Hacker News Reader

Comment by Damogran6 | Hacker News Reader

I sleep 5-6 hours a night. I also seem to be bi-phasic...on the weekends if I wake up after 5 hours, hang around for an hour and successfully go back to sleep, the second cycle is the sleep of the dead. Like, I don't move. Wake up with limbs fallen asleep, a deep divot in the memory foam...and a lot more rested.

(as an aside: have CPAP, apnea is not a factor.)

View on HN

iirc, biphasic sleep is the “usual way” people sleep without the advent of electricity, yes? “the waking hour”, and all that.

I wonder if there was an increase in dementia-related disorders once lightbulbs kept people up longer.

> iirc, biphasic sleep is the “usual way” people sleep without the advent of electricity, yes? “the waking hour”, and all that.

I honestly believe that this is not "natural", but rather an adaptation to the absurdly long European winter nights. Note that we didn't evolve there, so it seems unlikely that bi-phasic sleep is the most primal way.

Some of us have partially evolved for that environment. My ancestors eyes turned blue to see in the dim light and their hair and skin changed from Ethiopian Black to pale and blonde af.

Seems reasonable to expect some degree of genetic drift in sleep regulation as well, but I know of no data on this.

A bigger pupil would work better for dim light vision. Light through the iris would sacrifice daylight vision. The light skin on the other hand does have an obvious benefit in that climate for Vitamin D.

Everything is an adaptation to something. The one 8 hours sleep a night is also an adaptation for the life style we adapted for in the last 100+ plus years.

A CPAP had a severe negative effect on my sleep even after two years of getting used to it. I had severe apnea measured in a sleep study, but even so I've done better without it.

It helps for me...of course if I dropped 40 lbs, it probably wouldn't be needed...but then there's the whole GLP-1/Weight thing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com