Live data from Hacker News

The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

bbc.com

41–50 of 254 posts

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem and solution has been known for almost a century now; check out the book 'Nutrition and Physical Degeneration' by Weston Price. 'The Dental Diet' is also solid reading. I'm still working through the book, but the tl;dr is that it mostly just comes down to nutritional deficiency. People in the past ate pretty much strictly nutrient-dense foods, people today eat a lot of junk food, empty carbs, and generall…

Can’t you make up for nutrition dense foods with supplements?

We're still discovering new plant molecules and the effects they have on us all the time. Supplements are never going to be able to completely make up for a diet lacking in real whole plant food & animal meat.

With respect to the question about underdeveloped jaws, that development takes place primarily during your childhood, so if you didn't have optimal nutrition at that stage you won't be able to fix that retroactively.

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#43
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you unethically test ancient combat tactics? Unless you mean have people try it until it seems to work, in which case, I'm sure you would find many willing LARPers

I think the issue is that LARPing battle is a poor substitute for what the body can take and how people respond to real pain and damage. We might be getting to the point that we can get somewhat of a foot take on the damage with VR eventually.

VR? What if we just tried it out in a Mount and Blade mod.

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#44

I don't buy this as some universal phenomenon. Because I have very little control over when I sleep or how long. If my body wanted to sleep in two shifts it sure as hell would. But instead I sleep about 6 or 7 hours in one shift.

If you only had candles, and you had to make them yourself from pig fat, then things may be different.

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#45
post #12

If my cats are any indication of their larger wilder relatives, 1-3am is prime attack time. Might have been beneficial to be on guard during those hours when the felines were larger and more murderous.

In my experience bears also come around at that time too.

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#46
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue is that LARPing battle is a poor substitute for what the body can take and how people respond to real pain and damage. We might be getting to the point that we can get somewhat of a foot take on the damage with VR eventually.

VR? What if we just tried it out in a Mount and Blade mod.

Do you find that your behavior in Mount and Blade is close to real life?

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VR? What if we just tried it out in a Mount and Blade mod.

Do you find that your behavior in Mount and Blade is close to real life?

I wouldn't know, I don't actually play that game.

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#48
post #20

Considering this has been in the news for 10 years and pretty much no one does it, not even a weird sub community, we can safely say this is not a legitimate sleeping pattern for humans.

Ever since working from home during the pandemic sleeping from like 2am-6am at night and like 4pm-6pm has become pretty common for me. Not sure if that counts as "biphasic" or just a very long nap but definitely seems fine to me.

[deleted]

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you find that your behavior in Mount and Blade is close to real life?

I wouldn't know, I don't actually play that game.

I've been playing Blade and Sorcery in VR for a week or so. It's scary at first, but after a while I don't mind getting hit and play in a way that I would never do with my own body at risk. In the real world I'd get somewhere up high with a bow, but I run around like Conan the Barbarian in the game.

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#50

This article got me thinking, if artificial light forever changed the way people sleep, what other modern changes have also altered life or physical characteristics of people long ago. 200 years ago everyone had perfectly straight teeth, some think heavily blended/processed foods may have lead to under developed jaws and crooked teeth for alot of modern people or possibly high sugar, its not known but something in th…

Air conditioning, refrigerators
Post reply on HN