Can medieval sleeping habits fix America’s insomnia? | Hacker News Reader

Can medieval sleeping habits fix America’s insomnia?

theatlantic.com

85 pointspseudolus89 comments

I find it weird that many cultures have a noon time or afternoon time siesta -- but for some reason the Anglophone cultures don't. Something about the Protestant work ethic? (I know these are in theory secular societies, but the cultural relics remain)

When I was teaching at one of the local SEA universities they had an entire room for lecturers to sleep during the 1.5 hour lunch break. It had double bunk beds maybe 30 or so. It was well used from 12pm to 1:30pm.

I'll tell you -- this was magic. Even just being able to sleep for 30 minutes (after getting lunch and catching up on my phone) between classes was rejuvenating.

I never had that 2pm "nod off", which I did when working in Western style jobs...

My point being this is a kind of bi-phasic sleep.

I think it has to do with temperatures. In some countries it's very hot at noon so working is difficult. Especially with air conditioning.

And that sunlight is available abundantly early morning and late evening.

Isn't air conditioning intended to solve the too-hot-to-work problem?

Vast majority of working humans have no AC in their work environment. Highly wealthy counties like the US often forget we're in the luxury minority

I'm in India, a non-wealthy non-AC too-hot-to-work-at-noon country (for most parts of the country almost all through the year).

I was responding to this sentence:

> In some countries it's very hot at noon so working is difficult. Especially with air conditioning.

I'm confused because it sounds as if GP meant that air conditioning exacerbates the problem of it being too hot to work. The intent of installing AC is definitely to improve productivity that would be lost to the uncomfortable climate.

The most likely explanation is that it was an typo error or autocorrect.

That makes sense, thanks.

A/C is a pretty new invention. Mid-day rest is an older convention.

And it's a matter of social convention at this point rather than a practical solution to a problem. We're social animals and that tends to happen.

My point though being-- even with AC it's a good innovation. We are all chronically short on sleep these days. I'm surprised about the resistance to it in this thread.

>We are all chronically short on sleep these days. I'm surprised about the resistance to it in this thread.

People are short on sleep because they have too much stuff to do, not because there aren't enough opportunities to sleep. Adding an hour of sleep at noon isn't a free lunch (heh). You'll have one less hour of work done during the day, so all else being equal, you'll probably go to sleep 1 hour later and benefits are neutralized.

That's not true though if you were underslept in the first place. You'd just be catching up at your noon nap.

Also it is a free lunch. People sleeping DURING their lunch. I'm not sure how this would add to their workload if they are doing it anyways.

Also now everyone is remote so WHY not have a noon nap?

Even at my last startup which was in the West we had a nap couch and it was in constant use from like 1pm to 3pm.

But as I said - Anglophones seem to like punishing themselves.

missed the "without" in the AC statement i think.

Correct. I am horrible at typing on the phone.

> I think it has to do with temperatures.

More likely shorter days as you go further North. If you slept at lunchtime until 14:30 there would be less than two hours of usable daylight left during December and January.

[Edit] - This for the latitude of Southern England.

which SEA country/university was that?

Could be any. A nap at noon isn't just popular; it's ubiquitous in SEA.

I haven't seen that happening at offices in SEA.

You haven't been working in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

You work in Singapore I assume?

It's hyper westernized.

I studied in a boarding school which had a mandatory meditation time around 2 pm. This was exactly the time when we would me feeling very sleepy. Probably because of peak digestion time after we finished our lunch. Anyways we all would just sleep off in the bench instead of meditating. Really helped us concentrate on the rest of the classes

Did they name it “meditation” because “sleeping at school” is inappropriate in your culture?

No. It was an actual meditation session

China and Japan would like a word…

About what exactly? I don't know about Japan but post lunch siesta is very much a thing in China. Even employees working 996 schedules take a nap.

It would be impossible to do it otherwise.

