Rethinking Sleep

[Skyler]

Rethinking Sleep

By DAVID K. RANDALL

Published: September 22, 2012

 

SOMETIME in the dark stretch of the night it happens. Perhaps it’s the chime of an incoming text message. Or your iPhone screen lights up to alert you to a new e-mail. Or you find yourself staring at the ceiling, replaying the day in your head. Next thing you know, you’re out of bed and engaged with the world, once again ignoring the often quoted fact that eight straight hours of sleep is essential.

 

Sound familiar? You’re not alone. Thanks in part to technology and its constant pinging and chiming, roughly 41 million people in the United States — nearly a third of all working adults — get six hours or fewer of sleep a night, according to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And sleep deprivation is an affliction that crosses economic lines. About 42 percent of workers in the mining industry are sleep-deprived, while about 27 percent of financial or insurance industry workers share the same complaint.

 

Typically, mention of our ever increasing sleeplessness is followed by calls for earlier bedtimes and a longer night’s sleep. But this directive may be part of the problem. Rather than helping us to get more rest, the tyranny of the eight-hour block reinforces a narrow conception of sleep and how we should approach it. Some of the time we spend tossing and turning may even result from misconceptions about sleep and our bodily needs: in fact neither our bodies nor our brains are built for the roughly one-third of our lives that we spend in bed.

 

The idea that we should sleep in eight-hour chunks is relatively recent. The world’s population sleeps in various and surprising ways. Millions of Chinese workers continue to put their heads on their desks for a nap of an hour or so after lunch, for example, and daytime napping is common from India to Spain.

 

One of the first signs that the emphasis on a straight eight-hour sleep had outlived its usefulness arose in the early 1990s, thanks to a history professor at Virginia Tech named A. Roger Ekirch, who spent hours investigating the history of the night and began to notice strange references to sleep. A character in the “Canterbury Tales,” for instance, decides to go back to bed after her “firste sleep.” A doctor in England wrote that the time between the “first sleep” and the “second sleep” was the best time for study and reflection. And one 16th-century French physician concluded that laborers were able to conceive more children because they waited until after their “first sleep” to make love. Professor Ekirch soon learned that he wasn’t the only one who was on to the historical existence of alternate sleep cycles. In a fluke of history, Thomas A. Wehr, a psychiatrist then working at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md., was conducting an experiment in which subjects were deprived of artificial light. Without the illumination and distraction from light bulbs, televisions or computers, the subjects slept through the night, at least at first. But, after a while, Dr. Wehr noticed that subjects began to wake up a little after midnight, lie awake for a couple of hours, and then drift back to sleep again, in the same pattern of segmented sleep that Professor Ekirch saw referenced in historical records and early works of literature.

 

It seemed that, given a chance to be free of modern life, the body would naturally settle into a split sleep schedule. Subjects grew to like experiencing nighttime in a new way. Once they broke their conception of what form sleep should come in, they looked forward to the time in the middle of the night as a chance for deep thinking of all kinds, whether in the form of self-reflection, getting a jump on the next day or amorous activity. Most of us, however, do not treat middle-of-the-night awakenings as a sign of a normal, functioning brain.

 

Doctors who peddle sleep aid products and call for more sleep may unintentionally reinforce the idea that there is something wrong or off-kilter about interrupted sleep cycles. Sleep anxiety is a common result: we know we should be getting a good night’s rest but imagine we are doing something wrong if we awaken in the middle of the night. Related worries turn many of us into insomniacs and incite many to reach for sleeping pills or sleep aids, which reinforces a cycle that the Harvard psychologist Daniel M. Wegner has called “the ironic processes of mental control.”

 

As we lie in our beds thinking about the sleep we’re not getting, we diminish the chances of enjoying a peaceful night’s rest. Read More

[compsports]

Hi Schuyler,

 

A few thoughts.

 

Many people unfortunately, including many sleep doctor, make the mistake of equating the number of hours slept with a successful night when it is the quality of sleep that counts.

 

My concern about a split night of sleep is that a person wouldn't be cycling through the necessary sleeps stages to obtain adequate restorative sleep. However, in my opinion, doing that is still a million times better than taking sleep pills so you can get a straight 5-8 hour block of sleep.

 

It is sad that so many people are sleep deprived. It makes me wonder if one of the reasons the cost of healthcare is increasing is due to this.

 

CS

 

 

Rethinking Sleep

By DAVID K. RANDALL

Published: September 22, 2012

 

SOMETIME in the dark stretch of the night it happens. Perhaps it’s the chime of an incoming text message. Or your iPhone screen lights up to alert you to a new e-mail. Or you find yourself staring at the ceiling, replaying the day in your head. Next thing you know, you’re out of bed and engaged with the world, once again ignoring the often quoted fact that eight straight hours of sleep is essential.

 

Sound familiar? You’re not alone. Thanks in part to technology and its constant pinging and chiming, roughly 41 million people in the United States — nearly a third of all working adults — get six hours or fewer of sleep a night, according to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And sleep deprivation is an affliction that crosses economic lines. About 42 percent of workers in the mining industry are sleep-deprived, while about 27 percent of financial or insurance industry workers share the same complaint.

