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Hello TL,
I was wondering if I could have a moment of your time.
I’m a student at the University of Eindhoven and could really use your help.
I’m following a course on treating a problem in a scientific way. I think the subject is quite unknown to many of you and I think it will also at least intrigue most of you.
I’m sorry this is such a long post but I really want to not leave out to many details.
I wouldn’t dare post a topic in this general forum if I didn’t think you would care about this subject.
To solve my problem I’m wondering if you could answer some questions (polls down the post). In order to be able to answer the questions I will provide you with some information of my subject: Polyphasic sleep.
Here is an overview of this post:
1. Information about polyphasic sleep
2. The problem I’m trying to ‘solve’
3. Questions about polyphasic sleep
4. Closure
-1. Polyphasic sleep
+ Show Spoiler +There is more than one kind of sleeping patterns. On the one hand you have the monophasic sleeping pattern and on the other hand you have a variety of polyphasic patterns. Monophasic sleep means you sleep an amount of time (usually 6-8 hours a day) straight. While in a polyphasic sleeping pattern you sleep for short periods of time on set intervals. There also exists some kind of fusion of these two which most of you know as taking powernaps I guess. This pattern is however irrelevant to my research but can of course be discussed if you like. I’m now going to try giving you some more information about a polyphasic sleeping pattern which you should use to answer the question later in this thread. The following rules should be followed while using this pattern. -One should sleep every 4 hours for an amount of 20 minutes a period. Totaling up to 2 hours a day. One can postpone these naps for about 2 hours, but after this time you will rapidly get tired. Also caffeine and alcohol should mostly be avoided since it negatively affects your sleep. To understand this cycle I’ll tell something about sleep in general. You have several kinds of sleeping stages. But only one kind is useful. This one kind is called the REM sleep (Rapid eye movement and takes around 15-30 min) In a monophasic sleeping pattern you reach this state after 60 minutes of sleeping, enter it for some time and then return to the first fase (this repeats itself). Only the REM sleep is useful for getting ‘refreshed after sleeping’, so basically the other hour is wasted time. One needs about 6 REM cycles a day to reach full freshness. However the first fase of this sleep can be skipped by training, I.E only sleeping 30 minutes will after some time teach you to immediately reach REM sleep. The good thing about this is that the first fase (Called deep sleep) will never occur. In deep sleep the body starts shutting down internal processes. This causes the ‘sleepy feeling’ when waking up. So basicly Polyphasic sleep offers the following advantages. -One only gets REM sleep and doesn’t get the wasted deep sleep -One doesn’t wake up with a ‘sleepy feeling’ -One has 6 hours more a day -Time flows as a constant line instead of having these shifts of time wile sleeping. I do have to be fair and say that although this sleeping pattern is realistic and there are many people that have followed it. The effects of it on the really long term are yet to be known. I however assume for my research that there are no overcome able side effects. I will provide you with a source of someone who followed this pattern for half a year. http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/This is a blog and provides both the details about polyphasic sleep and a great first hand experience log. This man stopped his polyphasic pattern because of he was out of touch with the real world since everyone uses a monophasic sleeping pattern. This is where the problem I want to address rises.
-2. The problem
+ Show Spoiler +My problem is, and I quote from my essay outline:
Why is in the present almost everybody sleeping in a monophasic sleeping pattern, while a polyphasic sleeping pattern exists which reduces the amount of sleeping time by several hours a day?
I won’t give my proposed answers yet because these might influence the results of the poll. If you want to answer this question just see of it as a open question. I’m looking at this problem from a sociological way and I ask these questions under the assumption that advantages of polyphasic sleep are true and no yet unknown side effects occur.
-3 The questions.
+ Show Spoiler +Poll: Do you follow a polyhpasic sleeping pattern as described in section 1?( Vote): yes ( Vote): no Poll: Had you ever heard of polyphasic sleep before?( Vote): yes ( Vote): no ( Vote): Poll: Would you like 6 hours a day more( Vote): yes ( Vote): no The next questions was too long. by able to use it in your life im wondering if your work, study and other obligations would still allow you to follow this scedule. Poll: Do you think you would be able to use this pattern in your life( Vote): yes ( Vote): no ( Vote): Poll: Using your intuition do you believe this pattern is possible?( Vote): yes ( Vote): no ( Vote): Again this one was too long: Does your city where you live have places of entertainment and stores open 24/7 ?? Poll: Does your city where you live have places of entertainment and stores ( Vote): yes ( Vote): no ( Vote): Poll: Does polyphasic sleep seem like a good alternative to monophasic sleep( Vote): yes ( Vote): no ( Vote): yes=get up no=stay in Poll: If you wake up do you get out of bed immediately or stay in?( Vote): get up ( Vote): stay in ( Vote): Poll: Would you be worried about yet unknown side effects?( Vote): yes ( Vote): no ( Vote):
4- Closure.
I would like to thank everyone who filled in the questions. I hope I didn’t waste to much of your time. I hope you were interested in this subject and might even try it I myself am going to in the summer vacation since my own schedule wont allow me to do it during colleges. Maybe some interesting discusion about this pattern can start in the replys ?
