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Originally Posted by David Hausladen  Polyphasic Sleep Update: Experiment Concluded
This is my third sleeping incident in four days; while before I could be optimistic and say that my one or two sleeping incidents were flukes and could be dealt with, I think at this point I've got to admit that with this frequency of sleep incidents I'm not making any progress, and with the current schedule and technique, polyphasic sleep in the Dymaxion variant (a 30-minute nap every six hours) is unworkable for me. |
David, I'd have to agree, it looks like you've been "sleep walking" there. I think you're right, that's probably not healthy.
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Originally Posted by David Hausladen Before I go on to any other sleep schedule, I intend to take three days of free-running sleep to "reboot" my body. Among other things, my immune system has taken a beating from its lack of deep sleep in the past week, so I want to get it back to full strength again before I try anything. |
That sounds smart.
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Originally Posted by David Hausladen Afterward, I don't want to go back to monophasic, knowing from my experiments with free-running sleep (before I started posting here) how much time it can waste. The Uberman schedule is too tightly spaced for my current obligations and social life, and furthermore I don't feel up to another strenuous adaptation at this point. My thought right now is to go to a biphasic schedule, with a 3-hour core sleep and a 1.5-hour nap. This is the schedule that aligns most closely with the body's natural circadian rhythm, so there's little doubt as to whether it can succeed.
There's not as much to learn about biphasic sleep, so I don't think there's a need to post sleep logs here on a regular basis. I'll still post occasional reports on my progress and results, just not on a set schedule. |
Aaww.. gee... as a new biphasic sleep experimenter, I'd like to see your posts !! But of course whatever you like.
I found some standard stuff on sleep that I want to understand better and which seems to go very well with the things you have been writing. One is in Kaplan & Sadock's Synopsis of Psychiatry (the two volume set has pretty much the same) and the other in David Myland Kaufman's Clinical Neurology for Psychiatrists. (The latter is one of the best neurology books around, in my opinion. He and his editors aimed it at psychiatrists which actually gives it a different sort of clinical relevance than a straight neurology text).
In K&S, it says "Short sleepers are generally efficient, ambitious, socially adept, and content. Long sleepers tend to be mildly depressed, anxious and socially withdrawn" (!!!) (Now the chicken and the egg comes into play--they don't talk about people who decide to become short sleepers, specifically)
I'm not altogether clearly seeing a consensus on whether more REM is good or not. They say long sleepers have more REM. They also say that morning and noon naps taken by nighttime sleepers have more REM (how much nighttime sleeping not stated), and nighttime sleepers have much less REM during afternoon or evening naps. They say dreaming occurs with NREM sleep and is typically more "lucid and purposeful" than dreaming with REM sleep which is "typically abstract and surreal"./ They say that REM occurs every 90 to 100 minutes with the first REM period shorter (<10 minutes) than later REM periods (15 to 40 minutes). They say most REM occurs in the last third of the night and most stage 4 deep sleep in the first third.
They also say that the first REM stage is abt 90 minutes after sleep onset, "a consistent finding in normal adults".
So what does this mean for biphasic "nappers"--first the nap--no REM or maybe short REM but good amt of stage 4 deep sleep, one round. Then for the 3 hour biphasic sleeper: probably 2 REMs and 2 stage 4 deep sleeps. For the 4.5 hour biphasic: 2, maybe 3 REMs, and 3 deep sleeps.
This is fascinating and I'm going to try the biphasic thing, then we'll see. I think you're wise in what you're doing but I hope you keep posting just because it's so interesting and you have experience. Let's see how you feel after you've been in free-running sleep long enough to feel normal again.
good luck and best wishes!
Ati