Sleep - What works for you?

[Ross]

I've been messing around with sleep schedules for the past year or so. Ever since I heard about polyphasic sleeping, I've been fascinated with the idea of getting less sleep and getting more done!

For the unfamiliar, polyphasic sleeping is sleeping in more than one segment (known as monophasic) in any given day. A blog post hit the internet around 2001 where a woman with many sleeping problems decided to mess around with her sleeping, which led her to operate on naps leading up to only 2 hours of sleep a day! Leaving 22 hours of productivity, this sounds very alluring. The idea is that you enter straight into the REM and deep sleep phases of sleeping during these naps, which were believed to be the only useful ones (not true).

The problem is, her genetics allow for this, and an estimated 2% of us have the genetic malfunction that allows for only 2 hours of sleep in a day. So, for most of us, this isn't going to work.

But me being the naive guy and believing in the "anything is possible" mantra led me to a very messed up sleeping schedule. I would try and follow this model, only to fall into sleep during a nap and never wake up. Frustrated, I tried again and again. Eventually I gave up because my summer was getting really screwed up by my extremely messy sleep habits.

It wasn't until I found this website http://www.polyphasicsociety.com/ that I was able to understand the scientific process of sleep and understand that I needed a bare minimum of 3 hours of sleep. Science is abundant on this website, as are tips from experienced people. There are many, many different sleep schedules on here to suit anyone's needs. So if you are looking to gain some extra time, this is your website. It's definitely worth a look at.

I started out going for the everyman schedule, but I never learned to properly nap so I wouldn't be able to wake up from those naps. If you want to learn to nap, you need to do this with someone else. No one that I've approached has been as willing as I have to do this, so it's understandable that I've never learned. If you can get someone to learn how to nap with you and perhaps follow this same schedule, definitely do it.

Currently I am sleeping on a segmented schedule with 3.5 hours of sleep at night, going to a morning class, and then 3 hours of sleep before noon. The only problem is that I sometimes will fall out of whack and fall asleep after a workout, so I am obviously not getting enough sleep. Tried working with napping, but I never learned how to do that so I never wake up from my naps until 3 hours later. I'm in this mostly for health benefits rather than gaining time (which is inevitable with a proper sleep schedule, as more productivity trumps more time any day), so I'm not too concerned about learning to REM nap.

Any questions, comments, or experiences are appreciated; I made this thread to spread the knowledge of polyphasic sleeping and how it can benefit your lifestyle. I know how most of us are extremely self-improvement oriented, so it just made sense. Really take time to look at this website that I linked to earlier; it's the best resource on the subject of sleep that I've ever seen: http://www.polyphasicsociety.com/

 

[trashKENNUT]

I feel that power naps seems to work for me though. Traditional sleep seems boring to me by day. Workout, Sleep, Work, Sleep, Other things

Zac

 

[Garrett]

Ross,

I've experimented in the past with this and the most logical way to go about your sleep patterns is this... set your alarm at the same time every morning but go to bed at different times.

Only a very small % of the population is able to get by on barely any sleep, yet still function optimally (they're pretty much never tired). I get what you're saying about sleeping less and getting more done, but sleep is a need/requirement for all of us, and not something you can chince out of. Sleep, like food, water, and sex, is a biological requirement, and when people don't get enough of it, especially REM sleep, they tend to go a bit hysterical.If you want to get more done, eat healthier foods, sleep more, have fun, work hard, and basically keep your life balanced while taking care of all your other needs (social, hygiene, leisure, work).

As to my suggestion above, somedays you'll be really tired, others you won't. Your brain works by formulating patterns, so if you set your alarm at the same time every morning, you'll get used to it. Also, you're tired at different times everynight, maybe if you develop a pattern you'll get tired around the same time, but if you do a huge workout and go to work one day and the next day you have off, you'll be less tired the second day, so you shouldn't force yourself to go to sleep at certain times. Go to sleep when you're tired and wakeup at the same time every morning.