If anyone has tried this pattern already I would like having a discussion with you are just your opinion on the pattern itself.
Thanks a lot 
Greetings,
Marradron.
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I'm sorry i made a mistake in the polls, Some questions wrere too long, and for some ive accidentily left open a 3 third blank option.
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Sydney2287 Posts
I have wanted to give polyphasic sleep a shot for a while now, friends and family have refused to help though (I doubt I can make the transition on my own tbh) because they think a) it's stupid and b) it's unhealthy. They don't have any real reasons beyond a gut feeling and the notion that it's not normal and that if it was better we'd be doing it already. I honestly don't know if it'll work out for me but I'd like to give it a shot nonetheless.
Also in regards to the polls in the OP, some are broken (have a 3rd link with no question value) and this one is poorly worded:
Poll: If you wake up do you get out of bed immediately or stay in?
(Vote): yes
(Vote): no
(Vote):
maybe remove 'or stay in' and replace it with 'when you wake up'.
EDIT: Looks like you beat me to the polls thing heh.
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I question your statement of REM being the only useful phase of sleep. Perhaps your research has uncovered something that mine didn't, but I didn't find it to be the case.
As for the problem, I believe it's sort of a catch-22. everyone sleeps monophase so you do it too. this is also the reason steve switched back as I'm sure you're aware since you have linked his blog. I imagine it's juts very hard to maintain the schedule. it's definitely not possible if you're working 9-5 unless you're willing to chat with you boss and make special demands like working longer in exchange for the nap time. and in this economy you wouldn't wanna risk your job, would you?
as a student, well it's just impossible. at least for me, my schedule is so hectic that there's no way i can just turn off society for a nap every few hours. <<edit, well come to think of it, that's not the case. i bet i could. it would just be rather inconvenient, and people in general seem to assume you're awake the whole day and schedule things as such.
fwiw, iirc babies naturally sleep in polyphase at first?
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On March 23 2009 08:26 JeeJee wrote:
I question your statement of REM being the only useful phase of sleep. Perhaps your research has uncovered something that mine didn't, but I didn't find it to be the case.
As for the problem, I believe it's sort of a catch-22. everyone sleeps monophase so you do it too. this is also the reason steve switched back as I'm sure you're aware since you have linked his blog. I imagine it's juts very hard to maintain the schedule. it's definitely not possible if you're working 9-5 unless you're willing to chat with you boss and make special demands like working longer in exchange for the nap time. and in this economy you wouldn't wanna risk your job, would you?
as a student, well it's just impossible. at least for me, my schedule is so hectic that there's no way i can just turn off society for a nap every few hours.
fwiw, iirc babies naturally sleep in polyphase at first?
Ive got my information mostly from the blog it linked. There it made that statement and from his expierience he was
- well rested after work out
-after adaption period not tired
-no negative sideeffects unil the end at arround 120 days i think
Though you might be correct, my post might not be 100% factually correct.
And yes, babies, and other annimals sleep polyphasic. I believe thats where people first got the idea of.
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JeeJee made a really good point about everyone being on a monophasic sleeping system. Unless I was overwhelmed with work there simply isn't a good reason for me to be awake at 4am on a normal night(day?) Obviously everyone else would be asleep and there isn't much to do except surf TL.
This would be a decent thing if you could do it for a little bit during finals week hehe
Edit: very informative post, good job. I had not heard of this before now.
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Netherlands6142 Posts
heh, reminds me of this, http://xkcd.com/320/
Anyway, I've filled out the questions but I think two of the polls are broken.
So um, you really just need sleep to get some REM going on? How about giving your eyes some rest? Or muscles? I was completely unawares of this. A major problem for me would be actually falling asleep. At the moment, at night, I just go to bed, get a book, read, notice the book is now on my face, remove it, shut the light and try to sleep. With the 20 min window I don't know if I'd fall asleep soon enough. Anyway, I used to work night shifts for a while and got 4 hours of sleep every day, which eventually was no problem.
Just thought of something You say you can train your body to go into REM immediately if your body notices you're only sleeping for 20 minutes and you need 6 REMs per day. If you just every night sleep for 3 hours, won't your body adapt to having 6 REMs in that span?
Anyway, interesting stuff, but don't let it leak out of the man will make us work even more t_t
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I dont think your body can learn to go to rem for 3 horus straight. As far as i know you can just skip the 60 minutes before rem and go to it instantly. After the REM you go to deep sleep. So actually sleeping longer than the needed 20 minutes will result in a tired feeling.
In my problem im trying to find the thing that causes the lack of sycnk between the monphasic people and the polyphasic people. Like is it just timeschedules that stop it from working or is there some problem with not believing it to be possible or just lacking the discipline.
I accidently made some mistakes on the polls but i eddited most now for clarity.
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meh  i really tried to get all errors out of the post but i made it in word and somehow i didnt notice some questions where not in poll code. i think all the questions are in there now just added the last one.
I'm going to go sleep now i'll check out if there are any more responses in the morning.
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Netherlands6142 Posts
oh cool read, cheers. I always thought it might work, since I'd heard about the 25 hours thing, but apparently it's a myth. Tbh, this might also cast serious doubt on the polyphasic sleep shenanigans. Like pointed out before, is it really only the REM? And to have one person in a blog as a reference... I dunno. We've seen our share of people bragging about their sleeping patterns
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Phase = fase.. How do you not see this from 'Poly-Phasic' sleep?
