Would we sleep better – and feel more awake - if we slept more like our ancestors who followed their natural circadian rhythms rather than delaying sleep to scroll through a welter of social media posts, read one more page or work a little longer because electric lights allow us to?
Sleep therapist and scientist Dr Merijn van de Laar thinks so, joining a long line of those advocating for a return to simpler, more natural sleep practices. The difference is that van de Laar looks at sleep from an evolutionary perspective, drawing on years of research into personality, sleep, treating insomnia and his own experiences of chronic insomnia when he was in his 20s.
Studying the sleep patterns of modern-day hunter gatherers, like the Hadza of Tanzania, whose night-time routines aren’t ruled by technology and artificial light, has also been part of his research.
Van de Laar details his theories in the new book How to Sleep Like a Caveman: Ancient Wisdom for a Better Night’s Rest.
He’s upfront about acknowledging the chronic stress and social media, which keeps many of us awake in contemporary society, are things our ancestors didn’t have to deal with. At least not to the same extent. As he points out, a stress-free night’s kip when sabre-toothed tigers might be lurking outside your cave wasn’t always guaranteed either.
Despite our much-altered circumstances, van de Laar argues we can align modern habits with evolutionary sleep patterns through proper exposure to natural light, creating a serene sleep environment, improving sleep hygiene, and managing stress.
Stressing the critical role circadian rhythms (the body’s internal clock, which regulates sleep-wake cycles) van de Laar is a fan of getting natural light exposure during the day and avoiding bright screens at night. Here, we share van de Laar’s 12-point plan for how to get a better night’s sleep in 3 weeks:
1. Don’t believe everything you read or hear about sleep: Many things you think you know about sleep are probably incorrect and have to do with a distortion of reality due to problems with scientists not placing research data in their correct context, or with unscientifically substantiated cultural trends. Flashy, clickbaity, “newsworthy” media reports can further reduce the reliability of information about sleep that reaches us. If you read messages that say nothing about how sleep is measured, what exactly is measured, or how statements about causal relationships are substantiated, ignore them. [Van de Laar points out that How to Sleep Like a Caveman contains only the scientifically proven facts about sleep.]
2. Let go of the 8-hour rule: It is common to sleep between 5 hours 20 minutes and just over 7 hours, as objectively measured by actigraphy. To this you should add about 23 minutes because, generally, we tend to overestimate our own sleep. This means that an average good length of subjective sleep is between just under 6 hours and almost 7½ hours. However, this varies person to person - so you need to experiment to find your personal optimum sleep length.
3. Use a sleep diary to record your subjective sleep pattern over 3 weeks: This will give you an idea of how you think you are sleeping and allow you to compare it to how you feel. Don’t watch the clock while you are in bed, because it might lead to more restlessness. Instead, fill the diary in every morning for 3 weeks based on your perception of sleep. For people with insomnia, it is best to avoid smartwatches or apps to measure sleep because, for this group in particular, they are less reliable. Additionally, it can lead to increased sleeplessness because people with insomnia might focus too much on improving sleep scores, which creates more tension. Measure the effect of the other points of this sleep plan during these 3 weeks by using the sleep log and your daily functioning as a reference. [How to Sleep Like a Caveman includes a sleep diary.]
4. Discover your personal sleep needs: If you sleep fairly continuously but feel like you are getting too little sleep, you can extend your total bedtime a bit. If you continue to have restful nights and function better during the day or even feel less sleepy, you know you’re on the right track with your longer total bedtimes. If you are in bed a relatively long time and experience a lot of fragmented sleep while not feeling rested during the day, you might be oversleeping, in which case, shortening total bedtime might help you feel more alert and rested.
5. Examine your attitude towards lying awake at night: Realise that it is normal for us to lie awake at night. We have forgotten how to lie awake because, in industrialised countries, we are faced with higher sleep pressure due to shorter total bedtime. In a more natural situation, where even the best sleeper lies awake a lot (such as the Hadza), lying awake takes on a different and less problematic form. Also, make sure that you are not lying awake because of too much caffeine, nicotine or other stimulants.
6. Shorter total bedtimes might be better: Insomnia is more of a wake problem than a sleep problem - it is mainly not even about lying awake, but about how you lie awake at night. Awake time is only a problem if it’s restless or anxious. If you find yourself regularly awake and restless in the night, institute a shorter total bedtime to increase sleep pressure. The goal at first is not to sleep better, but to have shorter periods of restless wake. This is how you break the negative circle of insomnia.
7. Focus on the reason for lying awake rather than on the reason for not sleeping: Stress causes us to have more restless nights. This can manifest itself in lying awake more in terms of duration, but also in lying awake more restlessly. Don’t ask yourself why you don’t sleep but rather examine why you lie awake so restlessly.
8. Reduce stress: To reduce daytime or nocturnal stress, use mindfulness or relaxation exercises, but also look at structural stressors in your life and remember that you often have a choice in how you allow those things to become a predator of your night.
9. Keep regular bedtimes: The basis of our sleep is a strong circadian rhythm. Strongly varying the time at which you go to bed is not supportive, so keep a regular rhythm in bedtimes.
10. Follow the rules of nature: Reconnect with nature and use natural light during the day and less (artificial) light in the evening. Create an ambient temperature drop in the evening. Even thinking about nature can help you achieve better relaxation. Use your body in a natural way by doing exercise and walking (preferably in nature).
11. Respect your personal circadian rhythm: Skip the 6am exercise class if it does not fit with your natural circadian rhythm. Try to find out what your biologically determined day-night rhythm is and try to follow it as much as possible.
12. Don’t tempt the night-time ghosts: Realise that nightmares and sleepwalking probably have an evolutionary basis and that sufficient rest during the day, removing stressors at night, and keeping sufficiently long total bedtimes can help you reduce the symptoms.
