You only sleep twice

[Skybird]

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2...biphasic-sleep

After university, I worked as scientific assistant in a sleep laboratory for a bit more than half a year, I needed the money, had to overbridge some time, and the working time - nightshifts - met my biological inner clock perfectly, I am strongly a creature of the night, and I hate early mornings: I swithc of the light around 4 a.m., and sleep until 10-11 a.m. School, university and jobs in the first 45 years of my life, were not pkl,easant for me, in this regard: working day starting officially at 8a.m. is s little hell for me, sinc eI must raise even earlier, but I appreciate night shifts.

Many on my mother's family side ticked like this, were extremely night-active. My brandfather was a teacher, at that time kids were not rmeoved formt nheir fmaileis and place din state-run storage-facilties named schools, but school ended after the 6th hour, sometimes 7th, and that was it. He came back at 2 p.m., ate warm lunch - and then went to bed. He raised at around 10 p.m., did some stuff for school if need was given - and dissappeared for the night in his hobby cellar, working wiht woods, carving and turning it, building christmas pyramids and modelling on his hige miniature railroad. At 7 a.m. or so he came up again, had a coffee, and went to school. - The marriage was not the happiest one, for my grand mother was sleeping and awakening very "normally"... My mum is a later-raiser, too, so was her sister, and her grandfather.

In the lat 90s, sleep research still accepted that beside the huge group of normal sleepers there were also "owls" (night people) and "larks" (early morning people). I have no more interest in these things and am not up to date, but it seems that over the past two decades this separation was given up by some researchers. I wonder whether that makes sense, because realising that there are small groups of people deviating from the norm and being very early or very late raisers from sleep indeed is an observation you can easily make everywhere, and I see no meaning in wanting to reject this.

I think the push for announcing all people are the same in their internal clock's timing is just another face of the modern drive to define all people as being the same in their individual needs, without much differences and instead all ticking by the same rythms, criteria, identity traits and so forth - features that are designed to make the "drones" that employed peole de facto are for the economy better fit into the needs of industrial demands and economically structured contexts. That is also the reason why we all wear watches. Non-industrialised non-specialised economic societies do not need these.

Until some years ago I also had an interesting ability. I could set an internal biological alarm clock that let me wake up to a wanted time right within a 2-3 minute window, say 9:45. No matter what time of day or night, I could wake up almost precisely at the wanted time, within 2-3 minutes. That was almost a bit eerie. Family said they could correct their watches by me awakening. And I do not mean that it was always the same time. I mean a randomly set time different on every opportunity. This phenomenon is sometimes reported in literature, but it seems to be the rarer the more precise the waker could awake at the target time. In the past ten years or so I have lost this ability.

[Spoon 11th]

Originally Posted by Skybird

I think the push for announcing all people are the same in their internal clock's timing is just another face of the modern drive to define all people as being the same in their individual needs, without much differences and instead all ticking by the same rythms, criteria, identity traits and so forth

Yeah it's all fake news, fake science, awfulness and just horribility.

Peter Attia has great discussions with Matthew Walker about all things sleep.

Link to part 1
https://peterattiamd.com/matthewwalker1/

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Spoon 11th

Yeah it's all fake news, fake science, awfulness and just horribility.

Why that animosity?
I referred to a simple fact, that is that societies change and cultures change due to trends dictated by chnaging needs and circumstances. In the medieval, the perception of time and "workflow" was different than in the industrialization. The industrial environment needs a very different time management, needs synchronized tacts and intervals, and therefore, timetables and the "tyranny" of clocks was the logical consequence. Nobody in the medieval worked shifts of 9 hours length from exactly 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., instead one went with the daylight and the seasons, and the day-by-day changing needs. A travel was not timed for exact duration and ETAs, but it lasted as long as it lasted, and the length was estimated on the grounds of earlier experiences.



Today we must live by rules and timing intervals, by contexts and interfaces that are dictated by for example computers. The machine demands you to enter data and your demands in a certain formalized way, else it will not "comprehend" what you want it to do with it, or it will not even accept your input of data. These contexts feed back on your own way of working, and communicating, and finally: your thinking. We think differently today, than we did in the pre-computer age. We have made certain "anarchistic freedoms" in our way of being creative almost unthinkable.



