Imagine, you’re sitting in biology class and the teacher is droning on and on ab

Imagine, you’re sitting in biology class and the teacher is droning on and on about the life cycles of protozoa. You know you should be taking notes because this will all be on the quiz, but you are too sleepy to care. You rub your eyes, yawn, and regret staying up all night. It’s too late to change things now because your eyelids are already at half-mast. The next thing you know you’re out for the count, but hey, at least your mouth is still closed otherwise you’d be drooling all over your homework. Suddenly the teacher calls your name. You jump up in your seat as if you’ve been struck by lightning. The entire class is looking straight at you, snickering. You feel embarrassed, disoriented, and worried. After all, it’s only the first period, and you’ve got a long day to go. You’ve probably experienced a similar scenario. And to think, this could have been avoided if you had just gotten enough rest. Rest does much more than keep you awake during boring lectures. Rest is powerful. It refreshes, regenerates, and rebuilds your body, mind, and spirit. Rest allows you to function at your very best. Most students misunderstand or simply don’t appreciate the true benefits of proper rest. They allow the stress of life and the pressures they face at home or school to build up until they feel overwhelmed. At that point, it’s almost impossible for them to get a good night’s sleep. If they only knew that good and proper rest is life’s first antidote to stress. Why do so many students fall into this trap Probably because they have been taught to build their lives around the concept of success? They are encouraged by friends, society, or even family members to do whatever it takes to be the best they can be. Each day is filled with so many important and urgent responsibilities that getting rest becomes a low priority. Ironically, many students would be more likely to reach their goals of success if they gave themselves the right kind of rest at the right time. That’s why this section is so important to living a CREATION Life. For you to be your best, you first have to get good rest. In this chapter, you’ll see how Rest, the second principle of CREATION Life, plays a vital role in your well-being. You’ll learn how important sleep is to keep you healthy, and you’ll examine the benefits of taking regular periods of rest through naps, a weekly day of rest, and vacations. Rest includes a good night’s sleep as well as taking time to relax and rejuvenate daily, weekly, and annually. THE GIFT OF REST Then God said, Let there be light and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good and God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light Day and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day. GENESIS 13-5 For His very first act of creation, God set in place a pattern of day and night. This cycle naturally gave birth to nightly rest. Though there are a few exceptions, most people still work or play during the day and sleep at night. As you will see, following this pattern of rest allows you to live an abundant and healthy life. But God gave you another gift at creation. For His final act, God set apart a special time not just for rest, but also for reflection and communion with Him. God gave you the gift of the Sabbath. This special day of rest allows you to find strength from spending time with God Himself. It affords you a day when you can be free from the stress brought about by school, work, relationships, or finances. God desires for you to have rest, not just at night, but also through communing with Him every week. In this chapter, you will see there are numerous benefits to honoring God’s commandment and taking this day of rest. REST To me, rest is the space within my life – space to step back and to reconnect with God, with my family, with my friends. Rest is time to recharge my batteries and restore my enthusiasm for life and people. SCOTT BRADY, M. D. SLEEPY TIME Most everyone knows about the benefits of eating a healthy diet and getting regular exercise, but they overlook the important benefits of sleep. In an editorial in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine, two neurologists at Northwestern REST University said that sleep should be considered as essential to a healthy lifestyle as exercise and nutrition. Amazingly, you can make all the healthy changes you want by eating nothing but kale salad and quinoa while you run marathons till you are blue in the face – but if you don’t improve your sleep at the same time, especially your nightly sleep, you will never get the maximum benefits from your diet and exercise. Research has found that teenagers function best on eight and a half to more than nine hours of sleep each night. But most likely, you’re not getting anywhere near that amount. Typically, students your age voluntarily alter their sleeping habits to better manage their lives. One study found that more than 90 percent of teenagers reported sleeping less than the recommended time, with 10 percent sleeping less than six hours each night. Since a lack of sleep affects your brain and body in many negative ways, this can lead to some serious problems. For starters, it can make you more susceptible to sickness and disease. A study conducted at the University of Chicago found that chronic sleep deprivation could hasten the onset and increase the severity of diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity. Lack of sleep is also linked to a significantly increased risk of coronary heart disease. 5 Another study revealed that losing just three hours of sleep on any given night could cut the effectiveness of your immune system in half. 6 That means staying up a few hours past your bedtime makes it a lot harder for your body to fight off infections. Why is this the case According to Dr. Lisa Shives, founder of Northshore Sleep Medicine in Chicago, sleep is when the body heals itself. Sleep is a quiescent period where the cells are doing a lot of repairing. Your hormones act differently when you’re asleep, and your immune system as well. Dr. Shives goes on to say that if your immune system is out of whack, you can’t fight off illness – and I would venture to say that you can’t repair your cells very well, either. REST Lack of sleep also slows your brain function. How do you feel when you haven’t had enough sleep – groggy, cranky, like your head is full of rice pudding That’s because you’ve decreased your ability to perform tasks controlled by the frontal lobe. This includes tasks such as planning, concentrating, motor performance, and high-level intellectual