Btw, this shit doesn't work, I've been hearing about it on the net for a couple of years now at least. In the book 'The Game', by Neil strauss, Mystery and another guy were trying this out and found that after a few days they started drifting in and out of sleep just doing regular shit. They started babbling nonsense (day dreaming) and started to hallucinate if I'm not mistaken.
PS- I used to sleep 10-8 hours a day every day and stay up til daylight and sleep til like 4pm or whatever. The circadian rhythm would slowly get worse and worse until I wasn't tired til like 10am, and every month or so I would pull an all-nighter to reset me and fall asleep at like 10pm. It was a repeating cycle. Also When I would pull all-nighters I always noticed that the sun would drain me heavily in the daytime and as soon as dusk rolled around I felt not tired anymore, refreshed I could probably go a whole 'nother night without sleep. The Vitamin D metabolizing on the skin from the sun probably adds extra strain, I dunno.
Now in my adult life I regularly only get 5-6 hours of sleep and I'm fine.
PPS- I always wake up groggy as fuck, If I were to lay in bed for an extra hour maybe and wake up naturally instead of an alarm or whatever I would feel refreshed and probably hop out of bed instantly, instead of fighting to get out of bed. So OP's claim that all those extra hours of sleep are just waste is totally wrong.
There are different brain wave patterns that happen in each of the sleep phases. Some are short lived some are 100% manditory, others less so, but they will take their toll over time. Sleep deprivation is a form of torture you know? Guantanamo Bay Anyone?
Also If I'm not mistaken in war they give soldiers like 2 hour sleep watch patterns or something. You need like 90 minutes minimum to get a decent recharge. Don't you think that if polyphasic sleep was superior that all military would use it?
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On March 23 2009 08:36 JeeJee wrote:@pholon, that xkcd comic, i'm not sure whether you're aware or not, but there have been research done on that. i'm sure you know about circadian rhythms, and in fact, it doesn't work out. feel free to skim over http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/1999/07.15/bioclock24.html if you like
XKCD comics have alt text that you can see if you hover your mouse over the comic for a few seconds. This one's alt text is "Small print: this schedule will eventually drive one stark raving mad." So I'm guessing he knows that 
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My brother tried this and I helped him by waking him up every 20 minutes but he couldn't wake up
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You should take all the results images and separate them into a separate spoiler, so as not to affect the results.
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i was looking into this to try it myself... but I concluded that everyone that tried it was A) a hermit B) a lunatic C) both
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On March 23 2009 09:09 haz wrote:
i was looking into this to try it myself... but I concluded that everyone that tried it was A) a hermit B) a lunatic C) both
My friend/lab partner did it in college because of the large number of classes he was taking. I witnessed the whole thing. After the first couple weeks he seemed pretty coherent and normal. I asked him how it felt, and he said it was like having 6 hours of sleep, and it wasn't so bad because he had always just woken up from a nap.
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I answered your questions without two of them
"Does polyphasic sleep seem like a good alternative to monophasic sleep" -> I don't know since i havent tried the polyphasic sleep system yet
&
If you wake up do you get out of bed immediately or stay in? -> depends a lot. if it is a holiday day or i dont have to do anything too fast i will probably stay for a while, but if i am getting up for school or work lets say i will tend to get out of bed immediately.
btw this is a pretty interesting subject for me and probably could give it a shot in the summer time - when i have more free time and can spend more time at home. I don't know if i can adapt too fastly tho. If it is all about discipline i guess i could switch to polyph sleep pretty fast but i doubt so. I don't really have biological knowledge that much on the subject, but I intuitively guess that every human/body adapts differently from mono to polyphasical sleep. I also don't know if the monosleep is grounded so strong into our genes - thousands of years we are using monosleep system - that biologically would be better if we stay with it even if it is more time consuming... although it seems pretty nice idea to have +6 hours we gotta take into account that probably our better freshness and alertness (if they occur) will lead us to more bright thinking i guess which wouldn't leave us to fall asleep that fast into these 20-30min naps, thus accounting for +7-10 minutes x 6 a day which almost kills 1 hour of those 6. Also the number 6 , if we are speaking about polysleep for people that are 20+ aged, cannot be that certain too if the chart from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep is right and 20+ people need about 7-8hours of sleep a day, that means that if we sleep averagely 25 minutes x 6 a day + 5 minutes averagely to fall asleep x 6 that totals to 180 minutes which is 3 hours and the difference is 4 hours at best. But since i do not practice polysleep i cannot say anything for sure about that ^^
anyway i suppose that the benefits of 4 more hours won't overwhelm the social costs it will cause. I mean i try to imagine what would it be to have to sleep for 25 minutes every 4 hours... ofc about school scheduling it is obvious that we won't fit it perfectly and will experience problems with that. also if i wanna go out with friends or a gf somewhere outside and if it takes me 30minutes going and 30 minutes returning i will probably be short of time if there is nowhere i can sleep for 25 minutes... if the people i am seeing are like 1 street away it seems fine than, otherwise - not that lovely: ) i will end up not seeing people a lot more than usual ... that is if we consider that everybody around are using the monophasic system...
it becomes quite more interesting if more people - knowns and unknowns are using the polyphasic system way of sleeping. I found some information in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep about it and it seems that there are 5 systems of sleeping patterns...
