The 10-Hour Poison: How That Cup of Coffee Is Sabotaging Your Sleep and Your Health.

You feel that slight dip in energy in the late afternoon, that natural call from your body to begin winding down. But you have things to do, so you reach for a cup of tea or coffee. You think you are "waking yourself up," but what you are actually doing is administering a dose of a long-acting poison, a poison that will sabotage your health for the next ten hours.

That single cup is an act of chemical warfare against your body's most important restorative process: sleep. Tea, coffee, and all other intoxicants are enemies to your health, and I believe that unless you stop consuming them, you will never get the peaceful sleep your body desperately needs to heal itself.

The Chemical Attack on Your Brain

To understand the true danger, you must know what is happening inside your brain. For you to fall asleep, your brain must secrete two essential chemicals: serotonin and dopamine. Without them, sleep is impossible.

Tea contains a poisonous substance called tannin, and coffee contains a poisonous substance called caffeine. When these stimulants enter your body, they make a direct assault on the sleep center of your brain. They seize control of the very glands that produce your sleep chemicals. Even worse, they take any sleep-inducing fluids that have already been secreted and violently flush them out of your body through your urine.

The result is devastating. After just one cup of tea or coffee, the glands responsible for sleep will be completely shut down for at least five to ten hours. The exact duration depends on the strength of the drink. That coffee you drank at 6:00 p.m. is a chemical guarantee that you will not be able to produce the necessary hormones for sleep until 4:00 a.m.

Without understanding that you have chemically blocked your own ability to sleep, you will lie in bed worrying, and in that process of worrying, you will earn many other diseases. If you have a habit of drinking five cups of tea a day, you will definitely have a problem with your sleep.

The Geographic Fallacy: A Medicine for Them, a Poison for You

Some might argue that these drinks are consumed all over the world. But I believe tea and coffee should only be consumed by people who live where these plants naturally grow. Tea grows in cold areas. In those climates, the body can lack heat and feel sluggish. The bitter and astringent qualities of tea can instigate the body and make it work faster. For them, it can be a medicine.

But if we consume these drinks in hot places where they do not grow, they create disease in the body. We are using a stimulant meant for a cold climate to further overheat a body that is already warm.

In China, people traditionally take tea without milk or sugar, in very small quantities, as a medicine for indigestion. Two sips might be medicine. A full glass is poison.

The Wisdom You've Been Taught to Ignore

God, in my view, creates food in each area to suit the people of that area. The food that grows abundantly and cheaply near you is the medicine for your body. We pay high prices for apples and plums from cold countries when they are not what our bodies need. Watermelons grow in the hot season because that is when our bodies need cooling. We have been taught to ignore this natural wisdom.

How to Reclaim Your Sleep and Your Sanity

If you do not get sleep immediately after going to bed, it is a sign that you did not live that day properly. But you can reclaim your rest. Here are my non-negotiable methods:

• Learn Something New: A mind that learns is a mind that rests well. The more you learn, the better you will sleep.

• The "Mmm..." Vibration: Before bed, squat on the floor, back upright, thumb and index finger touching. Breathe in deeply, and as you exhale through your nose, create a long, slow "mmm..." sound. Repeat this 50 times. This vibration directly calms the brain and prepares it for deep sleep.

• Pre-Sleep Ritual: Put away petty thoughts. Read a spiritual book for 15-30 minutes. This purges the mind of the day's chaos.

• Intermittent Rest: Take a one-minute break every hour or two during the day to close your eyes and be idle. This is why a Muslim who does Namaaz five times a day, or the Brahma Kumaris who meditate every hour, have such clear minds and deep sleep.

The Terrifying Sign of a Sleepless Night

How do you know if your sleep is truly restorative? If you wake up in the morning and immediately remember the same problems you were thinking about the night before, you did not truly sleep. Your mind was just spinning on that same thought all night. This is a sign of a sleep-related disease, and I believe it can lead to hair loss and other mental illnesses.

A healthy sleep is so deep that when you wake up, it takes you a few seconds to remember: "Who am I? Where am I? What day is it?" If you achieve this level of deep sleep, your health will be in its best possible condition. Stop drinking the 10-hour poison and start your journey back to true rest.