Jessica Gamble talks about sleep patterns and what a natural sleep pattern is.

When people are living without any sort of artificial light at all, they go sleep twice every night.

They go to bed around 8pm until midnight, and then again they sleep from about 2am until sunrise. And in between, they have a couple of hours of sort of meditative quiet in bed. And during this time, there is a surge of prolactin the likes of which a modern day never sees.

The people in these studies report feeling so awake during the day time that they realize they are feeling true wakefulness for the first time in their lives.

~ ted.com

A passage in Wikipedia seems to agree with these findings on natural human sleeping patterns.

Before the advent of electric lighting in Europe, sleepers awoke from their “first” sleep for an hour or more during the night, before returning to their “second” sleep.

~ wikipedia.org

Being someone with a circadian non-rhythm, I’m always intrigued by any studies related to sleep and wakefulness.

Leonardo Da Vinci supposedly adopted a four hour sleep pattern called polyphasic sleep. Sleeping only four hours at a time did nothing to hamper his creativity as he is known as one of the great artists and inventors of history.

I have just hit my winter sleep patterns. That is, I supposedly have to sleep for about 10 hours or more during the winter. Watching this video made me do some more research into this polyphasic sleep and I encountered this little passage in the Wikipedia entry:

One study suggests that during periods of short daylight (~10 hours, as in winter), humans will adopt a biphasic sleep pattern.

~ wikipedia.org

This would seem to corroborate my theory my body adjusts according to the seasons. My former roommates have always joked that “Dan’s going into winter hibernation mode.” But what that could mean, is that I’m going into biphasic sleep, 4 hours of sleep, 2 hours “awake” and 4 more asleep.

Strangely, while my body seemingly adjusts according to season, day and night makes no difference to my body.

Might sleep at 8pm tonight … maybe. :)