How Sleep Can Heal Your Body

How Sleep Can Heal Your Body

Jamaal Harrison

Sleep was considered a block of time when you are not awake; it is now known that sleep has distinctive stages that cycle throughout the night. Your brain is active throughout sleep, but different things happen during each stage. A number of vital tasks are carried out during sleep to maintain good health and enable people to function at their best.

Furthermore, failing to get adequate amounts of sleep can be downright dangerous. Often a lack of sleep can serve to weaken the immune system, which in turn can lead to illness. The liver also seems to benefit tremendously from a good night's rest. Having a healthy liver is important because it performs hundreds of functions - over 500, to be exact - including the task of cleaning the blood and filtering harmful toxins and chemicals out of our bodies. Keeping late hours can negatively impact the metabolism of the liver.

Filtering toxins from the blood is one of the most critical of liver functions. In our modern environment, we are constantly bombarded with toxins in the air, the water and the foods we ingest. The liver is greatly burdened by this and needs the rest of the body at rest to best do the clean up work so badly needed. It takes at least three hours of sleep for the body to "reset" and allow the liver to begin the repair process. Of course, three hours alone is not adequate, with most people needing at least eight hours of rest each and every night.

But to do all the repair work, it takes a lot longer than three hours. If one is sleeping only for three hours for more than one night then the effect is as good as no sleep at all, because the body becomes tired as it has not got the chance to repair itself. One would feel like that of being hit with a ton of bricks. Here the body is screaming for help. It needs sleep so that it can rejuvenate itself. It will be saying that it didn't get the chance to kind of catch up on all the sleep the night before and they have all these other things that they needed to repair from the days before and now they have all these other things that we are making them do today. So may be the brain continues to work even if you sleep for three to four hours a day but in the long run if you're not getting, close to eight hours a night, it eventually will take a heavy toll on the brain.

So, it is a good idea to try to aim for about eight hours of sleep a night whenever possible. Doing so will help to maintain one's physical health, mental sharpness, energy levels, and overall well being.