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Have you ever tried sleeping in multiple segments, to improve your sleeping quality? 

In our current day society with blue-light screens, many distractions and crammed schedules, it’s not a rare phenomenon for people to have difficulty sleeping. Many also regularly wake up during the night, and then start to brood on daily-life events. And according to most sources about a third of us don’t get enough sleep!  Sleeplessness can be a big problem. 

This post is about a potential method to deal with this, which I don’t often hear anything about. So I won’t be talking about more regular methods to deal with difficulty sleeping, like limiting screen-time, using blue-light filters, using sleep-medication, etc. Instead, we will look at  sleep patterns.

Monophasic Sleep and Biphasic Sleep

Personally I’ve always seen sleep as a single activity for during the night. In other words, I have been sleeping a monophasic sleep for most of my life, which basically means one period of sleep within 24 hours.

But, in contrast to monophasic sleep, other sleep patterns are known and are even claimed to be more natural. Biphasic sleep, for example, is the practice of sleeping two periods during 24 hours. But a quick google-search will show you a whole range of polyphasic sleep patterns.

Overview alternative sleeping patterns / schedules.

History

Interestingly, when we go back in time a few centuries, sleep patterns were quite different than what most of us are used to today!

Up until the 19th century (!) it was a usual practise to go to bed a few hours after sunset – than sleep until midnight – have some hours of being awake – and then go to bed for a second time, until the morning. And it wasn’t just being awake… Instead of trying to fall back asleep immediately, people than were used to reading, smoking, praying and even visiting their neighbours and friends!

Transition into monophasic sleep

The main reason for this is thought to be the invention of electric light. A light bulb provides much more light than a candle or (kerosene) lantern. The light bulb gave us the ability to do more at night. So instead of going to sleep directly, you could stay awake for some longer and, after having gone to bed finally, sleep until the morning. Other reasons are mentioned as well. Because of the growing industries (in the 18th and 19th centuries), more people had to work in shifts. It would be more normal to come home late at night and starting work again the next morning. A monophasic sleep was more doable in these situations.

What is normal sleep?

In experiments, clues were found that a biphasic sleep pattern is more natural to us. An often cited experiment, by an american psychiatrist (Thomas Wehr), was conducted in the early 90’s.1 A group of voluteers were hold in an enclosure, in which darkness (14 hours / day) and lightness (10 hours / day) were regulated. The participants were free to choose when they wanted to sleep. After 4 weeks of monitoring the moments at which the participants chose to sleep, it was noticed that the participants started to sleep in a biphasic pattern. First they would sleep for about 3-5 hours – than be awake for a few hours – and then fall asleep again.

Wehr concluded that waking up after a few hours of sleep is possibly not sleeplessness, but normal sleep.

Solution for sleep deprivation?

When you wake up during the night, and can’t fall back asleep, perhaps with some worrying thoughts about work, school or relationships, you may wonder: “Why can’t I sleep?” Or even: “Why can’t I sleep AGAIN, like the last few weeks, months…” and “… there must be a problem!”.

Perhaps the history lesson can help as a method to improve your sleep. It may help to relativize the situation of being awake at the middle of the night, which alone can help to worry less. But you can also go a step further and look into what patterns of sleep may be practical in your schedule. If you have never tried anything else than a monophasic sleep pattern, you could try if a polyphasic works for you.

“What hath night to do with sleep?”
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John Milton
Paradise Lost

No one-fit-for-all

In the end, I think sleep can be viewed as a customizable activity. It’s no one-fit-for-all. But we should make sure to get enough sleep. If it feels right for you to try another pattern, why not try it? 

Some people even actively pursue different sleeping patterns to get more productive by limiting the distractions around them. So from that perspective, the middle of the night is a productivity-goldmine.

Reference:

  1. Wehr, T. A. (June 1992). “In short photoperiods, human sleep is biphasic”. Journal of Sleep Research. 1(2): 103–107. doi:1111/j.1365-2869.1992.tb00019.x. PMID 10607034