Say you wake up every morning at like 10am, but you want to be able to wake up at 6am. What you need to do is change your sleep schedule by 15-30minutes per week, so this week wakeup at 10, next week 9:30, then 9:00 the following week, until you meet your desired wakeup time. Say you have a late night partying and get home at 2am but your sleep schedule is to wakeup at 6am. As punishment, don't sleep in, so you'll stay tired the next day, therefore unproductive, and next time there's a party you'll go home earlier. That's negative reinforcement, and it'll cut out your late nights if you force yourself to getup at the same time that you've set.

Hope that helped,
Garrett

 

[Ross]

I feel that power naps seems to work for me though. Traditional sleep seems boring to me by day. Workout, Sleep, Work, Sleep, Other things

Yeah.. I used to power nap quite frequently before I did all of this messing around with my schedules.

I've experimented in the past with this and the most logical way to go about your sleep patterns is this... set your alarm at the same time every morning but go to bed at different times.

I know you mean well Garrett, but that's the mainstream sleep advice that I've come to know doesn't scientifically make sense.

I get what you're saying about sleeping less and getting more done, but sleep is a need/requirement for all of us, and not something you can chince out of.

It is perfectly healthy and an option to get by on just 4.5 hours of sleep with little to no health problems, as well as an increase in hormone regulation by the release of prolactin that is typically avoided by people who just sleep in a single segment. It is completely natural to sleep in more than one period, as if you take away unnatural light sources (white or blue light), the body shifts into biphasic sleep. You will fall asleep a little bit after the sun goes down, wake up in the middle of the night and perhaps toss and turn a little, and then resume sleep again. It's a natural phenomenon; not based on someone's "logic."

Biphasic is referenced in history before these white and blue light sources were around. Homer's the Odyssey refers to one awakening from his "first sleep", which acknowledges that there must be more than one sleep. Recent studies confirm this as people who were denied access to blue and white light during the night hours fell asleep far sooner, woke up in the night, and then fell asleep again to be then woken up by sunrise. Biological functions of humans > very loosely correlated studies.

Sleep, like food, water, and sex, is a biological requirement, and when people don't get enough of it, especially REM sleep, they tend to go a bit hysterical.

Agreed.

If you want to get more done, eat healthier foods, sleep more, have fun, work hard, and basically keep your life balanced while taking care of all your other needs (social, hygiene, leisure, work).

Excess sleep results in higher mortality rates.. Not sure if this has a quasi-explanation or not, but generally speaking too much sleep will leave you groggy and tired throughout the day.

Go to sleep when you're tired and wakeup at the same time every morning.

I do believe I read this same article a while back; this can work, the problem with it is that exposure to light can dramatically increase the amount of time you have before you grow tired. The body operates in daily (circadian) rhythms, so changing around the times that you sleep constantly isn't going to feel so nice the next morning. Trust me, I've tried that whole thing and it still lead to me being tired all morning long; I woke up at 5:45am nearly every single day for a year, and was still tired in the mornings even though I went to bed when I felt tired.

The body truly only needs 90 minutes of slow-wave sleep (abbreviated SWS or deep sleep) and 120 minutes of REM sleep for optimal health in an adult. Take an average cycle of 90 minutes, which includes around 20 minutes of deep sleep and ~25 minutes of REM, and then multiply that by the 5 needed, and you get 7 hours and 30 minutes of sleep. Deep sleep usually occurs more in the first cycles, while REM sleep is longer in the later cycles. Thanks to sleep repartitioning, it is possible to train your body to speed through the stages and go into a REM sleep almost immediately after falling asleep.

Using a Zeo, you can measure this:

This is a core nap taken from about 9pm to 12:30 am. When taken earlier in the night, the deep sleep quota is made, with an hour of REM used. Through the use of 3 naps that are 20 minutes, you will gain the additional hour of REM sleep needed for optimal efficiency.

