Did We Use To Have Two Sleeps Rather Than One? Should We Again?
Do you often wake up in the middle of the night? If you do, you probably think that you have some type of problem. However, a growing body of scientific and history evidence suggest that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.
A recent article by two university sleep researchers on The Conversation explains that there’s evidence to say that we used to have two sleeps, with a period of “wakefulness” in between.
During this waking period, people would relax, ponder their dreams or have sex. Some would engage in activities like sewing, chopping wood or reading, relying on the light of the moon or oil lamps.
How utterly charming.
It’s particularly interesting when you consider that almost a third of the population have trouble sleeping, including difficulties maintaining sleep throughout the night. While night time awakenings are distressing for most sufferers these days, back in the 17th century this period of wakefulness was considered normal.
Could it be that we’re not really built to sleep for one long chunk of time each day? Is the eight-hour sleep a myth?
References in history books
Throughout history there have been numerous accounts of segmented sleep, from medical texts to court records and diaries and even in African and South American tribes, with a common reference to “first” and “second” sleep.
In Charles Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge (1840), he writes
“He knew this, even in the horror with which he started from his first sleep, and threw up the window to dispel it by the presence of some object, beyond the room, which had not been, as it were, the witness of his dream.”
Beyond written accounts, anthropologists have found evidence that during pre-industrial Europe, bi-modal sleeping was considered the norm.
Sleep onset was determined not by a set bedtime, but by whether there were things to do.
Historian A. Roger Ekirch’s book At day’s close: night in times past describes how households at this time retired a couple of hours after dusk, woke a few hours later for one to two hours, and then had a second sleep until dawn.
Ekirch found references to the first and second sleep started to disappear during the late 17th century. This is thought to have started in the upper classes in northern Europe and filtered down to the rest of Western society over the next 200 years.
Interestingly, the appearance of sleep maintenance insomnia in the literature in the late 19th century coincides with the period where accounts of split sleep start to disappear. Thus, modern society may place unnecessary pressure on individuals that they must obtain a night of continuous consolidated sleep every night, adding to the anxiety about sleep and perpetuating the problem.
Comments
“Thanks to fascinating research I’ve recently come across, I’ve realized that what I’m doing is entirely natural. It turns out that I’m not an insomniac with a medical problem, but someone whose sleeping pattern harks back to an earlier time. I am sleeping less like a 21st century man and much more like our ancestors did. And knowing that has helped me conquer my anxiety so that I am sleeping better than I have in years. . . Surprisingly, the person who has done most to highlight its importance is not a doctor, but a historian, Roger Ekirch, a professor of history at Virginia Tech in the U.S.”
– Dr. Michael Moseley, “Doctor Michael Moseley Reveals How He Defeated His Sleep Problem,” Daily Mail, Oct. 25, 2016
“Our classic eight-hour-night only dates back to the invention of the light bulb in the late 1800s. Historians believe that before the dawn of electric lighting most people got plenty of sleep, and practiced what they call “segmented sleep,” snoozing for several hours in the first part of the night, when darkness fell, then waking in the middle of the night for a few hours of eating, drinking, praying, chatting with friends or maybe even canoodling, before ducking back under the covers again until morning. The arrival of electricity, argues sleep historian A. Roger Ekirch, led to later bedtimes and fewer hours of sleep overall.”
– Betsy Isaacson, “Our Sleep Problem and What to Do About It,” Newsweek, Jan. 30, 2015
“This sleeping pattern is called segmented sleep. Historical documents across cultures show plenty of references to a first and second sleep, divided by a period of being awake in the middle of the night. . . . . But lest you think that time was just wasted when people woke in the middle of the night, there are some very well-known, very productive people who used that period of night-waking to think and to write, both before the advent of electric lighting and after – people like Thomas Jefferson and Frank Lloyd Wright.”
– Tess Vigeland, “All Things Considered,” NPR, 2014
“So many people have sleep problems today, so many! It’s important for us to learn from history here, that it may not be all that normal to sleep through the night.”
– Anne Rice, novelist, October 2, 2014
“Our ancestors had a different solution. Homer and Chaucer both refer to the ancient practice of a short “fyrste sleep” at dusk after which people awoke – and talked, read, prayed, had sex, brewed beer or burgled – before a second sleep till dawn, the historian Roger Ekirch reveals in his book At Day’s Close.”
– Paul Vallely, “We Need Real Sleep,” Independent, May 15, 2014
Experiment
In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted a laboratory experiment in which he exposed a group of people to a short photoperiod — that is, they were left in darkness for 14 hours everyday instead of the typical eight hours — for a month.
It took some time for their sleep to regulate but by the fourth week a distinct two-phase sleep pattern emerged. They slept first for four hours, then woke for one to three hours before falling into a second four-hour sleep. This finding suggests bi-phasic sleep is a natural process with a biological basis.
Pros and Cons
To successfully maintain a split sleep schedule, you have to get the timing right.
Today’s society often doesn’t allow for this type of flexibility, and so we have to conform to today’s sleep/wake schedules. It is generally thought a continuous seven to nine-hour unbroken sleep is probably best for feeling refreshed. Such a schedule may not suit our circadian rhythms however, as we desynchronise with the external 24-hour light/dark cycle.
Some of the key advantages of a split sleep schedule include the flexibility it allows with work and family time (where this flexibility is afforded). Some individuals in modern society have adopted this type of schedule as it provides two periods of increased activity, creativity and alertness across the day, rather than having a long wake period where sleepiness builds up across the day and productivity wanes.
In support of this, there is growing evidence suggesting naps can have important benefits for memory and learning, increasing our alertness and improving mood states. Some believe sleep disorders, like sleep maintenance insomnia, are rooted in the body’s natural preference for split sleep. Therefore, split sleep schedules may be a more natural rhythm for some people.
The original article was first published in https://theconversation.com/uk – https://theconversation.com/did-we-used-to-have-two-sleeps-rather-than-one-should-we-again-57806
Sources: http://www.history.vt.edu
http://www.perthnow.com.au