The inequivocabile value of REAL sleep for healing!

On June 21, 2013, CNN.com posted a fascinating article by Alan Duke that delves into a story that illustrates how crucial real, solid, deep, restorative, level four REM sleep is! 

Sleep is a POWERFUL healer and, sadly, we are really sleep deprived in this country, even resistant to getting a good nights sleep. 

Michael Jackson. Went 60 nights without REM sleep. :O((

In the Michael Jackson case, Harvard Medical School sleep expert, Dr. Charles Czeisler, sleep consultant to NASA, the CIA and the Rolling Stones and NBA basketball teams said that the "drug-induced coma" induced by propofol (anesthesia) leaves a patient with the same refreshed feeling of a good sleep but without the benefits that genuine sleep delivers in repairing brain cells and the body. 

Propofol knocks the body out, but does not allow the brain to get the deep REM (rapid eye movement) sleep required for true rest.

Dr. Czeisler, testified that propofol deprives patients of vital REM sleep and that lab rats die after five weeks of no REM sleep. Michael Jackson was given the drug propofol for sixty straight nights. That's 60 nights withOUT real sleep!

Dr. Charles Czeisler, "Your brain needs sleep to repair..."

Michael Jackson may be the only human ever to go two months without REM -- rapid eye movement -- sleep, which is vital to keep the brain and body alive. 

In fact, in the weeks leading up to Michael Jackson's death, he exhibited textbook signs and symptoms of someone lacking REM sleep, which were identified and documented by many around him, but went unacknowledged and untreated, resulting in or contributing to his death.

Inability to do standard dances or remember words to songs he sang for decades, paranoia, talking to himself and hearing voices, and severe weight loss, cold to the touch in spite of warm temperatures, having trouble "grasping the work" at rehearsals and needed psychiatric help, all symptoms. "I believe that that constellation of symptoms was more probably than not induced by total sleep deprivation over a chronic period," testified Dr. Czeisler.

"Depriving someone of REM sleep for a long period of time makes them paranoid, anxiety-filled, depressed, unable to learn, distracted and sloppy. They lose their balance and appetite while their physical reflexes get 10 times slower and their emotional responses 10 times stronger," said Dr. Czeisler.

Dr. Czeisler continued with an explanation of circadian rhythm: the internal clock in the brain that controls the timing of when we sleep and wake and the timing of the release of hormones, "That's why we sleep at night and are awake in the day," he said. "Your brain needs sleep to repair and maintain its neurons every night. Blood cells cycle out every few weeks, but brain cells are for a lifetime. Like a computer, the brain has to go offline to maintain cells that we keep for life, since we don't make more, Sleep is the repair and maintenance of the brain cells."

According to experts, "adults should get 7-8 hours of sleep each night to allow for enough sleep cycles, he said. When you sleep, you "prune out" unimportant neuron connections and consolidate important ones during your "slow-eyed sleep" each night, he said. Those connections -- which is the information you have acquired during the day -- are consolidated by the REM sleep cycle. Your eyes actually dart back and forth rapidly during REM sleep.

"In REM, we are integrating the memories that we have stored during slow-eyed sleep, integrating memories with previous life experiences. We are able to make sense of things that we may not have understood while awake."

"Learning and memory happen when you are asleep, he said. A laboratory mouse rehearses a path through a maze to get to a piece of cheese while asleep. The area of a basketball player's brain that is used to shoot a ball will have much greater slow-eyed sleep period since there is more for it to store, he said. Players shoot better after sleep. The Portland Trailblazers consulted with him after they lost a series of East Coast basketball games, he said. He was able to give their players strategies for being sharper when traveling across time zones.

He's worked with the Rolling Stones on their sleep problem. Musicians are vulnerable since they are often traveling across time zones and usually "all keyed up" to perform at night, he said.

Czeisler developed a program for NASA to help astronauts deal with sleep issues in orbit, where they have a sunrise and sunset every 90 minutes. Other clients include major industries that are concerned about night shift workers falling asleep on the job, the CIA, the Secret Service and the U.S. Air Force, he said.

CONCLUSION:  Sleep is just as important to you when your body is healing, especially when the body or mind are under stress, such as following surgery.

The whole point of this blog, it to get your attention!! Sleeping and resting are to CRUCIAL elements that you must allow yourself following surgery if you are to have success.

:O))