As for the reason that my sleep isn't optimal, I tried messing with the timing of my sleeping but I really need to only sleep during the night hours to completely avoid the erratic nature that long daytime sleeping has.

 

[Garrett]

I forgot to take REM sleep into consideration... Thanks Ross!

Is there any way you can explain your theory in simpler terms? From my interpretation, you're going to sleep for 4.5 hours then taking a 3 hour power nap. 7.5 hours... how does this differ from everyone else? My interpretation could be off. I understand the concept of REM and all, but I don't fully understand the process you are advocating...

Cheers,
Garrett

 

[Ross]

I forgot to take REM sleep into consideration... Thanks Ross!

Is there any way you can explain your theory in simpler terms? From my interpretation, you're going to sleep for 4.5 hours then taking a 3 hour power nap. 7.5 hours... how does this differ from everyone else? My interpretation could be off. I understand the concept of REM and all, but I don't fully understand the process you are advocating...

Cheers,
Garrett

There's plenty of ways to polyphasic sleep. Basically you need a couple of hours of REM, then about 90 minutes of deep sleep. Get those and you're golden.

When I was talking about 4.5 hours of sleep, I didn't mean all of that in one segment. That's through an entire day. In the model that showed 3:30 hours of sleep, that was the only continuous sleep without waking. A typical schedule that uses a 3.5 hour sleep and includes REM naps for the rest of the day would look like this:

9:00pm-12:30am : Sleep
4:10am-4:30am : Sleep
8:10am-8:30am : Sleep
2:10pm-2:30pm : Sleep

This is ideal because in the circadian rhythm deep sleep occurs most during the early hours of the night, while REM occurs most efficiently right before daylight. Note that I am not currently using this model as learning to REM nap takes assistance as you will not wake-up with an alarm when trying to sleep for only 20 minutes; you need a human to wake you up until you adjust. I cannot follow this because my naps will always result in longer sleeps, throwing off my rhythm.

The schedule that I used to use:

3:30am-7:00am : Sleep
8:00am : Class
10:00am-12:30pm: Sleep

I was getting enough REM, but my deep sleep wasn't optimal and as a result I felt extremely tired. I could learn perfectly fine and retain memory, I just had no motivation to do it.

I used this model last night and am going to try and maintain it:

9:00pm-1:00am : Sleep
3:00am-7:00am : Sleep

I'll probably end up getting 1:15 of deep and 30 minutes of REM in the first segment, followed by 30 minutes of deep and 2:00 in REM in the second sleep. Most models for sleep cycles are averages; it's very rare that you'll see a person have the commonly talked about 90 minute sleep cycle. The only time you'll get even close is in the middle of the night. Also note that the younger you are, the more you are going to need. I need more sleep because I am still young (18) and I started puberty a tad later than most (14). I honestly feel like I'm finished with it (people say I sound like I'm 30 and I've been 6'3 for the past year).

 

[illmatic]

Hey Ross,

Really insightful stuff on this and something I've been fascinated with myself. Anything for optimal performance, really.

I haven't gone through the website you linked to yet but I've read your posts and I'm a little confused.

- Isn't REM a phase you enter into after having dozed for a specific number of hours in one session...meaning in say a 7 hour sleep session, you enter into REM around the 5th or 6th hour thereabout? Your piece suggested being able to automatically induce REM sleep. Please expatiate.
- Also, I know you are a fitness dude too...so how does this affect rest necessary for muscle growth? It's been widely stated that muscle growth occurs during sleep and that one needs at least 7 hours of undeterred sleep. So how does this occur with this reduced sleep thingy.
- Does dozing off in a bus or on the train count as part of the overall nap time?
- Your last post on this thread was a while ago. So any updates you have - theory, your experience etc - please share. Really interested.

I've read that too much sleep reduces your life span and personally, when I sleep for too long and in not too cool conditions, I wake up with my head banging. So, this could really change things for me. Cheers, man.

