Hi,

Have you ever woken up and been unable to sleep in the middle of the night? How would your perspective on that experience change if you thought of it as natural?

What is a Natural Sleep Pattern?

Today I'd like to share with you an older study about human sleep.

This paper busted apart one of my core assumptions about sleep: that humans need 8 solid hours of it per night.

The Connection between Light and Sleep

It turns out, that "need" may actually be the result of our 16-hour artificial lighting schedules. Under more natural lighting conditions, humans never sleep more than a few hours at a time. Instead, sleep occurs in chunks across the night (and sometimes day, for those who nap).

Read the full text of the study here: In short photoperiods, human sleep is biphasic (1992).

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That's all for today, but you can always review the archive at nikkofujita.substack.com. I will send more research about sleep styles in my upcoming emails.