From drug company advertisements or commercial articles, modern people learn that interrupted sleep is among the most common sleep problems. However, did people in the past really sleep for 8 hours uninterrupted?

Perhaps that nocturnal awakenings aren't abnormal at all. What if they are the natural rhythm that your body gravitates toward?

31^st August 2021, Posted by Cynthia Y. C.

In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas A. Wehr, MD, a sleep scientist at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), found in an experiment that when 8 healthy men had their light/dark schedule shifted from their customary 16 hours of light and 8 hours of dark to a schedule in which they were exposed to 10 hours of light and plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day (durations of light and dark similar to the natural durations of day and night in winter) for a month, they developed a sleep pattern similar to that followed in the preindustrial era— segmented sleep. Participants gradually shifted to a routine of sleeping in two four-hour phases separated by about one or two hours of wakefulness.

In 2001, historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech published a seminal paper, drawn from 16 years of research, revealing a wealth of historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks.

Some examples of sleep patterns of historical persons: past U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson slept 4 hours per night and he compensated for this reduced sleep by taking a nap every day after lunch; British Prime Minister Mrs. Thatcher, Sir Churchill and inventor Edison slept 4-5 hours per night; Franklin, Bill Gates slept 7 hours a day; and Einstein slept 10-12 hours a day. Considering these references, we can say that sleep requirements vary from person to person. Not everyone needs 5 hours, 8 hours or 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. The contents above show that 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep is unnatural and was not observed in times past.

Today, some people seem to have adapted quite well to the eight-hour uninterrupted sleep, but most people are having hard time dealing with “irregular sleep-wake disorders”, as the modern world calls it. Many sleeping problems may have roots in the human body's natural preference for segmented sleep. However, our weighted blanket could be an auxiliary for individuals with sleep difficulties. It helps to fall asleep faster and improves sleep quality.

More and more researchers become interested in examining how well the weighted blanket actually works. From the growing volume of research, there’s budding evidence that it does help relieve anxiety. Professionals such as occupational therapists already have long used deep pressure touch to help calm their patients.

If you sleep with our weighted blanket and wake up at late night, try not to be anxious by avoiding thinking about “irregular sleep-wake disorders” or “money wasted”, just take this natural bi-modal sleep pattern easy and find some static activities to do like reading relaxing books or listening to relaxing music with WONAP weighted blanket during this interval.

Let our therapeutic weighted blanket calm your brain down by providing pressure to your body. And the static activity would help you to decompress and put your mental feet up instead of focusing on wrong things like feeling panic of the weight on you. By doing so, the interval is often enough to calm your brain down and help you get back to sleep again faster.