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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2875 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for March 22, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

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This is something I deal with. (Since I'm still dealing with it, I might not be the best source of advice, but here we are.) I've read some pop-sci type articles that human are inclined to be bi-phasic sleepers and our monophasic sleep is a relatively new cultural practice/expectation. Anecdotally I find I tend towards bi-phasic sleep when I'm not on a schedule (backpacking trips, vacations, etc). I get sleepy in the evening, doze off for a few hours, wake up for a few hours sometime in the middle of the night, and then doze back off until just a little after dawn.

Things to consider to keep you asleep:

  1. What's your workload like right now? Are your days jam-packed? Even if you're not stressed, sometimes open mental loops will keep the brain distracted enough to wake up. Something something evolutionary psychology sabertooth tigers, I guess.

  2. Be aware of when you're intaking stimulants. Caffeine can last a while in the body so I normally cut off my caffeine intake (coffee, tea, soda, etc) somewhere around 1PM.

  3. Keep your bedroom as dark as humanly possible. Black-out curtains have made a world of different for me. (The city council recently decided all the streetlights needs to be the equivalent of automobile high beams, lest the criminals murder us all in our sleep.)

Things I've found that help me get back to sleep:

  1. Read something light and undemanding for a little while. I find about 20 minutes works for me.

  2. Ged out of bed and do something easy and mindless. Do the dishes you decided need to be soaked, pack a lunch for the next day, etc.

  3. Sleep on the couch or stretch out on the floor. Sometimes just the change of scenery helps. No idea why.

Humans are not naturally biphasic - direct sleep studies in modern hunter gatherers show they sleep mostly like we do, in a single 'phase', and for similar durations as modern humans. Biphasic sleep seems to be mostly a medieval Europe thing.

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