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Solar-based sleep patterns compared to modern norms

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Re: Solar-based sleep patterns compared to modern norms

#61

Post by darkwater »

Fr0styMatt88 wrote: post #51
OutOfHere wrote: post #24

There are three aspects of solar sleep: 1. Going to bed early and rising early, closer to 8 pm to 4:30 am. 2. An afternoon nap is extremely beneficial to having an attentive and productive evening. The nap makes quick work of clearing accumulated waste from the brain. Employers would do well to have nap pods for a 30 minute nap as a default, although longer is useful if you don't have a 9-5 job. A nap doesn't negate…

I _wish_ I could nap after hearing all the benefits, but for me it’s either doze off for five minutes and wake up feeling blah, or lie there for 10 minutes, MAYBE go to sleep for a bit and wake up feeling horrible. If I have light to anchor my circadian rhythm, I’m happiest waking up around 5:30-6:00 and going straight through, starting to wind down at 8:30. If I sleep later, I’ll end up shifting more towards natural…

> I _wish_ I could nap after hearing all the benefits, but for me it’s either doze off for five minutes and wake up feeling blah, or lie there for 10 minutes, MAYBE go to sleep for a bit and wake up feeling horrible.

You just need to get used to it, then you will feel horrible if you miss the nap. :)

Re: Solar-based sleep patterns compared to modern norms

#62

Post by jvidalv »

swiftcoder wrote: post #47
aarroyoc wrote: post #9

As someone who lives in Spain, a country that also has a tradition of siestas (that's where that name comes from after all), I have a lot of doubts and I think people romanticize the idea too much. First of all I have no doubts about the health benefit of siestas, but in the current society they have some issues. When I was younger I hated siestas because I had energy and everything was closed, you couldn't do anythi…

> And if you work keep in mind the shift is 8 hours, so how do you fit siesta in it? This is a big part of the problem with the modern interpretation in Spain and nearby countries. It used to be that most folks lived close to their work, and could go home for lunch+siesta in-between split shifts. As commutes are increasingly common, this doesn't work at all. Given generally low employment numbers and the widespread d…

You nailed it, commute is the killer. I'm also Spanish, from a very small and rural town.

My father is a farmer and does a siesta every day of the year. He comes back at home of working in the farm every day around 1PM, then we have lunch together and he goes on to take a nap (siesta).

In winter they are shorter, 30 minutes, as the day is short.

In summer, they can go over 1 hour easily, as the day is longer and is hot between 2 and 5 PM.

Of course, my father is it's own boss and old school farmer, young farmers don't do that, and try to work on an schedule.

And is the same about school, when I was a kid no one was driving me to the school or taking me back, I walked there on my own, went home at mid day for lunch, played some football after it, and then went back to school for a couple of hours at 3PM.

I feel we are slowly drifting away from natural times and actions to forced on schedule behaviour to fit within the cogs of a late-stage capitalism productive machine.

Re: Solar-based sleep patterns compared to modern norms

#63

Post by Fr0styMatt88 »

readonkeyless wrote: post #25
cyberax wrote: post #17

> In Greece remnants of these old ways of rest can still be found in the Summer siesta and "quiet hours" where the workday is split in two by a few hours of rest. Practiced religiously and an unshakeable part of its culture, it is the norm for businesses to open at 9AM, close at 2PM, reopen again at 5PM and close again around 10PM. This second work period is what the Greeks call the "afternoon". Researchers who lived…

It's interesting to compare this with non-solar based pattern as in the Siffre cave experiment where they ended up falling into 48 hour sleep cycles instead. I also fall into the camp where I believe that there are probably a variety of different sleep cycles that people are just predisposed to. I haven't seen any studies definitively indicating that there are a common sleep cycle. Even anecdotally, I know several pe…

What I’m curious about is what lead to larks ‘winning’ in the sense that there’s this massive prejudice against night owls.

Though I have heard that there are natural biological functions that depend on the sun such that night owls who are sleeping their natural pattern are STILL predisposed more towards certain physical/mental conditions. Though who knows?

Re: Solar-based sleep patterns compared to modern norms

#64

Post by nkrisc »

kelseydh wrote: post #34
nkrisc wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People working night shifts or other odd hours are not functional members of society? WTF? Get mad at your employer. My 9-5 office jobs always allowed me to take an hour or so to run errands that could only be done during work hours.

This flexibility can exist for office jobs, but customer-facing roles typically need somebody present for the whole shift.

