Okay, I’m curious to find out once and for all: Is there any significant difference to the average adult human body physically or psychologically between the following two scenarios:
Exactitude to the scenarios isn’t important to me; the general question is.
I’ve got multiple conflicting instincts on this, especially when I read that sleep divided into two periods used to be common in the very old days (I forget when).
I’m no scientist, but isn’t the importance to get complete sleep cycles?
Ideally, your night sleep will end without you requiring an alarm. So you end up getting as much as you need - for me, it’s right about 8 hours (which wound be six 80 minute cycles)
I’d think naps are similar. What’s “ideal” doesn’t require you to establish any artificial time constraints. You’ll sleep as long as needed. For me, it ends up being just under 55 minutes from when I lay down to when I awake (on weekends, when I have the time)
Sorry, does the link demonstrate that there is a significant difference, and sleeping through the night is superior? Just want to make sure I understand.
I’ve helped to crew a relatively small ocean going vehicle on multi-day journeys.
The schedule was 3 hours of taking watch, 3 hours of free time, and 3 hours of sleep.
8 hours of sleep is 1/3rd of your time on a 24 hour schedule so, functionally, there shouldn’t be any difference. But, let’s suffice it to say that it’s miserable to do.
Right, I do get that, say, sleeping according to the rhythm of a newborn isn’t ideal, even if it’s eight hours total. But I was wondering more along the lines of a more reasonable single nap, maybe also at what point it DOES matter.
I’ve also hiked and, in general, without artificial light and insulation/temperature control it’s very easy to adapt to a sunset/sunrise schedule.
I’d generally assume that biphasic sleep, in history, was at least somewhat seasonal. During longer nights, you’d probably get more sleep than you need so you’d probably start waking up in the middle of the night.
In the summer, in hotter regions, you might have a midday siesta. Again, my guess would be that this largely occurs naturally. In the heat, your body basically tells you to go find some shade and take a break. But, these are people who are out working the fields, chasing down animals, etc. not sitting at a computer.
But in equatorial, tropical, and Arctic regions, that might not have been the case. Those are just things we know from the more populated regions in Western history.
My sense from my experience is that your body knows what it needs in nature.
In modern life, I’ve napped and had it be good and I’ve napped and had it throw off my schedule and ruin several days.
My current best bet would be that napping, minus physical effort like heavy lifting or long hikes up mountains, is generally unwise if you have gotten enough sleep, otherwise.
I think the details do kind of matter here.
These are all different:
Your body needs a certain amount of time to get through a sleep cycle, and you need several of them per day. The extreme example of eight separate hour-long naps wouldn’t work. Blocks approaching 4 hours might, but ideally 6+ would be better.
Even if you could time the cycles perfectly to squeeze each one into a perfect 2 hour block every time, I think there would still be some other bodily systems (outside just the brain) that wouldn’t respond well to such short rest cycles.
Don’t know anything beyond that simplistic answer…
I think my main interest would be in the first two, maybe three. After that, like I said, I know enough about new parents that I can guess that it’s not ideal.
I, too, would be interested in any expert opinions on this subject. My only contribution here is anecdotal.
The traditional view is that a continuous ~8 hour block of sleep is important because of the sleep cycles we go through, and specifically the period of deep REM sleep (“Rapid Eye Movement”) where we dream. For most of us, though, as you get older, sleep becomes more intermittent.
I’m old enough to be in that category. I tend to wake up many times during the night, and will sometimes watch a movie in bed, and then go back to sleep, which typically lasts only a few hours or less. But, going back to the REM sleep theory, what I find is that I often have dreams during these short sleep cycles, so whatever purpose is being served by the “deep sleep” phase appears to occur naturally even during these short cycles.
Biphasic sleep is getting a bit of attention currently. Either a broken night, with waking for activity in the early hours, or nighttime and siesta. Both seem to work. Our modern regimented life seems to work against such patterns in unhelpful ways.
I have always tried to get roughly 90 minute cycles if I’m having trouble with sleep. For me that seems to provide a refreshing totality of sleep. Shorter periods don’t work. Anything where you are forcibly awoken mid cycle seems to essentially nullify the value of the cycle.
The various depths/modes of sleep all need to be present, as each has its role in body and mind maintenance. Punctuated sleep can and will wreck this.
YMMV.
Interesting topic for me. Especially today.
My Wife and I have always been very early risers. Now it’s about 4am.
This morning I woke at 1:30 am and could not get back to sleep. Somethimes iit helps to go to the couch. I call it a change of venue.
Well that didn’t really work. By 3am I gave up and got on the SDMB. I suspect I will ‘nap’ latter in the day, but frankley, that really throws me off and I feel real weird when I get up after a nap.
A sleep cycle is about 90 minutes. So blocks of time that don’t allow you to get in full sleep cycles are less useful.
I’ve read a bunch of articles recently associating napping with an increased risk of dementia. But i suspect the causation goes the other way, that is, i think aging brains may ask for more sleep. I don’t think anyone has done a study that would distinguish why there’s an association.