Don't interpret something into my original post or into the BBC text that actually is not being said there.

[mapuc]

Reading the first part was like reading my life in a nutshell.

Told once my doctor how I had huge problem sleeping when I was a kid, how I use to hear our clock on the wall in our living room strike 1 o´clock, 2 o´clock and sometimes 3 and 4 o´clock. How I was so tired in school.
Same as student.
Today I have free meeting at my job.

Forgot something
Said that I sleep like a baby if I sleep during daytime, I only wake when my toilet need watering.
She(my doctor) said that most likely my biological clock is out of order.

Except now. Since some month back I'm suffering from fatigue syndrome
Tired all the time- Even doing a little job like vacuum cleaning my living room would make me feel like I haven't slept for 3 days.

Markus

[Jeff-Groves]

My job has me always on different time schedules.
Over the years I have adapted to very little sleep at times.
Sometimes less then 5 hours a night for days on end. I still awaken before any time I set my alarm for! I've driven 32 hours straight, went to sleep with alarm set for 4 hours, and woke up 5 minutes before the alarm so many times I just never worried about it or gave it a second thought.
I can stay awake all day after getting up at 7 AM then going to bed at 3 AM then still wake up before 8 AM because I know if I am to be called out for a job?
8 AM is when I'll get that call.

[Skybird]

I know that feeling, waking up just minutes before a set time mark. But I ,lost that "ablity", perk, skill, whatever it is, over the past years.


Constantly changing sleeping patterns, like rotating shifts at work, can probably be a long-term health hazard, if the changes are too extreme. Especially the nervous system can be shpwign symptoms of many divers elinds after many years, even decades. This can further affect the immune system. Everything gets out of tact, out of synch. Its not before much later that the consequences show - and then are extremely difficult to be associated with what originally has caused them.



So I think its mor eharmelss to have extrnmeely deviating sleeping-waking patterns, but being constant in these, then to always have to alter these patterns and then very signficantly so. Keep a rythm,. however that rythm may be for your idnovidual nature - but if possible avoid to constantly change that rythm dramatically.



There is also an association with neurotransmitter levels going frenzy if these patterns get notoriously altered, and drastically. Lats b ut niot least, sleep is for allowing the brain to detox. It shrfinks a bit, so that the liquor inside the skull can easier wash around the brain and wash away the sub-molecular chemical "waste" from neutrotransmitters build and used over the waking phase, and then not getting properly re-synthesized. Itsnot so much muscular regeneraiton that forces us to sleep, for that, just resting would be good enough.

[Jeff-Groves]

There may be long term health issues. No idea about that.
The Army got me started with sleep deprivation and operating with it.
I've used that training to my advantage for over 40 years now.
There are times I go 48 hours with no sleep.
I know it sounds crazy but it is just a fact of my Cycles.
When I want to sleep if a Cycle hits where I know I can't sleep? I use melatonin.

[Skybird]

From Die Zeit:
--------------------
My girlfriend's cough hammers mercilessly on my eardrums. How long has it been going on? Fifteen minutes, two hours? I don't know, I just know that I won't fall asleep again. I get out of bed and plod barefoot toward the kitchen, yank open the window, pull my sleep shirt over my head, and as the cold, crisp, damp air comes in, my skin tightens and my hair stands up, I think: Benjamin Franklin, co-inventor of American democracy and the lightning rod-his genius must have something to do with this feeling.

Ever since I can remember, I've had trouble sleeping. I never have trouble falling asleep, but from about four in the morning I'm wide awake in bed. In a web of thoughts I rush around, get tangled up, stumble. Again and again I try to get out of it, but I don't succeed. Hours pass before I fall asleep exhausted or the alarm clock rings.