And businesses like that could create their schedules such that all employees would have some time for errands during normal working hours, but they usually don’t because it’s easier not to.

Re: Solar-based sleep patterns compared to modern norms

#66

Post by sph »

opan wrote: post #7
niobe wrote: post #4

I think you, the breadwinner, did NOT go to the shops. Your wife did. I don't know when 9-5 started, but it kinds of smacks of the British being that regimented. By contrast, my observation is that MOST of the world's population still works from about an hour after dawn until early afternoon, or sometimes until dusk, depending on their age, job, station in life and the general level of resources they have versus what…

>I think you, the breadwinner, did NOT go to the shops. Your wife did. This is an interesting point. It makes me wonder what unmarried people did, though. I suppose if you stayed with family, your mother would go to the shops. Did young people not used to live on their own as commonly?

Nuclear families are another modern invention.

Re: Solar-based sleep patterns compared to modern norms

#67

Post by loloquwowndueo »

jvidalv wrote: post #62
swiftcoder wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if you work keep in mind the shift is 8 hours, so how do you fit siesta in it? This is a big part of the problem with the modern interpretation in Spain and nearby countries. It used to be that most folks lived close to their work, and could go home for lunch+siesta in-between split shifts. As commutes are increasingly common, this doesn't work at all. Given generally low employment numbers and the widespread d…

You nailed it, commute is the killer. I'm also Spanish, from a very small and rural town. My father is a farmer and does a siesta every day of the year. He comes back at home of working in the farm every day around 1PM, then we have lunch together and he goes on to take a nap (siesta). In winter they are shorter, 30 minutes, as the day is short. In summer, they can go over 1 hour easily, as the day is longer and is h…

> is it's own boss

Is his own boss.

(And it would be “its” anyway - “it’s” is a contraction for “it is” and is wrong in this context)

Re: Solar-based sleep patterns compared to modern norms

#68

Post by gregwebs »

I see these claims pop up occasionally and I have found them both very overstated but potentially insightful.

With a perspective that goes farther back in time and a wider geography the sleep patterns promoted here as universal simply stated are not.

However, humans have always been flexible in their sleep patterns, and a lot of modern sleep pattern promotion is overly inflexible.

There are studies of hunter gatherers that lived close to the equator. Most of them did not nap most of the time, but in the summer they might nap during the day 20% of the time. They usually slept 6-7 hours in one stretch. [1]

But sleep was very flexible. In some cultures people would go to sleep at different times so there was always someone around the campfire. Mothers would nurse babies. Some cultures might for example once a month during a full moon stay up and party at night and then nap a lot the next day. And the sleep patterns mentioned in the submitted article show further flexibility.

Your sleep quality is likely a lot lower than a hunter gather due to modern light pollution, ability to use devices and have entertainment at night, and a lot of other factors. Unless you are monitoring your sleep with tracking devices there is a good chance you are probably getting a lot less (like an hour) than you might think. So committing to a 9 hour sleep window is still a good idea even if it might be natural in ideal settings to sleep for just 7 hours. Ultimately though you want to feel well rested with energy for your day rather than satisfying a belief system about sleep.

My approach with young children is to go to bed early so that if I get woken up I can deal with that and have time to go back to sleep. I might end up in the biphasic pattern of northern Europe sometimes with that. There was a time where I more intentionally tried to take a short nap during the day. But now I just take a nap if I feel tired.

References

  * [1] Hunter Gather Sleep study: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(15)01157-4
  * Why We Nap
  * The Old Way
  * Keep the River on Your Right

Re: Solar-based sleep patterns compared to modern norms

#69

Post by gonzalohm »

Not sure I get the point of the author. I really like the Mediterranean schedule but it's far from "solar based" we stay up until midnight normally.

I like it from a different point of view, which is that stores are opened after I finish working. The average worker doesn't have time for a siesta in the middle of the day. But once you finish working at 5, things are still open. You can go to the dentist, you can go shopping, restaurants close at midnight, etc.

It's way more flexible for me (way less flexible for service workers though). I moved to the US and I have to take time off of work to even get a haircut...

Re: Solar-based sleep patterns compared to modern norms

#70

Post by threwrfaway »

aarroyoc wrote: post #9

As someone who lives in Spain, a country that also has a tradition of siestas (that's where that name comes from after all), I have a lot of doubts and I think people romanticize the idea too much. First of all I have no doubts about the health benefit of siestas, but in the current society they have some issues. When I was younger I hated siestas because I had energy and everything was closed, you couldn't do anythi…

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