Washington - Maybe we cannot blame late-night TV, internet surfing, midnight snacks, good books, work deadlines and other distractions of modern life for encroaching on our sleep.
Research has shown that people in isolated and technologically primitive African and South American cultures get no more sleep than the rest of us.
Scientists tracked 94 adults from the Tsimane people of Bolivia, Hadza people of Tanzania and San people of Namibia for a combined 1 165 days in the first study on the sleep patterns of people in foraging and hunting cultures.
They logged an average of six hours and 25 minutes of sleep daily, a figure near the low end of industrialised society averages. “The conclusion is not that they sleep less but that they very clearly do not sleep more, contrary to what has been assumed,” said UCLA psychiatry professor Jerome Siegel.
University of New Mexico anthropologist Gandhi Yetish said the research suggests eight hours of sleep, long touted as the ideal total, “may be a longer sleep duration than can be realistically expected”.
The Hadza and San are “hunter-gatherers” and the Tsimane are considered “hunter-horticulturalists,” growing some of their food.
Despite having no electric lights, they did not go to sleep at sundown, remaining awake more than three hours after sunset and awakening before sunrise. They rarely napped.
Their sleep durations were seasonal, with about six hours during summer and just under seven hours during winter.
Study participants wore small, wristband devices that tracked sleeping and waking times.
“I visited study participants in their homes each morning to conduct short, 10-minute interviews on their pre-bedtime activities, fatigue, dreams and other sleep-related issues,” said Yetish.
Reuters