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Tossing and Turning At Night? Try Having "Two Sleeps"

By IGI Global on Dec 11, 2013
Contributed by Kristen Stauffer, Discipline Manager

Tossing And Turning At Night? Try Having Two Sleeps Popular magazine articles will often tell you that the best way to feel relaxed and refreshed is to go to bed early. Your parents or grandparents probably always told you that eight hours of sleep was a good thing. Even Benjamin Franklin, one of America’s founding fathers, can be quoted as saying: “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

Life is naturally busy, and many of us find ourselves pushing off sleep at night to tackle errands, projects, or chores after a busy working day. And once we finally do get to rest, we find ourselves mysteriously awake at 2:00 am with worries and anxiety - or sleepwalking around looking for a carton of ice cream. Waking at night can leave us distracted, anxious, or otherwise grumpy the next day from a rough night of sleep.

An article about sleeping patterns recently made the rounds on Facebook regarding the idea of “two sleeps”. It seems as if our ancestors, when plunged into darkness before the days of electricity, would retire early, wake in the night for a few hours, and return to sleep before waking again at daybreak. These twilight hours were often used for reflection, prayer, and other activities. A recent study from the 1990s, conducted by psychiatrist Thomas Wehr, had a surprising parallel: a group of people abided by 14 hours of darkness every day for a month. By the fourth week, the subjects settled into the distinct sleeping pattern of sleeping for four hours, awaking for one to two hours, and then a second four-hour block of sleep.

BBC News further explores the facts about this interesting history of two sleeps: “…the first and second sleep started to disappear during the late 17th Century. This started among the urban upper classes in northern Europe and over the course of the next 200 years filtered down to the rest of Western society. By the 1920s the idea of a first and second sleep had receded entirely from our social consciousness…The idea that we must sleep in a consolidated block could be damaging…if it makes people who wake up at night anxious, as this anxiety can itself prohibit sleeps and is likely to seep into waking life too.”

Which brings back the point of feeling restless and distracted in the twilight hours if you feel like you're not getting enough shut eye. Next time you find yourself anxious about waking up at night, take a deep breath and think of our ancestors. Or, take a moment to check out some research on the subject.

IGI Global publishes a wealth of research articles related to sleeping patterns, including the chapter “Sleep Management Promotes Healthy Lifestyle, Mental Health, QOL, and a Healthy Brain”, written by Hideki Tanaka (Hiroshima International University, Japan) and Maki Furutani (Hiroshima International University, Japan). This chapter is part of the title Biomedical Engineering and Cognitive Neuroscience for Healthcare: Interdisciplinary Applications, edited by Dr. Jinglong Wu (Okayama University, Japan).

Professor Tanaka and Mr. Furutani’s chapter focuses on an overview of sleep, lifestyle, mental, and physical health, and the characteristics of insomnia among the elderly and students. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the effects of sleep management with real life examples. Sleep management that included short naps and exercise in the evening was effective in promoting sleep and mental health with elderly people.

For more information about this title, and others, visit our Bookstore to find additional research on sleep patterns.
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