Foreword

I don’t know if Santa brought gifts for you, but as we understand life, we realize, “to be able to live healthy life each day”, is the greatest gift that we can offer to ourselves, and our dear ones. It is not readily tangible, but what we accomplish, how we behave, how we go through what we go through, is determined “how healthy we are in our mind and body”. Have you realized that already, or you think, there is much bigger gift or miracle waiting for you than health?

Being alive tomorrow, healthy and kicking is the only gift we must seek, and today is the opportunity for it.

A nuclear reactor is so powerful that it can light entire city for years, yet it needs to be handled with utmost care, before, after and during operation. So is health. Don’t take for granted, when it needs minute care, otherwise, it explodes, and you will have to run around searching men, who can stitch back the pieces, and rarely you find one, and even if you find one, they make you a Frankenstein, not “the whole you” again!

The key to such health, is right with you, in this new year. Whether or not you were aware already, I take the privilege of placing it back into your palm again, slowly over few weeks, and into the new year, that you feel empowered in this new year, and take charge of your life again! Good luck with it!

I keep the key to your health, in your own palms folded, assuming, you will take care of it responsibly. Please do, coz healthy individuals make healthy society!

Now, Sleep!

There were news items all around for past four-five years, that even people hitting gym every day, and those that have great muscular build are collapsing in the gym. Reason was mostly heart failure. People started doubting exercise. Many asked me, if exercise is that fatal, and they should never do exercise at all! What a pity!

Well, the answer is multi fold. If I am thirsty, I may die in a couple of days, of thirst. But if I start drinking water continuously, I will die in few hours.

So even drinking water can kill you faster than, not drinking at all!

The problem with these celebrities mostly is “improper” or “untimely” diet, restlessness, as they go to pubs and discos at night, or party all through night, and still go to work the next day. It could also be because of stress at work. So you see three dots(mind, sleep, food) which are connected to fourth dot(exercise), which proved fatal. The last one reason, however I think is not right, is that they over did exercise. A man who understood and has a routine for exercising for years, will almost never does the exercise, beyond his capacity. His body is disturbed by other reasons, which he didn’t realize, and continued his normal course, and collapsed. That is my answer!

Every machine heats up, wears out during operation. Machine needs cooling down mechanism constantly, so you see large metallic heat-exchangers in big Industries, on your vehicles as “fins”, in your destktop computers as “heat-sinks” or “Fans” or “Liquid Cooling” systems. These are all, inorganic, man made machinery. They don’t have life. When it comes to organic matter, remember food gets converted to your cell material and energy. These cells are muscles, nerves, tendons, ligaments, veins, arteries, organs both vital and sense organs, bones etc. There are three things that happen to tissues or cells, that exist in the body during activity

1. Wear-out (Damaged cells, due to repeated movement)
2. Fatigue (Stretched beyond limit), that the organ doesn’t function the way it should, though there is energy to pump
3. Energy Depletion(Due to activity

So, apart from the 3 items above, that need repair/rest, for the growing children up to late teens, body produces harmones to grow new tissues, that did not exist already, and needs body to be relatively at rest.

And to mind, during activity a few things happen

1. Minds gets to a state of confusion during activity, because all activity in the day goes to stack, and there are too many stack entries that are constantly popping and getting mixed up beyond the handling capacity of mind
2. Due to overuse of intellect, or brain, neurotransmitters are constantly firing new neurons, searching new paths in memory. It becomes stressful to them
3. The cycle of same vibration builds up and repeats through the day, so a kind of exhaustion, nausea develops.

To repair the tissues, regenerate new cells, reset the fatigue prone tissues,, to ensure metabolism of cells well, and to recharge the cells with energy, rest is required. Unlike a charger of our mobiles, it takes body, many hours to recharge, repair, regenerate and bring it back to work. This is because, all the process of nature is recyclable. Our engineering machinery is inorganic and produces lot of waste on the planet, which itself has become a menace dispose.

Anything that needs to be recycled, takes a longer process, because there is zero waste. It is a meticulous calculation of how things are to be identified,classified organized, and distributed. Organic processes are slow, but 100% recyclable.