skills. Not getting enough sleep also decreases memory and your ability to learn. This is why for optimal brain functioning, you must allow your mind to take advantage of the rejuvenating effects of regular sleep. As you saw in the previous chapter, the frontal lobe is the center of your ability to make wise and healthy choices. If your frontal lobe is impaired due to a lack of sleep, you will be less likely to do so. A lack of sleep will also affect how well you perform in school. Not enough sleep can result in excessive daytime sleepiness and reduced neurocognitive function. This makes staying awake in class a real challenge. Sleep restriction has also been shown to contribute to increased attention problems in schoolchildren. This explains why it is so hard to stay focused in your classes when you’ve missed sleep. In one study of college-age students, sleep restriction negatively affected their academic measures in contrast to those who had better quality sleep. Regardless of what grade you are in, the challenge with any sleep-deprived student is that they are often not aware that their academic challenges may be related to their lack of sleep. 13 These same students may even go so far as to wrongfully rate their cognitive performance as being better than that of students who have had a normal nights sleep. This would explain the comment so often heard in schools I dont understand why I did so badly. I studied for hours. 14-15 You can avoid the feelings of pity and confusion that accompany a poor performance in the classroom. By getting plenty of good rest, you will be free to achieve your best in high school and throughout your entire college career. Do you want to know what is scary If you are sleep-deprived you may not even realize just how tired you are. In one study, individuals who were sleep-deprived for 14 days reported feeling only slightly sleepy. This means they were completely unaware of just how impaired they had become. Their lack of sleep seriously reduced their ability to pay attention and react during important activities such as driving or monitoring security at airports. It also affected their abilities to think quickly, avoid mistakes, and multitask. 16 What do large-scale disasters like the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill and the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl all have in common Each of these devastating man-made tragedies occurred in the early predawn hours, and lack of sleep was a major factor in all three. This is because sleep deprivation puts you at a greater risk for accidents. For example, you have probably heard about the dangers of drinking or texting while driving, but getting behind the wheel when you are sleepy can have severe consequences as well. A study published in the British Medical Journal found that moderate sleep deprivation produces impairments in cognitive and motor performance equivalent to legally prescribed levels of alcohol intoxication 8 The American Academy of Sleep Medicine also reports that one in every five serious motor vehicle injuries is related to the driver being fatigued. 80,000 drivers fall asleep behind the wheel every day, and 250,000 accidents every year are related to sleepy drivers. Younger drivers are even more at risk of having a crash. Researchers found that drivers younger than 30 accounted for almost two-thirds of drowsy-driving crashes, even though they represent only about one-fourth of the licensed drivers. They were also four times more likely to have a crash due to sleepiness than were drivers 30 years of age or older. 20 With statistics like these, it’s important that you take sleep deprivation seriously. If you are driving while drowsy, pull over at a rest stop or another convenient location. Better yet, get adequate sleep before you get on the road. Your life, and the lives of others, may depend on it. EARLY TO BED, EARLY TO RISE Benjamin Franklin may have invented bifocals and posed for the picture on the one hundred dollar bill, but he is even more famous for his well-known saying REST Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. New research indicates that Franklin wasn’t Just trying to come up with a catchy rhyme. His words contain a great deal of wisdom. For starters, those who go to bed early and get up early have lower rates of heart disease, diabetes, and overall lower death rates than those Who stay up late and get up late. God created you and all human beings as diurnal creatures. That means you are made to function during the day. Your body is designed to work best when you get to sleep early in the evening and get up early in the morning. Dr. Timothy H. Monk, one of the foremost authorities on sleep, said that human beings are built to be daytime creatures. It’s hard-wired into our circuitry. when you deliberately try to shift the sleep-wake cycle, it’s like having a symphony with two conductors, each one beating out at a different time. your delicate internal rhythms go haywire. you need to treat sleep as a precious and fragile thing. 22 Monk has found that morning people, or larks as they are often known, are more likely than night owls to stick to healthy routines and have better sleep. Larks wake up, eat meals, exercise, and get to bed at pretty much the same time each day. Night owls, on the other hand, are not so consistent with healthy daily practices. 23 Developing regular patterns in your life is worth getting out of bed. For example, getting up early means you’re more likely to eat breakfast and exercise. This will naturally improve your physical and mental performance at school and throughout the rest of the day. BUT I’M NOT A MORNING PERSON. Do you dread when the alarm goes off every minute When you finally do get up, do your morning Do you stay do get up, do possibly have all the friendliness of a Bengal tiger with a hangnail A lot of people have excused themselves from early rising with what they think is a rock-solid, ironclad excuse I’m just not a morning person. People have heard it so many times they start to believe it’s true. but is it being a morning person in your genes Genetics may play a role in keeping some people bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning, but this only applies to a small amount of people. Doctors feel that for 80 percent of the population, it comes down to one thing lifestyle. Everything – from the people you hang out with to the activities you participate in and how you spend your free time affects you. 24 In 2005, the National Sleep Foundation conducted a national poll of adults that provides insight into why being a morning person is so beneficial. Twenty-seven percent of the