Now i imagine a meeting - business/school/friends - which is consisted of 10+ people with different bodies adapting differently to one of the 5 sleeping systems... well the probability that in a 30 minute meeting 1-2 guys will have to sleep is pretty big... basically everybody will be sleeping anytime and everywhere ^^ if you want to call somebody you have to know his sleeping schedule thus making the communication (in years of developing sick communication technologies) a bit harder. for instance in the world now you know that a call after 23h can interrupt somebody while if everybody is using randomly the polyphasic sleep then there is no such hour and many more such things wont be the same.. that is if the use of polysleep is different for different people..
now what if everybody had exactly the same sleeping pattern and the same sleeping schedule... well i cannot imagine this because i think hardly millions of different bodies can be put up to one schedule and one sleeping pattern... probably people will be bringing with them wherever they go and whatever they do (if needed) a pocket-bed or everywhere will be possible to be taking that nap... From economical point of view that accounts to shitloads of bed production ^^ also the daylight is pretty important in lots of things which you just cannot do properly if you dont have one.. for instance a woman that is into real estate business for a long time in bulgaria once told me - never go to a house/apartament/land inspection with a customer when the sun is going down - they never will like it (or something like that) and this is probably the smallest example i can give : ) Thus it is pretty probable that we will have negative expectation in the longterm by implementing this system in many many spheres of life
if you read that post... you are a SICK HERO!
btw is the main thing you are studying at the uni Sociology?
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the uberman sleep cycle blows. You have to alter your schedule a butt load to take naps and you never reach the same deep sleep your brain needs. You also start to lose your sense of time.
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Trust me, it does NOT work well.
It's not worth wasting your time over (especially if you're in school or have shift work jobs).
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On March 23 2009 11:26 eshlow wrote:
Trust me, it does NOT work well.
It's not worth wasting your time over (especially if you're in school or have shift work jobs).
well for statements like these, it's usually common sense to put in some sort of self-qualification so that we may have a reason for trusting you. have you tried it? or have you extensively studied it? as of now your post holds little more value than me posting 'Trust me, it DOES work well.'
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the reason we engage in monophasic compared to polyphasic sleep should be obvious... evolutionarily, what's the point of being awake when it's dark out and our sense of sight sucks? The light/dark cycle is critically important for sleep rhythms. (We have an entire neural circuit devoted merely to light detection and circadian rhythms [retina - suprachiasmatic nucleus]).
Also, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss NREM sleep. In general, slow-wave sleep has been associated with an increase in ability with regard to episodic and semantic memory consolidation (while REM has been more associated with implicit memory consolidation). There are also important hormonal emissions linked to SWS (growth hormone, for one), so trying this as a teenager might be downright stupid.
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I think teenage sleep patterns change considerably. I remember needing to sleep over 12 hours a day to feel refreshed during some of my teenage years, and hardly needing to sleep at all during others. So teenagers may be a bad gauge of the preferability of sleep paterns.
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On March 23 2009 08:17 Marradron wrote:http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/This is a blog and provides both the details about polyphasic sleep and a great first hand experience log. This man stopped his polyphasic pattern because of he was out of touch with the real world since everyone uses a monophasic sleeping pattern. This is where the problem I want to address rises.
I read this blog a while ago, but from what I read, he had a lot of difficulty when it came to flexable sleep. This is the biggest problem faced by someone in polyphasic sleep that I see.
On my current 8 hours a night sleeping pattern, If need be, I can extend my awake time out to 30 hours before fatigue begins to be a problem. Steve said he had trouble extending his awake time out by 30 mins. Its just too difficult to live without that flexability which is what makes polyphasic sleep something that just wont work.
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Man is it just me or is TL filled with mostly intelligent people..Everytime i see a thread with an obnoxious title,there are bound to be answers :S
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It's a little scary how much you lose the concept of a "day" when you go by the polyphasic sleep pattern, and how much it really means to us. Regularly, you plan your days in the sense that "oh, today I am going to do this, and tomorrow I'll do that". This way, all your time just kind of meshes into one long never-ending day.
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over the past 5 years, i've attempted the hardcore polyphasic sleep pattern 3 times and failed all 3 times .
It doesn't work and there are some myths about it. first off, polyphasic sleep isn't all rem sleep. it's actually a speeded up version of normal sleep, like watching a sc replay in 4x instead of 1x. during the first 2 weeks of transition, your sleep phase will be completely random and chaotic. after 2 weeks, your sleep phase goes in the order of 1,2,3,4,rem, except very quickly.
stampi (the person who invented it) doesn't believe it works for long term. the only people who have ever done it under his supervision only do it for a few weeks at a time, and require months of time to recover. interestingly, stampi published a text book about a computer programmer who was on the schedule for 2 years. however, he doesn't release a name and there are no interviews, so that is mehh.
what i would suggest would be a biphasic sleep schedule. this one actually works. you reduce your daily sleep time to 6 hours (which stampi agrees to be the minimum amount of sleep necessary per 24 hour period to be awake and be sustainable over long periods of time). if you decide to do the biphasic sleep schedule, consider buying a sleep watch.
sleep watches monitor your sleep cycle while you are sleeping by recording things like pulse, blood pressure, breathing, etc etc. they wake you up only when you are at the end of REM, which is the best time to wake up. they go for like, 70$, but for students like me who always oversleep or undersleep so i'm always tired, they save my life.
