Now, it's not exactly news to most people that we don't generally lead a very natural lifestyle. You don't see many grizzly bears eating Super Noodles and watching X-Factor after all. Granted, some are more unnatural that others, particularly in the age of yummy mummies and green smoothies, but we're all, more or less, well outside the natural world. However, even if you were to adopt the whole crunchy-lentils-and-woven-hemp "natural" lifestyle, the chances are that you'd still be living a life so wildly different to the one we evolved to cope with. The modern world has given us a great many gifts, but there is definitely a reason why you're tired, fat and achey all the time and it has everything to do with modern living. This isn't to say that we should all give up lightbulbs, deodorant and bagels to go and live in caves or anything, but there's always the possibility that we could somehow get the best of both worlds. It never hurts to dream, right?
10. Sleeping Through
Speaking of dreaming, if you're getting your recommended eight hours of sleep a night, then you're doing it wrong. Turns out that getting a good chunk of shut-eye is not the way our bodies are designed to do things. The more natural human sleeping pattern is actually something called Segmented Sleep. With Segmented Sleep, you go to bed when it gets dark, sleep for four or five hours, then get up for a couple of hours, before going back to bed for a further four hours. Basically, evolution has perfectly adapted you to midnight feasts, so why on earth aren't we making the most of it? Well, this practice seems to have been completely commonplace throughout western society right up until the early 18th century, and still practiced less frequently as recently as the 1920s, and it would seem that our lighting is to blame. It used to be that if it got dark, then it was dark and you'd have to deal with it (usually by going to sleep). With the invention of artificial lighting, we can stay up until all hours. However, if you force people to turn out the lights at sundown, their sleeping patterns will naturally revert to Segmented Sleep. So, what do you do during your nocturnal free time? Well, one 16th century health manual recommended this as the perfect time for a bit of baby-making, and many others would get up, chat, smoke and read. People who practice segmented sleep nowadays do everything from paint, eat or even attend nocturnal yoga classes, but you could just use the time to catch up on whatever TV series you're marathoning at the moment.
