Sleeping Like Our Ancestors

by Kaiden Tran, Features Editor

Fernando Hurtado, NBCLX

Most people get at least six hours of straight sleep every night. However, before the invention of the lightbulb by Thomas Edison in 1879, society used to wake up every night for about an hour for some leisure time before going through another block of sleep.

In 2005, sleep professor Roger Ekirch published his findings that humans actually slept in two separate blocks everyday (“A Day’s Close”). The blocks of sleep were usually about three to four hours in length which would then equal the usual eight hours of recommended sleep once combined.

“The vast majority experienced what is referred to as a segmented or biphasic pattern of sleep,” Ekirch said.

The hour that people stay awake would consist of various activities, partiucularly sex, because research from the time stated how efficient it was to conceive after the first sleep. Other usual activities during this time were talking with neighbors and meditation.

Curious about these findings, NBCLX reporter Fernando Hurtado attempted the challenge to sleep like our ancestors. He began on Friday, January 8, the same week as the US capitol attacks, meaning he was even more pressured and tired from his work than usual.

Hurtado set his boundaries for this challenge; he would initially go to bed at 11 p.m. and finish his first sleep at 3:30 a.m., returning back to bed at 4:30 a.m. While awake, he would not do anything that included technology as the light from the screens would make it difficult to go back to sleep later on.

On his first night with the segmented sleep, he spent his free hour reading, which in turn got him feeling drowsy so he transitioned over to shaving and housework which only lasted 30 minutes. He spent the remaining time with his cat until 4:30 hit. Throughout the week, Hurtado recalls not having felt a difference in energy level; there was neither a drop nor an increase with the new sleep regimen.

“I think the fact that I was still averaging eight hours of sleep total was helping with that,” Hurtado said.

Hurtado reached out to another person who had undergone segmented sleep, however it was on accident. Peter Papathanasiou went through segmented sleep after the birth of his firstborn because of the infant’s tendency to scream and cry in the middle of the night.

“At the same time as my son was nodding off, I found myself nodding off,” Papathanasiou said. “And then before you know it, you wake up and it's 11 o'clock or midnight.”

After Hurtado’s conversation with Papathanasiou, he decided to extend the schedule to a month: the same amount of time Papathanasiou stated it took to fall into a pattern.

However, throughout the month, Hurtado did not even wake up on most of the days and would usually snooze his alarm when he did. Additionally, during his month of adjusting to the schedule would be former U.S. President Donald Trump’s impeachment making life much more difficult due to his job as a journalist.

Ultimately, Hurtado found the worthless difficulty in trying to force an adjustment to this lifestyle choice. Along with his stressful career as a journalist, segmented sleep did not seem to compliment his life.

However, he has laid down five (really three) tips if you do want to try: Don’t. In any case, his actual advice would first be to consult a medical professional beforehand, to drink a lot of water before going to bed so you can force yourself to go to the bathroom every night, and to start the first sleep at the same time every night.