4 ms·

This rings true for me too... in winter if I go to sleep when the sun sets I'll wake up around 12-4am and stay awake for an hour before being able to fall aslee

• mhurron 11y ago
  This is what I have begun to wonder about this interest in the old sleep pasterns. They're usually put forward as healthier or the way we evolved to sleep. It seems to me it is more simply a symptom of going to sleep very early because the sun went down. The sun is setting here at around 5:15 pm and rising at around 7:30. Twilight times are about half an hour more light around those times. If you're going to sleep around 6pm because the sun has gone down, you're probably not sleeping through until dawn which is 14 hours away. So you got up, did some stuff, it still wasn't light out, so you just went back to bed. It's not because it's healthier, or because you evolved to do so, it's because your source of light hasn't shown up yet. That changed with cheap electricity, because even candles weren't quite as convenient or cheap.
  • CPLX 11y ago
    Well in fairness the process of evolution would have had millions of years to optimize body cycles for the former scenario rather than the latter.
    • robotresearcher 11y ago
      Humans didn't live at high latitudes until only tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago. We might be better tuned to Equatorial cycles.