Study Reveals That We Are More Sleep Deprived Than Our Ancestors

A new study has revealed that although we sleep more than our ancestors, we are still sleep deprived.

Study author, UCLA Psychiatry Professor Jerome Siegel said “The bigger conclusion is not that they sleep less but that they very clearly do not sleep more, contrary to what has been assumed.

“The short sleep in these populations challenges the belief that sleep has been greatly reduced in the ‘modern world.

“This has important implications for the idea that we need to take sleeping pills because sleep has been reduced from its ‘natural level’ by the widespread use of electricity, TV, the Internet, and so on.”

The researchers reviewed the sleeping habits of three traditional human hunter-gatherer societies: the Hadza of Tanzania, the San of Namibia, and the Tsimane of Bolivia. They also recorded the sleeping habits of 94 individuals around the clock to collect data representing 1,165 days in all.

Siegel added that “Despite varying genetics, histories, and environments, we find that all three groups show a similar sleep organization, suggesting that they express core human sleep patterns, probably characteristic of pre-modern-era Homo sapiens.”