Is it Possible that our Sleepy Quality Would have Actually Been Better if We Lived in a PreIndustrial Time?

The Preindustrial article by Jerome M. Siegel highlights a dominant cultural issue surrounding sleep health – which is the advent of first world luxuries and amenities – like electricity 24/7 and the internet.  The paper highlights an examination of sleep duration and timing as they are related to natural light, ambient temperature, and seasons in three still preindustrial cultures: those being the Hadza, Kalahari San, and the Tsimane.  The study found these societies’ sleep schedules to be fairly consistent with natural light – any changes being limited to perhaps changes daylight depending on the season.

For example, according to the study, the Tsimane and the San experience about an hour longer night’s sleep during the winter as compared to summer; this is not surprising because both of these groups live just far enough south of the Equator to feel the swing of season changes (15 and 20 degrees respectively).  What did surprise me however, a striking finding of the study, was that sleep patterns only minimally varied among these peoples – despite them being separated from each other by both some stretch of geography and by language, in other words totally separate aside from the unifying nature of their pre-industry culture.  Therefore, it can be inferred that such patterns are not in fact dictated by geographical location or culture by rather by the human condition (physiology).  If this conclusion is to be accurate, it would explain why even residents of “the city that never sleeps,” i.e. New York City, can hit that wall of bodily exhaustion without proper sleep health maintenance.

As a college student evaluating the information provided and analyzed in this article, I am not shocked about its findings related to circadian rhythm sleep patterns and artificial light, but am recommitted to my ongoing effort to “normalize” my sleep schedule, and get both a healthy quality and healthy quantity of sleep, like those in undeveloped countries or my ancestors.  Even my parents talk about their daily routines of no cell phones, finding entertainment outdoors only – coming home when it got dark, reading, and going to bed.  So even with artificial light, they still had a more “natural” sleep routine/ bed time, but today, with so many forms of stimulation that maintain the body’s alertness rather than naturally getting to sleep, we are (and this is a generalization) a pretty sleep-deprived generation…and I am very concerned for the next generation’s sleep health.

I commented on Ashley Zapata and Rachel Moore's blogs this week.