Siestas are a thing in Japan to a limited extent, mostly for blue collar workers, especially ones who drive for a living, in the seat of their vehicle.

Light. In the global south the days are a little longer. Part of the prodistant work ethic, which comes from northern europe, is based on the far shorter workday in the winter. You dont take naps if you only have eight hours of useful daylight. Even in summer the sun is always lower on the horizon. So too the dramatic shift from summer to winter. Even in high summer no time can be wasted in preparing for winter. The drive to make use of limited time is tied to the seasons.

This article follows the classic rule: If a question is asked in the headline, the answer is "no"...

"There is no evidence that sleep was universally segmented, and there is also little evidence that segmented sleep is better. A 2021 meta-analysis of studies on biphasic sleep schedules found that segmented-sleeping subjects actually reported “lower sleep quality … and spent more time in lighter stages of sleep.” One reasonable takeaway is that biphasic sleep is like anarchical foraging: Both might have well served some ancient populations some of the time, but neither of them offers a clear solution to modern problems."

Will this article be the end of trendy biphasic sleep articles..?

No. Nonsense.

"About 70 million Americans suffer from chronic sleep problems." - https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/about_us.html#:~:text=About%2070%2....

When lots of people have sleeping problems, the problem is systemic. Change the people's lives to be better and the sleeping problems cease to exist. Changing sleeping patterns does not, in any way or form, address the reasons why masses of people have sleeping problems.

All it does is making sure people are staying in the miserable state they are not to question.

What if mankind always had such sleeping problems? Without historical baseline you cannot tell if that 70m is high or low.

> Changing sleeping patterns does not, in any way or form, address the reasons why masses of people have sleeping problems.

Changing sleeping patterns would definitely be a change in people's lives, and if it left them with fewer complaints about sleep, it would be for the better.

You have an idea about what you think the real problem is, but you either don't have a coherent argument for it or you want somebody to ask you what you think to give you an excuse to explain at length. No need to play coy.

I wonder if it is just because we spend more time sedentary instead of up and moving. I know I sleep awesome if I have an intense day of renovation work or yard work or whatever. I looked for some research and this study has farmers sleeping much better than desk workers:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363513/

This study is interesting as it looks at elderly and finds that opposite. Elderly that were blue collar workers sleep worse than those that were white collar workers. It could be that the blue collar workers are no longer getting as much exercise and sleep crappy - or just that their bodies are screwed up after so many years of hard work.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8796375/

> I know I sleep awesome if I have an intense day of renovation work or yard work or whatever.

This is normal. Why do you even need a study for something that's just common sense? Why is it not common sense for you? Hm..

Previous Ekirch:

The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29886907 - Jan 2022 (245 comments)

Humans used to sleep in two shifts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27334769 - May 2021 (60 comments)

The History of Sleep - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9501610 - May 2015 (11 comments)

We used to sleep twice each night - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5542453 - April 2013 (107 comments)

Rethinking Sleep - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4558569 - Sept 2012 (60 comments)

The myth of the eight-hour sleep - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3620742 - Feb 2012 (161 comments)

I'm pretty sure there have been others, if anybody wants to look...

I wondered about 'Ekirch'

It's the author, the sleep researcher Roger Ekirch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Ekirch

I tried biphasic sleeping in my early 20s. I felt that I rested better but I had absolutely no social life outside work, so I gave it up. Turns out there’s a significant social advantage to being awake when other are and sleeping when others do.

Being awake for "the watch" (11pm-1am or so) seems like it would be compatible with some sort of social life, even if you weren't practicing communal sleeping like a true medieval.

A yes, the disco nap.

It worked quite well for me for a number of years. And I had a social life. I would go to sleep around midnight sleep until 3 or 4am get up for an hour or two, maybe bathe then sleep from around 5-6 until 9.

The other thing I've done more recently is take a sleep at around 4pm (2-3 hours) wake until midnight then sleep until 6 (I was was working for a country in a different timezones 7-3:30

The only reasons you were able to have such a sleeping schedule and have a social life is because you not only didn't have a job that required you to be there in the morning, but you also did not have children to tend to.

