Sweet Dreams

If I told you you need to detox, you would probably assume I meant going on a restricted diet. But what if one of the most effective detox strategies was to sleep?

As recently as 10 years age, health journals questioned the body's need for sleep. Now we find it is essential to several different elements of your health.

"The parasympathetic system repairs and rebuilds, and
it turns on at night when we're asleep. It's responsible for digestion and
increases the efficiency of digestion and secretion of hydrochloric acid,
enzymes from the pancreas, the bile salts from the liver. It increases the
absorption of nutrients, stimulates the repair of damaged tissues, and basically
is a reparative system."
Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez
Knockout: Doctors Who are Curing
Cancer
Suzanne Somers

Face it: on a daily basis you are barraged with chemical and pollutants. Exhaust from cars, plastic wrappings on food, nail polish, pesticides sprayed on our parks, chemicals used to sanitize office buildings: they all seep into your system. But your body has a beautiful system for ridding itself of trash. Sleep is a part of that system.

If you are not getting 8 hours of sleep it is most likely due to 1 of 3 things.

• TV - People who "relax" by watching TV are fooling themselves. TV is not relaxing; your body is doing several things while watching TV and relaxing is not one of those. I won't go into it here.
• Caffeine - is a stimulant. If you choose to consume caffeine, complete your consumption before noon.
• Glucose - Glucose ups and downs can knock out your body's natural rhythms. The sugar high that accidentally coincides with bedtime will keep you jumping. Don't eat synthetic sugars ever: stop eating 3 hours before bed. Drink water. All alcohol, beer and wine are condensed sugars which may induce sleep initially, but invariably disrupt deeper sleep cycles later.

Speaking of REM, dreaming happens during the REM stage of sleep. Dreams frequently seek to fix what went wrong during your day. You may notice (if you can remember your dreams) that, while they employ elements of an actual event in your life, they are altered for the better, weirder or worse. This is the psyche's way of "fixing" the problem; you may even dream a viable solution to the problem.

New research shows that the 7-8 hours of recommended sleep per night are not adjustable. Everyone needs them. Teenagers, with their growing brains, need more. But nobody needs less. Less sleep stifles the metabolism - you can actually gain weight by reducing sleep time. Your body has an 8 hour job and it needs you "off the clock" in order to do it's work.

"Humans, like most animals and plants, have biological
rhythms, known as circadian rhythms, which are controlled by a biological clock
and work on a daily time scale. These affect body temperature, alertness,
appetite, hormone secretion etc. as well as sleep time."

Wikipedia

You know the routine. No TV in the bedroom. No computer in the bedroom. Buy the most expensive sheets you can afford. Buy a new pillow every Christmas or once a year. Go to bed around dark, wake up around first light. You will see the effects of your nightly detox.

• Sleepy's - Your eyes rid themselves of the dust and grime of the day. It collects near your ducts for removal upon waking.
• The urge to urinate - Your bladder fills itself during the night with deleterious waste cast off by the digestive system.
• The urge to poop - Your colon fills itself similarly with the waste collected by the night-time ritual of completing the digestive process for the day's intake.
• Snot - You may feel the urge to blow your nose upon waking. Once again, collected waste from the night's cleansing.
• Hunger - A sure sign that you have detoxed well during the night. Your stomach is empty and ready for a healthy dose of morning nutrients.

Fait dodo ma petite. Sleep tight.