 

[Ross]

- Isn't REM a phase you enter into after having dozed for a specific number of hours in one session...meaning in say a 7 hour sleep session, you enter into REM around the 5th or 6th hour thereabout? Your piece suggested being able to automatically induce REM sleep. Please expatiate.

In the typical 8 hour sleep session, you have a different architecture of sleep periods. While the average sleep cycle is 90 minutes long, this does not hold true to every single sleep cycle. Your body operates on a circadian rhythm, and thus gets different amounts at different times. Typically, towards the beginning of the night you have a longer slow-wave sleep cycle, and towards the end of the night you have longer rem sleep cycles.

Naps are quite tricky. Slow-wave sleep can really only be gotten in large quantities towards the beginning of a larger sleep cycle. Trying to compress them into 30 minute naps hasn't really worked out too well. When you are REM-deficient, you are going to catch up on that REM sleep during the nap. The body shuttles through light sleep periods and provides an inclusive REM sleep. To better explain this phenomenon, I suggest remembering the last time you took a nap in the middle of the day. Typically, if you are getting REM sleep, you have dreams. I almost always have a lucid dream during the middle of a mid-day nap.

Typical sleep "science" doesn't go very far. Almost every single person out there believes that we operate in 90 minute cycles that are constantly equal, and therefore we all need to sleep 7:30-9 hours a night for optimal health. Actual experiments say quite differently; most people wake up in the middle of the night if they try to go to bed early. You get more SWS between the hours of 9 and 12 am than you do between 3am and 6am. Hook up a delta-wave capture machine if you don't believe me .

 

[Richard]

Rem sleep, ohhhh psychology how I love thee.

Lol, anyway Ross, in your 4.5 hours of sleep at different daily intervals, what specific type of sleep are you aiming for? Generally, REM sleep has about 5 stages, so what is it you're specifically looking to do?

And also, can you train yourself to "nap" and automatically go into stages of sleep?

I'm actually quite interested in this!

-Rich

 

[Ross]

http://www.polyphasicsociety.com/polyph ... titioning/

Beware; this information directly contradicts popular psychology's theory on sleep. But it also has more testing than a simple reading of multiple monophasic sleep cycle graphs. Evidence to the contrary, your psychology professor is probably wrong about this .

Lol, anyway Ross, in your 4.5 hours of sleep at different daily intervals, what specific type of sleep are you aiming for? Generally, REM sleep has about 5 stages, so what is it you're specifically looking to do?

Depends on the time in relation to circadian rhythm, and the type of sleep cycle that you are involved in. I haven't really been following optimal sleep lately, but SWS-focused sleep would be around 9pm-12:30am, and REM-focused would probably be 3am-5am. Sleeping for longer than 4 hours at one time has shown to produce diminishing returns; people aren't really made to constantly sleep for 8 hour intervals. The commonly known "5th stage" of REM sleep really only perks up towards the end of the night, where SWS (nREM) is going to remain more frequently in the beginning stages.

So, there are 5 stages, but it isn't as simple as a constant chain. Of 5min-10min-45min-15min-15min like most people have come to believe. During a nap it's more like 30sec-1min-3min-1min-20min for each relative cycle of sleep.

 

[Richard]

Meh! Just because the psychology is popular, doesn't mean its right

I haven't gotten a chance to check out the site yet, but I'm assuming that the time you fall asleep will allow you to sleep in that specific stage because of circadian rhythm?

Like, if you fall asleep every night from 12-8, your rhythm allows for different stages of REM sleep, so if you fall asleep from 4-8, you'll sleep having skipped the other stages that would normally occur from 12-4?

 

[Ross]

Well, then we'd get into conversations about how exactly each persons rhythm differs. If someone is exposed to light sources at odd times, such as at night, then their circadian rhythm is going to be slightly different as a result of them being subject to more light, while delays the release of melatonin. Also there's regulatory hormones such as prolactin that really only release in the middle of the night.

