Here is how we are supposed to sleep, and did, before the modern job existed.
Segmented sleep, also known as divided sleep, bimodal sleep pattern, or interrupted sleep, is a polyphasic or biphasic sleep pattern where two or more periods of sleep are punctuated by a period of wakefulness. Along with a nap (siesta) in the day, it appears to be the natural pattern of human sleep. Maintaining such a sleep pattern may be important in regulating stress.
In Western civilization before the Industrial Revolution, segmented sleep was the dominant form of human slumber since time immemorial, according to A. Roger Ekirch, a historian at Virginia Tech. [...] Typically, individuals slept in two discrete phases, bridged by an intervening period of wakefulness of up to an hour or more.
[...]
The modern assumption that consolidated sleep with no awakenings is the normal and correct way for human adults to sleep may lead many people to approach their doctors with complaints of maintenance insomnia or other sleep disorders. Their concerns might best be addressed by assurance that their sleep conforms to historically natural sleep patterns.
Here’s another article on Ekirch’s research.
With this natural sleep considered aberrant now, drug companies to the rescue!
Bed is a medicine,” instructs an Italian proverb. Increasingly, Americans are inverting that counsel by ingesting sleeping pills to speed their slumber.
With complaints of insomnia mounting, and marketing by drug companies becoming ever more ubiquitous, we are turning in increasing numbers to drugs like Ambien and Lunesta. According to a recent report from the research company IMS Health, pharmacists in the United States filled some 42 million prescriptions for sleeping pills last year, a rise of nearly 60 percent since 2000.
Your employer wants you awake to make them money, drug companies want to sell you products to keep you sleeping or awake, and all you need is a little nap….zzzzzz
Found by Brother Uncle Don
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