> In which part of the world do healthy adults regularly sleep for 8+ hours?
Isn't it the default in the western world? That's what we do in my family at least... I haven't really heard of people not sleeping just one 8 hour sleep every night.
Or maybe you're making a reference to the chronic lack of sleep that seems to be the rule in the US, but it doesn't seem to be necessarily case elsewhere. Average sleeping time is just a little above 8 hours in France and Belgium, my countries.
I think that majority of people sleeps less - 7 and less. (Yes they are somewhat sleep deprived, little bit, but still) I remember reading sleep studies saying that if people sleep regularly and without alarm, it stabilizes around 7:45 on average.
For the people commenting who didn't read the article I read it for you.
tl;dr
probably not but some people find just knowing that people slept like that can help with anxiety around insomnia.
----
I have never really had issues with insomnia before but over the last year I have started to have it. It's like the author describes just snapping awake in the middle of the night. It's really unsettling looking at your phone and seeing you only got 3 or 4 hours of sleep and now you feel like you are ready for the day. I think it's stress related from COVID and the general new anxiety I find in pretty much doing anything. Having to worry about who is going to be mad if I wear a mask. Who is going to be mad if I don't.
I tried to go see the doctor when I had almost two weeks of only getting 14 hours of sleep for the entire week. Unfortunately they couldn't see me for 2 months. So i'm not even sure what my health insurance is paying for. Anyway i was able to sleep again after another week and have felt good with only the occasional insomnia now.
USA based if you couldn't tell. I greatly worry about the mental toll these last years have taken on people and I'm really not surprised that it seems like society is crumbling around us now.
I tried biphasic sleeping in my early 20s. I felt that I rested better but I had absolutely no social life outside work, so I gave it up. Turns out there’s a significant social advantage to being awake when other are and sleeping when others do.
Being awake for "the watch" (11pm-1am or so) seems like it would be compatible with some sort of social life, even if you weren't practicing communal sleeping like a true medieval.
It worked quite well for me for a number of years. And I had a social life. I would go to sleep around midnight sleep until 3 or 4am get up for an hour or two, maybe bathe then sleep from around 5-6 until 9.
The other thing I've done more recently is take a sleep at around 4pm (2-3 hours) wake until midnight then sleep until 6 (I was was working for a country in a different timezones 7-3:30
The only reasons you were able to have such a sleeping schedule and have a social life is because you not only didn't have a job that required you to be there in the morning, but you also did not have children to tend to.
I had to read this a few times to get it. You're talking about the medieval biphasic described in the article, the more common biphasic pattern now is the siesta.
I had the luxury of switching to a 6am-1pm, 3pm-2am schedule in my late 20s, and I've never been better rested or more socially active. Lately I've been falling asleep at 9 and up by 4, which keeps me healthy and happy and out of bars.
But siesta-biphasic is great if you can carve out the time in the afternoon for it.
I rather liked this (biphasic sleep) article's beautiful illustration (marked "2 Matthew") of the three kings snuggled up in their bed (still wearing their crowns and robes) and being spoken to in a dream by a somewhat stern-looking angel (emerging from a cloud) with a scroll and pointing finger:
I find it weird that many cultures have a noon time or afternoon time siesta -- but for some reason the Anglophone cultures don't. Something about the Protestant work ethic? (I know these are in theory secular societies, but the cultural relics remain)
When I was teaching at one of the local SEA universities they had an entire room for lecturers to sleep during the 1.5 hour lunch break. It had double bunk beds maybe 30 or so. It was well used from 12pm to 1:30pm.
I'll tell you -- this was magic. Even just being able to sleep for 30 minutes (after getting lunch and catching up on my phone) between classes was rejuvenating.
I never had that 2pm "nod off", which I did when working in Western style jobs...
I'm in India, a non-wealthy non-AC too-hot-to-work-at-noon country (for most parts of the country almost all through the year).
I was responding to this sentence:
> In some countries it's very hot at noon so working is difficult. Especially with air conditioning.
I'm confused because it sounds as if GP meant that air conditioning exacerbates the problem of it being too hot to work. The intent of installing AC is definitely to improve productivity that would be lost to the uncomfortable climate.
My point though being-- even with AC it's a good innovation. We are all chronically short on sleep these days. I'm surprised about the resistance to it in this thread.
>We are all chronically short on sleep these days. I'm surprised about the resistance to it in this thread.
People are short on sleep because they have too much stuff to do, not because there aren't enough opportunities to sleep. Adding an hour of sleep at noon isn't a free lunch (heh). You'll have one less hour of work done during the day, so all else being equal, you'll probably go to sleep 1 hour later and benefits are neutralized.
