Interrupted Sleep Might Be the Best Kind 277
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that a growing body of evidence from both science and history suggests that eight-hours of uninterrupted sleep may be unnatural as a wealth of historical evidence reveals that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks called first and second sleep. A book by historian Roger Ekirch, At Day's Close: Night in Times Past, unearths more than 500 references to a segmented sleeping pattern — in diaries, court records, medical books and literature, from Homer's Odyssey to an anthropological account of modern tribes in Nigeria. 'It's not just the number of references — it is the way they refer to it, as if it was common knowledge,' says Ekirch. References to the first and second sleep started to disappear during the late 17th Century with improvements in street lighting, domestic lighting and a surge in coffee houses — which were sometimes open all night. Today most people seem to have adapted quite well to the eight-hour sleep, but Ekirch believes many sleeping problems may have roots in the human body's natural preference for segmented sleep which could be the root of a condition called sleep maintenance insomnia, where people wake during the night and have trouble getting back to sleep. 'Our pattern of consolidated sleep has been a relatively recent development, another product of the industrial age, while segmented sleep was long the natural form of our slumber, having a provenance as old as humankind,' says Ekrich, adding that we may 'choose to emulate our ancestors, for whom the dead of night, rather than being a source of dread, often afforded a welcome refuge from the regimen of daily life.'"
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
move along humanoids... (Score:2, Interesting)
The Uberman (Score:4, Interesting)
Always wanted to try the Uberman http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/15/103358/720 [kuro5hin.org]
Unfortunately, other people that I have to work with did not approve.
Other primates? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder, does anybody know how other primates handle sleep? If it's ingrained as they say, one would think our ancestors would also display the same tendencies.
Right Tune...wrong lyrics... (Score:4, Interesting)
Again, it's not that we don't need to "sleep" twice in a day, more than likely we do. there is evidence [go.com] that points to its benefits, however as we are finding out with medicine today, it would be and should be tailored to the individual and their schedule.
Re:No way (Score:2, Interesting)
Same here. I was utterly miserable for 3 months being woken by a puppy in the night. I never resented my girlfriend so much as when she convinced me a puppy was a good idea. Now the dog is older and fixed and sleeps throughout the night, which makes it high energy by the time we get home, which is its own sorry source of stress before bedtime. I am seriously reconsidering my interest to have kids later in life.
Re:Right Tune...wrong lyrics... (Score:5, Interesting)
IF you want to torture people make them work the "swing shift" 1st shift for 1 week, 2nd Shift for the next week, and 3rd shift the third week, rotate back to 1st.
Within 2 months you will become highly cranky, want to kill everyone and you enjoy a constant mental fog of never feeling awake.
Re:Napping (Score:4, Interesting)
Try napping for shorter periods of time - 20 to 30 minutes in order to not drop into deeper REM sleep. Works for some people. It's the 'power nap' idea. YMMV, of course.
I think one aspect that many of these studies overlook is that there is absolutely no teleologic / social / evolutionary reason for the population to have the same requirements in many aspects of our lives, sleeping being one. Some people really do well with prolonged, constant sleep. Others can get by on much less. I've been jealous of the latter for many years because if I don't get enough sleep, I really pay for it for days.
But I can do pretty well with short naps for a couple of days, then things catch up. It also depends on what you're doing. It's OK to be a bit tired when you are washing your car or taking a walk. Running the chain saw, not so much.
Re:I Believe It (Score:5, Interesting)
Cannot say if this works for everyone, when I get up in the middle of the night and cant sleep, I use the trick I stole from the lucid dreamers, stare at a point constantly, preferably (for me that is) a low lit corner of the room and before I know it I fell a sleep.
This is also one of the quickest ways of learning self hypnosis.
Re:I Believe It (Score:5, Interesting)
There seem to be some cultural aspects to this, when I expected to (when I was younger/late1960's/working) go to bed at 9PM and rise at 5AM and I expected that (naively) others in the vicinity (Chicago) would also sleep at night, I found that American Hispanics (I'm not a racist/I married one) (in particular/not exclusively) to stay up and not to even attempt nocturnal quietness until the wee hours, every night! I eventually moved and moved until I lucked out and rented what had been a garage in a very old industrial area where nobody else lived and was finally able to get some sleep.
