The surprisingly modern invention of sleeping 8 hours a night

AND THE AGE OF INSOMNIA Are you like one-third of people and struggle to sleep through the whole night? It might be because our bodies aren’t wired to sleep eight hours at a time. Throughout

most of human history, it appears, people slept twice a night. Engaging in what is called a segmented sleep cycle. People would head to sleep around 9–10 pm for a few hours, wake for an

hour or two in the middle of the night, and then sleep a few more hours until morning. WHY DID THINGS CHANGE? THE DEATH OF BIPHASIC SLEEPING While sleeping for a full eight hours was not

unheard of in the past, it does not appear to have been the norm. According to historian A. Roger Ekirch’s influential paper _The Modernization of Western Sleep: Or, Does Insomnia Have a

History?_, this change began to happen in the late 17th century among the upper classes of Europe. Indeed, medical books from this time suggested that, > “for better digestion and more 

tranquil repose, to lie on their > right side during ‘the fyrste slepe’ and after ‘the fyrste > slepe turne on the lefte side’.” Allusions to a biphasic sleep cycle appear all

throughout preindustrial history. Allusions that make the practice seem commonplace. From the classical figures of Homer and Virgil through to Charles Dickens, having two sleeps during the

night seemed to have been the norm. > “He knew this, even in the horror with which he started from his > first sleep, and threw up the window to dispel it by the presence of > some 

object, beyond the room, which had not been, as it were, the > witness of his dream.” — Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge (1840) Ekirch notes that, like with any broad societal change, it is

difficult to pin down an exact moment where our sleep schedules shifted. He suggests that there are a few factors that left our natural biphasic schedule a relic of the past. Beginning

partway through the 19th century, our relationship to the night began to change. This appears to have been in large part due to artificial lighting, the expansion of leisure life, and

improved safety. Night, according to Ekirch, became ‘open for both business and pleasure’. > ‘Every time we turn on a light, we are inadvertently taking a drug > that effects how we 

will sleep’ — Charles Czeisler, Harvard > University This didn’t cause the immediate dissolution of a biphasic sleep schedule, however. The changes seem to have first impacted the hour at

which people went to sleep, and subsequently, the hour at which they awoke from their first sleep. Before this time, a person’s first and second sleeps would have been roughly equal at

three to three and a half hours in length. As the 1800s and the industrial revolution chugged along, this relationship became lopsided. The second sleep shrunk under the ballooning five to

six hours of the first sleep. By the end of the century, the second sleep had all but disappeared and was replaced with the enduring ideal of an uninterrupted eight hours. EARLY RISING

Contemporaneous to this change in our sleep schedule was the rise of another ideal. The ideal of waking early. Around this time in London and New York, there even came into being societies

like the ‘Young Men’s Early Rising Association’ that spread the gospel of rising early. It was a habit that, as if it were straight out of the mouth of a modern productivity guru, proved one

possessed a strong will. > ‘He who will thrive must rise at five’ — 19th century adage It became the way of successful people to not succumb to what our circadian rhythm longed for, a

second slumber. Increased productivity, more earning potential — you know the drill. The ideal seeped into our collective consciousness and has loomed there ever since. A mirror to the

inadequacy felt when most of us inevitably sleep in. THE RISE OF INSOMNIA With this unnatural change to our nights, came the increasing medicalization of normality. 10–40% of American adults

wake during the middle of the night and are unable to fall back asleep. Making middle-of-the-night insomnia (MOTN) the most common form of insomnia. Some of these late-night woes are very

likely linked to our natural disposition for biphasic sleeping. As Russell Foster of Oxford University’s Circadian Neuroscience Institute puts it, > ‘Many people wake up at night and 

panic. I tell them that they are > experiencing is a throwback to the bi-modal sleep pattern.’ This is perhaps, in part, why one of the most popular remedies for MOTN also recalls the

past. During the hour or so gap in the nights past, people would generally be active. They used it for creative expression, meditation, prayer, reading, or intimate time with their partner.

They didn’t just lie there and try to fall back asleep. A pitfall many insomniacs fall into. For my part, I have often found that waking during the night when working on a challenging

creative project can be incredibly and unexpectedly fecund. Ideas suddenly begin to flow and demand a frantic scramble to be jot down before being inevitably lost. A SMALL PRICE TO PAY

Though it can be easy to come away from this intellectual journey romanticizing the past, this might be a mistake. The rise of artificial lighting, increased leisure time, and public safety

has made nighttime better for us all. It has dramatically decreased the prevalence of fires at night — fires which, back when the evening light was the product of oil lamps, were incredibly

dangerous. Similar things are true for increases in public safety as the result of street lamps and improved policing. It seems then, that while regressing is impossible and, in many ways,

undesirable, we can glean some learning from our biphasic ancestors. Understanding some of the history of sleeping can help MOTN insomniacs better understand what otherwise may seem

frustratingly unexplainable. For the rest of us, learning about this massive shift in our collective sleep schedules can help drive home the need to develop adequate sleep hygiene. The

importance of limiting artificial light exposure is something you are not exempt from.