The Fifth Law that Your Health is Dependent on.
"And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat."
(Mark 6:31)
These are the words of our Saviour. He promises to give us rest. Are you weary and tired of the everyday routine? Are you weary and tired of the day in and day out same things of life? If so proper rest which is the fifth law of Health reform is what you need. You need to rest your mind as well as your body and this is one of the greatest remedies to restore and maintain health.
The law of rest is also one of the most underrated laws of health reform. If you study most books on how to recover health you would see that nearly all of them do not talk anything about rest. But when you think about it rest is one of the most basic needs of humanity. When people become ill what do they do? They lie down in their bed or on the couch to rest. When I was a kid and became sick my mom always told me I needed to rest and lay down instead of going outside to play.
If you go into a hospital and visit from room to room, what are nearly all the patients doing? Nearly all the patients are laying in their hospital bed resting. They're not up running around and only going to sleep at night, they are resting nearly the whole day. The restorative power that is contained in rest is the key for making all other natural remedies work.
When most people lose their health you can trace it back in a large measure to a lack of proper rest. So even when we're healthy and vibrant we still need rest. God gave man a day of rest in the garden of Eden before sin ever entered into the world. God knows that rest is so serious and needful that man was given rest even in Paradise.
The reason why we have labeled the fifth law of health reform proper rest is because some may think they're resting, but they're not resting properly. Anytime before 12:00 a.m. is proper rest. They say that one hour of sleep before midnight is worth 2 hours of sleep after midnight. So the best time to get to sleep is before midnight. In between 9:00 and 9:30 p.m. is the ideal time. 10:00 p.m. is also good. But when you start getting in the 11s and 11:30s you're pushing it, but anything past 12:00 is you're out of the proper rest fifth law of health reform.
I read in a book about health that some people go to sleep with the chickens. It was said that some person thought that the chickens knew the best time to go to sleep, so some literally went to sleep when the chickens did. Whenever it was time for the chickens to go to sleep he went to sleep and whenever it was time for the chickens to rise in the morning he rose in the morning!
Chickens normally go to sleep by sundown. Some stay up a little later, but when it's completely dark outside chickens are normally sleep. They say that chickens wake up between 2:30 and 5:30 a.m. Now going to sleep and waking up when the chickens do may not be the perfect ideal for you and fit your daily schedule and lifestyle, but you get the gist of the idea of learning from nature.
"But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee:
Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee." (Job 12:8,7)
According to the Scriptures you can learn from nature. Nature can teach us things and looking at the beast of the earth and the chickens, we can see how God programmed them to teach us how to get proper rest.
One simple way to get some good rest is to lay down about 15 minutes before noonish or around 1pm, your lunch hour. 15 minutes of rest in the middle of the day is equal to 45 minutes or more at night. And if this is difficult because of your work schedule, when you retire or if you are already retired an hour of rest in the middle of the day every day in your later years could lengthen your days, this how serious and powerful rest is.
Remember the life of the flesh is in the blood and your blood needs the proper balance of acidic and alkaline compounds to function right. The perfect amount of rest is extremely necessary in order to protect the alkalinity of the blood. The reason why this takes place is because when you're resting waste matter is eliminated.
This is why sleep is so important to recovering and maintaining your health. There are people who know they need sleep, but find it hard to get it so they rely on "sleep medication." Researchers on sleep have learned that nearly all sleep medication greatly changes the normal cycle of sleep which affects the extremely important and needed REM sleep. Let's look briefly at how human beings sleep and then I believe we will see the seriousness of REM sleep.
REM stands for "Rapid Eye Movement." We all been at the begging stage of sleep when we're almost sleep or in-between full sleep and up. Your brain is at the alpha state during this period. This means that your brain is at its resting period. Then you drift off into the first stage of sleep also known as "light sleep." Stage 1 light sleep is the shortest stage lasting about 5 to 10 minutes.
Then you enter into the next stage. Stage 2 is also known as "light sleep" but it last for about 20 minutes. This is when the brain, activity of the muscles and movement of the eyes, slows down for the purpose of getting you ready to enter into deep sleep.
When you enter into stages 3 and 4, your about "knocked out" and cannot be waken up as easily. Our muscles are completely relaxed at this stage. The temperature of your body, the pressure of your blood, and the rate of your breathing slows down greatly.
Stage 4 is called the Delta sleep stage and it lasts about 20 minutes. This is when you go into the REM stage of sleeping, which again stands for rapid eye movement. The reason why the eyes move so rapidly in this stage is because you're dreaming. You're looking at something in your dream.
This stage last about 10 minutes and then you return back to stages 2, 3, and 4. These stages repeat in a cycle lasting about 90 minutes and then you enter REM sleep again.
Studies show that if you do not get your REM sleep you will wake up unrefreshed, irritable, and tired. People also become depressed, angry, and aggressive by a lack of REM sleep. This is why Jesus said, "Come apart and rest a while," in Mark 6:31. He understands the importance of sleep, and good refreshing sleep aids all the other laws of health reform to ensure your restoration or maintenance of Health. So don't underestimate the fifth law of health and get some good rest!
The Spirit of Prophecy says, "Nature will restore their vigor and strength in their sleeping hours, if her laws are not violated." (Solemn Appeal to Mothers page 16)