It was always clear to me that millions of others have the same problem, no need to make a big deal out of it. Until a novel opened my eyes. The book is called Harlem Shuffle, written by Pulitzer Prize winner Colson Whitehead. In sixties Harlem, a dirty world full of pimps and small-time hoodlums, a certain Ray Carney is trying to stay clean. That's why he's studying. A professor of business administration explains to him when is the best time for bookkeeping: his father preferred the "midnight leisure hour." Before the invention of the light bulb, it was customary to sleep in two stages. The first began shortly after dusk, because "if there was no light, (...) what was the point of staying up?" After four hours, one was brought out of sleep by an inner alarm clock - for about two hours, then one lay down again and slept through until morning.

Could what I was reading really be true? I began to do some research. On the Internet, I came across a historian named Roger Ekirch and an essay he had published in 2001, Sleep we have lost. In it, Ekirch reported that he had evaluated hundreds of diaries, novels and newspaper articles from the pre-industrial era and found repeated references to biphasic sleep.

The hours in between were called the watch by the British and dorveille by the French, a portmanteau word meaning "waking sleep." This dorveille was considered a window of leisure, of fantasy. In Cervantes' Don Quixote, the hero once berates his faithful squire Sancho Panza for sleeping through the night in a play - and not waking up after the "first sleep," as is generally the case, to discuss the great questions of humanity with his don. Benjamin Franklin is said to have taken "cold air baths" in the middle of the night - a nice way of expressing the fact that he sat naked at an open window - and then tinkered with inventions with a fresh head. Others simply had sex between sleep and sleep.

A thought grew in my head: Could it be that in reality it is not my sleep that is disturbed, but the society in which I live? Electricity, messenger of modernity, which brought light to man, the Thermomix and Internet porn, had it slammed the door on the mystical world of dorveille?

My body, at any rate, seemed programmed for biphasic sleep. Unlike Franklin or Don Quixote, I didn't wake up at midnight but four hours after, but I also went to bed later. If I stopped thinking of my wakefulness as an enemy and instead saw it as a friend - would it take me by the hand and lead me to another state of consciousness?

Three o'clock in the morning, my first dorveille night. I went to bed at eleven, as usual. After a franklin air bath, I sit at the kitchen table. What now? I decide to feel my way slowly in this new, strange world. First I want to understand what's going on inside me. The cold air has ventilated my cerebral convolutions, and yet my arms and legs are numb. Fatigue and wakefulness blur into a diffuse state. I close my eyes, hear the wind rustling through the treetop. No screaming children frolicking in the yard. No rattling washing machine in the neighboring apartment. If it weren't for the quiet hum of the refrigerator, there would be only the sounds of nature. After an hour, the first birds chirp, still isolated, a tentative announcement of the beginning of the day. The world awakens, I stagger to bed, tired - and content.
I wake up at ten in the morning. I haven't slept for a long time. At lunchtime, I'm sitting in my office. On the laptop, I continue reading Ekirch's essay about an experiment conducted by sleep researcher Thomas Wehr in the early 1990s. An experimental group was deprived of electric light for an extended period of time, spending 14 hours a day in complete darkness. The test subjects decided for themselves when and how long they wanted to sleep. After one month, a biphasic sleep was established. The test subjects reported great relaxation, a feeling like during meditation. Wehr found that they had increased levels of prolactin - a hormone that stimulates milk production in women and is also released more frequently after orgasm; in other mammals, it promotes brood care behavior.

The following night, I am a child. I'm sitting by a lake, leafing through a car quartet. As the playing cards blur, I wake up. The cell phone display shows 03:28. Kitchen, windows open. The wind is stronger this time, a dark drone. I slip into my jacket. Then it's out into the night.

Now is in-between

Outside the front door, lanterns cast warm light on the sidewalk. The fluffy soft cloud of tiredness carries me to a park. I've often walked home around this time, tipsy and euphoric after nights of partying at the club. This time it's different, I'm tired but fresh. Sober and intoxicated at the same time. What we call "nightlife", it's just the continuation of the day, I think. While standing at the bar or on the dance floor, we always carry the successes and defeats of the day within us. Only sleep makes it possible to process what we have experienced, only through it does the day become a cohesive unit. Now, on the other hand, is neither yesterday, today nor tomorrow. Now is in-between.

