My Dear Readers,

Greetings from Maverick!

Everything about life is a rhythm. Time is a rhythm, heart beat a rhythm. Inhalation and exhalation are a rhythm. Walking is a rhythm. Running is a rhythm. Every movement is a rhythm. But very often we are not even aware of that rhythm.

All living things have a biological clock that takes its cues from the sun and tells them when to eat, when they should mate and when to sleep. As most creatures live in their natural habitat, they are very much in tune with this rhythm. The flowers will bloom on time, the birds migrate on time. The lion doesn’t need an alarm to wake up nor the deer a reminder to run every morning lest it becomes the prey. Unfortunately, we humans are so far away from our natural habitat that we no longer listen to the rhythmic needs of our body. Rising in the morning with the Sun helps our body ‘wake up’ in the right way with a lot of energy and hormonal balances. The later than the sun you rise the more tired and low on energy you feel.

Ensure you have a healthy biological rhythm. We can even go without food for several days. But nobody can go without sleep! Your sleeping hours are very important to ensure a healthy body. Your body takes its cues from the sun like most living things on this planet. So with the morning light, cortisol (the wake up hormone) levels rise in the human body and as the sun goes down melatonin (the sleep hormone) levels are to rise. The cue to release these hormones is from the presence or absence of light.  But today’s lifestyle prompts many people to go to bed much later into the night. Today, at midnight, the lights are glaring, the TV blaring, confusing your body if its time for cortisol or melatonin!

Our sleep wake cycles are essentially anabolic/catabolic regulators for a good general overview. The average person needs eight hours of sleep a night. 10 pm to 2 am is for physiological repairs and 2 am to 6 am is for psychological repairs. If you don’t give your body adequate time to rest and recoup, you are going to accumulate an enormous ‘sleep debt’ that will be detrimental to overall wellness. It is time to stop burning the candle from both ends and ensure you give your body the requisite time for regeneration.

So unless you are a regular meditator, your body needs to rest from 10 pm to 6 am to perform all its daily chores. Without understanding this need to synchronize with the sun, many sleep all day and party all night. But that doesn’t give your body the recoup time as cell regeneration and repair happens only when cortisol is at its lowest which is only during sundown. Sleep depravation can cause weight gain as your body is too tired to exercise. Lack of adequate sleep causes hormonal imbalances with too little Leptin and too much ghrelin that causes weight gain. Also, perhaps with a lot more waking hours, you tend to rely heavily on snacks to keep yourself entertained ! If you have recently started gaining weight, but keep wondering as your food intake and exercise routines have not really changed, take a look at your sleep pattern. Are you in sync with the Sun?

You may think – “There’s not enough time in the day, I’ve got to stay up late to do my work or whatever else”, or you may think – “the only time it’s quite in the house is after the kids go to bed.” Well a little tip –  You are far better off to go to bed early and get up early. You’re better off to go to bed at 9 o’clock and get up at 3:00am or 4:00am in the morning than you are to go to bed at 2 o’clock and get up at 10:00am in the morning. The body seems to be much more capable of adapting to early rising than it does to staying up late.

Dim the lights and reduce the sounds preparing your body for sleep 2 hours before you need to get to bed. Take a warm or hot water bath. A gentle stretch relaxes the muscles, letting them release and grow longer. Stretching before bed with a focus on deep exhalations help you sleep better, recover and regenerate.

Yours in wellbeing

Gita Krishna Raj