In other words, you were lucky.

Similar here; I tried it for awhile. It worked for me, but I couldn't make the schedule work with both my job and the family.

I had to read this a few times to get it. You're talking about the medieval biphasic described in the article, the more common biphasic pattern now is the siesta.

I had the luxury of switching to a 6am-1pm, 3pm-2am schedule in my late 20s, and I've never been better rested or more socially active. Lately I've been falling asleep at 9 and up by 4, which keeps me healthy and happy and out of bars.

But siesta-biphasic is great if you can carve out the time in the afternoon for it.

I've been having success over the last month at dramatically improving my sleep, and I'll say that bi-phasic or letting go of the anxiety of being awake in the middle of the night, is my last go-to related to sleep, behind a bunch of other things.

What has really worked for me, and YMMV, as measured by a good 10-15 points a night as measured by my fitbit (admittedly a crude tool, but backed up by just feeling less fatigued during the day) is:

- Getting up consistently and early, and not snoozing the alarm. For me, that time is 5:30, which gives me time to work out.

- Going to bed 8 hours before that. Yes, 9:30.

- I take a 5mg melatonin and benadryl before bed.

- I start my bedtime routine around 9-9:30. This includes putting away the laptop and phone, and reading a book, magazine, or kindle.

- I stop drinking around 5pm. Fluids later in the evening were waking me up 3-5 times during the night to pee. Hydrating well earlier in the day reduces this to 1.

I started off doing that "Algorithmic Solution to Insomnia" [1] that was posted over the holidays, but I really didn't end up needing to do the adjusting bedtime thing. I had a rough week or week and a half when I was getting started, but the 3 weeks since then have been great, including:

- Waking up before my alarm. Twice last week I woke up 1 minute before my alarm.

- Feeling like I slept well.

- Not feeling tired during the day.

- My fitbit sleep analysis has gone from 63-77 points per night to consistently 79-89.

Honestly, there's a lot to that whole "have a bedtime routine" part of good sleep hygiene!

[1] https://ilya.sukhar.com/blog/an-algorithmic-solution-to-inso...

You may want to re-think regular use of benadryl. There is a study linking the use of anticholinergic drugs like benadryl to dementia: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/common-anticholinergic-d...

The scary part is that:

dementia risk increased along with the cumulative dose. Taking an anticholinergic for the equivalent of three years or more was associated with a 54% higher dementia risk than taking the same dose for three months or less

It looks like baseline dementia risk is about ~8%[1], so a 4% percent increase in the absolute risk of getting dementia which I would consider to be pretty severe.

[1] https://n.neurology.org/content/95/5/e519

Thanks to you and @melissalobos for that information. The antihistamine was something I have been experimenting with for the last week, so far I wouldn't say it has made an impact, but it seemed fairly innocuous, based largely on this SciShow and my wife's understanding. https://youtu.be/3wNin31IdmU

I had my nurse-wife review your link and her opinion was that it was legit and worth stopping the benadryl as a sleep aid.

Near as I can tell, it hasn't measurably aided either falling or staying asleep.

Betteridge's law strikes again:

> I asked Ekirch this question: As the historian most associated with biphasic sleep, had his research encouraged him, a spouse, or a friend, to become a biphasic sleeper? “Not at all,” he said. “At no time in history have conditions for human slumber been better than today.” Compared with 99 percent of our ancient ancestors, we have better beds, better blankets, better houses, and fewer late-night pests. If the purpose of sleep is mental and physical well-being, “there is very good reason to believe that uninterrupted sleep at night best achieves that outcome,” Ekirch told me.

For the people commenting who didn't read the article I read it for you.

tl;dr

probably not but some people find just knowing that people slept like that can help with anxiety around insomnia.