More likely shorter days as you go further North. If you slept at lunchtime until 14:30 there would be less than two hours of usable daylight left during December and January.
[Edit] - This for the latitude of Southern England.
I studied in a boarding school which had a mandatory meditation time around 2 pm. This was exactly the time when we would me feeling very sleepy. Probably because of peak digestion time after we finished our lunch. Anyways we all would just sleep off in the bench instead of meditating. Really helped us concentrate on the rest of the classes
Siestas are a thing in Japan to a limited extent, mostly for blue collar workers, especially ones who drive for a living, in the seat of their vehicle.
Light. In the global south the days are a little longer. Part of the prodistant work ethic, which comes from northern europe, is based on the far shorter workday in the winter. You dont take naps if you only have eight hours of useful daylight. Even in summer the sun is always lower on the horizon. So too the dramatic shift from summer to winter. Even in high summer no time can be wasted in preparing for winter. The drive to make use of limited time is tied to the seasons.
If this became a cultural norm today, it would immediately become working hours for a lot of people who would be better off sleeping. If we're going to shift hours around in a large-scale cultural move, I'd prefer siesta.
I can rarely nap - I nap when I'm sick and occasionally if I do not have enough sleep. And on top of it all, a siesta would take away daylight hours in the winter. I'm fairly far north and winters are dark (day is around 4.5 hours).
And honestly, I see little point in doing the cultural shift considering we aren't even making sure folks have proper food or heating nor that they have reasonable work hours (no one should need to work 50-60 hour weeks with any sort of regularity: You should hire more folks instead)
> I asked Ekirch this question: As the historian most associated with biphasic sleep, had his research encouraged him, a spouse, or a friend, to become a biphasic sleeper? “Not at all,” he said. “At no time in history have conditions for human slumber been better than today.” Compared with 99 percent of our ancient ancestors, we have better beds, better blankets, better houses, and fewer late-night pests. If the purpose of sleep is mental and physical well-being, “there is very good reason to believe that uninterrupted sleep at night best achieves that outcome,” Ekirch told me.
Just want to mention Jeff Warren's wonderfully quirky book from 2007, The Head Trip [1] which was where I first encountered the idea of the 'night watch'.
I encountered the idea of the 'night watch' and in fact the three traditional military watches of the night and their relationship with historical sleep patterns around the world thanks to The Paleolithic Prescription (1988) by Boyd Eaton, et al.[1]. Beyond introducing the idea of a paleolithic diet, Dr. Eaton along with his colleagues and students researched sleep and activity patterns in historical texts (records of Victorian doctors), the anthropological record, and practices of contemporary indigenous groups. As I recall, they found three sleep patterns commonly coexisting through recorded history and around the globe.
1) The night owl's late to bed and late to rise (first military watch)
2) The Dagwood Bumstead early to bed, up in the middle of the night, late to rise (second military watch)
3) Poor Richard's "Early to bed and early to rise" (third watch)
It was theorized that the three military watches possibly arose from prehistoric humans in small bands gaining survival advantages from having subsets of group members awake throughout the night.
I should also mention that long standing human practices involving nights when groups went without sleep showed up around the globe were studied as well. These existed independent of and seemingly well before showing up in academic settings and post industrial workplaces.
Yes, all-nighter neighbourhood parties centred around prayer and group singing of religious music have been an integral part of Hindu religious practice for a long time. They are literally called “jaagran” (‘keeping awake’) or “jagraataa” (‘night-wake’).
Although tracing this forward I see the obvious derivatives (vajra, vaaja) and it would be peculiar, but not unheard of, for the word to take two mutations.
I was once struggling with biphasic sleep. Then I read similar articles about it and found out that reading fiction is my activity between sleeps.
Today I move between monophase and biphase periods constantly. Stress is gone when periods change and my sleep patterns change. I just welcome them as they come and go. And I just read, a lot. Never "smart" books though, always fiction since it helps to relax.. And obviously walking in fresh air every day.
It has been years of journey how to find this balance. I hope you can find it too.
My solution for insomnia is to give up trying to coerce my sleep into a schedule. If I do not want to sleep, I stay up and work (or meditate, or whatever) and wait until I am absolutely exhausted and my eyes are closing shut by themselves. Then, I lay down and sleep like a baby. Exercise helps too.
The opening paragraph, reaching for his phone and checking Twitter in the middle of the night, instantly breaks many of the modern suggestions about avoiding insomnia...
