Saturday, April 24, 2010

SLEEP: The Best Remedy ever


There is nothing better then good sleep to get rest, regenerate the body and soul and get healed.

A lot of health problems occur just because people today do not have healthy quality and quantity of sleep,

• due to the modern style of life,
• our prejudices about sleep (we like to set up false standards about sleep, like how many hours is "normal", what is "too much" of sleep, what is "too little", when is "normal" to be awake, when is "normal" to be asleep etc).
• due to the constant noise to which are majority of people exposed in crowded cities,
• due to the alarm clocks that wake people up usually when they are in the deepest and highest quality of well deserved sleep and rest.
• due to the intake of various medications, alcohol, drugs
• due to the wrong belief that sleeping is wasting of time

Exact amount of sleep somebody needs is very individual parameter for every person. There are periods when body and neural system requires very many sleep. People usually confuse that need with depression but most often this is not so: the most valuable point of sleep is deep regeneration of brain cells, that can occur ONLY in deep sleep and if person sleeps as much is needed.

Sleeping, Self-healing and Law of Attraction

We create our material reality even during the sleep, while brain is processing emotions and memories and establish new brain patterns. With new, healthy brain patterns, created during the healthy sleep and healthy emotions are result of that, we easily attract healthy situations in our life. Brain has tremendous power of self-healing and healing of our life.

Many people believe that sleeping long is wasting the time - they cannot be more wrong: without enough sleep the life easily looses its quality.
Sleep Cycle and importance of deep sleep and REM sleep.

Healthy sleep is going on in cycles. After starting to feel sleepy, brain gradually slows down the activity and starts to produce slower brain waves (Alpha, Theta and finally Delta) then in awake state (when majority of brain waves are quick Bheta). At the same time, muscle activity slows down (with occasional muscle twitching) as well as heart starts to beat slower and breathing becomes slower. After stage of light sleep, /when we are easy to awake), we are gradually entering in the stage of deep sleep.

Deep Sleep - During the deep sleep brain is taking rest producing very slow waves, needed to restore the energy we expend during our waking hours. It is interesting to know that blood flow decreases to the brain in this stage, and it redirects itself towards the muscles,
• restoring physical energy,
• Regenerating the cells, tissues and organs of the body.
• This stage is extremely important for immunity to improve.
• This stage is regulating hormones in the body
• this stage is stage of deep self-healing

REM sleep - Dream Sleep – during that stage, eyes move rapidly (REM = Rapid Eye Movement). It is also called paradoxical sleep because brain activity is very alike to awakened state only body is paralyzed, although muscles can occasionally twitch. Breathing and heartbeat are rapid. In this stage brain is
• processing emotions,
• retaining memories,
• relieving stress and
• healing psychological traumas.
• REM sleep is extremely important for process of learning and developing new skills.
Most of dreaming occurs during the REM sleep.

We usually need to have three to five REM episodes per night.
Deep sleep and REM sleep are extremely important stages of sleep - brain cannot work properly without any of them, neither if the sleep cycle is constantly disrupted. Without sleeping as much as body needs - all our mental and physical functions gradually deteriorate, we cannot process traumatic experiences, brain becomes full of various information that is not properly processed and we also cannot learn new things and skills.

Today people suffer from heavy sleep deprivation, majority of people do not sleep enough or their sleep is of poor quality - no wonder why humanity is so tensed, not focused, full of fears, ill and confused. So many mental and physical problems would never appear if people would sleep as much as they need. Longetivity would also improve. Without enough sleep we literally burn ourselves too fast.
Medications create new sleeping disorders.

Many people try to heal their sleeping disorders by taking sleeping pills, what is certainly the worst possible option in majority of cases. Despite the fact that is so easy to ged addicted to them, they disturb normal sleeping patterns and negatively influence brain waves.

Sleeping goes in cycles that sleeping pills disrupt and most often completely suppress REM phase that is necessary for brain. As a result, brain does not get the chance to fully process all information, daily happenings and emotions and cannot fully regenerate. Effects of using sleeping pills are similar to that ones of sleep deprivation, maybe even worse - brain that cannot process memory causes that traumatic experiences and negative emotions never get healed which does not allow regeneration of brain cells as well.

Nothing strange that people who are constantly on sleeping medications usually do not heal their chronic diseases - their brains and whole bodies are constantly exposed to trauma caused by lack of normal and natural REM phase and lack of normal exchange of sleeping cycles.

Herbal remedies for good night sleep

For healing minor sleeping disorders there are two herbs that can be always of great help for this purpose:

Valerian Root (tincture is the best)
Passion Flower


They do not work the same as sleeping pills, they gently and tenderly restore natural sleeping powers and help nerves to start with healing.
Healing heavy sleeping disorders naturally.

We start to feel sleepy when our brain starts to secrete more hormone melatonin. It is secreted by pineal gland in the brain and it is very important for regulation of all other hormones.

For healthy production of melatonin, it is good to know that darkness stimulates it while light suppresses secretion of melatonin. If we would live without artificial lights, we would naturally start to feel sleepy immediately after the sunset. And we would sleep much more during the winter time, what would allow us to completely rest and regenerate.

Many heavy sleeping disorders are caused by low melatonin secretion and could be temporarily solved by using melatonin supplements, what is certainly much healthier then to depend on sleeping pills.