Over the next few days, a routine sets in: I go to bed before midnight, wake up between three and four, take my air bath, read or go for a walk. Then I sleep on, sometimes until ten, sometimes until half past eleven, which is possible because I work as a freelancer. In the afternoon, I read that Ekirch's thesis is controversial. In 2015, scientists led by neurobiologist Jerome Siegel studied the sleep of three indigenous peoples who live as they did before industrialization. And cultural scientist Gerrit Verhoeven studied court records from 17th- and 18th-century Antwerp. Siegel's research group and Verhoeven found no evidence of bipartite sleep. On the other hand, there are diaries and newspaper articles, Don Quixote and Benjamin Franklin.

In any case, I will not be deterred in my self-experiment. On my fifth night, I want to use the dorveille experience, my newly discovered state of consciousness, to become creative. In the shopping center I get myself a wedge canvas and acrylic paints. The last time I painted was several years ago; I never thought of myself as particularly talented. But maybe it's different now.

After the obligatory air bath, I listen to the soundscapes of an Icelandic dream-pop band. Like Jackson Pollock, I want to be. I squeeze the violet out of the tube, spread it around. Then blue, a hideous streak emerges. I correct, reapply, correct, reapply, an hour, two hours. At some point the result seems passable, I want to go to bed. The problem: I am wide awake. I don't fall asleep again before six o'clock.

The next day, overtired, I call Hannah Ahlheim. Like Ekirch, she is a historian and has written a book about the history of sleep. I ask her if she thinks Ekirch's theory is plausible. "Scientifically, it's difficult to assess," Ahlheim says. That's because sleep research is a very young discipline, she says, having been conducted only since the last century. Therefore, not much more is known about the sleep behavior of earlier generations than what is written in novels, diaries and medical treatises from the time.

"I'm not sure that natural sleep ever existed," Ahlheim says. When we go to bed, how long we sleep, depends on what is modeled. Even today, sleep rhythms differ from one another around the world: In southern Europe, people take a siesta; in Japan, many people also sleep for short periods during the day. Sleep is always socially constructed. Ahlheim warns against romanticizing the past: "I don't know if people who shared a room with five or ten others really slept better."

Still, has something gotten lost in our oh-so-restless times? "We've certainly lost our appreciation for doing nothing," says Ahlheim. Sleep, he says, is an economic resource today: we need it to function. There is no time for dozing off, loafing, daydreaming. Yet it is precisely these experiences that allow contact with the subconscious.

The next night I sit there, close my eyes and listen to the sound of the wind. A phrase from Ahlheim echoes in my head: "We have lost the appreciation for doing nothing." Even the dorveille I have wanted to use for my own purposes, to increase my supposed creativity.

Before I go to bed, I read a little in Don Quixote. The hero sets out on his first adventure, in the distance an inn that seems to him like a castle. Two prostitutes are standing in front of it, he thinks they are fair maidens. "Your Grace does not want to turn to flight," he says, armed with spear and cardboard visor, appeasing them. But they only laugh at the ancient language. I think: The fight of Don Quixote is mine. Like him, I try to live the life of an era whose time has passed. Perhaps it is true that we have forgotten the natural rhythm of sleep. But even if it were - it would completely disconnect me from the rhythm of my fellow human beings. For true dorveille, I would have to go to sleep at eight o'clock. I would always be well-rested and terribly lonely.

Meanwhile, I sleep in one piece again. Eight hours, sometimes uninterrupted, sometimes I wake up in between. As before, I stay in bed. But I no longer fight my wakefulness. Instead, I read two or three pages, then I fall asleep.

--------------------

[Rockstar]

One thing I’ve never had a problem with is going to sleep. My wife was so amazed at my ability to fall fast asleep within minutes of my head hitting the pillow, especially after getting some nookie.

Not sure if her being an artist had anything to with her sleep pattern but she would tell me of her inability to “turn off my mind”. She would stay up late more often than not painting throughout the night, eventually getting to sleep around three or four in the morning and sleep til 9 or 10 a.m. but sometimes earlier.

Besides our sleep schedule being different she would always remember her dreams in great detail. Whereas I would wake knowing I dreamt but seldom remembered anything about them.