 

Typically, mention of our ever increasing sleeplessness is followed by calls for earlier bedtimes and a longer night’s sleep. But this directive may be part of the problem. Rather than helping us to get more rest, the tyranny of the eight-hour block reinforces a narrow conception of sleep and how we should approach it. Some of the time we spend tossing and turning may even result from misconceptions about sleep and our bodily needs: in fact neither our bodies nor our brains are built for the roughly one-third of our lives that we spend in bed.

 

The idea that we should sleep in eight-hour chunks is relatively recent. The world’s population sleeps in various and surprising ways. Millions of Chinese workers continue to put their heads on their desks for a nap of an hour or so after lunch, for example, and daytime napping is common from India to Spain.

 

One of the first signs that the emphasis on a straight eight-hour sleep had outlived its usefulness arose in the early 1990s, thanks to a history professor at Virginia Tech named A. Roger Ekirch, who spent hours investigating the history of the night and began to notice strange references to sleep. A character in the “Canterbury Tales,” for instance, decides to go back to bed after her “firste sleep.” A doctor in England wrote that the time between the “first sleep” and the “second sleep” was the best time for study and reflection. And one 16th-century French physician concluded that laborers were able to conceive more children because they waited until after their “first sleep” to make love. Professor Ekirch soon learned that he wasn’t the only one who was on to the historical existence of alternate sleep cycles. In a fluke of history, Thomas A. Wehr, a psychiatrist then working at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md., was conducting an experiment in which subjects were deprived of artificial light. Without the illumination and distraction from light bulbs, televisions or computers, the subjects slept through the night, at least at first. But, after a while, Dr. Wehr noticed that subjects began to wake up a little after midnight, lie awake for a couple of hours, and then drift back to sleep again, in the same pattern of segmented sleep that Professor Ekirch saw referenced in historical records and early works of literature.

 

It seemed that, given a chance to be free of modern life, the body would naturally settle into a split sleep schedule. Subjects grew to like experiencing nighttime in a new way. Once they broke their conception of what form sleep should come in, they looked forward to the time in the middle of the night as a chance for deep thinking of all kinds, whether in the form of self-reflection, getting a jump on the next day or amorous activity. Most of us, however, do not treat middle-of-the-night awakenings as a sign of a normal, functioning brain.

 

Doctors who peddle sleep aid products and call for more sleep may unintentionally reinforce the idea that there is something wrong or off-kilter about interrupted sleep cycles. Sleep anxiety is a common result: we know we should be getting a good night’s rest but imagine we are doing something wrong if we awaken in the middle of the night. Related worries turn many of us into insomniacs and incite many to reach for sleeping pills or sleep aids, which reinforces a cycle that the Harvard psychologist Daniel M. Wegner has called “the ironic processes of mental control.”

 

As we lie in our beds thinking about the sleep we’re not getting, we diminish the chances of enjoying a peaceful night’s rest. Read More

 

[Skyler]

My concern about a split night of sleep is that a person wouldn't be cycling through the necessary sleeps stages to obtain adequate restorative sleep.

 

People get a better overall quality in many instances as sleep architecture is not a linear progression. Did you read the second page of the article?

 

Thanks for your feedback... ~S

[GiaK]

I wrote about segmented sleep a few months ago...I find that it's been an important part of regaining my sleep cycle...allowing for getting up in the middle of the night...and sometimes it's quite productive time.

 

Insomnia? Or is your body just asking to sleep like our ancestors did?

http://beyondmeds.com/2012/03/13/segmentedsleep/

 

my sleep pattern changes quite frequently as sleep comes back online...I just go with whatever it's doing...and for now that includes napping whenever I feel like it too, but mostly I only sleep at night and this segmented sort of sleeping is the norm...

 

for me, letting my body do what it needs to do is the most important thing. Given I can't work, or even leave the house quite often I have the luxury of having all the time I need...this isn't something that is particularly helpful for people who are trying to hold regular jobs etc...

[Altostrata]

I think fragmented sleep is undesirable -- that's when you don't go through the sleep cycles because you're waking up too frequently. I'd take sleeping from dark to dawn with an hour or so of pleasant wakefulness in the middle as healthful enough sleep any day.

 

I've had to cope with fragmented sleep for years, from withdrawal syndrome. The way I looked at it, I was grateful for whatever the sleep fairy gave me. (My sleep is improving, however, and I am now sleeping through the 3 a.m. waking with that obnoxious withdrawal alerting.)

[Barbarannamated]

I think the article is referring to "segmented" (differentiated from "fragmented") sleep occurring in 2 blocks with 1 awakening. My interpretation, anyway.

 

I suspect that many people get up and turn the TV on when they can't sleep (guilty!).

[GiaK]

yes, Barbara...it's an important distinction...thanks

[Skyler]

I think the article is referring to "segmented" (differentiated from "fragmented") sleep occurring in 2 blocks with 1 awakening. My interpretation, anyway.

 

I suspect that many people get up and turn the TV on when they can't sleep (guilty!).

 

Thanks for the clarification. Barb I often (when there is no insomnia that is, duh!) get 3 hrs. of good quality refreshing sleep, with a 2AM wakeup, at which time I get up and do some work, then go back to sleep from 3AM until 7 or 8. For years I thought there was something wrong with sleeping this way, so when I saw this there was a very big AHA moment.

 

With insomnia, I just don't get to sleep until 3AM.. or later. But that is not the same. On benzos I got a lousy quality of sleep and that was fragmented and not deep. The article speaks to a healthy deep sleep, just in a couple of installments.