What Sleep Can Do For Your Liver

Years ago, sleep was understood to be a period of time during which your brain was not active. Now it is known that sleep consists of a number of distinctive stages, and that your brain is active even while you are asleep. Different brain activities occur during each different sleep stage. Sleep is an important factor in helping people to feel good and function at their full potential, as a number of things occur during this time to facilitate healthiness, healing, and rejuvination.

On the other hand, not getting enough sleep can be dangerous. The first thing it affects is our immune system. If our immune system is not strong enough we will fall sick. It seems one of the main organs that is involved in a good night’s sleep is the liver. It regulates our energy level for the next day. When we stay up late at night we affect the liver’s metabolism.

Filtering toxins from the blood is one of the most critical of liver functions. In our modern environment, we are constantly bombarded with toxins in the air, the water and the foods we ingest. The liver is greatly burdened by this and needs the rest of the body at rest to best do the clean up work so badly needed. It takes at least three hours of sleep for the body to “reset” and allow the liver to begin the repair process. Of course, three hours alone is not adequate, with most people needing at least eight hours of rest each and every night.

But to do all the repair work, it takes a lot longer than three hours. If one is sleeping only for three hours for more than one night then the effect is as good as no sleep at all, because the body becomes tired as it has not got the chance to repair itself. One would feel like that of being hit with a ton of bricks. Here the body is screaming for help. It needs sleep so that it can rejuvenate itself. It will be saying that it didn’t get the chance to kind of catch up on all the sleep the night before and they have all these other things that they needed to repair from the days before and now they have all these other things that we are making them do today. So may be the brain continues to work even if you sleep for three to four hours a day but in the long run if you’re not getting, close to eight hours a night, it eventually will take a heavy toll on the brain.

The brain may function with merely three or four hours of sleep, but it will not function at its best without that eight hours we truly need. Liver function also impacts the immune system so sleep is doubly important. We must have a strong and vigorous immune system to fight invaders like viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites, so enough sleep is essential for everyone. Getting adequate sleep makes for a healthy liver and a strong and vital immune system which makes us feel better and be healthier.

Tags: Healing, Health & Fitness