----

I have never really had issues with insomnia before but over the last year I have started to have it. It's like the author describes just snapping awake in the middle of the night. It's really unsettling looking at your phone and seeing you only got 3 or 4 hours of sleep and now you feel like you are ready for the day. I think it's stress related from COVID and the general new anxiety I find in pretty much doing anything. Having to worry about who is going to be mad if I wear a mask. Who is going to be mad if I don't.

I tried to go see the doctor when I had almost two weeks of only getting 14 hours of sleep for the entire week. Unfortunately they couldn't see me for 2 months. So i'm not even sure what my health insurance is paying for. Anyway i was able to sleep again after another week and have felt good with only the occasional insomnia now.

USA based if you couldn't tell. I greatly worry about the mental toll these last years have taken on people and I'm really not surprised that it seems like society is crumbling around us now.

Thank you, Captain!

It's sad but not surprising that it is only mentioned in passing that prayer was the main reason for this practice since the beginning of Christianity. People didn't just magically wake up in the middle of the night. They woke up in the middle of the night to pray, and again at sunrise.

Modern people think "I should just wake up in the middle of the night for two hours to be super-productive!" but then wonder why they can't keep the practice up for any length of time, because they keep thinking "what's the point of this again?"

The point was prayer.

I rather liked this (biphasic sleep) article's beautiful illustration (marked "2 Matthew") of the three kings snuggled up in their bed (still wearing their crowns and robes) and being spoken to in a dream by a somewhat stern-looking angel (emerging from a cloud) with a scroll and pointing finger:

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220107-the-lost-medieva...

This was mentioned in Matthew Walker's book "Why We Sleep". It's properly called biphasic sleep as the article mentions later. The example he uses in his book is that of an old part of Greece where people live well into their 90s and stores/restaurants close for the midday siesta and re-open at night. I forget what they called the town, but it was something along the lines of "The Undying Dreamers" or something.

When I traveled in Europe this was really common to see many places close in the afternoon. I personally never understood it until just recently. I assume there's many more reasons as to why, but it makes much more sense with the Greece example above and that most cities are more alive at night.

I'd love to see the modern WFH day-job transform into an hour of naps. I know many people are already doing that today, but I mean for it to be acceptable to do so for your health. Being able to set your teams status to "taking a nap" would do more good than harm.

Sleep very well can be the cure for many more things in life that we aren't aware of. Our addictions to bright screens, caffeine, and work surely doesn't help much. For all we know, getting a nap in during the day could even lead to less heart issues.

My solution for insomnia is to give up trying to coerce my sleep into a schedule. If I do not want to sleep, I stay up and work (or meditate, or whatever) and wait until I am absolutely exhausted and my eyes are closing shut by themselves. Then, I lay down and sleep like a baby. Exercise helps too.

> Then, I lay down and sleep like a baby.

Then, the alarm rings and you have to leave for work.

I had to eliminate that part.

There's an "easy" fix for the majority of us who are hopeless junkies.

Stop ingesting caffeine.

Hm. Interesting.

I need some coffee to think about this properly.

> Stop ingesting caffeine.

I can stop anytime I want. But why would I stop when it feels so good?

And staring at screens after 8pm.

I was a die-hard anti-caffeine fanatic because I thought it gave me headaches.

Then I started drinking caffeine to stay away at work, and I thought that was working for a while, and started having the problem again eventually.

Then I got off caffeine again because I was drinking far too many sodas.

What I've discovered is that once I stabilize, it doesn't matter at all. Whatever habit I have eventually ends up being what my body expects, and I get the same pattern in the end.J

I'm hesitant to apply this globally to everyone, but I think it's likely that everyone reacts the same. It's just really hard to get off caffeine, and much more so if you have a busy life.

Edit: That was supposed to be "stay awake at work". Whoops.

That is not happening for me.

This is all easy to solve if you get up early and then never stay up late.

I can't stay up late on Friday and Saturday, sleep in on Sunday and then expect to not have my sleep schedule altered to get up early during the week.

