A new study examines the benefits of sleeping twice a day in shorter chunks instead of one long block, reports Today.
Melinda Jackson, a senior research fellow at Australia’s RMIT University, and Siobhan Banks, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Sleep Research at the University of South Australia, find that having two separate sleep periods provides “two periods of increased activity, creativity and alertness across the day, rather than having a long wake period where sleepiness builds up across the day and productivity wanes.”
The researchers also noted that having two sleep periods was once the norm at various points in history across the world.They quoted a passage from the 1840 Charles Dickens novel “Barnaby Rudge” where a character refers to his “first sleep” — which presumably came before losing limbs to dangerous factory machinery and inhaling soot — and then taking a second nap.
Jackson and Banks believe the Spaniards are on to something with their traditional siesta, a two- to three-hour lunch break taken at 2 p.m. typically used for a nap.
