Most of us go to bed at night and try to get our 8 hours of rest within one sleep cycle, but that hasn’t always been the case. “Over 300 years ago, biphasing sleep used to be the norm. People would consolidate their sleep overnight over two different periods,” said Lee Health Sleep Medicine Physician Dr. Jose Colon.

Even today, in some countries like Spain, the siesta or long afternoon nap is still common. “Normally after lunch our circadian system can have a lull, we can feel that tiredness,” said Dr. Colon.

Biphasing sleep is a term for breaking your rest up into two separate sleep phases. There can be some benefits, “Biphasic sleep can be helpful for some people who have different jobs, and circadian shift work disorders,” said Dr. Colon. With that being said, Dr. Colon doesn’t recommend it. “Typically, the best thing is to have onenight sleep to have one phase.”

For those who do work overnight shifts, “Sometimes we recommend people take what’s called an anchor nap, which is a nap of two hours prior to that shift,” said Dr. Colon. To learn more about biphasing sleep or to schedule a sleep consultation, search for sleep medicine on leehealth.org.



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Lee Health in Fort Myers, FL is the largest network of health care facilities in Southwest Florida and is highly respected for its expertise, innovation and quality of care. For more than 100 years, we’ve been providing our community with personalized preventative health services and primary care to highly specialized care services and robotic assisted surgeries. Lee Health Caring People. Inspiring Care.


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