This is easy to do once you are old. If you are young with a social life I really have no idea.

I was once struggling with biphasic sleep. Then I read similar articles about it and found out that reading fiction is my activity between sleeps.

Today I move between monophase and biphase periods constantly. Stress is gone when periods change and my sleep patterns change. I just welcome them as they come and go. And I just read, a lot. Never "smart" books though, always fiction since it helps to relax.. And obviously walking in fresh air every day.

It has been years of journey how to find this balance. I hope you can find it too.

I've had insomnia and have been successful with bi-phasic sleep. I suspend an e-reader above my head and read until I'm ready to drift off quickly. If I wake up, I keep reading. I dont need to get to work early so I don't set an alarm and it's okay if I read for an hour and sleep in.

Letting go of strict timing and associated stress has been key. I'm not looking at the clock counting down hours of sleep while trying to depart.

Not so medieval at all. Winston Churchill:

“You must sleep some time between lunch and dinner, and no half-way measures. Take off your clothes and get into bed. That’s what I always do. Don’t think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. That’s a foolish notion held by people who have no imagination. You will be able to accomplish more. You get two days in one—well, at least one and a half, I’m sure.”

Luckily for the world, Hitler did not know this secret.

I'll go back to bed if I feel tired or I feel like I'm going ill with something whatever the time of day.

I've lost track how many times I've been stuck on a some coding problem, gone to bed and woken up with the solution. If I feel like I'm going down with something, because I dont want it to develop into something full blown that can leave me laid up in bed for days, like flu, I will always go to bed and sleep it off.

One example, when the avian flu was going around one winter, I felt like I was going down with something, so I just went to bed. Partner also got it, but didnt sleep it off, they deteriorated and were laid up in bed from before Xmas until after New Year. ME, I felt better by lunch time the next day, not 100% but no longer feeling like I was trying to fight some dreaded lurgy.

Just want to mention Jeff Warren's wonderfully quirky book from 2007, The Head Trip [1] which was where I first encountered the idea of the 'night watch'.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2168851

I encountered the idea of the 'night watch' and in fact the three traditional military watches of the night and their relationship with historical sleep patterns around the world thanks to The Paleolithic Prescription (1988) by Boyd Eaton, et al.[1]. Beyond introducing the idea of a paleolithic diet, Dr. Eaton along with his colleagues and students researched sleep and activity patterns in historical texts (records of Victorian doctors), the anthropological record, and practices of contemporary indigenous groups. As I recall, they found three sleep patterns commonly coexisting through recorded history and around the globe.

1) The night owl's late to bed and late to rise (first military watch)

2) The Dagwood Bumstead early to bed, up in the middle of the night, late to rise (second military watch)

3) Poor Richard's "Early to bed and early to rise" (third watch)

It was theorized that the three military watches possibly arose from prehistoric humans in small bands gaining survival advantages from having subsets of group members awake throughout the night.

I should also mention that long standing human practices involving nights when groups went without sleep showed up around the globe were studied as well. These existed independent of and seemingly well before showing up in academic settings and post industrial workplaces.

[1] https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/a/brothers-grimm-...

Yes, all-nighter neighbourhood parties centred around prayer and group singing of religious music have been an integral part of Hindu religious practice for a long time. They are literally called “jaagran” (‘keeping awake’) or “jagraataa” (‘night-wake’).

Wouldn't you know it, when Christians do the same thing, it's called a vigil, from the Latin for.. being awake!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigil_(liturgy)

I wonder if jaagra- and vig- come from the same root? Wouldn't that be fun.

I'm thinking of the derived word "vigor" which means strength and energy, apparently the PIE root is *weg- from which we also get "awake".

So this is very likely a cognate!

Edit: the related word, turns out, is excited, not vigil.

That would have been fun! But in this case it doesn't work. The PIE root is *h₁ger-

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%9C%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%97%E...