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Oh ya, if you have any more questions of if you decide to do the biphasic sleep thing, feel free to pm me. i don't check threads after i post, hahaha.
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I think what you're describing is REM debt, mostly. After a while of not getting enough REM sleep your brain 'prioritizes' your sleep to try to offset the deficiency - leading to faster initiation of REM and a longer duration. The problem is you still have a lot of REM debt building up and you're not working nearly enough of it off (note that REM periods lengthen the longer you sleep in one sitting).
Also, and more importantly, the napping leads to a real lack of stage 4 or slow-wave sleep which can be problematic - your body takes advantage of this 'metabolic downtime' for anabolic processes like secreting GH. An extended period of time without slow wave sleep can lead to fybromyalgia among other health problems.
I'm not a sleep specialist but I'd stick to a regular sleep schedule.
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On March 23 2009 16:01 Mista wrote:
Man is it just me or is TL filled with mostly intelligent people..Everytime i see a thread with an obnoxious title,there are bound to be answers :S
DAMN RIGHT BITCH!!! hehe .
tlnet. winning the internet since world war 2.
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On March 23 2009 16:19 Equaoh wrote:
I think what you're describing is REM debt, mostly. After a while of not getting enough REM sleep your brain 'prioritizes' your sleep to try to offset the deficiency - leading to faster initiation of REM and a longer duration. The problem is you still have a lot of REM debt building up and you're not working nearly enough of it off (note that REM periods lengthen the longer you sleep in one sitting).
Also, and more importantly, the napping leads to a real lack of stage 4 or slow-wave sleep which can be problematic - your body takes advantage of this 'metabolic downtime' for anabolic processes like secreting GH. An extended period of time without slow wave sleep can lead to fybromyalgia among other health problems.
I'm not a sleep specialist but I'd stick to a regular sleep schedule.
yah ur right. stampi's textbook talked about rem debt. after the 2 week acclimation period, the sleep % divoted to rem goes up a bit, but still isn't nearly 100%. as i recall, it was something less than 50%. so in any case, it doesn't cover the rem debt, not that rem sleep is the only important sleep cycle. fuck polyphasic sleep.
now polyphasic orgasm, that's where it's at.
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I have real problems waking up if I don't sleep more than 8 hours. I don't know how I'd be able to do this.
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Biphasic works (afternoon nap 1.5~3 hours). You can reduce sleep to 6.5 hours / day average or maybe 6.5 hours one day 8 the next. Slight improvement over monophasic which is slightly less efficient.
Humans can sleep well both in biphasic monophasic schedules though so the difference isn't too large.
Humans can not sleep well in a polyphasic schedule - we have the ability for survival situations but otherwise it's just going to mess up too much of your stuff.
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On March 23 2009 16:19 Equaoh wrote:
Also, and more importantly, the napping leads to a real lack of stage 4 or slow-wave sleep which can be problematic - your body takes advantage of this 'metabolic downtime' for anabolic processes like secreting GH. An extended period of time without slow wave sleep can lead to fybromyalgia among other health problems.
This. I'm not sure if there are any conclusive studies but I remember reading from a few different sources that deep sleep is important for health, growth and recovery. Let me know how it turns out, though. Assuming no physical and mental health implications, an extra 6 hours a day would be awesome, I could easily work around the social inconveniences.
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Artosis
United States2140 Posts
i've actually done polyphasic sleep patterns in the past when practicing for WCG really hardcore in like 2004/2005. i doubt its very healthy, although at the time i felt totally fine on some weird "30 hour days" thing where i took 3 rotating naps of 3 hours a piece every 30 hours or so. i didnt do it exactly to a schedual, thats just what it worked out to. regardless i think you need to sleep the normal way to be really healthy.
ask nony though hes a sleep expert.
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I have mixed feelings about polyphasic sleep itself. On the one hand theres all these claims of you need this sleep you need that sleep. But on the other hand there are reports of people using this rythem succesfully for years. Maybe it just depends on the individuals and it is not suited for most of the people.
Also i believe many studys take conclusions to quickly after looking at it for the first few weeks. But i believe in these weeks the body and mind is still addapting to the change.
I dont believe there is really strong evidence it can be used succesfully for years. But i also believe there is a strong bias against it preventing any proper research.
For my class i made the assumption that it is actually healthy and i was more looking at why wouldnt it be the standard. is it:
a- the schedule doesnt fit in the timetables of people ?
b- People lack the discipline and or willpower to follow the pattern?
c- people dont know about the method or dont believe its a usable (healthy) pattern?
The course isnt to foccused on finding the right answer or even having the right problem. It is just about teaching use how to thread a real problem in a scientific way.
