Nonurgency

“Most of us follow a sleep-waking pattern of sleeping for 6–8 hours followed by staying awake for approximately 16–18. This is a relatively recent invention. For most of human history, our ancestors engaged in two rounds of sleep, called segmented sleep or bimodal sleep, in addition to an afternoon nap. The first round of sleep would occur for four or five hours after dinner, followed by an awake period of one or more hours in the middle of the night, followed by a second period of four or five hours of sleep. That middle-of-the-night waking might have evolved to help ward off nocturnal predators. Bimodal sleep appears to be a biological norm that was subverted by the invention of artificial light, and there is scientific evidence that the bimodal sleep-plus-nap regime is healthier and promotes greater life satisfaction, efficiency, and performance.

To many of us raised with the 6–8 hour, no-nap sleep ideal, this sounds like a bunch of hippie-dippy, flaky foolishness at the fringe of quackery. But it was discovered (or rediscovered, you might say) by Thomas Wehr, a respected scientist at the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health. In a landmark study, he enlisted research participants to live for a month in a room that was dark for fourteen hours a day, mimicking conditions before the invention of the lightbulb. Left to their own devices, they ended up sleeping eight hours a night but in two separate blocks. They tended to fall asleep one or two hours after the room went dark, slept for about four hours, stayed awake for an hour or two, and then slept for another four hours.”

[…]

“Millions of people report difficulty sleeping straight through the night. Because uninterrupted sleep appears to be our cultural norm, they experience great distress and ask their doctors for medication to help them stay asleep. Many sleep medications are addictive, have side effects, and leave people feeling drowsy the next morning. They also interfere with memory consolidation. It may be that a simple change in our expectations about sleep and a change to our schedules can go a long way.”

[…]

 “AVERAGE SLEEP NEEDS

Age

Needed sleep

Newborns (0–2 months)

12–18 hours

Infants (3–11 months)

14–15 hours

Toddlers (1–3 years)

12–14 hours

Preschoolers (3–5 years)

11–13 hours

Children (5–10 years)

10–11 hours

Preteens and Teenagers (10–17)

8 1/2–9 1/4 hours

Adults

6–10 hours”

[…]

“Part of the problem is cultural—our society does not value sleep. Sleep expert David K. Randall put it this way:

While we’ll spend thousands on lavish vacations to unwind, grind away hours exercising and pay exorbitant amounts for organic food, sleep remains ingrained in our cultural ethos as something that can be put off, dosed or ignored. We can’t look at sleep as an investment in our health because—after all—it’s just sleep. It is hard to feel like you’re taking an active step to improve your life with your head on a pillow.

Many of us substitute drugs for good sleep—an extra cup of coffee to take the place of that lost hour or two of sleep, and a sleeping pill if all that daytime caffeine makes it hard to fall asleep at night.”

Excerpt From

The Organized Mind

Daniel J. Levitin

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-organized-mind/id731072740?mt=11

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