I think this intersects with the reported habits of some people like Thomas Edison cat napping several hours rather than sleeping 8 to 10 hours in a row
“You must sleep some time between lunch and dinner, and no half-way measures. Take off your clothes and get into bed. That’s what I always do. Don’t think you will be doing less
work because you sleep during the day. That’s a foolish notion held by people who have no imagination. You will be able to accomplish more. You get two days in one—well, at least one and a half, I’m sure.”
Luckily for the world, Hitler did not know this secret.
I'll go back to bed if I feel tired or I feel like I'm going ill with something whatever the time of day.
I've lost track how many times I've been stuck on a some coding problem, gone to bed and woken up with the solution.
If I feel like I'm going down with something, because I dont want it to develop into something full blown that can leave me laid up in bed for days, like flu, I will always go to bed and sleep it off.
One example, when the avian flu was going around one winter, I felt like I was going down with something, so I just went to bed. Partner also got it, but didnt sleep it off, they deteriorated and were laid up in bed from before Xmas until after New Year. ME, I felt better by lunch time the next day, not 100% but no longer feeling like I was trying to fight some dreaded lurgy.
When lots of people have sleeping problems, the problem is systemic. Change the people's lives to be better and the sleeping problems cease to exist. Changing sleeping patterns does not, in any way or form, address the reasons why masses of people have sleeping problems.
All it does is making sure people are staying in the miserable state they are not to question.
> Changing sleeping patterns does not, in any way or form, address the reasons why masses of people have sleeping problems.
Changing sleeping patterns would definitely be a change in people's lives, and if it left them with fewer complaints about sleep, it would be for the better.
You have an idea about what you think the real problem is, but you either don't have a coherent argument for it or you want somebody to ask you what you think to give you an excuse to explain at length. No need to play coy.
I wonder if it is just because we spend more time sedentary instead of up and moving. I know I sleep awesome if I have an intense day of renovation work or yard work or whatever. I looked for some research and this study has farmers sleeping much better than desk workers:
This study is interesting as it looks at elderly and finds that opposite. Elderly that were blue collar workers sleep worse than those that were white collar workers. It could be that the blue collar workers are no longer getting as much exercise and sleep crappy - or just that their bodies are screwed up after so many years of hard work.
I was a die-hard anti-caffeine fanatic because I thought it gave me headaches.
Then I started drinking caffeine to stay away at work, and I thought that was working for a while, and started having the problem again eventually.
Then I got off caffeine again because I was drinking far too many sodas.
What I've discovered is that once I stabilize, it doesn't matter at all. Whatever habit I have eventually ends up being what my body expects, and I get the same pattern in the end.J
I'm hesitant to apply this globally to everyone, but I think it's likely that everyone reacts the same. It's just really hard to get off caffeine, and much more so if you have a busy life.
They drink caffeine into the afternoon, ingest alcohol before bed and sleep in a warm, barely darkened room with ambient street/building noise. On top of that they spend the hour before bed staring at a brightly lit screen.
If you want to sleep properly try:
- Doing some steady state cardio after 1pm
- Getting your room as dark as possible
- Getting your room as quiet as possible (or using a noisy fan to drown out external sounds)
- Getting your room as cool as possible (64-67F)
- Move the phone across the room and do not look at it 90 mins before bed
- Avoid alcohol when possible
Some people have genuine sleep disorders, but most people don't do the basic stuff to ensure a proper sleep environment.
95 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 185 ms ] threadSleeping for 8+ hours at one time, on a regular basis, may just not be natural for a significant percentage of humanity.
Source?
> Sleeping for 8+ hours at one time, on a regular basis, may just not be natural for a significant percentage of humanity.
In which part of the world do healthy adults regularly sleep for 8+ hours?
Isn't it the default in the western world? That's what we do in my family at least... I haven't really heard of people not sleeping just one 8 hour sleep every night.
Or maybe you're making a reference to the chronic lack of sleep that seems to be the rule in the US, but it doesn't seem to be necessarily case elsewhere. Average sleeping time is just a little above 8 hours in France and Belgium, my countries.
tl;dr
probably not but some people find just knowing that people slept like that can help with anxiety around insomnia.
----
I have never really had issues with insomnia before but over the last year I have started to have it. It's like the author describes just snapping awake in the middle of the night. It's really unsettling looking at your phone and seeing you only got 3 or 4 hours of sleep and now you feel like you are ready for the day. I think it's stress related from COVID and the general new anxiety I find in pretty much doing anything. Having to worry about who is going to be mad if I wear a mask. Who is going to be mad if I don't.
I tried to go see the doctor when I had almost two weeks of only getting 14 hours of sleep for the entire week. Unfortunately they couldn't see me for 2 months. So i'm not even sure what my health insurance is paying for. Anyway i was able to sleep again after another week and have felt good with only the occasional insomnia now.
