*most of my references to polyphasic sleep are referring to the Uberman sleep pattern unless otherwise specified.
Pushing my limits has always been something that I crave. As a result when I found out about the Uberman sleep pattern I was quick to jump at my first opportunity with enough 'free' time to weather the transition phase. This first bout with polyphasic sleep will be described in a subsequent post.
For those that don't know, the Uberman Sleep pattern is one of many types of polyphasic sleep schedules (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep). Polyphasic sleep is any sleep schedule that requires the person to sleep multiple times in the same 24 hour period.
The majority of people fall into either monophasic sleepers or biphasic sleepers. Monophasic sleep is the typical all your sleep in one chunk at night. Biphasic sleep has a core sleep at night and then a nap (or siesta) sometime during the day when onset daytime drowsiness sets in.
So comes the questions
"Why go polyphasic?"
Well, the majority of polyphasic schedules allow for significantly reduced amounts of sleep. The Uberman schedule allows the user to sleep just 2 hours a day. This sleep is split up into 6 twenty minute blocks that happen every 4 hours. Another popular polyphasic schedule is called Everyman. Everyman can be much less intense as it allows for a longer core sleep at night. This core sleep usually ranges anywhere from 1.5-5.5 hours. As well there are usually 1-3 naps during the day that can range in length. This means that assuming you are transitioning from a suggested 8 hour night (cause we all know thats what the average person gets) Uberman will give you 6 extra waking hours a day, and Everyman will give you 2-5.5.
Although the extra waking hours are nice, unless you have some serious plans in the works its going to be hard to continuously fill that extra time with even semi-productive activities. Other reasons to go polyphasic include increased alertness and energy. While this might not seem right at first, if you think about it, it kind of makes sense. You are almost always in that just waking up state and never more than 3 hours and 40 minutes from another nap. So you should never fall into the mid day or post lunch sleepiness. I can confirm this from my first attempt. Once I was adapted I very rarely was tired going into a nap, instead it became something I had to do like charging my cellphone.
Finally for those that are interested in dreaming, many people claim that these sleep cycles give them more vivid dreams and more lucid dreams. This is because you are only sleeping for a short nap so your chance of remembering your dreams are much higher.
"Don't we need 8 hours of sleep"?
While it is true that 8 hours is the suggested time for monophasic sleepers, the same is not true in the polyphasic world. In a typical monophasic sleep cycle the sleeper goes through numerous stages of non-rem sleep before reaching rem (I am assuming if your reading a blog about polyphasic sleep and exercise that you at least have a vague understanding of sleep cycles and what rem is, if not, wiki and pretend to be an expert). Even then the first rem stage is usually very short with following stages getting longer in the night. Essentially what polyphasic sleep cycles do is remove the non essential(note its non essencial not non beneficial) stages of sleep. This means that on the Uberman schedule a person goes directly into Rem sleep rather than having to go through the other stages of sleep.
Increase free time.... more energy.... better dreams why the hell isn't everyone polyphasic?
Well there are unfortunately quite a few answers to this one. The most prominent being that it doesn't fit our monophasic culture. There are very few people who have the ability to take naps every 4 hours at work. As well you need a transition period of a couple of weeks where you don't have to do anything. This is because you are a zombie during the transition period. In order for you body to enter rem sleep directly you must become extremely sleep deprived. These first days are a testament to your self control and will. To be able to get out of a warm bed when thoroughly sleep deprived after only 20 minutes of sleep takes some real will power that not a lot of people have.
The schedule is also very inflexible especially at the beginning. You pretty much have to be hitting your naps every 4 hours give or take 20 minutes otherwise your transition period will be much longer. Once you are accustomed to the schedule you can start to shift the naps around, maybe place more closer to the night and fewer in the day. Still from the blogs I have read, most people can't have a gap of more than 5.5-6 hours without feeling the repercussions. I had 5 days after my transition period and I got up to a max of 7 hours between naps without negative repercussions.
One of the most famous and well blogged accounts of the Uberman sleep pattern was done by Steve Pavlina (http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep). He remained on the Uberman sleep pattern for just about 6 months before deciding to return. His reasoning
"The #1 reason I decided to call it quits is simply that the rest of the world is monophasic. If most of the world was polyphasic, I probably would have stuck with it. Obviously when you go polyphasic, you fall out of sync with the way other people live. You’re awake most of the night while everyone is asleep. If you sleep like most people, then the hours you’ll gain from polyphasic sleep will come in the middle of the night. And as I gradually learned, nighttime hours are not the same as daytime hours when you live in a monophasic world."
Steve Pavlina
I returned to monophasic sleep after just 15 days. My reasoning was that I was doing it in Hong Kong while on an exchange program and my life was no where near predictable enough to structure naps. As well you can't really party (drink or other drugs) as it will affect your naps. There was times where I would go out to the club at 10pm right after my nap. I would dance and have a couple beers, at 2am I would walk to McDonalds and nap for twenty minutes at a table, then return to the club making it home just before 6am for my last nap. The final reason I decided to quite was I didn't think I could work out. I knew that muscle recover was primarily done during sleep so any muscle tears would not have time to recover.
One of the main reasons I am doing this again is because I plan to find out if my final reason was correct. If so would a different polyphasic schedule allow at least moderate exercise. I will explain more about my plan and background on myself and my workouts in later posts.
A proper night's sleep is absolutely essential for our long-term health and mental well-being. But getting enough sleep - and sleep of the best quality - is a requirement we often fail to meet. Taking sleeping pills is both addictive and dangerous, while simple breathing or mental exercises just aren't effective for most of us. Sleep Tracker, however, can guide us down to a deep sleep amazingly well because it works in harmony with our natural sleep cycle app. For further information you can install this app.
ReplyDelete