Yo soy Sam

The liver requires all the energy it can get to fulfill all these and many other responsibilities. This can only happen sufficiently, though, if you sleep during this time. If you use up the night-time Pitta energy for eating or mental/physical activities, the liver is left with too little energy to do its extremely vital work.

Most of the available Pitta-energy should be directed to the liver and also, to some extent, to the kidneys.

This helps the kidneys to filter the blood plasma, to keep the body fluids balanced and blood pressure normal.

Although the brain makes up merely one fiftieth of the body mass, it generally contains more than one quarter of the body’s entire blood content. However, during the Pitta period at night, most of the blood located at the back of the brain moves into the liver for storage and purification. If you are mentally or physically active at this time, the liver does not receive enough blood to work with. It also cannot cleanse the blood sufficiently. This results in the accumulation of toxic material in the liver and blood stream. If

toxins keep circulating in the blood, they will settle in the interstitial fluid (connective tissues) of organs and systems, thereby raising acidity and damaging them, including the liver itself. High blood toxicity can lead to secretions of stress hormones, brain fog, injured capillaries, arteries and heart muscles. Most heart diseases are the result of a poorly performing liver that is unable to remove all toxic, noxious substances from the blood on a daily basis. If we do not give the liver the energy it needs to conduct the most basic physiological activities, we sow the seeds of illness throughout the body.

Sleep can be divided into two main parts – before-midnight and after-midnight. Among adults, the most important processes of purification and renewal occur during the two hours sleep before midnight. This period involves deep sleep, often referred to as “Beauty Sleep.” It lasts for about an hour from 11pm to midnight. During this period, you enter a dreamless state of sleep where oxygen consumption in the body drops by about eight percent. This results in profound physical rest and relaxation. The physiological rest, which you gain during this hour of dreamless sleep, is at least three times deeper than what you get during the sleep after midnight, when oxygen consumption in the body rises again by 5-6%.

Growth factors, commonly known as growth hormones, are secreted profusely during the hour of deep sleep. These powerful hormones are responsible for cellular growth, repair and rejuvenation. People age faster if they don’t produce enough growth hormones. The latest “fashion” in the beauty market is to consume synthetic growth hormones, which create “fantastic” rejuvenating results, but can also have devastating side effects, including heart disease and cancer. On the other hand, if the body makes them, at the right time and in the correct amounts, as happens during deep sleep, they can keep the body vital and youthful at every age.

Deep sleep never occurs after midnight and it comes only if you go to sleep at least two hours before midnight. If you miss out on deep sleep regularly, your body and mind become overtired. This triggers abnormal stress responses in the form of constant secretions of stress hormones such as adrenaline, cortisol or cholesterol (yes, cholesterol is a stress hormone that rises with stress!). To keep these artificially derived energy bursts going, at least for a while, you may have to take recourse with such stimulants as cigarettes, coffee, tea, candy, cokes, alcohol, etc. Once the body’s energy reserves have been depleted, chronic fatigue results.

Fatigue can be considered to be a major causal or contributing factor of today’s health problems. When you feel tired, it is not just your mind that is tired. In fact, when fatigued, all the cells that make up your heart, lungs, digestive organs, kidneys, etc., suffer from low energy and are unable to function properly.

When you are tired, your brain no longer receives adequate amounts of water, glucose, oxygen and amino acids – its most essential nutrients. The short supply of brain nutrients can lead to innumerable problems in a person's mind, body and behavior. When you drive a car during the night, for example, your body has to keep fighting the “sleepy” hormone melatonin, which naturally tries to keep your body at its lowest level of performance and activity. According to research in the field of chronobiology, attention span after midnight drops considerably. This dramatically raises your risk for making mistakes and having an accident. Most one-way road accidents occur during nighttimes, and accidents in factories are 20 percent more likely to occur on the night shift.

Doctors at the University of California, San Diego, have found that losing a few hours of sleep not only makes you feel tired during the following day but can also affect the immune system, possibly impairing the body’s ability to fight infection. Since immunity diminishes with tiredness, your body is unable to defend itself against bacteria, microbes, and viruses and cannot cope with the build-up of harmful substances in the body.

