Another Jeff Sleep Rant, With Research

[jeff_duntemann]

I just stopped an oncoming cold in its tracks, after not having had one for well over a year. (I used to get two or three a year minimum, some of them doozies.) My technique is the same one I used to avoid colds this past year, and although it's simple you're not going to like it: I stopped "

Comments

[shoei_mike]

Sleep is not optional

I've gotta agree, and it's not just your nation. Also those with flexible hours (students, contract programmers, etc.) who stay out of phase with daylight for prolonged periods are likely to give themselves minor depression similar to SAD. The rise in diabetes will also be related to prolonged poor sleep.

I've recently been to my doctor since I was feeling run down despite increasing my sleep hours, eating well and being fairly active. She said it's likely to be that I'm not getting restorative sleep due to allergies. For the last couple of weeks, I've been taking an antihistamine and a nasal spray, and freezing my pillows to kill dust mites. It's really making a difference.

[muerk]

100% agree with you. We kept chickens for a while and they roost at sunset, so should we.

Apparently before electric light people would go to sleep with sunset and wake for a few hours around 11pm and then go back to sleep until sunup. I forget where I read that.

[jeff_duntemann]

I read that too (in an article in Time Magazine ,of all places) but have been unable to find any mention in the psychological literature: In older times, people would go to bed when it got dark, then wake up at 1 ayem for a couple of hours before falling asleep again until dawn. This period of wakefulness was called "the watch" but I've seen nothing else about it.

I think that there is a maximum number of continuous hours that an individual can sleep deeply, and before the appearance of inexpensive electric light, when the hours of darkness exceeded this value, sleep cycles got shallow (and hence they "broke") in the middle of a long night rather than at its end.

It's possible that "the watch" might not completely break a sleep cycle, but instead put the individual into an extended hypnagogic/hypnopompic state, during which visions of angels, dead relatives, or other supernatural creatures might occur. We in the West are in little danger of getting to that point these days, heh.

[chris_gerrib]

Well, the situation where hours of darkness exceeds normal hours for sleep would be winter, yes?

How long will a fire burn without being tended? And if it's winter, you're more likely to WANT that fire, even in relatively temporate areas.

I do recall seeing on Discovery Channel or some such a documentary on wolves. As I recall, the wolves tended to wake up around midnight / 1 am. Maybe it's a mammalian brain thing?

[jeff_duntemann]

Grandma got it backwards, I think: When you're older, you sleep less well and thus get less sleep. I don't think you need any less sleep. This has certainly been true for me (I'm 55) and although sleep isn't time I can use creatively, I keep telling myself that it's a form of work leading to a longer and healthier life.

I hope.

Less sleep equals less productivity for me.

[n8ux]

I used to think sleep was such a waste of productivity. I'd stay up late, and wake early. Now in my mid-forties, I go to sleep around 930pm, wake for a few minutes around 2am, then wake for the day at 5:30. That's 8 hours more or less, and it's what I need to make production during the day. And I feel very rested with that sleep schedule

something I read somewhere

[happy_hacker]

I read something *somewhere* (and cannot now remember where, naturally) that part of the reason we have so much stress in our lives as Western Europeans is that as people migrated from equatorial areas, where the hours in days and nights remains relatively constant, to areas with winters, our circadian rhythms adapted, and thus in the winter, we expect to be awake less time. With the advent of artificial lighting, in winter, we're always "Staying up late." This runs down the immune system, by stimulating the fight/flight reflexes (which deprives the immune system of energy in favor of energy to fight or flee).

It's an interesting hypothesis, and I sure wish I could remember where I read it.

-Jim