The biological clock can affect lots of processes in the body but needs the information from light and dark to properly adjust. This means that the boundary between day and night is blurring. In effect, we can always leave the lights on. With artificial light, you can also see that the influences of the seasons are much less obvious as far as light is concerned. This also applies to people who see a lot of light before they go to sleep. ‘We know that working night shifts influences the biological clock and thus your health. A number of pilots have already been done and the first results are trickling in. We hope to be able to offer specific advice on the biological clock for the elderly, students and night-shift workers, for example, to help these people become healthier.’ The research will take six years in total. ‘At the end of the research programme, we hope that as a consortium we’ll have an impact on society. And that is fantastic to see,’ says Laura Kervezee. ‘At the moment we’ve been going for a year and are still in a bit of a start-up phase, but nearly all 25 researchers have started. The consortium comprises 12 projects and 25 young researchers. The coordinators of the consortium are Joke Meijer, Professor of Neurophysiology and head of the Circadian Clocks group at the LUMC, and Dr Laura Kervezee, a researcher at the LUMC. They share a goal: to understand how we can maintain a healthy biological clock in our modern 24-hour society. Corporate business people are now using sleep as one of their tools to increase productivity, using periods between meetings and business travels to get that needed nap.The BioClock Consortium is an interdisciplinary network of universities, civil society partners, local government and other stakeholders. Today, people are back to placing reverence on sleep because of its numerous health benefits and impact on productivity. In 1926, Ford adopted the eight-hour work and the 40-hour workweek, which became the regulation for all businesses everywhere. This increase in working hours led to early labor movements such as the eight-hour movement. In 1839, Thomas Edison invented the incandescent light bulb, which led to more extended workdays and a permanent end to segmented rest.īusinesses and people started prioritizing work and productivity over getting a good night’s rest. However, all these changed in the 19th century, at the peak of the Industrial Revolution. This sleeping pattern was most revered during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. During the period between the first and second sleep, people socialize quietly, pray, do chores, visit friends, and have sex. to 675 B.C., and this practice continued into the Renaissance. The earliest references to the segmented sleeping pattern were in Homer’s “The Odyssey,” dating back to about 725 B.C. This sleeping pattern changed when humans migrated to Europe, where they experienced longer nights, leading to segmented rest.

However, by observing hunter-gatherer groups in Tanzania, Bolivia, and Namibia, researchers discovered that early humans only slept for about 6.25 hours and rarely woke up during the night. Our understanding of how early humans sleep is limited, as there is little to no historical evidence of early hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies. And as we experience changes in civilization, human sleeping patterns also change, impacted by cultural shifts, migration, and technological advancements.

Since the beginning of human evolution, we have always needed sleep. Sleep is as much a part of the natural process as eating and breathing.

Biological clock