Frequent tiredness and low energy precedes any type of chronic disease and most acute illnesses, including cancer, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, AIDS, the common cold and

the flu. An ever- increasing number of children are the victims of sleep deprivation, and its consequences.

The critical role of sleep and sleep disturbances in child development has been repeatedly demonstrated.

According to published research, psychopathology in children could result from or be exacerbated by insufficient sleep and consequent fatigue and sleepiness. There exists a particularly strong relationship between sleep problems and neuropsychological functioning in children. Sleep disruptions have often been implicated in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children, because sleep deprivation and the resultant sleepiness could lead to ADHD-like symptoms. There are clear indications that learning and attention skills could be significantly compromised by insufficient sleep or sleep disruption. This is no way is limited to children only.

Most tiredness results from missing out on the two hours of sleep before-midnight. Any treatment of disease that does not include natural “deep sleep therapy” cannot lead to lasting success, since the body’s healing system itself, the immune system, depends on proper, healthy sleeping cycles to be vital and efficient.

Pitta, which controls AGNI, the digestive fire, also becomes disturbed when you regularly eat your dinner late or have snacks during Pitta (night) time. Consequently, Pitta will be disrupted also during following lunchtime, which causes disturbances in the liver, spleen, gallbladder, stomach and pancreas.

The main principle at work here is, that whenever you disturb or use up Pitta energy during the night, you also disrupt all the Pitta functions and Pitta organs during the following day.

The Second Vata Cycle

The time from 2am to 6am is controlled by Vata. Its early morning cycle is responsible for moving the body’s waste products from the liver, the cells, the intestines and all other areas of the body towards the organs and systems of detoxification and elimination. The lymphatic system neutralizes harmful microbes, metabolic wastes, cellular debris, worn out cells and cells damaged by disease. While the rectum forms fecal matter, which triggers a bowel movement, the kidneys pass urine to the bladder, which causes urination. The skin also receives waste products that begin to surface at this time. Hence, the importance of washing or showering in the morning. The entire body is geared towards excretion of useless waste material (about 70% of the body’s waste is eliminated through the lungs, 20% through the skin, 7% through urine, and 3% through feces).

At the end of the Pitta period, which marks the beginning of Vata time, the body temperature begins to drop and phase out at about 4am (peak of Vata time). After that, it gradually rises again. Towards the end of Vata time, when nature starts becoming active, both body temperature and stress hormone levels (adrenaline and cortisol, etc.,) will have risen high enough to jumpstart the day with a thorough clean out.

To be able to support complete and efficient waste removal, though, the body needs to be awake and in a vertical position. Therefore, Ayurveda recommends that we get up preferably before sunrise or at dawn, but not after sunrise. Since the times of sunrise vary from season to season and country to country, Vata also undergoes certain fluctuations. Still, six o’clock is the most applicable and recommended time to rise for most people (with the exception of young children, teenagers and even adolescents whose melatonin cycle is slightly different and who may require at least one hour extra sleep in the morning and evening).

The use of an alarm clock to wake you up in the morning abruptly cuts down the gradual phasing out of the various, subsequently occurring sleep patterns and can cause irritability, headaches and nervousness throughout the day. You may feel as if you haven’t really woken up yet. The easiest way of controlling the waking times is to adjust the bedtimes in the evening. For example, if you generally need 8 hours of sleep to feel refreshed and rested in the morning, you would greatly benefit from going to sleep at around

10 pm. If you need more hours to feel refreshed, then go to bed even earlier. Should you only require 7 hours of sleep (although most adults need about 8 hours) then go to bed at 10 pm and get up at 5 am, an even better time for Vata to be effective. The bowel movement is the strongest type of movement in the body and requires a large portion of the body’s energy. To support the body in this effort, we need to be up and about bright and early. Going to sleep early in the night and rising early in the morning is one of the most important health recommendations you can get.