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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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EPT