PS i study mechanical engeneering.
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I didn't read most of the comments, but I assume that the reason behind humans following monophasic sleep has to do with aggriculture, that people slept when it was dark because farm work couldn't be done then; an archaic left-over in culture much like how in most(?) American schools we get a long summer break, because when it was first setup kids would go work on the farm during summer etc. However, since the whole world follows monophasic sleep, the whole world works within a schedule which assumes a monophasic sleep pattern. So I guess retired and homeless people could try this out, but I dunno about everyone else.
Personally I hate naps. When I sleep without needing to get up at a certain time I usually sleep 10-12 hours at once, which is pretty wasteful, but I don't want to limit myself from sleeping if I need the sleep, and presumably(?) I need that much sleep if that's how long I sleep unbothered?
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i think Beast_BG did that for a while
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The whole polyphasic thing is absolutely retarded. You actually aren't really getting much REM sleep at all even once your body adjusts to it. When I did combat training with the Marines we only had 3 hours of sleep a night max for a month. The first few weeks sucked, but then we got used to it and it wasn't a big deal. Does that mean that three hours of sleep a night is fine and healthy? Of course not!
Go ahead and make the switch if you want to suck a few years off your life. Research has been done, and nothing supports this nonsense.
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Wow, this topic has had me reading stuff for like four hours. Polyphasic sleep looks really interesting, but I don't think I could be out of sync with the rest of the world, it would just be so inconvenient, and my schedule isn't very flexible, since I'm at university.
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I experimented with this awhile ago, I slept for 1.5 hours x 3 times a day - which is almost how much I would get regularly (5-6 hours) but the advantage of this is that you are able to get work done day and night. I still do this from time to time when I really need to get something done (studying for exams and giant projects), but I can only maintain it for a few days max before I start to accumulate a sleep debt. It's also not very practical for people who have to follow a set schedule because of work/school (most people) since it's not convenient to sleep on the job or in class. In the end it just comes down to the person, some people can function off less sleep in general and I'm sure some people could keep it up their whole life and be more productive because of it.
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On March 23 2009 16:19 Equaoh wrote:
I think what you're describing is REM debt, mostly. After a while of not getting enough REM sleep your brain 'prioritizes' your sleep to try to offset the deficiency - leading to faster initiation of REM and a longer duration. The problem is you still have a lot of REM debt building up and you're not working nearly enough of it off (note that REM periods lengthen the longer you sleep in one sitting).
Also, and more importantly, the napping leads to a real lack of stage 4 or slow-wave sleep which can be problematic - your body takes advantage of this 'metabolic downtime' for anabolic processes like secreting GH. An extended period of time without slow wave sleep can lead to fybromyalgia among other health problems.
I'm not a sleep specialist but I'd stick to a regular sleep schedule.
Then I guess polyphasic sleep is not a good option for those trying to gain weight. I'm try to get out of this gangly, frail 122 pound nerd body (12 of those pounds recently gained.)
Edit: I'm currently a university student, and I'd consider using this pattern too, since I'm already so consistently awake when others aren't. I'd be able to stay focused, and my class schedule (though 17 units) allows for this. I try to get 6-8 hours of sleep daily because I need any anabolic process that kicks in during long periods of sleep to happen. -.-v
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good old polyphasic sleep... I've actually done this myself a few times, mostly a summer two years ago where i did it for about 3months.
It was great and I would definitely do it again if it wasn't for the one major flaw; I had to eat SO MUCH MORE than usual, every 4hours i would basically need a whole meal. (too expensive). If I had loads of money I would do it again and never stop.
I always felt a load more awake (except the first few days when i felt so bad I couldnt think at all). Music sounded AMAZING, every one of my senses was just so insanely good.. I could see details loads more and i felt faster.
I played songs so well in guitar hero that i was failing so hard before (and after...)
If you can afford it and don't need to be awake for more than ~3hours and 45minutes then give it a go for sure. It's amazing, and each day feels like a week.
Oh yea, and the dreams.. wow... the dreams. Best dreams of my life every time i went to sleep.
I miss polyphasic T_T, but I can't afford all the food and i need to work for long periods of time now anyways.
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I can't seem to find the actual study but there were some experiments done involving regulating hormone levels in the brain (melatonin and orexin, i think?) such that patients didn't need to sleep at all and suffered no cognitive deficits.
They did need to eat a lot more, though.
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Wait, could someone explain in a simple, 14 year old kid way, this to me so I can try? Or is it not safe until I'm at least 20 or w.e?
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On March 23 2009 16:16 Polyphasic wrote:
sleep watches monitor your sleep cycle while you are sleeping by recording things like pulse, blood pressure, breathing, etc etc. they wake you up only when you are at the end of REM, which is the best time to wake up. they go for like, 70$, but for students like me who always oversleep or undersleep so i'm always tired, they save my life.
Didn't know that existed. Sounds fucking awesome.
Edit: Some models/brands to recommend?
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Im not sure how exactly your body would fast forward to REM sleep over time. I feel like thats a pattern/system that your body wouldnt be able to alter.
