subject: Your Health And Natural Detoxification Diets [print this page] The environment, both externally in your room and internally in your body and mind, is critical to experiencing the natural detoxification and rejuvenation that happen during sleep.
Natural detoxification is just that: natural, unforced, according to an uncontrived state. In order to allow this process to unfold, the most important thing for us to "do" is get out of our own way. For example, there is sometimes misunderstanding about exercise or exercise physiology. Some think going to the gym and stressing the body is what generates muscle growth. This is actually only a small part of what is happening. In the time after mechanical stress is impressed upon the musculature, connective tissue, bones and other structural components are the next two equally, if not more important phases. During the resting part, your body first repairs and restores the tissues and then rejuvenates, rebuilds and adapts them to handle the next stimulus, which it assumes is going to be somewhat fierce if you have been working out very hard. All work and no rest is a recipe for over-training, exhaustion, and burn-out.
This process doesn't just happen with exercise. It happens with all of our other life processes as well. This balancing of alternating states of activity/rest, stimulus/recovery, engagement/passivity are manifestations of the need to balance and harmonize the opposites of yin and yang. It is my personal belief that sleep is one our greatest allies. For the amount of time we spend asleep, which for most of us should be around eight hours per night, we cannot do any further damage. We are necessarily "out of our own way." It is in this place that natural detoxification can thrive.
Most of us are exposed to all sorts of all chemicals in our food. We are breathing air that is fairly heavily laden with particulates and deprived of oxygen. We must contend with toxins in our cars and heavy metals from the exhaust of our car and all other vehicles on the road. While we are constantly being bathed in all of these detrimental influences, the interesting thing is that most of us are fairly functional. We are walking around and we are doing our best to get through the day.
At the time of writing this I googled "why do we need sleep?" MSNBC replied with, "Though researches have many theories about the function of sleep, why we do it is still a mystery." It is my belief that if we didn't have those hours of sleep to take the choice out of our hands, our lives would be much shorter. We would not have an opportunity to let our body engage in natural detoxification, rest, restore and regenerate from the myriad of difficult choices we are asked to make everyday.
Sleep and the environment in which we sleep is an incredibly important part of natural detoxification. Try to acquire bedding which is as natural as possible. Don't wash your sheets and pillows with toxic chemicals. Make sure you aren't bathed in formaldehyde fumes while you sleep (this is a very common chemical found in carpets and rugs.) If possible, acquire a few green plants growing in your bedroom to produce more oxygen and do a little scrubbing of the air so you really have a chance to restore yourself. It is during the quiet moments when our body can relax, when we don't have the stress and tension of dealing with the wild business of our modern lives, when all of this stress and tension is not binding up our tissues, that we actually have an opportunity to release on a much deeper level. Then these things flow out of the body as a course of natural detoxification.
Sleep is a time when we have the opportunity to let the liver do its job, to let the kidneys do their job, the lymph and all the other organ systems that are involved in natural detoxification, rejuvenation and the maintenance of our normal state of health and well being. It is a chance for us to follow that old holistic adage that "power that made the body, heals the body." This is not meant to be something particularly mysterious. It is more that the body has millions and millions of years worth of survival built into our genetic code. Our bodies know how to survive and for the blessed eight hours or so when we sleep and close our eyes, we can actually let the body do that.
