How did our ancestors sleep and what do people with insomnia do?

Historian A.Roger Ekirch at Virginia Tech, USA studies about ancient sleep and thinks that sleep is a biological constant.

Yet while studying nightlife in pre-industrial Europe and America, he discovered the first evidence that many people used to sleep in segments - first sleep and first sleep. Monday with a break of a few hours to have sex, pray, eat, talk, and take medicine.

'This is a sleep pattern that is unknown in the modern world,' says Ekirch.

Two-phase sleep

Ekirch's follow-up book, "At Day's Close: Night in Times Past," unearthed more than 500 references to what has since come to be known as biphasic sleep. Ekirch has now found more than 2,000 references in dozens of languages ​​and goes back in time to ancient Greece. His 2004 book will be republished next April.

Image of a couple sleeping on the glass door of the church.

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Sleeping through the night didn't really exist until just a few hundred years ago. It grew only with the spread of electric light and the Industrial Revolution, in the belief that sleep was a waste of time that could be spent doing better.

The myth of 8 hours sleep?

The first reference to biphasic sleep that Ekirch found was in a 1697 legal document from an itinerant court "Assizes" buried in a London recording office. The account of a 9-year-old girl named Jane Rowth mentions that her mother woke up from her "first sleep" to go out. The mother was later found dead.

Ekirch later found numerous references to "first" and "second" sleep in diaries, medical texts, literary works, and prayer books. A 16th-century French physician's manual advises couples that the best time to conceive is not at the end of a long day but "after the first sleep", when "they are more interested". and "make it better".

Lie on the right, then turn to the left

However, pre-industrial life was not the Halcyon era when our ancestors went through a well-rested and rejuvenated day, without insomnia or other sleep problems, easily syncing with night and day cycles, weather patterns and seasons. Sasha Handley, a history professor at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, who studies how families optimized their sleep in Great Britain, Ireland and the British American colonies between 1500 and 1750. know.

Handley says her research shows that, like today, sleep is linked to physical and mental health and is a subject of anxiety and phobia.

Doctors recommend sleeping on the right side first, and then on the left side in the second half of the night. Lying on the right side, perhaps during the first sleep, is thought to allow food to go to the stomach, where it is digested. Turn to the left, the cooler side, the steam escapes and distributes heat evenly throughout the body.

Insomnia

Russell Foster, a professor of biological neuroscience at the University of Oxford, has conducted sleep experiments that have shown that, when people are given the opportunity to sleep longer, their sleep can become biphas or even multiple phases.

However, Foster, who is also the director of Sir Jules Thorn Sleep and the Circadian Institute of Neuroscience at Oxford, suspects that it's a sleeping habit that can happen to everyone.

No one should impose a phased sleep regimen, he adds, especially if it reduces total sleep time. Interrupted sleep was considered less of a problem in the past, says Foster, but a good eight-hour sleep in modern times isn't always helpful.

Foster's research shows that, if we wake up at night, sleep is likely to return, if sleep isn't dominated by social media or other behavior that makes you more alert or triggers a stress response. straight.

Sleep experts recommend getting out of bed if you can't get back to sleep and engaging in a relaxing activity in low light.