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Originally Posted by Scott  I understand that the REM/NREM proportions are the same while total sleep is reduced, but how does the body cope with this? Is there a "latency" between stages in monophasic sleep which is reduced or eliminated on a short-sleep schedule? Is it not so much the total amount, but the number of stages that determines how efficient our naps are? |
Good question; I don't have a definite answer. Stampi's experiment showed that after adaptation, some naps are pure Stage 1/2, some are mostly Stage 3/4, and some are mostly REM. But if the proportions are the same, isn't the body still getting, overall, the equivalent of the same time in long sleep each day? Maybe spreading the sleep out over the day thins the requirement by a lot. Or maybe we don't need nearly as much sleep as our circadian rhythm gives us, and short sleep just points that out. The success of short sleep schedules certainly suggests that there's major inefficiency somewhere in our ordinary long sleep schedules.
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Originally Posted by Scott Have you been reading PureDoxyK's blog? She coined the term "Uberman" (which refers specifically to the six-nap, 20-minute schedule) and also "Everyman" I believe. She's actually the only person I've come across who's succeeded at the schedule you describe, but there may be some more recent accounts. |
I've read most of the polyphasic sleep articles on her site (and a few of the others). In her
polyphasic sleep overview she says, "In the course of communicating with other hopeful Ubermen (the majority, but not the entirety, of whom failed), I’d learned that most people who are doing polyphasic schedules are doing a version that includes a 'core' sleep period of a few hours at night." This was what she dubbed the "Everyman" sleep schedule because the adjustment period is so much easier than the one for the "Uberman" sleep schedule. (She admits that "no-one I’ve talked to yet who’s done it for longer than a few months" but except for the purported historical cases, that's true of Uberman sleep too.)
I was basing my claim that Everyman was the "most popular" hybrid schedule mostly on PureDoxyk's account, but also on the fact that I think I've seen more than one other blog of aspiring Ubermen who couldn't make it and so decided to add a core sleep to their schedule in the manner described above.
One correction I'm going to make to the article above: Everyman is four 20-minute naps per day, not three.
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Originally Posted by taylor Interesting post David. Where did you get the info on Stampi's experiments? |
Here is where I found a summary of the revelant chapter in
Why We Nap by Claudio Stampi--it's third-hand data, but
Why We Nap is out of print.
Yet another correction: after re-reading the summary again now, I realize that Stampi's polyphasic schedule was six 30-minute naps for a total of 3 hours of sleep a day, not 2.