Sleep less. Nap more. Get better circadian health?
A possible landmark sleep study came out this year (2025)
Sleep less. Nap more. Get better circadian health?
Research from the 90’s that led to bright light therapy for SAD suggested the need for 8 hours of nightly sleep was merely a product of a 16 hour lighting schedule1.
Human beings do differ from other animals in that they use artificial light to create an unending 16-h photoperiod for themselves. This fact raises the possibility that the sleep of human beings differs from that of animals because the artificial long photoperiod compresses and consolidates their sleep in an unnatural way.
Reduce the artificial light, and human sleep naturally drifts into biphasic or polyphasic sleep patterns instead of the solid 8 hour block most of us imagine to be ideal.
(of course spreading sleep out isn’t practical for work and school, so they this information has been used to prescribe MORE rather than less artificial light)
What would it look like to re-integrate napping into the modern …