Natural Sleeping patterns

[praenin]

Hey, it's been like a year since I posted here (my old user name was watersennin but I forgot that password and I deleted the email that went with that user name because it was hacked). Anyways, I got laid off recently and haven't had any real reason to wake up early so for like a month I was sleeping strange hours. I would sleep for about 4-5 hours wake up for like 2..ish hours then go back to sleep for another 2-4 hours and I felt great which I thought was weird but didn't really think to much about it. Then the other day I was watching something on history channel and they were talking about how pre-industrial revolution literature, from ancient time up until the 1800's, talked about people sleeping for a few hours then waking for 1 or 2 hours then went back to sleep for a few more hours. they even had names for these periods of time but I forget. Now that I'm working again I've been getting a good 8 to 9 hours of sleep straight through and I feel like crap when I wake up, really lethargic. My diet hasn't changed, I train a little bit less because I have to work now but I dont think thats why I'm lethargic when I wake up. So my question is does anyone know anything about "natural" sleeping patterns? I mean, I don't think we can ever know how "cavemen" slept but I'm sure there's something about "primitive" people's sleeping patterns some where, I just can't find it. I looked on google, although I admit it was a bit of a half ass search. So yeah anyone know anything about that?

[houmax]

Interesting, as a night worker I've thought of this before.

Cavemans guide to quality sleep...
http://www.sleepwarrior.com/the-cavemans-guide-to-quality-sleep

Experiment...
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/30/foer.php

[praenin]

Some interesting reads. It's strange that people went to a 48 hour cycle after being in the cave so long. I don't think I could make it in a cave for 6 months I'd go through sun withdraw, i get annoyed when I work 3rd shift and never see the sun that day.

[Sammage]

its good to read this post as I have been waking up in the night for a couple of hours and then dropping back to sleep again and i don't feel tired although i find it difficult to stay up late. For me its approx 5 hours, awake for 1-2 and sleep for another hour or so and i don't feel tired. i won't stress out about it so much now.

[Murphy86]

Hey, I am Just starting the caveman diet and I am also a shift worker. My turnaround from days to nights and back again can be very quick sometimes. I was just wondering how people thought was the best way to go about this diet in this situation?

Previously when working nights I would have my main meal an hour or so after waking up at around 1600 before going to work for 12 hrs and taken some food with me. I would not eat anything when I got home the following morning and just gone to bed.

With the caveman diet I was just going to follow the eating pattern after waking up and then have a large meal when I got home in the morning. This would mean I would be eating a large meal immediately before going to sleep. do you think this would be a problem?

[Lilnicki]

Well when you get to stage 3 you won't be having a big meal at the end of the day, so don't worry how you do things till then it's only temporary.

Nicki