Sleep is one of the beautiful blessing in our life. If someone understands how the sleep works, it will become blessing. It nourishes your body, rejuvenate you, refreshes you and sometime it even makes you stronger.
Nowadays mental health is as important as physical health. The key for good mental health is a sound sleep. It stabilizes your mind, brings positivity, bring enthusiasm and makes you happy.
In sushrut Samhita, sleep is told to be as illusion of lord Vishnu (Vaishnavi). It means when a person sleeps he reaches to lord Vishnu’s magical world.
Ayurveda and sleep
In Ayurveda, sleep is given very much importance. All 3 acharyas (charak, sushruta, vaghbhatta) describes sleep in tray upstambha (3 pillars of life) that is ahara (food), nidra (sleep), brahmcharya (celibacy). All Acharya describes some different and some same opinions about sleep but they all are given very much importance.
They describes following specifications for sleep,
• Benefits,
• Disadvantage,
• Timing,
• Less sleep problems and its remedies,
• Over sleep problems and its remedies,
• Best sleep features,
• Reasons for sleep
Acharyas describes psychology of sleep and dreams briefly. It gives us a guideway to understand the mechanism and improve mental health and sleep.
They describes relation of food and sleep also. Mental health depends on sleep and sleep depends on good food. There are so many factors that affects the sleep as in physical and mental health, age, environment, surroundings, food etc. Among them food plays a vital role. So we must understand its relation. It can help ourselves for better sleep and lead to jolly good health.
Food and sleep
You will have a question, the food we take get digested and expelled on next day. So how can it impact on sleep? So the answer is, not the physical food but the subtle quantity of food will impact.
Food have qualities like heaviness, lightness, dryness, unctuousness, spicy, balanced etc. These attributes will show its impact on your sleep.
Heavy food (cheese, butter etc.) takes more time to digest. So body will have to work more. So it can’t be engaged in sleep. Dry food (bread,pav etc.) also need more enzymes to get.
Nowadays junk food has become more popular but it is very harmful for body. Excessively burnt food, spicy food will harm the soft lining of our organs and causes disease like ulcers, bleeding, hyperacidity.
Heavy and dry food can cause constipation. It will lead to abdominal, flatulence, piles, fissure. These physical problems affect the body and mind too. It disturbs the mind and causes negative impact on sleep.
These food are tamsik in nature. It will increase tamas guna of mind which results in anger, hatred, jealousy etc. Thus mental health will be impaired and affects the sleep.
So we must consume food which is beneficial for our physical as well as mental health. The food which is beneficial is called as wholesome food. The wholesome food also act by their qualities like lightness, unctuousness, less spiced, balanced, good for health.
Milk, butter, grains, pulses, green vegetables are wholesome food for body and mind. These foods are easy to digest and gives much more energy.
A person can gain more protein from beans and dry fruits than egg or other protein sources. Fruits contain calcium, vitamins and other minerals. Milk contains all the vitamins except Vitamin C. butter contains enough fat for producing energy.
This is a short list for wholesome food which can be taken daily
Milk Orange
Ghee Apple
Banana Rice
Mung Bean Wheat
Ground Nut Ginger
Coriander Fenugreek
These foods are satwik in nature. So it will increase satwik guna of mind. It will lead to happiness, energy, enthusiasm, positivity.
These all things help in maintaining mental health and leads to sound sleep. These foods don’t damage digestive system. So it decreases the risk factor for hampered health.
Light food will be easy to digest so it will give its benefits quickly. It will not cause any complication and make a person healthy.
Conclusion
We must focus on what we eat because “how we think depends on what we eat.” It affects our mental and physical health too. Mental health directly effects our sleep.
Sleep helps you to give energy, enthusiasm, refreshment. So we must eat wholesome food and balance
our health.
It is saying “one cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dinned well.”
