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Interrupted Sleep Might Be the Best Kind
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.'"
I still sleep in two chunks, only I call the second one "work"
I sometimes have insomnia in the middle of the night, after awaking from a few hours' rest. At first I was angry that I needed to get up soon and couldn't sleep, but then I started taking it in stride. If I cannot feel sleepy within 15 minutes or so of laying back down, I get up and read or work on a project or something for an hour or two until the sleepiness comes back, or simply nap after work the next day. Since doing that I feel more relaxed and natural. I am not sure if its biological or simply a state of mind, but I often find it is better not to force sleep if I am not ready for it, it just frustrates me and wastes time. Unfortunately, the way society is set up does not make it easy to run counter to that schedule of course, but I try.
As one who had his sleep interrupted during 40 years of medical practice, and now can sleep through the night, a full night of uninterrupted sleep feels wonderful- far better than interrupted sleep.
Call it a self discovery, but I found napping after I get home from work for two hours is life changing. It clear sthe mind from stress and when you wake up, you feel like the work day happened just 12 hours ago. Feeling mentally and physically detached from the office has been extremely beneficial to me. But then again, I suppose it's because I do work about 50 to 55 hours a week.
Life is not for the lazy.
There's countless millions of pre-industrial people alive today. Do they commonly exhibit this behavior? You don't need to dig through medieval diaries when there are humans alive now who exist at varied levels of social and technological development. I'm more interested how agrarian and hunter-gatherer societies treat sleep today than urban Europeans a few hundred years ago. Urban Europeans have always engaged in bizarre activities.
Plenty of the Latin countries still adhere to a segmented sleep pattern.
In my personal case, the period between 1 and 4 pm is useless for getting anything creative accomplished and my emotional state and creativity peaks in the hours beginning at dusk and for many hours after.
The pattern of siesta and staying up late for dinner, etc. seems to fit this pattern quite nicely.
And my wife keeps asking why I insist on waking every 10 minutes to search the house...and also sleep propped up in a chair with a loaded gun beside me.
See, honey, THIS IS WHY!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
In Germany they did a documentary on the Uberman and they mocked it. They thought crazy idea. So the "victim" gave his fullest and something strange happened.
1) Getting used to the schedule was hard.
2) Once used to the schedule it actually worked very well. The doctors who inspected him thought the experiment would fail, were also surprised. They did reaction tests, brain scans, and a battery of other tests such as blood pressure. He passed with amazing colours.
After the test was done the volunteer said he would go back to the original sleeping habits. Not because he did not like it, but because it is out of tune with the rest of society. For the the uberman to work he had to take naps and at the wrong time it was a bit wierd. And then with all of the free time he had he did not know what to do. He ran out of things to do.
So end conclusion yeah it works, but it is a major lifestyle change.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
I think Ekirch's research is obviously correct but his conclusions might be a little off. it's well known already people tend to lose productivity during the afternoon in the modern day workplace. This is why the Europeans have their siesta . Prior to the industrial era and the advent of lighting yes, we may have had our circadian clocks synced to this pattern prof. Ekirch talks about. However, it is Post-Industrial now, many countries around the world have constant non natural light and many individuals work around the clock and have varying shifts. As a result, the need for sleep - or "power naps" - hasn't changed, our clocks have just synced to a different schedule. Where you are in the world and the personal schedule you have will determine the optional time for that cat nap needed to recharge.
Again, it's not that we don't need to "sleep" twice in a day, more than likely we do. there is evidence 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.
$action = empty(PHP) ? backToC() : unset(PHP) ; "when the concrete cases are understood, the abstractions are readily
I've been forced to do "segmented sleep"
If it's forced, then you're not actually doing it... The story is about waking naturally between sleeps, not waking yourself up on a schedule. It also seems based on going to bed shortly after dusk which, at least for me, is hours before I've trained myself to go to bed.
Interrupted Sleep Might Be the Best Kind.
The next best kind would perhaps be the coitus one?
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
You wake your kids up to feed them? Seriously? Whatever ever happened to feeding the kid when it wakes up hungry and demands it? I'm no expert, but waking the kid up to feed it sounds like a bad pattern to get into for the kid.
You're right. You're not an expert. For newborns, making sure they stay nourished is extremely important especially in the first month or so. So if you have a fussy eater or the mom has trouble nursing and wants to be sure the child is getting her milk (better in many ways than any formula out there - especially early on), then yes you might have to wake the baby up every couple of hours.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Or as they are commonly known in the post-industrial world: meetings.
Have gnu, will travel.
I've noticed my cats also practice interrupted sleep.
They sleep for 11 hours- wake for an hour to eat/use litter box/scratch up the furniture. Then they sleep for 12 more hours.
The cats seem very rested and happy- I think I need to follow the cat model for success.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
At the equator there are 3 simple rules in life:
1. Dress light but keep your legs covered
2. Be as inactive as possible
3. Avoid the sun.
Who would have thought the same rules for living at the equator would apply to working in IT.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
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.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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.
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! :-)