Re:Camping (Score:5, Interesting)
When I backpack I rarely sleep uninterrupted. Around 2-3am I'll wake partially and then sleep lightly from then on. I feel fine the next day.
I wonder if the outdoors experience in our ancestral past is the source of the two-sleep periods TFA mentions.
After all, somebody had to get up and feed the fire, and maybe re-heat another chunk of the prior-day's catch for a snack, take a pee in the bushes, throw rocks at the Hyaenas, and before you know it the whole camp is awake. Military traditions from the first organized armies carried this forward with the changing of the guard, more peeing in more bushes, fire tending, debauching the POWs, and checking the horses. Flock tending, crop guarding, bush watering, and debauchery over the ages tend to train our brain to this two-sleep pattern.
The history and quality of beds over the ages suggests some of this waking up and walking around was just to shake off a few bugs that were feasting, or re-arrange the straw for more comfort.
Now as for backpacking, sleeping on the hard ground after a day schlepping a pack up hill and over dale might just cause a lot of sore muscles and compressed flesh due to that rock underneath the foam pad. Not big enough to get up and move it, but just big enough to keep you awake. And that bladder which, while filling, has not yet reached emergency stage yet also keeps the bushes coming to mind.
You could get up, water the bushes, move the rock, and take a ibuprofen, but then you would sleep so soundly that you would be eaten by wolves before you awoke again.
Polyphasic sleep (Score:5, Interesting)
This is similar to what I did in university. I called it short-cycling back then and lived on a 12hour day (2-4 hours sleep). Usually sleeping some time between 6-10pm and 4am-8am which was just fine for a social life (although not so great for the 7:30am lecture class skipped every tuesday my sophomore year)...
I found the so-called biphasic sleep schedule to be very productive (and very helpful as I was taking lots of coursework and was editing the school newspaper at night). Being awake between lunch and dinner was good for school and between 10pm and 4am was great for studying and socialization.
My motivation for this was after researching Leonardo Davinci and Buckminster Fuller and how they allegedly slept only a few hours a night and took lots of catnaps to become more productive.
I fell back to the typical 6-8 hours at night after university (dinner got later after work and there wasn't much to do between 1am and 4am, but was amused to see that this whole thing was mentioned during an episode of Seinfield a few years after I graduated (didn't really work out for Kramer in the sitcom, though)
Unfortunatly, I have an infant to care for, it's sorta been forced back on me now and kinda works... With my current experience, my take away is that if humans weren't adapted to polyphasic sleep, the species would fail to survive.
Re:The Uberman (Score:2, Interesting)
I am both a freelance coder and have some seriously time-consuming solo hobbies. Even if I wasn't, and didn't, there's about 20 bands I've been meaning to check out before even considering entire new genres I want to step into, I couldn't possibly enumerate all the books I want to read, I'd like to have the time to learn to cook, and the time to actually cook, play with my cat because I'm sure the little time I can devote to it isn't enough for him, finally get my home automation stuff set up, work out, learn calculus and physics and statistics ... and even if I wasn't interested in any of those things, I'm sure that I could find some use for the time.
I guess that's an essential difference between an extrovert and an introvert--I'd be ecstatic for more time without people's demands, whereas I guess for other people, time without people around is ... worthless? I don't know. I'm usually pretty good at empathizing, but this is absolutely escaping me, I can't imagine not being able to find something to do without other people around during that time. Put me on a deserted island, and I'd still feel every instant passing like a kidney stone.
Re:I Believe It Too (Score:4, Interesting)
These comments all make me feel much better. I sleep for around 3 hours after work (5pm-8pm) and then 3-4 hours before work (3:30am-7:30am). Obviously I don't have kids. I find that when I skip my post-work sleep I have to be doing something active to avoid being completely exhausted and useless. After my long nap/short sleep I am much more rested and can read and write more complicated things much more easily.
Everyone I know thinks these hours are weird, but it works so well for me that I intend to keep doing it as long as I can. These comments all serve to make me feel like a little bit less of an outsider. Thanks! :-)
Re:Napping (Score:3, Interesting)