In the last post, I said sleep is becoming even more essential. This is why.

For the past few decades, we have been handed the magic bullets of antibiotics to cure all that ails us. Then we were sent back to work. No problem.

Now, the magic is running out of power. Many older antibiotics are useless against resistant strains of bacterium. The few new ones that do work sometimes are apparently loaded with serious, almost incredible side effects that can include deafness, severe joint pain and psychosis leading to suicide (1, 2)… in addition to the usual damage that nearly all AMA drugs do to the kidneys and/or liver, and the rest of your body.

Let’s shift gears for a moment. We know that only the body can heal the body. Everything we do is just trying to help it heal itself, giving it extra building blocks, or trying to take some negative factor out of the way. Bandaging does not heal a wound. It just keeps dirt out of it. All medicine, when it works at all, works that way, too. It does not actually cause healing. It just helps the body’s own processes. If the body is too weak, all the medicine in the world will not save a person.

Before we relied so heavily on antibiotics, the essential prescription was… rest.

Rest gives the body a chance to heal itself. To fight off infection. To repair damage. We will need to include ‘rest’ more seriously in our future medicine, as the pharmaceutical wonders start working less and less, at a higher and higher cost in side effects.

Would it not also be good to take preventive rest? To give the body enough sleep so it is capable of fighting off disease before it happens? And to give it a little more sleep if you feel yourself starting to catch something. In an emergency situation, the last thing you want is to be ill.

I can’t say what is sufficient sleep for you. My requirements are laughable. But that’s my genetics. You need to think about and determine what is adequate for good health for you. Then get that much, as often as you can. Don’t deprive yourself of sleep on a regular basis.

If you get into an emergency situation, take every opportunity to catch whatever sleep you can get. Of course do not go to sleep while people are depending on you. But by getting as much sleep as you can, you lessen the possibility of suddenly and disastrously falling asleep at exactly the wrong time. Over 100,000 automobile accidents and somewhere between 1,500 and 5,000 fatalities are caused each year by people falling asleep while driving.

Also, take every opportunity to eat that you get during an emergency. You never know when you’ll have another chance at some nourishment. Bonus: dieting is out the window for the duration. You should be more concerned about getting enough or even more than enough calories to sustain the workload and stresses you will be subjected to in the situation. Make it as good food as possible. An energy bar helps your body work better than a bag of corn puffs. But I would eat the corn puffs if there wasn’t anything else.

Anyway, I suppose the ‘emergency version’ of the saying I quoted at the top of the previous post would be…

Tags: antibiotics, emergency, rest, sleep
This entry was posted on Saturday, December 6th, 2008 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Thoughts.
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