USA based if you couldn't tell. I greatly worry about the mental toll these last years have taken on people and I'm really not surprised that it seems like society is crumbling around us now.
The other thing I've done more recently is take a sleep at around 4pm (2-3 hours) wake until midnight then sleep until 6 (I was was working for a country in a different timezones 7-3:30
In other words, you were lucky.
I had the luxury of switching to a 6am-1pm, 3pm-2am schedule in my late 20s, and I've never been better rested or more socially active. Lately I've been falling asleep at 9 and up by 4, which keeps me healthy and happy and out of bars.
But siesta-biphasic is great if you can carve out the time in the afternoon for it.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220107-the-lost-medieva...
When I was teaching at one of the local SEA universities they had an entire room for lecturers to sleep during the 1.5 hour lunch break. It had double bunk beds maybe 30 or so. It was well used from 12pm to 1:30pm.
I'll tell you -- this was magic. Even just being able to sleep for 30 minutes (after getting lunch and catching up on my phone) between classes was rejuvenating.
I never had that 2pm "nod off", which I did when working in Western style jobs...
My point being this is a kind of bi-phasic sleep.
I was responding to this sentence:
> In some countries it's very hot at noon so working is difficult. Especially with air conditioning.
I'm confused because it sounds as if GP meant that air conditioning exacerbates the problem of it being too hot to work. The intent of installing AC is definitely to improve productivity that would be lost to the uncomfortable climate.
And it's a matter of social convention at this point rather than a practical solution to a problem. We're social animals and that tends to happen.
People are short on sleep because they have too much stuff to do, not because there aren't enough opportunities to sleep. Adding an hour of sleep at noon isn't a free lunch (heh). You'll have one less hour of work done during the day, so all else being equal, you'll probably go to sleep 1 hour later and benefits are neutralized.
Also it is a free lunch. People sleeping DURING their lunch. I'm not sure how this would add to their workload if they are doing it anyways.
Also now everyone is remote so WHY not have a noon nap?
Even at my last startup which was in the West we had a nap couch and it was in constant use from like 1pm to 3pm.
But as I said - Anglophones seem to like punishing themselves.
More likely shorter days as you go further North. If you slept at lunchtime until 14:30 there would be less than two hours of usable daylight left during December and January.
[Edit] - This for the latitude of Southern England.
You work in Singapore I assume?
It's hyper westernized.
I can rarely nap - I nap when I'm sick and occasionally if I do not have enough sleep. And on top of it all, a siesta would take away daylight hours in the winter. I'm fairly far north and winters are dark (day is around 4.5 hours).
And honestly, I see little point in doing the cultural shift considering we aren't even making sure folks have proper food or heating nor that they have reasonable work hours (no one should need to work 50-60 hour weeks with any sort of regularity: You should hire more folks instead)
> I asked Ekirch this question: As the historian most associated with biphasic sleep, had his research encouraged him, a spouse, or a friend, to become a biphasic sleeper? “Not at all,” he said. “At no time in history have conditions for human slumber been better than today.” Compared with 99 percent of our ancient ancestors, we have better beds, better blankets, better houses, and fewer late-night pests. If the purpose of sleep is mental and physical well-being, “there is very good reason to believe that uninterrupted sleep at night best achieves that outcome,” Ekirch told me.
The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29886907 - Jan 2022 (245 comments)
Humans used to sleep in two shifts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27334769 - May 2021 (60 comments)
The History of Sleep - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9501610 - May 2015 (11 comments)
We used to sleep twice each night - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5542453 - April 2013 (107 comments)
Rethinking Sleep - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4558569 - Sept 2012 (60 comments)
The myth of the eight-hour sleep - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3620742 - Feb 2012 (161 comments)
I'm pretty sure there have been others, if anybody wants to look...
It's the author, the sleep researcher Roger Ekirch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Ekirch
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2168851
1) The night owl's late to bed and late to rise (first military watch)
2) The Dagwood Bumstead early to bed, up in the middle of the night, late to rise (second military watch)
3) Poor Richard's "Early to bed and early to rise" (third watch)
It was theorized that the three military watches possibly arose from prehistoric humans in small bands gaining survival advantages from having subsets of group members awake throughout the night.
I should also mention that long standing human practices involving nights when groups went without sleep showed up around the globe were studied as well. These existed independent of and seemingly well before showing up in academic settings and post industrial workplaces.
[1] https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/a/brothers-grimm-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigil_(liturgy)
I wonder if jaagra- and vig- come from the same root? Wouldn't that be fun.