Enemeies of Sleep

Just the way we invest capital for any business to grow in the initial years, teenagers body is offered more energy, by Nature, as a capital for their overall growth, and they must spend it on a daily basis, if not it gets built up in head and body creating restlessness, thus children suffer sleeplessness. Anxiety is another factor, which is a major contributor to sleeplessness. Not able to accept people around us, or having high expectations of wrong people or strangers, makes us nervous, or irritated, or angry, which gobbles up our sleep. Wrong food at night is also a reason for sleeplessness. There are hereditary reasons for sleeplessness, which are out of scope here.

So based on your daily activity, and the quality of food you eat, based on the need, your body would need different amount of rest. Some people sleep less and some more. However on an average for a individual in good health below 35, doesn’t need more than 6 hours of sleep a night. If you are under 45, 7 hours. If you do heavy exercise, add another hour of sleep for your recovery.

For some the above statements appear like “demonic”! Yes, because, they are used to sleep 8, 9, 10 hours per day, and almost 12-14 hours on weekends.

While on one hand sleep is a recovery process, and on the other, sleep is half death. In deep sleep, we don’t even know whether we are alive or dead. World vanishes for us, all troubles just vanish. So in a way people feel death obliterates all troubles. That is only one face of the coin, when we handle the real coin, there is not just a different face, but dimension and also weight to it! Isn’t it?

Sleep is subjective, that doesn’t mean, being a healthy individual you need ten hours of sleep, and I am fine with 7. What does it mean then? I often talk about traps of life, there are 5 traps in life. Though treating them here would be injustice, as it is a vast topic by itself, but be informed, these ones are potential “life-gobblers” in our life, when we take more dose than needed. These traps are unlike the addictions like “Smoking”, “Drinking” etc, which by their face, appear evil, and have a very positive, decent face, for which you can fight, with a great argument!

Life is a packet of time, energy and resources. Where are you deploying them?

These traps, make us feel great, and steal our time, energy, resources. The end of it, they hand over to us, with a smiling face, very proudly, a big “nothing”.

1. Entertainment
2. Sleep
3. Gossip
4. Shopping
5. Self pity

So, for sure Sleep falls into this category. If you live for 70 years, and if you sleep 8 hours per day, you are left with only 46 years to live, do you understand that, and if you do, is that acceptable?

Sleep is an elixir to recover, beyond that it is a temporary Euthanasia. If you like to be there constantly, you are interested in death, not life!

If you say “yeah, yeah, I know, move on, I don’t want to give in to your talks…, fine, it is your life, not mine, any way”

The important thing here is to understand that unless you are in a job which requires you to be awake through the night, sleep early. That is how body understands, or body is programmed for health. Sun sets because it tells you:

“be done with your activity, go home, eat and rest, we have a big day tomorrow”.

We can see only in light, because it tells you:

“Activity time, wake up”

They don’t mean, Sun has set, darkness has set, so put on light and start your night life. Common sense, isn’t it?

If you violate natural cycles set by the universe, you are in friction with it. Today, if not tomorrow, you may not realize, but you or your offspring will face consequences. Because Nature is too big to face consequence of your mistakes, and time is limited for you, not for nature.

World has innumerable “spontaneous” intellectuals, who can think logically and connect dots of today, and prove me wrong. But this analysis needs not a “day”, not a “week” or a “month” but decades of retrospection and projection of human health, mind, genetics etc.

There are that kind of individuals, and this kind of individuals, and people who get carried away by what they like, or what appeals to them. The beauty of nature is everybody is free to make their own choice. So do you, whatever appeals to you, not what you “like” alone!

So in all, your body needs rest, to recover, and generate new ideas, have a blank slate tomorrow again to restart. For that identify your sleep quota based on

1. Current activity (Heavy activity needs high recovery, and so more time to sleep)
2. Kind of food you eat (light vegetarian food at night makes you less sleepy in the morning)
3. Early eating (Eat early, that it is at least half digested before you sleep. It doesn’t mean sleep after the food is half digested. Push the eating time early, not the sleeping time, coz that violates the Sun-Set principle)
4. Mental stress you are in

I hope this gave you a moderate picture on how Sleep should be looked at. Next week, we will look at the ocean of mind, that is something I like to delve and analyze.

Leave a comment below, if it has, in any way affected your life. Your comment is my fuel to churn more such content.

I hope this gave you a moderate picture on how Sleep should be looked at. Next week, we will look at the ocean of mind, that is something I like to delve and analyze.

Leave a comment below, if it has, in any way affected your life. Your comment is my fuel to churn more such content.