It’s wonderful how redemptive a change in category can be. For instance, I used to be an insomniac. Insomnia is a pathology associated with a wide array of negative health outcomes. Recently, I learned that I can, if I choose, stop being an insomniac and become instead a “segmented sleeper.” It turns out the folk wisdom that we require eight consecutive unconscious hours is balderdash. Sleeping in spurts is every bit as restorative. I can’t tell you how happy that makes me. Now I am a committed practitioner of segmented sleep. Here’s how it goes:
I’m writing this on a Thursday. On Tuesday, I had a sleep segment that ran from roughly 2:45 a.m. through 3:34 a.m. My next sleep segment came on Wednesday, starting at about 3:07 a.m. and concluding at 4:28 a.m. Monday, I didn’t do as well, but I’m new at this.
Oddly, I’m not finding my segmented sleep much more refreshing than my insomnia was. I expect this is a psychological hangover from my insomniac days and will ebb as I gain experience. One of the advantages of segmented sleep is that, barring early appointments, you can force yourself to have it. What I mean is, when I was an insomniac, I was a defeatist, who at a certain hour would just throw in the towel. As a segmented sleeper, I will stay in bed until noon if I have to, to nab that one last segment of sleep. This works surprisingly well.
There are the dreams, of course. Second, or subsequent, sleep has a different quality from first sleep. I haven’t consulted a specialist about this, but I’m willing to bet that it isn’t deep-REM (rapid eye movement) sleep but something more along the lines of shallow-PHLEGM (phlegmatic eye movement) sleep. The dreams that come in this later sleep are disturbing. Not precisely nightmares, they’re naturalistic in an off way, and you always remember them when you wake up. Your dead friends and relatives appear, and they’re annoying. Often, there’s a big-box store. In this past week, I’ve been dreaming a lot about food, which raises the question: Am I hungry? Last night, I dreamt that, as a punishment for something, I had to stock miles of bookshelves with my books, which I numbered with a magic marker: one to five million. Suddenly I was a bridegroom and the wedding march had five million steps, only it was the wedding rehearsal, not the ceremony, and at the dinner there was the issue of not spilling food on the clothes, which were the wedding clothes. This meant I had to refrain from eating, though the food looked succulent, in a heavily sauced way. Again: hungry? Supposedly, when you dream about a wedding it means death, but . . . somebody else’s, right?
Whatever kinks still need to be ironed out, I’m very grateful to be a segmented sleeper, and now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take advantage of the recent discovery that eating salt is actually good for us.