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 sleep needs vary tremendously by individual. I have always been a light sleeper and also have always slept 9 to 10 hours a night. When I was a teen it was 10 now that I am 65 it is 9. If I only get 7, I can function but will feel awful.
My Father was really strange. He could lie down just about anywhere and immediately go soundly to sleep. I could never do that.
Very interesting.
Personally I wish I could figure out how not to sleep I would.
The sleep patterns people are talking about here are also interesting.
I go for about three weeks of sleeping about four hours, then one night I’ll sleep about ten hours. Weird, but it has been that way as long as I can remember.
Thanks for posting.
Whenever I have a sustained period of time off work, my pattern is 6-7 hours at night and 1-2 hours in the afternoon. I know for a lot of people, the early afternoon (2-4) is the low point of their day, energy-wise.
I usually sleep 7 hours. If I wake up after three hours, and stay up 2 hours and then sleep four hours, I’m dead tired all day. I always feel refreshed after 7 solid hours of sleep.
I have short sleep cycles as well - I really only sleep soundly for about 3 hours each night. On weekends it’s more of a 3-2-3 sleep-wake pattern, but on workdays the second three is only a dream :)
Pretty much me too.
The best sleep is the last 30 minutes.
Power naps - that’s the secret.
You are correct, in fact I think that is where the “tea” at 4 o’clock came from. Like a perk me up.
I had to do that for about 9months.
I was running a 24 hour convenience store, and I only had an employee work 2 days a week.
I kept it open and learned how to meditate (so I wouldn’t sleep) for 12 hours a day, so I could work the other 12 hours.
It’s been a couple of years since I did that and my ability to sleep is still all screwed up. But I did pick up a trick of how to not sleep for extended periods.
And they change over our lifetimes.........
Generally lot's when we are growing, then less when we are adults. But even then it waxes and wanes....from 6 to 10 hrs a day.
Of course there are variables....but that's close.
bfl
seven to eight...i can get by on less but then i need to catch up
powernap sometimes too...20min in the middle of the day is a great restorative
I have a friend who was a Navy pilot for years and then a
commercial pilot until retirement. He never got into a sleep
pattern. He could sleep and be up on about any schedule as
long as the rest averaged out well. He could do this.
Whether I wake up between sleeps is entirely dependent on how much beer I drink.
I’ve taken to sleeping this way. Trouble is if I work too long in the middle time I sleep real late.
While in the Army we worked swing shifts. 6 days on, 2 days off on days, then 6 days on and 2 days off on afternoons, then 6 days on and 3 days off on midnights......
I can't say that I had any problem with it, it was just something we had to accept.
Horse feathers.
I had the good fortune to have a few months of free time several years back and tested my natural sleep patterns. Turned out that my ideal is 18 hours awake then 8 hours of sleep. Perhaps the human race originated on a planet with 26 hour days?
***Interesting article. I worked night shifts for nearly 20 years,***
I worked an 8 hour rotating shift for about ten years. Midnights, evenings, days. Four days off between. Talk about messing you up!
Then we went to an 8 hour forward rotation for about 15 years. Midnights, days, evenings. Much better as that was in sync with our body clocks.
Then the fools voted to have a 12 hour day rotating. 4 midnights, 1 1/2 days off, then 3 days. Then three days off, and 3 midnights, 1 1/2 days off, and 4 day shifts, 6AM to 6PM.
Thought I was gonna die! Finally I had to retire or or fall over dead as I kept falling asleep at work in a very stressful job.
The fools wanted the 12 hour rotating shift as it gave them about 20 days off in a row. The problem was so many people were calling in sick that no one ever got 20 days off.
I’ve been waking after about 4 hours of sleep. Then I’m awake, usually until time for the alarm clock to go off, when I’m ready to go to sleep again. The following day just KILLS me, then I sleep all night the next night, then normal for the rest of the week. The last night of my weekend, I lather, rinse, and repeat.
Hate it.
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