JJamie

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.

BBC News - The myth of the eight-hour sleep


I knew there was nothing wrong with me.


People telling me "If you just start getting up early..."

Oh shut up. Don't you think I thought of that !

ClayTheScribe

I read this and think there's something to it in that not everyone sleeps the same or has the same requirements for amount of sleep. One of my friends six years younger than me only needs 5-6 hours of sleep. I'm a recovering addict and still dealing with the remnants of depression and anxiety and I need 8 hours of sleep, no more and no less. If I have more than that I have difficulty falling asleep the next night and if I get less, cognitively I'm a bit off and generally more tired and grouchy/emotional. I can get 6 hours if I got too much sleep the day before but that's usually it. My big problem is falling asleep. Once I'm asleep I'm asleep deeply and it's hard to get me up. I also know some Buddhist monks and masters who meditate all day only need 3-5 hours of sleep at night and I notice the longer I meditate for at night before bed, the more likely I am to get up earlier or right on time when I want.

JJamie

You never read the link ! BBC News - The myth of the eight-hour sleep

Its nicer looking to read from the source above but I copied it below.

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.

"It's not just the number of references - it is the way they refer to it, as if it was common knowledge," Ekirch says.

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.

the course of the next 200 years filtered down to the rest of Western society.

By the 1920s the idea of a first and second sleep had receded entirely from our social consciousness.

He attributes the initial shift to improvements in street lighting, domestic lighting and a surge in coffee houses - which were sometimes open all night. As the night became a place for legitimate activity and as that activity increased, the length of time people could dedicate to rest dwindled.

In his new book, Evening's Empire, historian Craig Koslofsky puts forward an account of how this happened.

"Associations with night before the 17th Century were not good," he says. The night was a place populated by people of disrepute - criminals, prostitutes and drunks.

Even the wealthy, who could afford candlelight, had better things to spend their money on. There was no prestige or social value associated with staying up all night."


Roger Ekirch says this 1595 engraving by Jan Saenredam is evidence of activity at night That changed in the wake of the Reformation and the counter-Reformation. Protestants and Catholics became accustomed to holding secret services at night, during periods of persecution. If earlier the night had belonged to reprobates, now respectable people became accustomed to exploiting the hours of darkness.

This trend migrated to the social sphere too, but only for those who could afford to live by candlelight. With the advent of street lighting, however, socialising at night began to filter down through the classes.

In 1667, Paris became the first city in the world to light its streets, using wax candles in glass lamps. It was followed by Lille in the same year and Amsterdam two years later, where a much more efficient oil-powered lamp was developed.

London didn't join their ranks until 1684 but by the end of the century, more than 50 of Europe's major towns and cities were lit at night.

Night became fashionable and spending hours lying in bed was considered a waste of time.

"People were becoming increasingly time-conscious and sensitive to efficiency, certainly before the 19th Century," says Roger Ekirch. "But the industrial revolution intensified that attitude by leaps and bounds."

Strong evidence of this shifting attitude is contained in a medical journal from 1829 which urged parents to force their children out of a pattern of first and second sleep.

A small city like Leipzig in central Germany employed 100 men to tend to 700 lamps "If no disease or accident there intervene, they will need no further repose than that obtained in their first sleep, which custom will have caused to terminate by itself just at the usual hour.

"And then, if they turn upon their ear to take a second nap, they will be taught to look upon it as an intemperance not at all redounding to their credit."

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 as well as the ubiquity of artificial light.

This could be the root of a condition called sleep maintenance insomnia, where people wake during the night and have trouble getting back to sleep, he suggests.

The condition first appears in literature at the end of the 19th Century, at the same time as accounts of segmented sleep disappear.

"For most of evolution we slept a certain way," says sleep psychologist Gregg Jacobs. "Waking up during the night is part of normal human physiology."

The idea that we must sleep in a consolidated block could be damaging, he says, if it makes people who wake up at night anxious, as this anxiety can itself prohibit sleeps and is likely to seep into waking life too.

Russell Foster, a professor of circadian [body clock] neuroscience at Oxford, shares this point of view.

"Many people wake up at night and panic," he says. "I tell them that what they are experiencing is a throwback to the bi-modal sleep pattern."

But the majority of doctors still fail to acknowledge that a consolidated eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.

"Over 30% of the medical problems that doctors are faced with stem directly or indirectly from sleep. But sleep has been ignored in medical training and there are very few centres where sleep is studied," he says.

Jacobs suggests that the waking period between sleeps, when people were forced into periods of rest and relaxation, could have played an important part in the human capacity to regulate stress naturally.

In many historic accounts, Ekirch found that people used the time to meditate on their dreams.

"Today we spend less time doing those things," says Dr Jacobs. "It's not a coincidence that, in modern life, the number of people who report anxiety, stress, depression, alcoholism and drug abuse has gone up."

