Biphasic Sleep – Segmented Sleeps Isn’t Necessarily Bad

Ya’ll know I’m a contrarian thinker, so bear with me here.

Are you one of the millions of us who go to bed, fall asleep and find yourself wide awake at 3 a.m.?

What if I told you that in many cultures this is perfectly normal? It is standard in cultures that have long winter nights and may be healthier than an uninterrupted eight hours of sleep in the long run. It’s also known that people sleep fewer hours during summer when days are longer.

I’m not sure when the experts decided that we all need to sleep eight hours at a stretch, but history shows that was common and normal to go to sleep a couple of hours after dark and wake up around four hours later. That was called the “first sleep.” In the waking time, folks would eat, read, pray, make love (this time was thought to be best for conception) and maybe even visit the neighbors for a couple of hours and then enter the “second sleep” for another four hours or so.

Our LatinX ancestors made the idea of divided sleep even deeper with the tradition of the afternoon siesta.

There was an interesting study in the ’90s in which a researcher exposed their subject to 14 hours of darkness and then allowing them to sleep when they felt the need. Within four weeks, virtually all of the study participants were sleeping in two four-hour stretches pretty much like our ancestors did.

It was really the onset of artificial light that interrupted that regular pattern, keeping us awake later and trying to shoehorn into us into a longer sleep. Then came along TV, laptops, tablets and phones that further disrupted our sleep patterns. It’s probably not a coincidence that the idea of divided sleep disappeared from the common and medical language in the 1920s, right at the same time that electric lighting became common in ordinary homes.  Another non-coincidence: This was roughly the same time frame when the consumption of caffeine became much more popular in American society.

Today, of course, medical science has given this ancient practice a name: biphasic sleep.  It’s technically described as two distinct sleep periods over 24 hours. There are those who argue that divided sleep is a good stress management tool, but it doesn’t appear that any studies have been done on this.

Biphasic sleep should not lead to sleep deprivation. Those are two different things and sleep deprivation assuredly has a negative impact on health.

Don’t try to force segmented asleep, but if it happens naturally and you’re awake at 3 a.m., don’t stress. Your ancestors did it. Who knows, maybe they created your great-great-great grandmother in the dead of the night!

I’ve written a lot about sleep, so if that’s something that you want to know more about, check out these articles.