The myth of one cycle of eight-hour sleep as being the norm for men and women

Posted by Kendall Harmon

We often worry about lying awake in the middle of the night - but it could be good for you. A growing body of evidence from both science and history suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.

In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted an experiment in which a group of people were plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month.

It took some time for their sleep to regulate but by the fourth week the subjects had settled into a very distinct sleeping pattern. They slept first for four hours, then woke for one or two hours before falling into a second four-hour sleep.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-WatchHealth & MedicineHistoryPsychologyScience & Technology

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Posted February 28, 2012 at 3:00 pm [Printer Friendly] [Print w/ comments]
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