Sleep

I haven't heard anything from God about yesterday's post, so let's move on to something lighter.

Sleep.

As a person who has had trouble sleeping in the past, I do not believe we can do without it.

Studies show that sleep is as important to our health as diet and exercise. We need between 71/2 and 8 hours of sleep every night. The dreams we have work out our subconscious thoughts, categorize them and sluff off the least important. Keeps us from going crazy.

A recent study at the University of Chicago School of Medicine restricted the sleep of young, healthy test subjects to four hours for six consecutive nights. At the end of that time, tests showed that each of the subjects was already in a pre-diabetic state. Lack of sleep caused a drop in levels of leptin, a hormone that tells our brains when we aren't hungry. (When the students were allowed to sleep normally, their health was reversed)

In our society we believe the lie that our true worth is in what we produce. Because of that belief we quit "wasting time" sleeping. Then the wheels come off and we slog on physically and emotionally as if through molasses. Also, the person will be fat and sick. Does that sound like something we want?

Being sleep-deprived is awful. I speak from experience. On the days after not sleeping at all or much the night before, I could hardly function. No writing. No talking coherently. Just sit and eat. Grumpy, mood swings, "hell on wheels" is a good description of the chronically sleep-deprived. On top of the risk factor for diabetes, obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure and stoke can be linked to sleep deprivation.

I've heard that Einstein only slept four hours a night and was a genius. I don't know that for a fact since he isn't here to tell us. After someone in a minister's family died, his young daughter was so worried that someone else in her family would die that she couldn't sleep. She went into her big brother's room and he told her, "You can sleep because God stays awake." God doesn't sleep but he wants us to so He can do within us what we can't do for ourselves.