4.10 HOW MUCH SLEEP IS REQUIRED FOR GOOD HEALTH

HOW MUCH SLEEP IS REQUIRED

FOR GOOD HEALTH

Sleep is a very important  part of human life. Our body and mind are built  and coordinated to have a fixed amount of sleep every night.Without that sleep, the body clock and functions go off balance, concentration goes for a toss, simple functions like walking, counting and handling objects  seem like Herculean tasks. Many of us are missing sleep perhaps out of ignorance.

How many hours of sleep are required for good health is important. Widely talked magic figure of sleep is 7... seven hours of sleep. If you are not getting enough sleep (7 hours ), you are playing with fire. In fact, hours of sleep requirement vary depending on different factors: 

Age factor: New born babies (1-2 months old) need sleep of 14-18 Hrs. Children (5-12 years old) need 10-11 Hrs. Adults need 7-9 Hrs. The wide variation is obvious.

Activity factor: More sleep is required for highly active people,who work restless. For example, log-distance runners need an hour of extra sleep  to repair the running related damage.

Sex factor: Women do require more sleep than men. According to British sleep expert, women’s brains typically require an extra 20 minutes of sleep each night to “recover” from additional stresses-a reflection of the fact that women generally multitask more than men. 

Type of Diet: Plant based diet (vegetarian) is much quicker and easier to digest. It needs less help from the sleep. So, non-vegetarian, spicy or oily diet requires more hours of sleep.

Body’s water intake: If you drink more water during the day, your body has less effort to do at night for digesting food. This means you need less sleep hours, if you are well hydrated.

Yoga and meditation: They reduce sleep requirement. Use meditation as a tool to improve the state of mind. Yogis need less sleep due to  their ability to manage their thoughts. Of course ,their simple and uncomplicated life style and vegetarian diet also  helps. If we are able  to have fewer but more powerful thoughts, we conserve our energy and can stay light & stress-free. With meditation & peaceful thoughts, if we can  rejuvenate ourselves, the hard work  to our “sleep factory” will be less to replenish us. This will cut down sleep requirement.

 

Sleep Quality: Improve your Quality of sleep by improving quality of your thoughts. People complain about having bad dreams. This is the result of not having done the work of cleaning our sub-conscious. Filtering our thoughts, letting go of the past & choosing to retain good memories are all ways in which we can help to make our dreams sweet. If we would follow the rhythm of the day as nature intended, we will be in tune with natural energies that surround us. Staying awake at night throws us off balance. The body will function, but not optimally.

Firstly before retiring to bed, it is important to sit for a few moments of reflection to check on the day and see how positive or otherwise we may have misused our precious energies. Therefore if you need to ask forgiveness or apologise someone, we should. If you settle the karmic accounts of the day, we will sleep with light heart.

Secondly, as we lie in bed imagine floating off to a land of light, the home of the soul. This visualisation helps us to realise that we are not just this body and paraphernalia that is connected with it. Just as actors go home after their performance, so too we need to “take off our costumes” and return home after a day’s performance! This world of soul is a world of light, simple and quiet. Take thoughts up above to this place of silence and visualise the body resting down below. In the morning, imagine that I , the soul, have come down from this world of light, free from all worldly  concerns, and ready and eager to play today’s scenes on the stage of the world. 

Sleep Timing: The average person needs 7-8 hours of sleep per night, although the timing of such sleep also plays an important role. You'll be most rejuvenated if you go to bed early and don't sleep more than 8 hours. If you stay up late and compensate by sleeping late, you'll wake up lethargic and have trouble focusing. If you have the opportunity, take 10-20 minute naps when you are hit with a wave of drowsiness. Anything longer will make you lethargic, but a short nap will refresh you.

Timing of night meal: Don't lie down immediately after taking meal. It is a very bad habit.Try to finish your night meal early and keep a gap of 1 to 1.5 Hours before going to bed. Otherwise the digestion of food takes longer time, affecting the sleep.

How to cover up the missed sleep hours: One night, if you are not able to get the required sleep, there is no need  to worry so much or be stressful all day about it. Even after missing  the whole night sleep, you don't need to go to sleep for 7+7=14 hours during the following night. It is only the deep, refreshing sleep that you need to catch up on, so you need to recoup only about a third to a half of what you missed.

****************