Except this appears to be a mistake! (Read on, it isn't)

If we follow the Sanskrt we get the cognate jaagarti: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/जागर्ति#Sanskrit

Which lists the root as *h₁ger- (“to be awake, to awaken”).

But that root is missing from Wiktionary, which isn't a good sign, but compare:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...

Although tracing this forward I see the obvious derivatives (vajra, vaaja) and it would be peculiar, but not unheard of, for the word to take two mutations.

I'm basically on a random walk at this point, but here's that missing root again https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ἐγείρω#Ancient_Greek and I am once again left wondering...

Exitare! Ok. Nope completely different roots. Someone should really write up *h₁ger- it's pretty important...

If this became a cultural norm today, it would immediately become working hours for a lot of people who would be better off sleeping. If we're going to shift hours around in a large-scale cultural move, I'd prefer siesta.

I wouldn't. A siesta would make life worse.

I can rarely nap - I nap when I'm sick and occasionally if I do not have enough sleep. And on top of it all, a siesta would take away daylight hours in the winter. I'm fairly far north and winters are dark (day is around 4.5 hours).

And honestly, I see little point in doing the cultural shift considering we aren't even making sure folks have proper food or heating nor that they have reasonable work hours (no one should need to work 50-60 hour weeks with any sort of regularity: You should hire more folks instead)

Dealing with noise and surplus light might do more, but would be harder.

The opening paragraph, reaching for his phone and checking Twitter in the middle of the night, instantly breaks many of the modern suggestions about avoiding insomnia...

Most people have horrible sleep hygiene.

They drink caffeine into the afternoon, ingest alcohol before bed and sleep in a warm, barely darkened room with ambient street/building noise. On top of that they spend the hour before bed staring at a brightly lit screen.

If you want to sleep properly try:

- Doing some steady state cardio after 1pm

- Getting your room as dark as possible

- Getting your room as quiet as possible (or using a noisy fan to drown out external sounds)

- Getting your room as cool as possible (64-67F)

- Move the phone across the room and do not look at it 90 mins before bed

- Avoid alcohol when possible

Some people have genuine sleep disorders, but most people don't do the basic stuff to ensure a proper sleep environment.

I think this intersects with the reported habits of some people like Thomas Edison cat napping several hours rather than sleeping 8 to 10 hours in a row

Referred to as "dorvay" in the novel, Harlem Shuffle. I can see certain productivity wonks on HN getting into this ;)

Polyphasic sleep seems to be the natural sleep-cycle of humanity, as proven through natural circadian rhythms.

Sleeping for 8+ hours at one time, on a regular basis, may just not be natural for a significant percentage of humanity.

> Polyphasic sleep seems to be the natural sleep-cycle of humanity, as proven through natural circadian rhythms.

Source?

> Sleeping for 8+ hours at one time, on a regular basis, may just not be natural for a significant percentage of humanity.

In which part of the world do healthy adults regularly sleep for 8+ hours?

> In which part of the world do healthy adults regularly sleep for 8+ hours?

Isn't it the default in the western world? That's what we do in my family at least... I haven't really heard of people not sleeping just one 8 hour sleep every night.

Or maybe you're making a reference to the chronic lack of sleep that seems to be the rule in the US, but it doesn't seem to be necessarily case elsewhere. Average sleeping time is just a little above 8 hours in France and Belgium, my countries.

I think that majority of people sleeps less - 7 and less. (Yes they are somewhat sleep deprived, little bit, but still) I remember reading sleep studies saying that if people sleep regularly and without alarm, it stabilizes around 7:45 on average.

HN on "fix [...] insomnia": Oh, the irony!

More than eliminating stimulant's (caffeine) and getting in a brisk walk every day would? I doubt it.

I think one of the biggest differences that they completely skip over is the ubiquity of indoor lighting. If they turned off your lights and screens after sunset I'm sure most people would sleep better. I always go to sleep quicker when I'm camping and would guess the lack of electric lighting is the main reason for this.

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