Day 7:
I was getting kind of sleepy which would
sometimes happen from my 1-5 naps and today rather than slowing down and
just trying to keep myself awake I chose to add another 20 minute nap.
Before this nap I didn't really have any overly vivid dreams. I kind of
remember a few but nothing out of the ordinary. This 3am nap, though only lasting 15 minutes, allowed me to instantly become lucid. It has probably
been 4-5 months at least since the last time I had a lucid dream. As
well I woke up feeling extremely refreshed before the 20 minute alarm
went off. I am probably going to keep adding this nap because it made me
feel much better at night and hopefully it will allow me to continue becoming lucid in my dreams.
If this lucid dreaming
continues I am going to attempt something I have always wondered. Can
you learn something new in a dream. I am confident in my ability to consolidate knowledge and have insight to allow you to solve
problems in a dream, but can the acquisition of a totally new skill be learned in a dream. If I get the opportunity I am going to try to teach myself to juggle 4 balls at once. I have been able to do 3 for a long time but I am not able to do 4 and I have never practiced for any significant time or looked into how it can be most easily done.
The rest of the day I would say was the first day I felt true adaptation throughout. It felt just as natural for me to be up in the night as it did during the daylight. For this next week I am going to add full muay thai training. I still will not be lifting but plan to go to the gym in mornings just to keep my schedule on track and to stretch and sauna (which should help with the muscle recovery). As well this next week I am going to be recording in depth data in excel of my exercise, physical effects, diet, how i felt (tired or not), nap quality, and water intake. I will attach this to the blog at the end of the week in case anyone is interested in data or more in depth details.
What I've noticed this week:
So its been a week and my body has managed to keep itself together thus far. I assume I am pretty much through the adaptation phase. Like 90% of the time I feel like I would on a regular day with sleep except I am often more alert as I get nap breaks. Only once in a while at night do I feel waves of sleepiness and a strong urge to hibernate.
I am starting to accept the time dilation and altered consciousness effects now. What I am referring to is the fact that when you only take 20 minute naps you really don't have days but instead time flows continuously. As well this goes along with a perpetual awareness, the world wakes up and goes to sleep but I remain to observe. It's also pretty easy to get into a weird head space because of the number of hours you spend alone.
Other major changes in this first week are a difficulty controlling my core body temperature (though this has gotten much better in the past couple days). Swings in tiredness and sexual drive (always interesting feels like I am in high school again). Increased alertness during monotonous work. Increased muscle soreness.
Effects on diet and cravings. This I feel was the most interesting because I did not have these effects during my first attempt in Hong Kong. It seems like I now hang in a very delicate balance. This seems to have put my much more in tune with other things my body needs like proper nutrition. I crave healthy complex foods, I also am leaning towards raw food more and more. My current favorite thing to eat is spinach with blueberries and almonds. Before I started Uberman I ate rather healthy but it was because I knew I should rather than I craved it. Now my body actually wants these foods, its kinda like this
-is it food?
-is it healthy? (I get that this is fairly objective)
-is it within reach?
-why aren't you eating it?
At some point during this experiment I may become vegetarian for a while to see the effects that it has as well. I was interested in trying this because I read an article about how Carnivores need the most amount of sleep and it is taken usually at once, omnivores less, and herbivores the least with a sleep pattern that was more polyphasic. My complete lack of craving for alcohol or drugs was extremely interesting as well, even avoiding caffeine has not been difficult.
Overall I honestly feel healthy than before I started. I have more energy during the day and am starting to get it at night as well. I hope this continues and I get more accustomed to planning my days for 20 minute naps every 4 hours.
I will leave you with a quotation from the book I am reading which seems to be one of the very few well written and researched book on polyphasic sleep. To purchase a hard copy its something ridiculous like $200 but its available online free at the following url
http://sleepwarrior.com/Claudio_Stampi_-_Why_We_Nap.pdf
" the recuperative value of sleep on performance may not be linearly correlated with sleep duration; this is suggested by many studies presented in this volume. Indeed, even under sleep deprivation, short naps normally produce remarkable recuperative effects, disproportionate to their duration. Rather, nap recuperative power could be best represented by some sort of exponentially decaying (in time) function, providing high recuperative value at the beginning of sleep, which is gradually reduced (exponentially) as sleep continues. This function may be analogous, and perhaps parallel, to the exponential decay observed in delta wave (or SWS) activity during sleep (Feinberg, 1974; Borbely, 1982)."
- "Why We Nap" Claudio Stampi
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