The BIG Sleep Myth

Did you know that it's completely UNNATURAL to sleep for 8 hours a night? Think about it... no other animal sleeps like this, and it would be extremely dangerous if it were actually required! Your "sleep issues" may not be issues at all, but a complete misunderstanding of how our bodies REALLY work. Not only do scientific studies prove this to be true, but back before the Victorians and artificial light, it was considered natural to have a First Sleep, followed by an hour or two of wakefull ness, followed by a Second Sleep.

His book At Day's Close: Night in Times Past, published four years later, unearths more than 500 references to a segmented sleeping pattern - in diaries, court records, medical books and literature, from Homer's Odyssey to an anthropological account of modern tribes in Nigeria.

Much like the experience of Wehr's subjects, these references describe a first sleep which began about two hours after dusk, followed by waking period of one or two hours and then a second sleep.

"It's not just the number of references - it is the way they refer to it, as if it was common knowledge," Ekirch says. [http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16964783]

How many people are shoving "medicines" down their throat for a problem that shouldn't be seen as a problem? And how much healthier would we all be (including shift workers, who have a notoriously difficult time switching between schedules) if we recognized our true nature?

Makes you wonder what else we might have wrong, doesn't it?