Friday, February 24, 2012

I'm Sleeping Wrong!

So, apparently, this whole "sleep 8 hours straight" stuff is modern BS*. An isolation study has shown that given enough continuous darkness, people settle into a sleep pattern of 4 hours, then an hour or two of awake time, then 4 more hours. Which is actually refreshing to me, as I've done this more than a few times over the last year**. This is backed up by more than 500 historical references to "first sleep", "second sleep", etc. These references disappear around the time of round-the-clock lighting in cities and disappear completely in the 1920s.
So don't fret the next time you wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble going to sleep -- you're just getting in touch with your roots.

* If you're a conservative, feel free to insert your own "liberal media" rant here. But be careful -- this has been happening for hundreds of years.
** I thought I had trouble sleeping, apparently I was just kickin' it old school.

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