GETTING BETTER SLEEP (PART 1)
One of the regular complaints that our clients come to us with is the lack of quality sleep. Now, sleep is a very wonderful time when enjoyed in a healthy amount and it gives not only our bodies a chance to rest and regenerate, but also our minds. This nightly break from our mind’s activities is very important and if ignored a variety of mental disturbances will set in from anxiety through to psychosis.
So, in the mood of helping you to understand what factors create a healthy sleep, let me outline three fundamental and important ways improve our sleep…
PART #1: Getting Ready For Bed Hormonally.
Your body has a government within it in the form of a series of glands called the ‘Endocrine Glands’. These glands produce your hormones, steroids, and neurotransmitters that act as little emails telling your cells what to do – in other words, nothing happens inside your body without your glands first giving the command.
One of those glands in the Endocrine System is the Pineal Gland that sits at the centre of your brain. The Pineal Gland has a rather famous history being touted as the ‘third eye’ or ‘spiritual eye’ of the body, but another of its important functions is the production, and timely release of the hormone ‘Melatonin’. Melatonin is essentially a sleepy hormone that begins to be released shortly after the eyes sense regular low light, like when the sun goes down. Without the proper release of melatonin you will find it difficult to sleep and may not feel sleepy at all, so how can we ensure that our Pineal Gland does it’s job, and Melatonin is released in a healthy fashion?
The first step to take is one of Detoxification – the process of cleansing the tissues of the body and strengthening the cells that make up your glands. You can read more about Detoxification here. This process will certainly help to break up calcifications within the Pineal Gland and also begin to regenerate damaged cells and genetic weaknesses that are limiting function. Botanical herbs that with help here specifically will be the ‘Fab Five Formulas’, Brain & Nerve II, and Upper Circulation.
But the second and equally important part of preparing for sleep hormonally is to ensure that your Pineal Gland is actually getting the signal to start releasing melatonin. Now remember I said earlier that melatonin is released shortly after the eyes begin to sense a low-light environment that in the natural world is the signal that bedtime is close. While this worked great when we were living close to nature, in our current modern setting it is more common than not that we have either a TV, laptop, of light bulb shining straight into our face until the very moment we decide to go to sleep. This gives our body very little time to sense that bedtime is approaching and therefore most people’s heads hit the pillow without a trace of melatonin being released to put the body into sleep mode.
The best way therefore to prepare for sleep it to provide for yourself a low-light environment in the hour or two before you plan to sleep. This means turning off the TV and computer screens, dimming the lights, or maybe lighting a candle. Provide an environment that your eyes will recognize as sundown so that they can send the signal to your Pineal Gland that it is sleepy hormone time – this will do you the world of good in improving your sleep.
