171–180 of 254 posts
What I find interesting is how there are references to a second sleep in literature, such as Charles Dickens and Don Quixote. Whether it's cultural or biological remains to be seen, but it definitely seem to be common enough that it didn't merit explaining, except as a casual reference.
"Despite near-constant headlines about the prevalence of sleep problems, Ekirch has previously argued that, in some ways, the 21st Century is a golden age for sleep – a time when most of us no longer have to worry about being murdered in our beds, freezing to death, or flicking off lice, when we can slumber without pain, the threat of fire, or having strangers snuggled up next to us." What a wonderful time we live in…
Yeah but one could argue that it's a time of more headaches because we have it so well that we have plenty of time to think about our lives. While people of old were busy working and were more exhausted than we are today. Of course this is the very definition of a 1st world problem but I think it holds some water in modern western society.
https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/for-95-percent-of-human...
In my experience the easiest way to transition from sleeping 8 is to wake up early on a weekend day and do a bunch of tiring activity, then take the longest nap possible in the afternoon in a blacked out room. That evening, go to bed as early as you can fall asleep and get up after 4 hours. Then enjoy the watch for a few hours before going back to sleep.
I find i'm also less dependent on alarms sleeping that way.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure if your comment was partially made as a joke or not but I can certainly attest that having to wake up at 4 or 5 in the morning because of lice is not ideal. My parents live in the (Eastern-European) countryside and because of the environment (basically all sorts of animals living around the house) they started having lice since 2-3 years, I think. You eventually get used to them, one of the keys is to tuck (…
Are you really talking about lice, or do you mean bedbugs? If you mean lice, do you mean head lice, body lice, or pubic lice?
They are really amazing little creatures.
The article does not mention it, but mothers with small children have to nurse babies every couple of hours, even at night. So given that in middle ages, families had "copious numbers of children" (quote from the article), it is for sure that mothers would need to get up to feed a baby. And then possibly the whole family would woke up too. And if multiple generations were living in the same house, then even more prob…
Here's a nice graphic showing a baby's sleep pattern during the first 15 weeks: http://www.eiman.tv/misc/somnrytm.jpg Since the text is in Swedish, here's roughly what it says: Every row is a day, black is sleep, white is awake.
I've heard of sleep patterns like that but always thought it's just marketing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course. But the fact that the norm is that one doesn't have to worry about these things still is a huge improvement.
Indeed, and since you already called it the norm, we need to ensure that everybody gets to live that way.
I regularly sleep in 4 hour blocks, and it's definitely the most productive and energetic ive felt. I encourage anyone who is curious to try it for at least 2 weeks, though i find it doesn't take long to get used to. The challenge is mapping sleeping times around the rest of society. In my experience the easiest way to transition from sleeping 8 is to wake up early on a weekend day and do a bunch of tiring activity,…
The article does not mention it, but mothers with small children have to nurse babies every couple of hours, even at night. So given that in middle ages, families had "copious numbers of children" (quote from the article), it is for sure that mothers would need to get up to feed a baby. And then possibly the whole family would woke up too. And if multiple generations were living in the same house, then even more prob…
The parent not caring for the baby learns to sleep through. My wife and I swap roles when we wean babies, we need just a couple nights to get used to the changed role.