Extract:
I'm not sleeping as soundly as I used to before starting the paleo diet. I wake up as early as 4:30 in the morning, though I usually can go back to sleep. Anyone else notice sleep disturbances?
This pattern of sleep is called 'bimodal' or segmented sleep - this way of sleeping has been documented as the 'normal' sleep pattern of pre-industrialized societies, i.e. before electric lighting was invented. Typically, the body reverts to it after a week or so of going to bed when it gets dark and sleeping in pitch black all night (except for the three nights around the full moon).
For more Paleo hacks: http://paleohacks.com/questions/2509/anyone-getting-less-sleep-on-a-paleo-diet#ixzz1SPcCIo7a
Although it has not been documented, a paleo/primal diet may also help move the body back into a segmented sleeping pattern and you may find that this is what your body is trying to do, although, 4.30 a.m. sounds as if it is not quite there yet.
Here is another fascinating account of hunter/gatherer sleeping habits; studies on segmented sleep are cited in the last section (with this quotation from psychiatrist Thomas A. Wehr of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Md. who conducted the studies in 1993: "A natural human sleep pattern may reassert itself in an unwelcome world and get labeled as a disorder").
Bimodal sleep is composed of two periods of sleep during the night, with a wakeful (or half wakeful) hour or two in the middle. In medieval England, the first (or dead) sleep and the second (or morning) sleep was well-known and the wakefulness in between (named dorveille – meaning ‘twixt sleep and wake – in French) was highly valued for its meditative and semi-dreamstate qualities. This was the time of quiet conversation, love-making or dream interpretation and soothsaying; a period of deep contemplation that we, with our electric lighting and 24-hour lives have all but lost.So, to answer your question, you maybe feeling that you are not sleeping so well, but you should not feel any worse the wear for it, your body is probably trying to get back into its natural rhythm of two 'sleeps' per night, but - if you are still using electric lighting in the evening - cannot quite manage it. I would suggest using candlelight after dark, if it is at all possible, F.lux on your computer or just go to bed and wake earlier....(there is another paleohacks post about this subject) in fact, you will find that this maybe a chance to use a couple of hours during the night for meditation or something similar ;)
Until the modern era, up to an hour or more of quiet wakefulness midway through the night interrupted the rest of most Western Europeans, not just napping shepherds and slumbering woodsmen. Families rose from their beds to urinate, smoke tobacco, and even visit close neighbors. Remaining abed, many persons also made love, prayed, and, most important, reflected on the dreams that typically preceded waking from their “first sleep.” Not only were these visions unusually vivid, but their images would have intruded far less on conscious thought had sleepers not stirred until dawn...... ......In addition to suggesting that consolidated sleep, such as we today experience, is unnatural, segmented slumber afforded the unconscious an expanded avenue to the waking world that has remained closed for most of the Industrial Age.
`Sleep We Have Lost’ by A. Roger Ekirch
Here is another fascinating account of hunter/gatherer sleeping habits; studies on segmented sleep are cited in the last section (with this quotation from psychiatrist Thomas A. Wehr of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Md. who conducted the studies in 1993: "A natural human sleep pattern may reassert itself in an unwelcome world and get labeled as a disorder").
For more Paleo hacks: http://paleohacks.com/questions/2509/anyone-getting-less-sleep-on-a-paleo-diet#ixzz1SPcCIo7a