Polyphasic sleep seems very impractical. You can't expect an employer to allow two or three half hour naps during your 9 to 5 schedule. Also, I think the world would use a lot more of its resources if the world ran on a polyphasic schedule - imagine all of the newly demanded work hours and gross amounts of food consumed.
I'm for monophasic sleep.
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Polyphasic sleep is decent if you have control of your schedule but for the most part society is centered upon monophasic sleep
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Anyone else read the title as 'Polyphasic sheep?'
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i agree that too much sleep combined with the lack of sports is bad, since you get used to being sleepy, but my common sense tells me that regular of 7-8h is better for your body, because:
1) The body shutting down is important for regeneration
2) The body reacts to the day/night cyclus, making it natural to be awake at sunshine and sleepy at night. Interrupting this could give your body´s natural balance some problems
3) I guess man did always sleep at night for millions of years making it look to me like the most effective way in the long run.
Well, i got a question: Are there any animals who do take their sleep in several naps?
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Its sounds like it is possible, but it would require some natural selection, atm most alive humans are people completely adapted to a full cicle of sleep, and altho technology is changing that, 20 min naps every 4 hour require a lot of mastery to really work and not fuck you up.
So unless you are a fucking marine in a war, I say screw this, gimme my long sleep and my sweet dreams.
Nice topic tho
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I read some time back that this was not healthy at all. Over the course of one year, participants (who could even last that long in itself was amazing), experienced deteriorating health conditions. Many had increased blood pressure, less bone density, etc.
I think it's also extremely hard to dream with 20 minutes of sleep. Psychologists are starting to think that dreams help you re-organize everything in your brain. So if you don't dream, you start to become incoherent.
I may be wrong about some specifics, but it's been about 2 years or so since I've taken any psychology classes.
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On March 23 2009 09:05 il0seonpurpose wrote:
My brother tried this and I helped him by waking him up every 20 minutes but he couldn't wake up
Not surprised here. Whenever I feel tired and just want to 'lay down for a minute or two' and ask my wife/set the alarm to wake me up in 30min, I end up sleeping for 12-16hrs straight
Besides that I need to change my sleep pattern a lot (just need to change my job to a normal one) since what it is now is exactly what CharlieMurphy wrote on p1 of this thread...
Also, to stay on topic, some more reasons why people don't do polyphasic (apart from work/study and stuff):
1. Alcohol (everyone likes to parteeeeeey  )
2. Depression (due to loneliness at night and having to go through the night longer, why do you think like everyone in Iceland is perpetually depressed?)
3. Frustration (if you have no-one to go out with/talk to, no pizza delivery etc. at crazy hours during normal weekdays)
4. Boredom (you now have extra 6hrs to fill with some kind of mostly abnormal activities, no fun here)
On March 24 2009 00:50 bladebrood wrote:
It was great and I would definitely do it again if it wasn't for the one major flaw; I had to eat SO MUCH MORE than usual, every 4hours i would basically need a whole meal. (too expensive). If I had loads of money I would do it again and never stop.
That's because your body is substituting calories for sleep. That's how people working on fishing boats etc. go through 80hrs of hard work with maybe 2hrs of sleep.
Eat as much as you can as often as you can - you can stay awake for crazy amounts of time.
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I did polyphasic sleep for about nine months. I did an "everyman" pattern at first, 3 hours "core" sleep then 3x20 naps during the day. Later I moved to 4.5 core and 2x20.
I learned two things. One is that you have more crap interrupting you during the day than you think. (Hence my move to 2 naps. I just couldn't get 3 in consistently.) The other is that your body may have a natural sleeping time when sleeping is just more effective. Mine was about 9 PM to midnight -- I probably could have gone 3h + 2x20 on that. But, that was time that my wife did not want me sleeping. So it comes back to the schedule again.
I went back to monophasic when I started interviewing for a new job. I didn't think the companies would go for waiting for my nap, and I didn't want my brain to be fried from missing them either.
I'd like to do it again when my work schedule allows it again. The extra time is great, even if you are sleeping a lot more than the minimum 2h some people have gotten to. (I don't have a month to spend wasted trying to acclimatize to that. "everyman" is much gentler.)
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I did this for a bit more than 5 weeks a few years ago. It worked fine, I felt alert, but then I crashed for about 3 days straight when I stopped. Also, did not save extraordinary amounts of time for me in my case because maybe half an hour is spent before finding a party in Lineage II.
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On March 23 2009 12:08 JeeJee wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2009 11:26 eshlow wrote:
Trust me, it does NOT work well.
It's not worth wasting your time over (especially if you're in school or have shift work jobs). well for statements like these, it's usually common sense to put in some sort of self-qualification so that we may have a reason for trusting you. have you tried it? or have you extensively studied it? as of now your post holds little more value than me posting 'Trust me, it DOES work well.'
I have fairly "extensive" experience with biphasic and some everyman through college. Throws everything out of whack as I said especially if you're in school. I strongly recommend against anything other than monophasic.
Physiologically, sleep is a recharge time for your body... strongly anabolic. That's when a lot of hormones like growth hormone get released which are important for systemic repair. Decreasing sleep decreases the time spent (GH for example peaks in short wave sleep) and staying away tends to have elevated levels of cortisol (stress hormone). Decreased overall GH secretion and increased cortisol is related to senescence (aging). It "sounds" cool to get more time in the day, but it's just more stress on your body and makes it age "faster" biologically.