So the next time you wake up in the middle of the night, think of your pre-industrial ancestors and relax. Lying awake could be good for you.

JJamie

I ment to hit preview then it posts then it sais log in when I was logged in... then no edit button


Did you read what its telling us ? Sleeping and waking up "on time" is a great big scam ! Yes the "On time" scam.

I posted this link cause the sleeping "on time" scam caused me to drink to put myself to sleep and then become addicted to XANAX , that horrible addictive drug did for a wile give me the ability to sleep and then wake up "on time". It was great at first before dependence and addiction caught up.

One thing that keeps me sober is I respect my "sleep disability" and won't take a job that requires early wake ups and "on time" sleeps.


BBC News - The myth of the eight-hour sleep

Riel

This makes perfect sense to me.

Those quiet hours in the middle of the night are so peaceful; it's a great time for reflection. And the second sleep is very restful, provided there is no pressure to get up before dawn for work, instead, just letting yourself be gently woken by the sun.

I bet there are many ways in which we've been trained to be at odds with our body's natural rhythms.

bookmaven

I'm not kidding, seriously, my last visit to see my psychiatrist went like this:

Dr: How are you sleeping?

Me: Well, I get about 7-8 hours, but I sleep in shifts.

Dr: What do you mean by that?

Me: I go to bed around midnight, get up at 4, do some stuff, and then go back to sleep from about 7 to 11 am.

Dr: As long as you feel rested there is absolutely nothing wrong with sleeping that way.

Slammy1

Thomas Edison never slept straight through but would take cat naps throughout the day. I think best when I'm a little tired, I think I'm just more cautious not to mess up.

I haven't gotten 8 hours in the last 3 days. Fornicate this drug, no desire to take it just feel crappy and tired and hungry.

Lyoness

What a great article! I have struggled with insomnia, being a night owl, and "sleep disability" my entire life. And I have forced myself to sleep with tons of pills, been unable to sleep for worry I couldn't/wouldn't be able to get up, struggled with "wired/tired" insomnia, forced my body to not follow its own rhythms and on and on. Reading this puts so many things into a whole new perspective that makes a lot more sense!

I have always been a night owl by nature I think and when I was a child I was not safe at night and learned to be hypervigilant until about dawn when "safety" would return. I've always had my best sleep between roughly dawn and noon. So even though my pattern was formed by trauma my later years of broken sleep make sense now in two ways, trauma induced and these natural sleep patterns. No wonder I've never been able to sleep like everyone else!

I am on disability now so I am finally able to allow my body its own weird rhythms. After reading this I am going to focus on reducing my worry and anxiety over my weird sleep patterns.

trick413

Wow. I thought there was something wrong with me for having just about the same schedule. But for me, being in early sobriety, I feel exhausted most of the time and have attributed it to this type of sleep. I'd rather think that I need to catch up on many years of not good sleep, I.e. passing out.

DesertArizona

Last I heard they were saying you need NINE hours instead of eight. I don't think the 8-hour sleep schedule is a "scam," because who is scamming people and for what gain? You need 8 hours of sleep.

HJIK

Thomas Edison ?

He invented insomnia with his light bulb , before that the world got dark when the sun went down and people slept I guess, these days even from outer space the world is lit up so many bulbs are on.

I think electric lights , T.Vs playing computer all make insomnia worse

KateL

I am glad to hear it. My sleep pattern has been really weird recently.xx

EverySngleNight

I recently read about this. The "shift sleeping" in history. People are all so different! There doesn't seem to be a "one size fits all" anything really.

Unfortunately, what's natural for me doesn't fit in with the normal schedule of the world. LOL

I feel my best and most productive between 7PM and 1 or 2AM. Sometimes that can stretch until around 4AM. I've been this way since I was born- literally. (my mother still hasn't forgiven me. ;-))

I force myself to get up at the same time every morning. If I have any hope of getting enough sleep and doing daily tasks that require being done during the DAY- I have to get up at a decent hour. That's where I end up losing sleep. If I just can't get to sleep until at least 2AM, getting up at 7 or 8AM consistently isn't easy! But, I have to or I won't have time to get errands and work done. If it were acceptable to sleep until noon- I'd be doing GREAT!

Too bad the world doesn't have a shift for night owls like me.

I wonder, do I really have "Insomnia", or do I just have a hard time sleeping when I'm "supposed" to be sleeping?? One thing is for sure- it sucks to lay down when I'm "supposed" to- while my brain has other plans!

GreenBottles

Ok but is 8 hour sleep unnatural? I have always slept 7-8 hours all my life. If I get up earlier than it then I feel tired all day. And I rarely sleep more than 8.
If I go to sleep even after not sleeping for 2 days I will still only sleep 7-8 hours. It doesnt matter how much I didnt sleep before it is always 7-8 to recharge my batteries.
So you saying I am unnatural?

matt4x4

We need REM sleep.

AAnoob

we need oversleeper anonymous ;-)