Quote:
Polyphasic sleep involves taking multiple short sleep periods throughout the day instead of getting all your sleep in one long chunk. A popular form of polyphasic sleep, the Uberman sleep schedule, suggests that you sleep 20-30 minutes six times per day, with equally spaced naps every 4 hours around the clock. This means you’re only sleeping 2-3 hours per day. I’d previously heard of polyphasic sleep, but until now I hadn’t come across practical schedules that people seem to be reporting interesting results with.
How can this sleep schedule work? Supposedly it takes about a week to adjust to it. A normal sleep cycle is 90 minutes, and REM sleep occurs late in this cycle. REM is the most important phase of sleep, the one in which you experience dreams, and when deprived of REM for too long, you suffer serious negative consequences. Polyphasic sleep conditions your body to learn to enter REM sleep immediately when you begin sleeping instead of much later in the sleep cycle. So during the first week you experience sleep deprivation as your body learns to adapt to shorter sleep cycles, but after the adaptation you’ll feel fine, maybe even better than before.
How can this sleep schedule work? Supposedly it takes about a week to adjust to it. A normal sleep cycle is 90 minutes, and REM sleep occurs late in this cycle. REM is the most important phase of sleep, the one in which you experience dreams, and when deprived of REM for too long, you suffer serious negative consequences. Polyphasic sleep conditions your body to learn to enter REM sleep immediately when you begin sleeping instead of much later in the sleep cycle. So during the first week you experience sleep deprivation as your body learns to adapt to shorter sleep cycles, but after the adaptation you’ll feel fine, maybe even better than before.
The system Steve Pavlina is talking about above is the "Uberman" sleep schedule that he followed for 5 1/2 months in a detailed blog. Despite getting only 2-3 hours of sleep a day, he found himself fully awake and alert - as long as he followed the strict schedule requiring a nap every 3 1/2 to 4 hours. He said he quit in the end because "we live in a monophasic world" and he couldn't psychologically get adjusted to polyphasic. But during those months he had over 20 hours of "awake" time a day.
What I am looking to do is more of the "Everyman" polyphasic schedule; a longer nap of 3 hours a day, with 3 thirty minute naps through the day. The information can be found here and elaborated on the author's site here. Unlike the "Uberman" (which the author actually named back in 2000, apparently), this can be fitted to a 9-5 job like the one I work; the author herself claims to have been on this cycle almost continuously since 2009. It would still involve only 4 1/2 hours of sleep a day, meaning I would gain at least 3 extra hours and hopefully (if the testimonials can be believed) be less tired than nowadays, where I generally feel worn out after a long day at the office. The adjustment period is longer but the sleep-deprivation effects are lessened compared to "Uberman."
Now, all this could obviously be a joke. There are a few blogs I've found like those listed above detailing people having success and how they adapted to this kind of sleep pattern - and then there seem to be several dozen more that are all about failures. Furthermore, the "Puredoxyk" author admits to having sleep issues prior to trying the schedule (which is common in polyphasic sleep); and Steve Pavlina seems quite a bit eccentric. There's also a very detailed paper by Dr. Piotr Wozniak that attempts to explain how the entire concept has no scientific basis and anyone doing it and saying they are not sleep deprived is a liar or a mutant (both Puredoxyk and Pavlina have responses to this on their sites).
Anyway, it makes me curious. I'm thinking of taking some time off from work next month, and I thought adjusting to a polyphasic sleep pattern would be an interesting change. Anyone heard of this, tried it, or have any advice?
Edited, Apr 5th 2011 1:35pm by LockeColeMA
