h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783

This is interesting, because the two-chunk sleep pattern they describe as being commonplace centuries ago isn't too dissimilar from my own sleep pattern.

Interesting article. Sleep is a fascinating process!

Last night I dreamed I was on the Olympic swimming team.

Two-chunk sleep pattern, you say? I probably do that most nights. I have vivid dreams just about every night, many of them full of stress and strong emotion.

When I saw the subject line, I thought it would be about the differences between night owls and morning birds. Some of us get up with the dawn and fade at sundown, while others (myself included) sleep well past dawn and are still active until Midnight.

I was going to make a long post but, it's almost bed time, so, point form:


-Farley Mowat
-"Never Cry Wolf"
-published 1963-ish
-describes events in 1948-ish
-Mowat noticed that the wolves he was studying took naps through the night with periods of activity rather than sleeping straight through. He tried it himself, found broken sleep more restful than a "good" night's sleep.
-He never went back to sleeping through the night.

iirc, one can 'train' oneself to have a more efficient sleep pattern, which consists of many shorter, 'power naps' throughout the night.

I'll see if I can find the article...

Yep, here 'tis.

It's called polyphasic sleep

http://www.dustincurtis.com/sleep.html



I did this in school all the time

I do it throughoumy nights and days, particularly while driving.t


Seriously, there's another, shorter term for polyphasic sleep:









"parenthood"

Power naps.
Power walking.
Learning chinese while driving into work.
kwality time with the kids and spouse...

It's interesting that article, especially in relation to current advice, but surely, as the article hints, the four plus four thing was cultural/ environmental as much as our current pattern is, the shift coming with easier access to artificial light?

And of course we know other sleep patterns are available: look at the siesta cultures.

Mind you, I do think it depends. I like a long night's sleep and napping just makes me feel ill. My son is the same really.

My husband is a born napper, as I rather suspect, my daughter is too (she says, up at 4am again).

I daresay some training might be involved but then I have had ample opportunity the last four years to overcome my 8 hour habit and so far, it ain't happening.

Of course, I recently read that evolutionarily speaking, it's people who like a lie in but can stay up and function late at night who have the edge over early birders (apparently They got people to do various tests, different times of day and so on, and the late nighters consistently performed better), which flies in the face of conventional wisdom but does make sense in a nor getting eaten by the sabre tooth tiger kind of way.

I am an early birder, of course. Clearly my sleep is all wrong.

Interesting about the short sleeps, but if I nod off on the sofa and have, say 30/40 min nap I feel awful when I wake up. Really heavy, hard to wake up, and more tired than I was when I nodded off. And grumpy as hell.

I prefer two sleeps. By half way through the night, I find that getting up relieves any aches I have from lying down for 4 hours, I can rehydrate myself, use the loo, and end up feeling refreshed yet ready for another bout of deep sleeping. Unfortunately it's not socially acceptable to pursue this practise, because inevitably you have to go to bed earlier than everyone else and look like a 'party pooper', or you risk getting up too late for the start of the working day.

I take one six-hour sleep each night.

I've never been able to sleep during the day.

Paisley.

A version of this surfaces every couple of years.

Some mumblemumble years ago, I studied under a sleep researcher, well known in his field, who frequently got in trouble when newspapers reported his view that sleep patterns are individual and that a lot of worry about insomnia is down to people feeling they're meant to fit in to a strict eight ours a day pattern. The fact that he also stated as clearly has he knew how that insomnia is, indeed, a genuine problem for many didn't stop an angry barrage of letters from sufferers who thought he was dismissing their problem and calling them hypochondriacs.

I take medication just before bed, and sleep about eight hours. I don't actually wake up in the middle of the night, but the dreams come in two separate waves. I don't usually nap during the day, but if I've been doing something srenuous, I might nap. Even if I nap, I still sleep the usual amount at night.

I believe in a 12 hour day.
And 12 hours of sleep in two acts.
A late afternoon to early evening nap of 2 - 3 hours
and 9 - 10 hours from somewhere after midnight until
late morning or noon.

~jwf~

If you're in good health, then that's fine. I do think that people's sleep requirements are quite varied. My father worked the 9:00 to 5:00 routine for many years. He liked to have a serious nap on Saturday afternoon. His mother and grandmother insisted on afternoon naps pretty much every day. All three lived very long lives. My father is still alive at 92.

I found that article very interesting, as following major surgery I am obliged to wake & get up once every night. If I get off to sleep OK at the start of the night & after getting up it's not too bad - a total of around 7 - 8 hours sleep.
Often though, I find it difficult to get to sleep either at first or after getting up, or both. Generally I feel I'm not getting enough sleep, but that's possibly stress related at the moment, as well as post-op fatigue.

Before the op I used to easily have a nap on the train coming home from work, now I find I'm not able to do that.

I'm sure we would all settle to our own natural pattern if it weren't for the constraints of work, social life etc.