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United States3824 Posts
There was a study that was done where they put people in complete darkness for the night (like if they lived as cavemen) and noticed that they developed two sleep cycles. So maybe there is more to it than some people think.
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Anyone who is still in the developmental phases of life (early twenties or younger) shouldn't even attempt it.
I have only heard of it working long-term for people who took amphetamines, anyways. Polyphasic sleep is not natural. It just takes advantage of the brain's adaptability.
I think that 4-6 hours sleep/night, and a 1hour or so powernap during the day would be much better cycle.
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Don't forget that every human follows a polyphasic sleep pattern (babies) until their parents/society forces them into a schedule.
So it is pretty natural!
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On March 25 2009 03:12 bladebrood wrote:
Don't forget that every human follows a polyphasic sleep pattern (babies) until their parents/society forces them into a schedule.
So it is pretty natural!
wait a second. de ja vu.
was your post a joke?
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Seems like if I had enough money where I didin't have to work a fulltime job, I would adapt a polyphasic sleep system to open my world to having as much fun as possible. But I think that since most people have obligations to where they cant simply nap every 4 hours, this isn't really applicable. And even if it is, I don't think there would be enough people with this sleep cycle. So then the problem kind of becomes in the twilight hours, finding yourself bored.... And so it seems not really worth it to constantly be sleeping every 4 hours so that you will have more time awake, but there is nothing to do.
I also took psych 101, and if I remember...wasn't it like... your body sleeps with the intent of gaining proportional amounts of REM and DEEP sleep? So...say you have been taking several naps as such is explained in the polyphasic cylce...then eventually(long term) won't your body seek out deep sleep, and so your REM sleep would be skipped altogether and this sleep cycle would be counter productive because you would be taking 20 min naps of deep sleep, thus waking up exhausted? i dont know... seems like a optimistic idea to live your life more, but not totally applicable with the majority of most normal cultural perceptions of when you are suppose to sleep....
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Well i dont agree about it being not natural. there are animals that sleep in this kind of pattern.
ans also babies sleep polyphasic (though with much longer sleeping times)
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On March 25 2009 03:45 Marradron wrote:
Well i dont agree about it being not natural. there are animals that sleep in this kind of pattern.
ans also babies sleep polyphasic (though with much longer sleeping times)
what kind of argument is that? there are animals that do lots of stuff, it doesn't make it natural for humans to do it.
and comparing how babies sleep to this is just... silly.
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I believe someone at tl.net already tried this for a year and he said this was just not worth it.
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Also, isnt there a study that if you leave people in a place without clocks or any notion of the outside time, theyr bioclock goes to a 25 hour long day ?
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I haven't done uberman but I did try everyman earlier this year: sleeping 4am-7am, 12noon-12:20, 5:20-5:40, and 10:40-11. It took me about 3 days before I got to the point of sleeping and waking at the right times and I maintained it for around two weeks after that.
The adjustment period wasn't too bad. I'd feel a bit slowed down between 7am and noon but after the midday nap I'd be fine for the rest of the 'day'/night. Perhaps the wakefulness between 11pm and 4am was a result of my spending that time programming (bright screen + time vanishes).
Adjusting back to monophasic was terrible however. It took me nearly a week and a half before I could make it through the day without napping/feeling awful.
While the extra time in the day was pleasant I think the main benefit I got from it was having my day broken up so strongly into sections. Every so often I'll have a day where I'm not feeling particularly inspired and will just goof off reading the internet to see if anything has changed. With the nap based break, I'd tend to wake up and get back to work. So rather then lose an entire day I'd only lose a 5 hour window and still get 15 hours of useful stuff done. In the army you can follow a routine because someone is yelling at you, in polyphasic you can follow a routine because sleepiness is yelling at you.
In the end I stopped for a number of reasons, all of which were external. The pain of trying to nap at uni, a monophasic girlfriend and a "why risk mental illness?" mother. Additionally, while 22 hours a day sounds great on paper, I didn't perceive 20 hours a day to be all that much better then the normal 16.5. For the last couple of mornings I've been woken up to my alarm clock asking "Would you like an extra 30 minutes of awakeness today, or will you just keep sleeping?" and every time I've slept in.
One of your questions seemed to hint at going out clubbing late at night to pass the time and while I never tried it I'm not sure if it'd be worth the effort. For me that would mean stuffing around with buses on a hour round trip in and out of the city. Having to fit that all in within 3.5 hours between waking and sleeping. *shrug* It might have been more feasible in the 5-hour wake period version of everyman that I was doing, but again, I never tried. Under uberman you're forced to only do things for 2-3 hours or go to places which you can nap at. More time in the day but a smaller range of activities you can do during it.
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This sounds interesting especially because we just had a brief lesson on sleep during our states of consciousness unit in psychology.
It does sound like a cool idea but for many in normal school/job days it's pretty tough to try out. And I'm not sure if I could do it anyway. I generally take a long time to fall asleep unless I just don't go to bed until I can barely keep my eyes open.
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EPT
