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undergroundsilver t1_isxqh7j wrote

In the old days, before electricity people would wake up in the middle of the night and mingle before going back to their second sleep. Can read more about it here: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220107-the-lost-medieval-habit-of-biphasic-sleep

Later on the changed the sleeping patterns changed during the industrial revolution.

https://www.sleepadvisor.org/history-of-sleep/#:~:text=By%20the%201920s%2C%20all%20references,sleep%20schedule%20had%20entirely%20ceased.

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Fforfailinglife t1_isyjkbe wrote

I was unemployed for like 2 months and I naturally started waking up around 2 and just like doing whatever then going back to sleep an hour or two later and that’s the only time in my life I’ve felt well rested and wasn’t tired all day

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GoodTodd1970 t1_isyr206 wrote

I did the same while unemployed for 3-1/2 months. Seemed like a wacked-out sleep schedule, but it was effective. Now I'm back to the 8-5 grind and it's take a week to change.

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FlowerFeather t1_iszbbr1 wrote

SAME!!!!!!!!!! DURING summer breaks when i was in uni that was my default sleeping pattern. absolutely amazing

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Ihopetheresenoughroo t1_isz19an wrote

What time did you go to sleep before you woke up at 2?

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Cyb3rSab3r t1_it0stpd wrote

I did this in college and I went to sleep at 9, woke up for an hour around 1, and then went back to sleep at 2 and woke up around 6 or 7.

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Hisgoatness t1_iszdbw7 wrote

What if you felt more well rested because you work working?

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ladydanger2020 t1_it0yair wrote

Same. The real issue is that if I know I have work in the morning I stress about not getting enough sleep and can’t get back to sleep the second time and end up with 3-4 hours

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CyborgCabbage t1_isy1ifi wrote

Bimodal sleep may be limited to Europe:

>Historical evidence suggests that “until the close of the early modern era, Western Europeans experienced two major intervals of sleep bridged by up to an hour or more of quiet wakefulness” [33 ] (see also [30 ]). Our results suggest that the bimodal sleep pattern that may have existed in Western Europe is not present in traditional equatorial groups today and, by extension, was probably not present before humans migrated into Western Europe. Rather, this pattern may have been a consequence of longer winter nights in higher latitudes. In this view, the “recent” disappearance of bimodal sleep was not a pathological development caused by restricted sleep duration, but rather a return to a pattern still seen today in the groups we studied, enabled by the electric lights and temperature control that restored aspects of natural conditions in the tropical latitudes.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.09.046

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nick_shannon t1_isy7gle wrote

Most weekends I sleep from around 5pm to 10pm then I’m up for a few hours and I go back to bed about 1am and then get up around 5-6am

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Quakarot t1_iszfw5l wrote

The bbc article suggests otherwise:

> Biphasic sleep was not unique to England, either – it was widely practised throughout the preindustrial world. In France, the initial sleep was the "premier somme"; in Italy, it was "primo sonno". In fact, Eckirch found evidence of the habit in locations as distant as Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Australia, South America and the Middle East.

So it’s unclear, at least, but the bbc article also suggests compelling evidence that biphasic sleep exists even today in Africa, and other places without artificial light

> Back in 2015, together with collaborators from a number of other universities, Samson recruited local volunteers from the remote community of Manadena in northeastern Madagascar for a study. The location is a large village that backs on to a national park – and there is no infrastructure for electricity, so nights are almost as dark as they would have been for millennia.

> The participants, who were mostly farmers, were asked to wear an "actimeter" – a sophisticated activity-sensing device that can be used to track sleep cycles – for 10 days, to track their sleep patterns.

> "What we found was that [in those without artificial light], there was a period of activity right after midnight until about 01:00-01:30 in the morning," says Samson, "and then it would drop back to sleep and to inactivity until they woke up at 06:00, usually coinciding with the rising of the Sun."

> As it turns out, biphasic sleep never vanished entirely – it lives on in pockets of the world today.

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TuhmaMyy t1_isyoik4 wrote

This is really interesting! Thank you for the link.

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council2022 t1_isy80bh wrote

I used to do similar back when I went out to late night clubs. May be asleep till midnight or 1 then hit the doors an hour or two later, come in around sunup sleep till 10-11 am ( or maybe noon or 1). It's like an even split 24. I also used to have to go to 3-4 clubs in a night to collect for bands I booked, when I knew no use in being there till closing time. Did that for years.

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BulletRazor t1_iszd8hg wrote

So my body naturally does that. I wake up about 4 hours into the night, get up and do a few things, and then go back to sleep.

I thought I had some like weird form of insomnia. Nope! Just a regular biphasic sleep schedule.

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Ihopetheresenoughroo t1_isz149e wrote

Wow this was such a great read!! I never had any idea about this at all. Tysm for sharing!

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