Sleep Enough

More people are sleeping late these days. And many people do not quite understand why sleeping late at night is bad for health. Having had some experience with Eastern medicine, I can attest that from its standpoint, sleeping late at night – is indeed not good for health. For the uninitiated, Eastern medicine is deeply rooted in the culture and lifestyle of Asia, encompassing billions of people, and practiced for thousands of years.

Eastern medicine would normally refer to either Oriental or Indian (Aurvedic) medicine. But although quite different, both systems seem to concur on the issue of sleeping late. While the scope of these ancient medicinal systems is so wide that practitioners normally specialize in just a few branches, just a brief look and you can’t help but notice they never condone sleeping late.

Basics of Eastern medicine

The basis of Eastern medicine is rooted in the principle that an unseen energy pervades the universe and this energy is what gives the “life force” of all living things, including man. When we are healthy, this life force is strong, and flowing in our bodies in a healthy manner; when we are sick, this life force is weak and obstructed. This life force is called prana in Ayurveda or chi/qi in Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).

Also, the elements like earth, air, water, fire, wood, wind, and metal are all a huge factor in Eastern medicine as a whole, and being healthy means living as harmoniously as possible with these elements. Some organs are said to represent certain elements more strongly, and some herbs may influence the distribution and flow of elements as well as energy in the body.

Sleeping late in Chinese medicine

Oriental medicine places a strong emphasis on balance and moderation, so it’s no surprise that in Traditional Chinese medicine, sleeping late is highly discouraged. This balance is all to do with yin (female) and yang (male) energy. In sleep, the shen energy is the mental/spirit energy that represents yang, while the heart/blood (jing) represents the yin. The balancing of shen with jing results in sleep, when the shen is housed in the jing, and a disruption in this balance results in insomnia.

TCM regards sleeping as bad for health because the liver gets unduly heated and since the liver is the prime regulator of chi, and stores or processes blood, the smooth flow of chi is disrupted. This creates all kinds of complications like poor metabolism and digestion, bad breath, acne, and negatively impacts the eyesight. The heat/fire element gets too much in this case.

Sleeping late in Indian medicine

In traditional Indian medicine or Ayurveda, sleeping late is also inadvisable. In Ayurveda, three important factors in health are the doshas – vata, pitta, and kapha, or wind, bile, and phlegm, respectively. Also, healthy sleep is considered one of the 3 pillars of health, the others being eating and loving. To put this together, the doshas need to be in a healthy state or the health will become weak. The doshas are represented in the body as thoughts/action (vata), metabolism (pitta), and structure (kapha). People are a combination of doshas, often with a dominant dosha.

Sleeping early is getting in sync with the kapha dosha, while sleeping late throws the vata dosha off balance by increasing it. Note that you don’t have to be a vata dominant to have unbalanced vata. Also, sleeping late is considered as not being in harmony with nature’s cycles, which each also have their fluctuating states of doshas. In Western medicine, we can likely approximate this to the circadian rhythm.

In actuality, Ayurveda considers the ideal time to go to bed as 10 pm! I wonder how many of us can manage going to bed at 10 pm?