What is sleep?
Sleep is considered as one of the three pillars that effects life. Why is it so important that it is classified as one of the three (the other 2 being Food and Procreation Process) pillars? Stay awake for 2 days in a row and observe the chaos and confusion that happens around you—you will then agree its importance. It is so important that American Academy of Sleep Medicine has declared a Sleep Awareness Day. It is a known fact that each night millions of people struggle to fall asleep and several million dollars are lost due to sub adequate delivery of work We spend 1/3rd of our life sleeping, let us find out the rules of sleep and how to ensure we get good quality sleep.
What happens if I don’t get enough sleep?
Several essential qualities of life are effected by the adequate and inadequate amount of sleep including but not limited to nourishment, energy, mental comprehension, strength, sexual vigor and even our lifespan. It must have crossed your mind by now that this is serious stuff we are talking about and you wouldn’t want to compromise any of the above essential qualities of life for anything.
Whenever I talk about sleep, it is the sleep at night I am referring to and minimum of 7-8 hours of sleep is essential for us to thrive, anything less than that you are definitely taking a loan from future health and the interest you would have to pay would be in the form of body pains, heavy head, loss of appetite, chronic fatigue, acidity, greying of hair and wrinkling of skin. Every time I see a teenager I have this standard question ” What time do you go to bed?” Answer varies depending upon their organizing ability of work load. However most of the times they deprive themselves of sleep and are constantly working with drained batteries in their cells; they try to catch up with this charge on weekends or vacation times but just like a car cannot be filled beyond its tank capacity you cannot fill your batteries beyond a certain point no matter how much you try to “catch up”. We try to find an answer for our migraines, acidity, indigestion, constipation etc and put bandaids forgetting to address the root cause when the answer could simply be a good night sleep!
But, My work requires me to stay awake at night!
However, with modernization it is mandatory for few of us to work different work schedule and to be awake at night, In that compulsory situation make sure to sleep half the amount before eating food and half the amount of sleep after digestion of food. Including oil application of the whole body whenever possible would be highly beneficial.
Rules for proper sleep
- Have a gap of at least 90min between your dinner and bedtime
- Maintain proper cozy; clean; quiet and comfortable environment when retiring to bed
- Never exercise right before bed time
- Stay away from sleeping in the day time especially right after meal unless absolutely necessary according to your age, health condition etc
- Go to bed with happy contented mind and recall good thoughts about the day
Maintain a proper routine everyday so falling asleep would not be a problem, if falling asleep is a problem because you have worked too hard through out the day–try a cup of warm milk with spices and/or warm oil massage to soles of feet and scalp (check with your vaidya–some conditions apply). If you are still having trouble falling asleep please contact us and we can help you with that!