I'm thinking of the derived word "vigor" which means strength and energy, apparently the PIE root is *weg- from which we also get "awake".
So this is very likely a cognate!
Edit: the related word, turns out, is excited, not vigil.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%9C%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%97%E...
If we follow the Sanskrt we get the cognate jaagarti: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/जागर्ति#Sanskrit
Which lists the root as *h₁ger- (“to be awake, to awaken”).
But that root is missing from Wiktionary, which isn't a good sign, but compare:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...
Although tracing this forward I see the obvious derivatives (vajra, vaaja) and it would be peculiar, but not unheard of, for the word to take two mutations.
I'm basically on a random walk at this point, but here's that missing root again https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ἐγείρω#Ancient_Greek and I am once again left wondering...
Exitare! Ok. Nope completely different roots. Someone should really write up *h₁ger- it's pretty important...
Today I move between monophase and biphase periods constantly. Stress is gone when periods change and my sleep patterns change. I just welcome them as they come and go. And I just read, a lot. Never "smart" books though, always fiction since it helps to relax.. And obviously walking in fresh air every day.
It has been years of journey how to find this balance. I hope you can find it too.
Then, the alarm rings and you have to leave for work.
“You must sleep some time between lunch and dinner, and no half-way measures. Take off your clothes and get into bed. That’s what I always do. Don’t think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. That’s a foolish notion held by people who have no imagination. You will be able to accomplish more. You get two days in one—well, at least one and a half, I’m sure.”
Luckily for the world, Hitler did not know this secret.
I've lost track how many times I've been stuck on a some coding problem, gone to bed and woken up with the solution. If I feel like I'm going down with something, because I dont want it to develop into something full blown that can leave me laid up in bed for days, like flu, I will always go to bed and sleep it off.
One example, when the avian flu was going around one winter, I felt like I was going down with something, so I just went to bed. Partner also got it, but didnt sleep it off, they deteriorated and were laid up in bed from before Xmas until after New Year. ME, I felt better by lunch time the next day, not 100% but no longer feeling like I was trying to fight some dreaded lurgy.
"About 70 million Americans suffer from chronic sleep problems." - https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/about_us.html#:~:text=About%2070%2....
When lots of people have sleeping problems, the problem is systemic. Change the people's lives to be better and the sleeping problems cease to exist. Changing sleeping patterns does not, in any way or form, address the reasons why masses of people have sleeping problems.
All it does is making sure people are staying in the miserable state they are not to question.
Changing sleeping patterns would definitely be a change in people's lives, and if it left them with fewer complaints about sleep, it would be for the better.
You have an idea about what you think the real problem is, but you either don't have a coherent argument for it or you want somebody to ask you what you think to give you an excuse to explain at length. No need to play coy.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363513/
This study is interesting as it looks at elderly and finds that opposite. Elderly that were blue collar workers sleep worse than those that were white collar workers. It could be that the blue collar workers are no longer getting as much exercise and sleep crappy - or just that their bodies are screwed up after so many years of hard work.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8796375/
This is normal. Why do you even need a study for something that's just common sense? Why is it not common sense for you? Hm..
Stop ingesting caffeine.
I need some coffee to think about this properly.
I can stop anytime I want. But why would I stop when it feels so good?
Then I started drinking caffeine to stay away at work, and I thought that was working for a while, and started having the problem again eventually.
Then I got off caffeine again because I was drinking far too many sodas.
What I've discovered is that once I stabilize, it doesn't matter at all. Whatever habit I have eventually ends up being what my body expects, and I get the same pattern in the end.J
I'm hesitant to apply this globally to everyone, but I think it's likely that everyone reacts the same. It's just really hard to get off caffeine, and much more so if you have a busy life.
This is all easy to solve if you get up early and then never stay up late.
I can't stay up late on Friday and Saturday, sleep in on Sunday and then expect to not have my sleep schedule altered to get up early during the week.
This is easy to do once you are old. If you are young with a social life I really have no idea.
They drink caffeine into the afternoon, ingest alcohol before bed and sleep in a warm, barely darkened room with ambient street/building noise. On top of that they spend the hour before bed staring at a brightly lit screen.
If you want to sleep properly try:
- Doing some steady state cardio after 1pm
- Getting your room as dark as possible
- Getting your room as quiet as possible (or using a noisy fan to drown out external sounds)
- Getting your room as cool as possible (64-67F)
- Move the phone across the room and do not look at it 90 mins before bed
- Avoid alcohol when possible
Some people have genuine sleep disorders, but most people don't do the basic stuff to ensure a proper sleep environment.