I need 8 hours of sleep per night? Is it a Myth?

We often worry about lying awake in the middle of the night (especially if we are having Benzo related sleep problems) - but it could be good for you. A growing body of evidence from both science and history suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.

 

There's no correct amount of sleep, says Prof Kevin Morgan, of Loughborough University's sleep research center. The only rule is to sleep long enough to feel refreshed when you wake up.

 

For about 1% of people - probably including Thatcher, Trump, and Churchhill - this will be as little as four hours a night, says Morgan.

 

The average adult sleeps seven hours a night but many sleep considerably less than this, especially people over 50.

 

For artists, sleep deprivation carries a whiff of creative drive and raucous hedonism. Keith Richards, the Rolling Stones guitarist, once stayed awake for nine days - when he fell asleep, he fell down so quickly that he broke his nose.

 

In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted an experiment in which a group of people were plunged into total darkness for 14 hours every day for a month.

 

It took some time for their sleep to regulate but by the fourth week the subjects had settled into a very distinct sleeping pattern. They slept first for four hours, then woke for one or two hours before falling into a second two to four hour sleep.

 

Though sleep scientists were impressed by the study, the general public still believes in the idea that we must sleep for eight consecutive hours.

 

In 2001, historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech published a seminal paper, drawn from 16 years of research, revealing a wealth of historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks.

 

His book At Day's Close: Night in Times Past, published four years later, unearths more than 500 references to a segmented sleeping pattern - in diaries, court records, medical books and literature, from Homer's Odyssey to an anthropological account of modern tribes in Nigeria.

 

Much like the experience of Wehr's subjects, these references describe a first sleep which began about two hours after dusk, followed by waking period of one or two hours and then a second sleep.

 

Ekirch found that references to the first and second sleep started to disappear during the late 17th Century. This started among the urban upper classes in northern Europe and over the course of the next 200 years filtered down to the rest of Western society.

 

By the 1920s the idea of a first and second sleep had receded entirely from our social consciousness.

 

He attributes the initial shift to improvements in street lighting, domestic lighting and a surge in coffee houses - which were sometimes open all night. As the night became a place for legitimate activity and as that activity increased, the length of time people could dedicate to rest dwindled.

 

Today, most people seem to have adapted quite well to a 7-8 hour sleep, but Ekirch believes many sleeping problems may have roots in the human body's natural preference for segmented sleep as well as the ubiquity of artificial light.

 

This could be the root of a condition called sleep maintenance insomnia, where people wake during the night and have trouble getting back to sleep, he suggests.

 

The idea that we must sleep in a consolidated block could be damaging, he says, if it makes people who wake up at night anxious, as this anxiety can itself prohibit sleeps and is likely to seep into waking life too.

 

Russell Foster, a professor of circadian [body clock] neuroscience at Oxford, shares this point of view.

 

"Many people wake up at night and panic," he says. "I tell them that what they are experiencing is a throwback to the bi-modal sleep pattern."

 

But the majority of doctors still fail to acknowledge that a consolidated eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.

 

"Over 30% of the medical problems that doctors are faced with stem directly or indirectly from sleep. But sleep has been ignored in medical training and there are very few centers where sleep is studied," he says.

 

Jacobs suggests that the waking period between sleeps, when people were forced into periods of rest and relaxation, could have played an important part in the human capacity to regulate stress naturally.

 

In many historic accounts, Ekirch found that people used the time to meditate on their dreams, use the bathroom, smoke tobacco, engage in sex, talk to neighbors, etc.

 

"Today we spend less time doing those things," says Dr Jacobs. "It's not a coincidence that, in modern life, the number of people who report anxiety, stress, depression, alcoholism and drug abuse has gone up."

 

So the next time you wake up in the middle of the night, think of your pre-industrial ancestors and relax.  Don't panic and don't freak out.  Lying awake could be good for you?

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a sound explanation of why we don't need to freak out, or catastrophize, when we wake up in the middle of the night. It's going to happen sometimes, especially in the first year or so of wd, and it's going to be OK.

I guess my sleep pattern is "natural".  I always sleep 3 - 4 hours, wake up, then take a break of 1 - 2 hours, then sleep another 4 hours.  I've talked to a sleep specialist and she told me that's totally fine.  I just need to give myself some extra time for the break.  I have to admit that during the "break" I've totally enjoyed myself.  I tend to text friends (they're awake already as I have a delayed sleep), eat a light snack, and watch funny videos online.  I ignore all the warnings about melatonin production or stuff, and enjoy a good break instead of lying in the dark trying hard to fall asleep.  I've changed my attitude about sleep in the last year or two.  I now enjoy falling asleep and don't mind doing it twice a day.  I used to be so frustrated about my "inefficiency" and get all worked up about wasting time in bed, of course that wasn't helping me to relax.

I just go with the flow, sometimes it's 4 hours, sometimes it's 7, I don't dwell on it.

Great advice Ginger127...

 

Not worrying about how much sleep you get is the best way to deal with it without taking anything.

Great advice Ginger127...

 

Not worrying about how much sleep you get is the best way to deal with it without taking anything.

 

I totally agree! 

People used to call there two sleeps first and second sleep in England at least.

 

I saw it mentioned in a novel I once read.

 

Yes..that is listed in the original post:

 

Much like the experience of Wehr's subjects, these references describe a first sleep which began about two hours after dusk, followed by waking period of one or two hours and then a second sleep.

 

Ekirch found that references to the first and second sleep started to disappear during the late 17th Century. This started among the urban upper classes in northern Europe and over the course of the next 200 years filtered down to the rest of Western society.

I wonder if it changed with seasons.

 

Richer people could stay up later in dark winter months because they could afford candles and to ‘burn them at both ends’ for extra light.

It could have?  Lots of people today purposely stay awake late into the night/early morning as there are so many ways to occupy your time.

There is a book you might enjoy: https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/oct/09/mark-forsyth-the-horologicon-top-10-lost-words

 

I think he mentions the first and second sleep in there as well.

 

 

 

Thanks Ajusta,

 

I'll check out that book! 

Bump!