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Comment by Xurinos | Hacker News Reader

There is only one study in this article, and it involves how a group of people adapted to a 14-hour sleep pattern. Other than that, there are no studies of importance here, nothing that confirms concretely that this kind of segmented sleep is effective for humans. It is based on historical hearsay but cannot make a prescriptive judgment. The evidence purely anecdotal. Please be careful in reading things like this that you do not immediately form a blind belief or justification.

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I'm going to say something not so geeky but I think babies also sleep in segments and for shorter periods. We mainly adapt their "natural" habits to the society we're living. Is it for the better or not, I don't know.

They do, however that is as much to do with the need for frequent feeding given their tiny stomachs!

> Please be careful in reading

You should take your own advice. Bi-Modal sleep has a lot more evidence than just that, and the article includes some from historians, which I guess you missed.

This sleep pattern is well accepted, and has been known for decades. Not sure why they are writing an article about it now, except maybe the author heard about it and decided it would make an interesting article.

So quote them. Xurinos is rightly pointing out the lack of referencing.

By the way, I worked in sleep medicine, first as a medical tech, and then in technical support for the medical equipment. I never came across the idea that split sleep sessions was right or healthy, and never heard the sleep physicians or clinical specialists mention such a thing. It is far from "well accepted and known for decades", at least up until I left the industry in 2009 (though I spent less time with the specialists from about 2006).

Xurinos is presenting the correct scientific position; you are presenting the antithesis of science: "Yeah, you're wrong, everyone knows it and has always known it, I'm sure there's some research somewhere".

References, many by Ekirch but not all:

http://www.history.vt.edu/Ekirch/sleepcommentary.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmented_sleep

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/106.2/ah00034...

http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc99/9_25_99/bob2.htm

http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/sleep-disorders/content/arti...

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2869.2008....

http://www.nature.com/scientificamericanmind/journal/v17/n6/...

http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/sleep-deprivation/content/ar...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2647798/

There is very little criticism of this, both modern studies and research of historical language and literature find the same thing.

It's interesting that the references of yours that are scientific studies are all in the last 6 years (which is when I say I was more out of the loop). This is hardly "known and accepted for decades".

It was originally published in 1993, and you make it seem like if you didn't know about it it didn't exist.

Although in your defense, it's not widely known. (Most people never even think to ask, although once they do the evidence is compelling.)

... 'it' refers to which reference?

ref 1 seems to be a series of excerpts of articles ref 2 is a literature review of historical acounts

neither ref 1 nor 2 is a scientific study, and according to the dates come from around 2000

ref 3 wiki article referencing articles from 2005, ref 4 is science journalism and refers to a 1993 study

remaining refs are all studies from 2006+

So, yes, I didn't know it existed. I've never heard sleep professionals talk about it in my career to 2006ish. Good sleep was pretty universally considered a contiguous segment of uninterrupted sleep with particular cycles by sleep practitioners. My problem is not with the content - I'm open to learning about new things about stuff I 'know' - but with your description of it being something well-known and universally accepted for a long time.

I think it's fascinating, and thank you for providing references. But it's really a very new avenue of formally studied biology.

> and universally accepted

I didn't mean among practitioners, I meant among research, i.e. that there isn't significant criticism, which to me makes it accepted. It's normal for there to be huge lag between research and practice, especially since research is frequently wrong.

I remember reading about this many many years ago, and it was written as if it had been known for even longer before that. But I guess the recent references seem to start with 1993 which is long, but not as long as I thought it was.

I'll have to eat humble pie here. The kind of comment you made initially has always been suited to the criticisms I've raised, in my previous experience. It's unusual for there to be substance behind that style of claim - so I apologise for my abrasiveness.

Thank you for the links. It's a fascinating topic. Sleep medicine and the theory behind it is really, really interesting. Actually conducting sleep studies - attaching things, watching people sleep all night, then finishing off your shift smelling people's morning breath... is one of the most boring jobs in the world :)

Also, don't Spanish people and sailors sleep in segmented blocks? Not exactly newsworthy, then.

Sailors' sleep patterns are mostly dictated by their watch schedule. Different ships have different schedules (eg, three eight-hour shifts, or four six-hour shifts, etc) and basically you try to get sleep whenever possible.

I sailed on a ship that had six four-hour watches with three watch groups. That meant that one group would stand two 4-hour watches per 24-hour period (eg, 4am-8am then 4pm-8pm). With less than eight hours between watches, you had no choice but to sleep in two different blocks each day.

The effects of such a schedule and standing watch in a windowless engine room deep in the hull of the ship are quite interesting. For example, people (myself included) would completely forget whether it is PM or AM. If you occasionally go outside--rather than straight from the engine room to your bunk--you never knew whether to expect it to be light or dark out. I often went out expecting to reminisce under the star-laden sky, only to find out it's broad daylight out.

I don't see how your post could be "also" to the parent post: It's saying to be skeptical of the claims due to lack of evidence, while your post contrarily implies that this is already established knowledge.

I think he's saying that the conclusion from the historical study (people used to have bi-modal sleep patterns) isn't exactly revolutionary either. So it's in line with the parent post in that there's not really anything noteworthy in the article.

Lots of things are noteworthy for people who don't already know them.

Link to relevant article for people who are interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siesta.

Siesta (midday nap) is very common in Bolivia, Mexico and other Latin American countries, but I'd hesitate to call it segmented sleep.

Not to detract from your main point, but I don't think Siesta is very common in Mexico and most other Latin American countries. I was born in Cuba, lived there for five years and lived in Mexico for about three or four. I don't know of a single person who regularly slept after noon.

In fact, I had an opportunity to live in Barcelona for three months and while a lot of businesses do close down from noon to three, I got the impression that people were not using that time to sleep, and that the idea of siesta in Catalunya is on the decline.

Ok, I did work for Bolivia for a time, and our Bolivian office closed for siesta, as did our main customer (the La Paz city council).

Same for a more rural area of Mexico (Toluca surroundings), they also did siestas there.

Googling a bit, acording to Time magazine, siesta was struck down in Mexico in 1944, so it's more a myth than reality now I guess (probably subsists in some more rural areas).

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,850501,00.h...

My impression was that siesta still persisted in some countries, but that it tends to disappear as they conform to western work hours, and, as the Time article states, it does involve four commutes instead of two, so it's not workable in urban areas (btw, people who siesta still work the same amount of hours, I'm not saying they work less).

Observation: In the Philippines, most parents force their kids to take a siesta. These are taken around 1 or 2 in the afternoon. However, some parents fail to wake their kids up after 3 hours of sleep. In this case, these kids are up till the wee hours of the night, making their sleeping habits more complicated than it should be.

Regarding the article, I guess one should just do what works for them (their body). Some people find it necessary to get 8 hours of sleep, and some are okay with six.

No, we don't. In Spain, some people take a quick 30-minute nap after lunch, but I wouldn't call that sleeping in segmented blocks.

Like people now who just believe blindly now about the way they feel they should live their life by the norms?

It goes both ways.

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