Second Sleep

I saw a TV show a few days back about those unusual people who wake up in the middle night and do stuff for an hour or so then go back to bed; they have two sleeps each night. This isn't a new idea, quite the opposite it seems. But I feel just watching this show has affected my own sleeping patterns.

It wasn't even news to me, as a couple of weeks earlier I had watched a show about history - a rare thing indeed. This one was about the history of the bedroom, and in it I learnt that until quite recently people slept for a bit, then got up and did stuff, then had a second sleep. They obviously went to bed much earlier due to lack of light. And now people generally don't get nearly enough sleep as we insist on trying to run a 24-hour society.

Let's face it: history is rubbish. But when  Dr Lucy Worsley's cheeky smile and oddly coloured eyebrows appears on the TV there is a good chance I will put the remote down and keep watching. I might even learn something about history.

This all fits nicely with a factoid I have known for a long time: that we have two quanta of sleep at night, each lasting about four hours. Although we don't usually wake up in the middle of the night, we have two periods of deep sleep separated by a period of light sleep.

So, now I wake up at 4am and start thinking. Ah, it is that waking period between my two sleeps. It's perfectly natural for me to be awake now. I could maybe get up and read something or whatever. Hold on, it's 4am and I am wide awake - shit.

And before you know it I am too busy worrying about not sleeping to go to sleep.