Sleep yourself well, beautiful, and sane
Question: I generally get 5 or 6 hours of sleep. But I notice in your column that you advocate 8 to 10 hours. Why do you sleep so much?
Mimi: All living beings, including plants, are on a 24 hour cycle. There is an activity time and a resting time. For humans, we are designed for our activity time to be during daylight. We need to be outside during daylight so sun enters our eyes to prevent depression. We need sunshine on our skin to produce vitamin D. When the sun goes down and darkness creeps in, our bodies produce melatonin. This hormone makes us drowsy. But, if we go into an artificially lighted room, our bodies don’t produce the hormone. We trick our bodies into thinking that it is still daylight. Then we have trouble falling asleep. Our circadian rhythms get out of kilter. This is most noticeable with Jet Lag when you change time zones. Did you notice in history class that Stalin rarely left his time zone when he negotiated treaties? If you travel north or south, you don’t suffer from Jet Lag. When you travel slowly by car or ship you can adjust to new time zones slowly and your body doesn’t suffer.
To lull your body into a sleep routine, wind down an hour or so before bed. You know the routine: no caffeine, no vigorous exercise, warm bath, dull book, darkened, cool room, and comfy bed. No food before bed. If you eat before bed, then your body will be busy digesting the food instead of sleeping and mending. Sleep is the healing time of your 24 hour cycle. Your body will send the repairmen around to check all your systems while you are asleep. All the electricians, carpenters, and handymen will scurry around repairing and mending. If you don’t give them enough time to do their work, then you will lose your good health. No machine is designed to work non-stop with no rest. It will burn out.
Perhaps the most important healing is in the mind. Your mind will sort out the day. Your remarkable mind works all night. If you have a problem, present it to your mind before you go to sleep. During the night your mind will sorting out and present you with the solution in the morning. If you need to memorize something, give it to your mind as the last thought before turning off the lights. Your mind will dwell on it. In bed as you drift off to sleep, ask for forgiveness and review what went right that day. You don’t want to dwell on the negative. This is why bedtime prayers are so powerful. Sleep will sweep out the cobwebs so you can start fresh in the morning. Dreams are powerful tools to put your life in order. Keep a notepad and pen by your bed. First thing in the morning, write down your dreams before you forget them. Everybody dreams. If you tell yourself at night that you want pleasant dreams and that you want to remember them, then you will have a better time remembering. During the day, read what you wrote about your dreams. You will find answers and insight. You will discover direction for your journey. You do not need to refer to a dream book. YOU have the answers and revelations of your dreams. They are YOURS. You don’t need outside guidance. Analyzing dreams is not some hocus-pocus new age, witchcraft thing. It is very Biblical. God spoke to many people through dreams.
Sleep deprivation is used as a form or torture. Your body aches and screams for rest. Your mind plays ugly tricks on you when you deprive it of sleep. You will get sick, go crazy, and die without sleep.
With all the wonderful benefits of sleep, why would anybody want to deprive himself? Luxuriate in sleep. It is a beauty and health treatment without equal and without cost.
Throughout the ages, the bards, sages, and the wise have written about sleep:
Now blessings light on him that first invented this same sleep: it covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; 'tis meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. 'Tis the current coin that purchases all the pleasures of the world cheap; and the balance that sets the king and the shepherd, the fool and the wise-man even.
- Miguel de Cervantes
It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterwards.
- Baltasar Gracián
That we are not much sicker and much madder than we are is due exclusively to that most blessed and blessing of all natural graces, sleep.
- Aldous Huxley
And if tonight my soul may find her peace
in sleep, and sink in good oblivion,
and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower
then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.
- D. H. Lawrence
For sleep, one needs endless depths of blackness to sink into; daylight is too shallow, it will not cover one.
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
All men whilst they are awake are in one common world: but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own.
- Plutarch
Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.
- William Shakespeare
Mimi Barre is the owner of International Day Spa, 325 Cajon St., Redlands.
Send your skin care questions to her at MimiB@INTLdayspa.com. She and her estheticians are available for personal consultations. (909) 793-9080. Past columns of Ask Mimi are on the web at www.INTERNATIONALdayspa.com.
