You may have noticed that I often visit and revisit certain subjects of basic healthy lifestyle practices. I shall explain why. There are certain important healthy habits that can be easily neglected. Modern life has become so demanding and competitive that one fails to see their implications on health. The neglected practices of healthy lifestyle could incur harm on the body and brain on the cellular and immune levels, resulting in harmful consequences.

Because of the arrival of the holy month of Ramadan of fasting, I decided to tackle the subject of sleep, because it is quite neglected or upset during this month. Restful sleep is a very important lifestyle practice, which restores, protects, and resets overall health every single night.

Sleep is crucial to mental and physical health as well as to our sanity and the mere balance of our health. We spend one third of our day sleeping or resting to recover the energy that is expended during those twenty-four hours. Then, it must be very essential to life. Once upon a time before electricity, sleep was a sacred act that was ritually practiced and respected each night. Only those who were pursued by the law, drunkards, the owls, and the cats roamed around at night.

Recently, it is a different story. Electricity turned our nights into daytime. City dwellers rarely go to bed before 11 p.m. or 12 a.m. Sleep has become a rare commodity due to work and life demands and deadlines. Night attractions and activities and bright neon lights and billboards invite you to participate in late night action, distracting from sleep.

In Ramadan, Muslims in this country have gone further than staying awake past the middle of the night and fajr (dawn) prayer. Some young people stretch it to 7 a.m., oblivious of the importance of night sleep. Very few realize that daytime sleep is not as hygienic or repairing to tissue, muscles, cells, brain, immune system, and the entire body as night sleep. Recovering energy becomes less effective and brain functions and responses less efficient. Night owls become less productive, less functional, and less healthy. This unhealthy habit defeats the purpose of fasting, as night owls continue eating all through the night and gain weight during Ramadan. Allow me to explain why.

The ordinance of fasting for one entire month is not meant to punish Muslims or starve them, perhaps to make them feel what the less fortunate and deprived feel. Fasting twelve hours a day provides many health and spiritual benefits. It makes you consume significantly less food, helping in losing excess fat and weight; giving a break to the many body systems, the digestive tract in particular; cleansing the body from toxins; detoxifying from free radicals, inflammation, infections, bacteria, viruses, and yeast; giving rest to the kidneys and liver (two detoxifying organs); renewing and repairing cells and tissues; eliminating defective cells; boosting the immune system; increasing energy and mental clarity; improving the memory; and enhancing spirituality. Of course, all the above mental and physical benefits lead to improved energy, clearer mind, and heightened spirituality in order to perform the required worships.

I extensively discussed the benefits of fasting in a series of articles during Ramadan last year (found in the Arab News website under Health Solutions). Since fasting is not my topic today, I shall revert to the importance of sleep and why you should respect sleep guidelines to achieve restful and repairing sleep during Ramadan and all the time, even if sleep hours are less.

If you can fast and stay awake during the day and sleep at night during non-Ramadan days, you can readjust your time in order to accommodate your resting hours and reap all the physical, mental and spiritual benefits of fasting without upsetting your biological clock and the normal functions of your immune system and other systems.

Allah asserts in the Holy Qur’an that His creation of day is to seek livelihood and night is for retirement, “And We have made your sleep as a thing of rest (9). And We have made the night a covering [through its darkness] (10). And We have made the day for livelihood (11).” (Chapter: 78; verses: 9, 10, 11)

Before I discuss sleep and its importance, I would like to describe what happens to the body physiologically during the 24-hour daily cycle according to French scientist, Michel Siffre, who is a pioneer in chronobiology, the study of biological rhythms. Siffre spent over six months in a cave in southwest Texas without natural daylight. His study on chronobiology was based on his own experiment in the cave.

Your sleep and waking hours depend on three main factors; daylight entering your eyes; time of day and night; and the important sleep hormone, melatonin, which is produced by the brain through its precursor hormone serotonin. These factors determine your circadian rhythm, more commonly known as the biological clock. This inner clock varies from one person to the other and is based on the eye exposure to daylight, the daily sleeping habits, waking hours, crossing time zones (jetlag), and other aspects.

Exposure to daylight is the most influential factor to resetting our body clocks as Siffre found from his own experience that showed that darkness, or absence of daylight, resets the biological clock to a different rhythm and makes it adjust to darkness. Facing or looking into the bright daylight for at least 30 minutes a day can help regulate the body rhythm and adjust night sleep, waking hours, bowel movement, mood, energy, and appetite. This happens when the light of dawn and the light of the rising sun enter the eyes, signaling the change for a new day cycle and making melatonin secretion in the brain decrease.

In Northern countries, certain individuals develop depression and seasonal affective disorder (SAD) in winter when the day is short and the sun does not appear sufficiently. Sometimes, their mental state pushes them to suicide. For people with SAD condition, it is important for them to get exposed to artificial ultraviolet rays to compensate for the insufficient daylight they get in winter.

On the other hand, the twilight hour just after sunset makes the brain release melatonin and sends signals to the body to prepare for night sleep. This phenomenon affects your bedtime and waking hours, your daily time for bowel movement, mealtimes, appetite, peak of brain activity and body energy. The time and sequence of each activity is dictated by your day/night cycle.

After sunset, or in the darkness, the brain begins secreting melatonin to prepare the body and brain for sleep. This nightly release makes you less physically energetic and less mentally attentive; sends you signals of sleep like yawning and weariness; and also lowers your body temperature. When your sleep/wake hours are regular and enough light goes into your eyes, melatonin is released more predictably after dark and less before dawn to give energy for morning activities.

When the sleep hormone is disrupted during traveling and crossing time zones, automatically your sleep hours are interrupted or shifted to different times of the day along with bowel movement and other functions. If the body clock is not readjusted to the time zone you are in quick enough, disrupted sleep occurs and lasts for several days and weeks; energy and productivity are decreased; and immunity declines, making catching a virus easier.

Next week, I shall explain how the body operates when the circadian rhythm (biological clock) functions adequately according to daylight and nighttime hours and how all the biological and physiological tasks perform meticulously and continuously like a clock. I shall discuss the other aspects of night sleep and how to readjust your body clock to bolster your immune system, protect your health, improve your mood, enhance mental and physical performance, boost your energy, increase your productivity, and even delay the aging process.

I wish us all a comfortable month of Ramadan fasting, praying, supplications, and charitable deeds that get accepted and rewarded by the Almighty.

References:

• The Science of Good Sleep: There is a Reason You’re Always So Tired by James Clear in Wellness

N.B.:

Individuals with medical conditions or on medication should consult their physicians when they decide to introduce anything new in their diet even if it is natural.

The previous Health Solutions articles are located at www.arabnews.com

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