A team of researchers led by Dr Christoph Nissen of the University Medical Centre, Freiburg, have been studying sleeping patterns in a Stone Age-style environment. Five volunteers spent two months in a settlement in southern Germany, living in huts, gathering their own food, and sleeping on brushwood and furs. They had no electricity, phones, running water, torches or candles. According to data collected from their sleep-tracking armbands, the participants slept an average of 1.8 hours more each night than they ordinarily would have done. According to Nissen and his team, whose findings have now been published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, these observations provide "evidence for the long-held belief that the absence of modern living conditions is associated with an earlier sleep phase and prolonged sleep duration."
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