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 ...
I think you are right, 9 is good!
Mind you, moose bites can be nasty.
Thats good to know. I usually wake up several times a night either by the Chihuahua charging off the bed to run and bark something up or by the Beagle snoring like a lumberjack in his pet bed. Its a real snooze fest in our bedroom. Somehow we squeeze in about 8 hours.
bed by 9:00 - up at 3am - work from 6-4 - 4 days a week - 6hrs is ok - but would prefer 9
That's why so many Swedes left Sweden and came to the United States. Unfortunately no one warned them about settling in Minnesota.
The moose are thick there, especially around Frostbite Falls.
There are so many variables such as age, activity, health, etc.
I remember one time in Vegas watching Jackie Mason.
After wanting to see him for years I fell asleep. My body and mind told me to do it.
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