Posted on 02/23/2012 5:17:34 PM PST by grundle
We often worry about lying awake in the middle of the night - but it could be good for you. A growing body of evidence from both science and history suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.
In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted an experiment in which a group of people were plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month.
It took some time for their sleep to regulate but by the fourth week the subjects had settled into a very distinct sleeping pattern. They slept first for four hours, then woke for one or two hours before falling into a second four-hour sleep.
In 2001, historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech published a seminal paper, drawn from 16 years of research, revealing a wealth of historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks.
His book At Day's Close: Night in Times Past, published four years later, 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.
Much like the experience of Wehr's subjects, these references describe a first sleep which began about two hours after dusk, followed by waking period of one or two hours and then a second sleep.
During this waking period people were quite active. They often got up, went to the toilet or smoked tobacco and some even visited neighbours. Most people stayed in bed, read, wrote and often prayed. Countless prayer manuals from the late 15th Century offered special prayers for the hours in between sleeps.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
yitbos, goodnight
Maybe it will help, if you go to bed earlier.
If you know you’ll be awake in 4 hours, have something productive, but boring to do during those couple of hourse. I’ve heard reading is the best thing for combatting sleeplessness.
Regular night-time sleep of 7-8 hours works best for me.
Too bad it is a luxury seldom enjoyed due to a really inconsiderate elderly mother who lives nearby and will not stop early a.m. phone calls or banging on the door “just to make sure you’re alright”,despite my 2nd/3rd work schedule.Before that it was a wife who thought sleeping from 1am to 6am should be plenty since I only worked 60-64 hours a week!
The angel is gonna have to sound the Trumpet a second time for some of us.
7-8 hours becomes 5-6 and up for Government Arbeitsziehungslager bondage, for government salaries pensions and “insurance” contractors.
5-6 becomes 3-4 and up for Government Arbeitsziehungslager bondage, for government salaries pensions and “insurance” contractors.
3-4 and up then sleep, becomes 3-4 no sleep, up for Government Arbeitsziehungslager bondage, for government salaries pensions and “insurance” contractors.
I’ve always been nocturnal from the time I was a toddler. Over the years I worked both night shift/day shift at different times and ALWAYS was more productive/creative at 3 am rather than 3 pm. I really don’t get tired until the sun rises. Then I sleep erratically for the rest of the ‘night’.
Sounds weird, bit for me that’s ‘normal’. Or I’m a vampire and just haven’t realized it yet.
That last 30 minutes is the greatest.
Sleep patterns are highly individualistic. Siestas, or naps, depending upon your culture, are said by many to be healthy. I just can't. There is no way under God's yellow sun (literally) I can go to sleep while it's daylight. Close the blinds, close the curtains, paint the windows black -- doesn't matter; somehow my body knows.
I sometimes wish I could "bankroll" some sleep -- maybe grab a couple of hours of shuteye on a long plane flight, when I know a long period of activity awaits that night. No can do. I can't store up extra hours of sleep; but on the other hand, I can and do make up for a a few days of 6-hour sleep by sacking out for 9 hours. I need to average 7± hours, and I typically get it almost uninterrupted.
Almost, because I have to admit my sleep schedule is governed by my two big dogs (Weimaraners, who have a starring role on my FR home page). They invariably wake at first light, and spot a duck or a deer, or think they do. They have a dog door leading from my bedroom to their dog run, but they find it necessary to alert me to that fact before they bolt out the dog door. In a matter of seconds (as far as I know), I'm back asleep for another 60 to 90 minutes. Typically I awake unassisted the second time, as light enters from my east-facing bedroom window. But in case not, the dogs are there to remind me that it's breakfast time.
I know it did for me.
Quite true. Especially something really boring. I've used the bible books of Leviticus and Numbers.
I guess it is possible that Daddy picked it up in the Army in WWII. He was a combat veteran. I know they often had to work in the dead of the night because they were losing too many men and machines during the day.
Oh, forgot to mention he was in the Combat Engineers.
7 will do, 8 is better and 9 is perfect!
Yeah. My 2:30PM cup of coffee is hard to live without.
Residency will do that as well. I once remember falling asleep standing in the back of an elevator. But then working 12-12-36 with no days off in-between will do that for you!
Hahaha...my first rack on the JFK was the top rack on a main passageway, directly under the arresting gear with a 1MC three feet above my head.
Can people sleep anywhere? I think I am living proof!
When I was in the USN, we came home from a Med cruise, and we had one of our planes that had to have the engine changed.
Everyone else got to leave Norfolk, but a bunch of us had to stay behind and fix the plane. It got craned off, and we had to tow it up a main road to a hangar.
We worked straight through the night to change that engine, and after being up the whole night the evening before that packing on the ship, I think I must have gone more than two straight days with no sleep.
When we were sweeping the hangar in the morning after finishing the engine swap, I stopped, rested my two forearms on top of the vertical push broom, and laid my forehead on top of my arms and closed my eyes.
Just for a second, you know?
I immediately fell fast asleep while standing there, and was abruptly awakened seeing stars and a pain in the center of my brain.
I had fallen asleep, my arms slipped off the broom handle, and my head came down on the end of the broom handle, which went right up into my eye socket. Very nearly put my eye out!
bflr
I remember as a child nights that seemed to take three seconds, even though they were may 8 or 9 hours. Best sleep I ever had. I can sort of remember as it faded away. Probably in my mid-teens. I remember feeling melancholy that I didn’t sleep like that anymore. The very first time I took melatonin, I was about 42, and I seemed to sleep like that again for one night, and one night only. I was never able to replicate it.
My husband was out of town last night, I slept exactly 8 hours and I don’t think I moved all night. I think I have discovered the problem here. :D
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