Normal Sleep Patterns

This is the most valuable information I've learned from an ATS contributor.

This knowledge transformed my life.

Here's a well written article on the subject.

www.businessinsider.com.au...

Anthropologists have found evidence that during preindustrial Europe, bi-modal sleeping was considered the norm. Sleep onset was determined not by a set bedtime, but by whether there were things to do. Historian A. Roger Ekirch’s book At day’s close: night in times past describes how households at this time retired a couple of hours after dusk, woke a few hours later for one to two hours, and then had a second sleep until dawn.

During this waking period, people would relax, ponder their dreams or have sex. Some would engage in activities like sewing, chopping wood or reading, relying on the light of the moon or oil lamps.

Ekirch found references to the first and second sleep started to disappear during the late 17th century. This is thought to have started in the upper classes in Northern Europe and filtered down to the rest of Western society over the next 200 years.

After years of thinking I was suffering from insomnia I found I was actually doing it right.

. . . modern society may place unnecessary pressure on individuals that they must obtain a night of continuous consolidated sleep every night, adding to the anxiety about sleep and perpetuating the problem.

Sleeping once is a fashion started by the decadent upper classes of Northern Europe.

Sleeping, waking, and sleeping again is normal.

a reply to: Kester


I'll grant that waking in the middle of the night can be common. As I've aged into my last decades, I've found that I frequently get wide awake during the middle of the night. I've learned to not fight it as I formerly did. These days, I get up, and tap at ATS for a spell while I drink two cups of coffee and munch as on a typical morning. Even with the coffee, I usually get sleepy after about two hours and trot off to bed again. It is not a learned habit to find oneself wide awake at 2-3am say, "Well, I just as well get up...."

Evolutionarywise, elders waking up in the middle of the night would be beneficial to care for the fire, the young and the ill while the real workers found the necessary deep sleep. Fire-keeping would be critical in those days. Other skills would not be so easily done by firelight.

I actually do this some times and I feel great the next morning. But the wife likes to sleep through the night, so she complains if I do things that wake her. Also, after about an hour and a half, I get tired again and then go to sleep. I can't really start things that take longer than that. I could get up and prepare stuff for the next day to cook, like boiling potatoes and eggs for potato salad. I seem to always choose things that make noise that wakes her and she is cranky in the morning.. If I sleep for over six hours, I get such a sore neck, breaking it up into two sleeps makes this not a problem.

So I give this technique a thumbs up. As long as I don't wake the wife up. I can't even watch TV, it is right below our bedroom.

I am Finn, according to what I read on this nearly a year ago, Finns used to do this. They would go out at two in the morning and visit friends or relatives. Have coffee and cardamon bread or Nissu I suppose.

My biggest problem has been FALLING asleep. I also wake up in the middle of the night and have since my 30's. Reading this post has made me think that maybe this is a normal thing....the sleeping a few hours, waking up at say 1am, reading and doing whatever until almost 3am and then going back to sleep (if I can) until 6am. The hardest part, for me, is shutting off the brain to a whisper so I can fall asleep!! I am 50 now and it seems I fall asleep JUST FINE on the couch watch TV at 7pm.....but I still wake up in the wee early morning hours and sometimes I never make it back to sleep....BAD when I work....not so bad right now that I am not working.

Nice post!

a reply to: Kester

a reply to: Kester

I think having two sleep phases goes back to the paleolithic/stone age period. There have been studies done to support such theory.. One of the most interesting parts of the two sleep sleep cycle is this :

The interval between first sleep and second sleep is characterized by elevated levels of prolactin, a pituitary hormone best-known for helping hens to brood contentedly above their eggs for long periods. Wehr concluded that this liminal intermission can produce benign states of altered consciousness not unlike meditation – if we are available to hang out in the interval between sleeps.

more. ..

At least for me... I remember reading how writers/inventors/artists (Da Vinci, Einstein, Nostradamus I believe) would keep a notebook by their bedside and when ever they woke they would write down their dreams/visions/ideas. Having two sleep cycles and that period between the cycles which is like a deep meditative period... that makes more sense to me now.

Thanks for the OP..
blend57

I watch the cats and wonder why we can't be like them. Sleep all day and night, getting up to eat and go to the bathroom. But if we were like the cats, who would feed the cats five times a day? Who would clean their litter boxes twice a day? Who would work to buy the cat food? I think I have been conditioned by the cats to say this.

originally posted by: Cornczech
My biggest problem has been FALLING asleep. I also wake up in the middle of the night and have since my 30's. Reading this post has made me think that maybe this is a normal thing....the sleeping a few hours, waking up at say 1am, reading and doing whatever until almost 3am and then going back to sleep (if I can) until 6am. The hardest part, for me, is shutting off the brain to a whisper so I can fall asleep!! I am 50 now and it seems I fall asleep JUST FINE on the couch watch TV at 7pm.....but I still wake up in the wee early morning hours and sometimes I never make it back to sleep....BAD when I work....not so bad right now that I am not working.

Nice post!

a reply to: Kester

same here. brain never shuts off. it takes me 2 hours at least to fall asleep every night. after that i sleep solid for maybe 3 hours then im up every 30 minutes or so to pee. it sucks and i hate it. im tired all the time.
nothing helps.

originally posted by: TinySickTears

originally posted by: Cornczech
My biggest problem has been FALLING asleep. I also wake up in the middle of the night and have since my 30's. Reading this post has made me think that maybe this is a normal thing....the sleeping a few hours, waking up at say 1am, reading and doing whatever until almost 3am and then going back to sleep (if I can) until 6am. The hardest part, for me, is shutting off the brain to a whisper so I can fall asleep!! I am 50 now and it seems I fall asleep JUST FINE on the couch watch TV at 7pm.....but I still wake up in the wee early morning hours and sometimes I never make it back to sleep....BAD when I work....not so bad right now that I am not working.

Nice post!

a reply to: Kester

same here. brain never shuts off. it takes me 2 hours at least to fall asleep every night. after that i sleep solid for maybe 3 hours then im up every 30 minutes or so to pee. it sucks and i hate it. im tired all the time.
nothing helps.

I had problems sleeping when younger so leart how to meditate and can now sleep within a minute of hitting the pillow night after night. Its not that your mind doesn't shut off, its you, allowing your mind to run riot. Put a leesh on it.

a reply to: Aliensun

Other skills would not be so easily done by firelight.

When you don't use artificial light your night vision is vastly better. I used to be able to function safely at night even with minimal star/moonlight. When I started living with electric light again the night became much darker for me.

Criminal EU secret services can alter your sleep pattern to provoke sleep deprivation as a torture. All of this using neurological weapons at night.

All these neurological trick though, won't save the EU from imminent demise.