go to bed at aproximately 10:00 p.m. and arise at approximately 6:00 a.m.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health offers these tips for getting a good night's sleep:

• Stick to a regular sleep schedule.
• Avoid exercising closer than five or six hours before bedtime.
• Avoid caffeine, nicotine and alcohol before bed.
• Avoid large meals and beverages late at night.
• Don't take naps after 3 p.m.
• Relax before bed, taking time to unwind with a hot bath, a good book or soothing music.
• If you're still awake after more than 20 minutes in bed, get up and do something relaxing until you feel sleepy. Anxiety over not being able to sleep can make it harder to fall asleep.
• And my addition to this list is to make prayer the last thing before you fall asleep.

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