While residents of the Southwest, Mexico and Spain are no strangers to the midday ‘siesta’ prompted by high daytime temperatures, today’s industrial societies suffer by not having enough time in the day to do everything they feel is necessary and instead bank all their sleeping time at night, often cutting that time shorter than the recommend 8 hours.
However, the ‘First Sleep, Second Sleep’ practice was apparently well known to humans prior to the 17th century. The onset of industrialization and expansion to the New World caused a curb in in favor of a single 8-hour sleep period through the night supposedly to boost productivity during the day.
Hugh Pickens offers his summary of the phenomenon and recent studies showing how two sleep cycles a day can cure insomnia and improve your day-to-day life.