I still don't see where you are going with this concept of stages of REM sleep. REM really isn't concrete in its length; it's just longer later in the night. So, in a way, yes you do skip those initial few periods in the sleep cycles where REM is much lower, but changing from a 12-8 to a 4-8 cycle wouldn't really change the frequency of the rhythm.

The website goes into a lot more depth than I can, so whenever you get some free time I suggest you check it out.

 

[Richard]

I definitely will, this is really interesting to me and I really thank you for introducing it

So in your year of experimenting, have you discovered anything with this polyphasic sleeping schedule?

 

[illmatic]

Thanks Ross for the reply. Like Zphix asked, any personal experiences from doing this whole polyphasic sleep thing? As much as the science is solid, it's true benefit is in results. Otherwise, it's all just theory.

Also, no one has answered my question on the effect of this on muscle growth as the mainstream mentality is you need 7 hours uninterrupted sleep for optimal muscle growth blah blah. When I'm done writing this, I'm going straight to devour that website but from previewing it, didn't see anything on the muscle growth thing. So, I guess Ross' experience is what would be insightful here.

Cheers.

 

[Ross]

The owner for PolySoc is a powerlifter, and I am heavily into weights. This actually greatly benefits bodybuilders in general, as hormone efficiency becomes greater as a result of higher quality sleep. A little regulatory hormone called prolactin really only releases in large quantities in between two cores. Also, SWS generally is at an optimal rate when you are getting sleep this way, therefore aiding in recovery. So overall I'd say it benefits bodybuilding.

My experience with it was that it went well. I felt better as a result, and had more time to get things done. Productivity increased as a whole. Something that is very important to note is that holding someone responsible for waking you up will help with adapting to a new schedule. You'll still have tendencies to oversleep for about a week or two, then it becomes fairly natural as long as light sources are kept at a minimum during night hours.

My current lifestyle doesn't really let me get onto a solid schedule. But now that my interest in it has been rekindled, I may try and fit it into my schedule as I realize the many benefits that it provides.

 

[Humay]

Hey Ross, are you doing the segmented schedule or everyman schedule? What do you think of it?

I'm planning on starting the uberman schedule now, and move onto the everyman schedule. I'll come back later to report how it goes. Hopefully things should be positive- thanks for the mentioning that website on here.

P.s. i'm the same age as you, so i think our results should be quite relevant for each other

 

[Ross]

Humay, if it's your first time doing polyphasic sleep, let me warn you that uberman isn't a sustainable schedule for most people. There's a small population that can sustain it, but missing naps will throw off your vibe for the entire day. The creator of polyphasic sleep patterns did the uberman schedule as she suffered from extreme insomnia, and it helped her to feel better about life and actually be well rested.

Also, it's almost impossible to do on your own. You will sleep through alarms, therefore having someone around to ensure that you actually get up is vital to surviving the adaptation period (4 days to 2 weeks on average). Everyman is sustainable, and plenty of people are on that schedule. All I can say is good luck! It's hard to just jump into something like uberman, but having everyman as a fall back is what most people end up doing. Just be prepared for the infamous zombie mode during the adaptation .

I'm on the siesta schedule right now. Mostly because of laziness, but when I didn't have so many obligations I was on the DC1 schedule (segmented + nap). This is what the content creator is on as well, as its generally regarded to be the healthiest sleep schedule.

 

[Humay]

the uberman requires you to be awake for 36 hours before you begin your naps. I've been awake for almost 24 hours now so i still got some time to go (i'm so tired!). It's just that on that site, they suggest to try out the uberman first and see how things go before doing the everyman, which is what i'm doing.

If the DC1 is the most healthy however, i think i'll switch to that- it seems much more comfortable than the uberman.

(Sorry if i made some mistakes- i can barely keep my eyes open).