respondents to the survey were categorized by the foundation as Healthy, Lively Larks. Members of this group were the least likely to have problems sleeping and were the most likely to enjoy a good night’s sleep. As morning people, they began their day early and fell asleep quickly at night without the use of sleep aids. They were also the least likely of all those who responded to the survey to have any medical conditions. In addition, they were also the most likely to say that during their time awake they never or rarely felt tired, fatigued, or less than par. Compared to average sleepers, Healthy, Lively Larks are much less likely to have missed work or events and or made errors at work at least once in the past three months because of being too sleepy. EARLY TO BED, EARLY TO RISE Benjamin Franklin may have invented bifocals and posed for the picture on the one hundred dollar bill, but he is even more famous for his well-known saying REST Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. New research indicates that Franklin wasn’t Just trying to come up with a catchy rhyme. His words contain a great deal of wisdom. For starters, those who go to bed early and get up early have lower rates of heart disease, diabetes, and overall lower death rates than those Who stay up late and get up late. God created you and all human beings as diurnal creatures. That means you are made to function during the day. Your body is designed to work best when you get to sleep early in the evening and get up early in the morning. Dr. Timothy H. Monk, one of the foremost authorities on sleep, said that human beings are built to be daytime creatures. It is hard-wired into our circuitry. when you deliberately try to shift the sleep-wake cycle, it’s like having a symphony with two conductors, each one beating out at a different time. your delicate internal rhythms go haywire. you need to treat sleep as a precious and fragile thing. 22 Monk has found that morning people, or larks as they are often known, are more likely than night owls to stick to healthy routines and have better sleep. Larks wake up, eat meals, exercise, and get to bed at pretty much the same time each day. Night owls, on the other hand, are not so consistent with healthy daily practices. 23 Developing regular patterns in your life is worth getting out of bed. For example, getting up early means you’re more likely to eat breakfast and exercise. This will naturally improve your physical and mental performance at school and throughout the rest of the day. BUT I’M NOT A MORNING PERSON. Do you dread when the alarm goes off every minute When you finally do get up, do your morning Do you stay do get up, do possibly have all the friendliness of a Bengal tiger with a hangnail A lot of people have excused themselves from early rising with what they think is a rock-solid, ironclad excuse I’m just not a morning person. People have heard it so many times they start to believe it’s true. but is it being a morning person in your genes Genetics may play a role in keeping some people bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning, but this only applies to a small amount of people. Doctors feel that for 80 percent of the population, it comes down to one thing lifestyle. Everything – from the people you hang out with to the activities you participate in and how you spend your free time affects you. 24 In 2005, the National Sleep Foundation conducted a national poll of adults that provides insight into why being a morning person is so beneficial. Twenty-seven percent of the respondents to the survey were categorized by the foundation as Healthy, Lively Larks. Members of this group were the least likely to have problems sleeping and were the most likely to enjoy a good night’s sleep. As morning people, they began their day early and fell asleep quickly at night without the use of sleep aids. They were also the least likely of all those who responded to the survey to have any medical conditions. In addition, they were also the most likely to say that during their time awake they never or rarely felt tired, fatigued, or less than par. Compared to average sleepers, Healthy, Lively Larks are much less likely to have missed work or events and or made errors at work at least once in the past three months because of being too sleepy. EARLY TO BED, EARLY TO RISE Benjamin Franklin may have invented bifocals and posed for the picture on the one hundred dollar bill, but he is even more famous for his well-known saying REST Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. New research indicates that Franklin wasn’t Just trying to come up with a catchy rhyme. His words contain a great deal of wisdom. For starters, those who go to bed early and get up early have lower rates of heart disease, diabetes, and overall lower death rates than those Who stay up late and get up late. God created you and all human beings as diurnal creatures. That means you are made to function during the day. Your body is designed to work best when you get to sleep early in the evening and get up early in the morning. Dr. Timothy H. Monk, one of the foremost authorities on sleep, said that human beings are built to be daytime creatures. It’s hard-wired into our circuitry. when you deliberately try to shift the sleep-wake cycle, it’s like having a symphony with two conductors, each one beating out at a different time. your delicate internal rhythms go haywire. you need to treat sleep as a precious and fragile thing. 22 Monk has found that morning people, or larks as they are often known, are more likely than night owls to stick to healthy routines and have better sleep. Larks wake up, eat meals, exercise, and get to bed at pretty much the same time each day. Night owls, on the other hand, are not so consistent with healthy daily practices. 23 Developing regular patterns in your life is worth getting out of bed. For example, getting up early means you’re more likely to eat breakfast and exercise. This will naturally improve your physical and mental performance at school and throughout the rest of the day. BUT I’M NOT A MORNING PERSON. Do you dread when the alarm goes off every minute When you finally do get up, do your morning Do you stay do get up, do possibly have all the friendliness of a Bengal tiger with a hangnail A lot of people have excused themselves from early rising with what they think is a rock-solid, ironclad excuse I’m just not a morning person. People have heard it so many times they start to believe it’s true. but is it being a morning person in your genes Genetics may play a role in keeping some people bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in t