Sleep Deprivation

Just like maintaining a healthy diet and exercising regularly, getting quality deep sleep is essential for your optimum health. Keeping you energetic and also for building your body's immune system against infections and chronic illnesses.

So what then is deep sleep?

To put it simply, deep sleep is a phase when you will be very difficult to be awaken by external factors because of near complete disengagement from the environment.
On average a person should get about 7 to 9 hours of quality sleep daily.
During deep sleep body refreshes and rejuvenates. Kidneys cleanse  blood, organs detox and wounds heal. Cells and muscle tissues repair, replace and build up. Brain relaxes and memory consolidates.

Here's what happens when you are sleep deprived: 

• Weight gain: Our human growth hormone is a profound anabolic (process of tissue building) hormone. It is produced by a small pituitary gland that is located at the base of the skull. Human growth hormone is released in pulses during deep sleep, and any interruption at this stage abruptly stop its release. Growth hormone helps maintain some bodily functions like tissue repair, muscle growth and metabolism (the rate at which our body burns kilojoules for energy). So, lack of sleep slows down your metabolism and makes you gain weight.
• Heatiness: Lack of sleep disrupts regulation of body heat and causes certain illnesses like ; Fever, Constipation, Sore Throat, Pimples and Acnes, Mouth Ulcers and Indigestion.
• Depressed immune system: that will lead to many illnesses like throat infection,cold and flu.
  And long term effect like heart disease.
• Slows down brain function: like alertness, reactive responses and memory loss. People who don't sleep well at night tend to be more forgetful, short temper and irritable than those who sleep soundly.
  And long term effect like dementia.

Here's some tips in getting a good night's sleep:

Research has shown that people who exercise regularly tend to sleep better.
Keeping to a regular sleeping schedule and having a more conducive surroundings to rest does help.
           

How harmful is SUGAR to your body ?

Are you addicted to SUGAR without you even knowing about it ?
And what is the most important fact you should know about SUGAR?
Sugar is neither acidic nor alkaline, meaning it is neutral. But, when it is processed inside your body that it turns acidic. Meaning to say when sugar is broken down in your body it becomes acid as an end product.
Therefore,  SUGAR = ACIDIC

Your body should always maintain a healthy Acid - Alkaline Balance ( pH balance ). Even though your body has a natural way of maintaining pH balance, long term  excessive acidity in your system will put a strain to your body functions.
Even a slight increase in acidity in your body over a prolonged period of time will cause you a variety of health problems. And they are:

• Fatigue
• Accelerated ageing 
• Headache
• Tooth decay
• Obesity
• Decreased HDL and increased LDL
• Type 2 diabetes
• Hypertension
• Heart disease
• Dementia
• Low immune system
• Cancer 
• Damage to liver
• Osteoporosis
• and the list goes on

Excessive sugar intake is the most damaging substance to your body that you can ingest. Your body is not prepared for that. Majority of excess sugar becomes metabolised into body fat - leading to all sorts of debilitating chronic metabolic diseases many people are struggling with :-

• Fructose is almost exclusively metabolised by the liver. Excess fructose is converted to fat and stored in the liver giving rise to a fatty liver and causing fatty liver disease.
• Promotes insulin resistance giving rise to type 2 diabetes.
• Feeds cancer cells allowing cancer to spread faster.
  According to the American Anti-Cancer Institute,"When we consume sugar, we are simultaneously shutting off our defenses while pouring gasoline on the fire that is Cancer."
• Causes brain to work harder to burn off excess sugar for fuel. Long term effect is brain disorders like Alzheimer's disease.
• Excess sugar ends up as fat tissue causing obesity.

Research from some of America's most respected institutions (like Harvard Medical School) now confirm that sugar is a dietary factor that drives most chronic diseases development today.
So, have good control over what you eat and drink. The likes of sodas,sweet desserts, fruit drinks, frozen yogurts, candies,cookies, cakes and ice-creams - all contain great amount of refined sugar.
Glucose or sugar also come from some of the foods that we eat, like bread, pastas, noodles and cereals.

And here are some Tips on best ways to greatly reduce your sugar intake:

• If you are a coffee lover; try to drink coffee with much reduced sugar or best of all, like me, drink without sugar.
• If you love fruit juices; try mixing half your juice with more vegetables like celery, carrot, tomato and cucumber. No doubt fruit juices contain useful minerals, vitamins and fibre, but some fruits are also high in fructose, and fructose is also sugar, so  moderation and exercise  are the key factors.