Sleep and its Utmost Importance

Think of anything that doesn’t wear out. Jewelry? Houses? Clothes? Cell phones? Cars? Constant use wears out the finest products and machinery. How about our own bodies?

As we all know, we constantly face the challenges and high demands of the family life, work or academe. In fact, there are times when the demands are so overwhelming that we feel stressed-out and depressed. Now, would you like to know how we could prevent our bodies from wearing out?

Everybody can afford it. It causes no undesirable side effects, just improves your mental efficiency as well as restores energy for every organ in your body to function well! This remedy focuses on replenishment and repair of your hormones and organs that had been used during the day, at night. Yes, you guessed it right! It is sleeping, the body’s repair mechanism.

Our bodies need seven to eight hours of sleep every night. The regularity of this much time in our sleeping habits is important such that the work of building up essential nutrients for our body takes place during the hours of our sleep, says Ellen White in one of her book. And robbing nature of her hours of rest, she adds, will result irreparable loss.

In a study conducted in an eastern American university, young males were paid to go without sleeping as long as possible, to test the effects of sleeplessness. The winner went 96 straight hours without sleep – all four 24-hour days! He received his money, but as a result of sleep loss, his brain waves slowed down for more than four months. He failed his senior year and had to repeat it!

You see, we think of our brain as our “power center.” During quality rest, the “batteries” of our brain are “re-charged.” Each cell of our body has tiny granules of chemicals such as hormones and other forms of energy stores, which are exhausted during the day and take hours to be replenished. Our nervous system especially, needs a quality night’s sleep to be at its best the next day! And glands, which secrete hormones to control stress, run on cycles of work and rest. In short, our performance will be negatively affected due to long-term stress caused by sleeplessness.

Sleep is the body’s great restorer. Through the years, doctors have recommended that the best sleep is an early sleep, especially before midnight. It is because, in researches it has been found out that these hours of sleep coincide with the time our body repairs our hormones and organs depleted during the day.

The importance therefore of having regular sleep and having proper rest should not be overlooked as part of our lives. As I have already pointed out, researches have shown that sleeplessness reduces our mental efficiency and thus lowers our performance. Sometimes, we tend to physically abuse ourselves and as a consequence we face depression, headaches, among other things as diseases sets in our bodies. Our immune system will be broken down and because of the abuse; death may close the scenes of our life. Our lifework and academic achievements would then be useless.

Sleep is not a privilege; it is a necessity. Whatever we do, we must not forget to spare enough time for our body to have proper rest and quality sleep. After all, we only have one body, literally! How long would it last without sleep?

We are fortunate; our creator designed a built-in automatic charger for our bodies. If we would live this kind of regular life, our bodies would “purr” like fine engines. Take rest seriously, as a steady ingredient in successful, happy life…