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Old 12-26-2006, 10:07 PM   #206 (permalink)
vuurstorm
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Join Date: Nov 2006
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Default Festive season got out of hand

Polyphasic sleep day 5. So far I had 13.5 hours of sleep since 22 December 2006.

Currently my energy levels are way down. I haven’t experienced any vivid dreams (can’t remember any dream since starting polyphasic sleeping) Mostly I avoid working on my computer because my eyes hurt to much which causes to be a problem as all of the projects I planned to keep me busy are computer based.I started to worry about my energy levels but after reviewing Steve and Multidimensional’s polyphasic logs I saw that they too had an energy drop between day 5 and 6.

As I stated before I am currently following a mostly raw fruit diet, but the last couple of days with all the family get together events I have been eating a lot of meat and cheese.I think that what I am eating is having a huge effect on the whole polyphasic sleeping experiment.If I had eaten meat I seam to be more tired and my eyes hurt more for about two to three days. This let me think back a month ago with my juice fasting, my energy levels where at an all-time high since two days into the juice fast and my sleeping hours decreased to between 5 and 6 hours. I am going to apply some of that to my polyphasic sleep experiment as well. For the rest of the week I am going follow a 100% raw-fruit diet and as an extra rule ensure that I get at least one cup of fruit juice in every session that I am awake. This should boost my energy levels and require less sleep making the transmission easier.

I am going to drop my backup plans for oversleeping. It is now the end of day 5 and I haven’t overslept once. I can feel that by body is getting accustomed to sleeping in 25 minutes portions. Currently I am using my cell phone alarm as my primary wakeup method with a standard alarm clock as backup set to go off three minutes after my cell phone and instructed my wife to ensure that I get up. Up until now I always woke from just my cell phone and have decided not to set the alarm clock anymore. Luckily for me my wife does not wake from the cell phone alarm so the whole sleep experiment is not having any effect on her during night times.

On the 25th December I skipped one sleeping session and had to delay the next one after that. The next morning, I tried not to add an extra session in but due to my eyes hurting to much (I think driving an hour at night time being tired at the time caused this) I had to put an extra session back in giving me 6 sessions again. With skipping a sleep session I noticed that my body seems to be more tolerant as I can go past 6 hours without feeling tired and losing concentration. I will experiment with this at the end of the week because if I can eliminate one session at day and work it in at night it will fit better into my lunch breaks when I go back to work.

My eyes are feeling better now, but I have been avoiding the computer where possible the previous day. So yes the obvious has to be done: I have to be more careful to what I do during my night sessions. From now on I will allow myself to work on the computer during the day (I am a software developer), between 5pm and 10pm I will only spend time with my wife and daughter and only turn the computer on only after my 10pm nap.After my 2am sleep session I will try and work in as much physical sessions as possible also limiting my computer as much as possible. These changes will make the load on my eyes lighter which in turn will make the polyphsic sleeping experiment better.

The biggest things I realized with my polyphasic sleeping experience are the following:

What you eat is very important.
Try to eat foods that are the easiest to digest. This will give you more energy and should also require less sleep.

Your eyes are the most important.
When your eyes are hurting you can’t do anything and you automatically feel more miserable. Try to work some activities onto your schedule where you don’t sit in front of a computer or read books so that your eyes can relax more.

Be consistent
Sleep as close to your planned times as possible. Everyone, including me, wants to constantly change their times and experiment with different sleeping schedules but rather get your body into a schedule first and adjust the times afterwards.

Stay positive
Take one day at a time. Yes after day 3 or 4 you may be past the worst but you are still going to experience a lot of ups and downs. This is still part of the adoption process and does not mean that things are necessary going worst.

Last edited by vuurstorm; 12-26-2006 at 10:10 PM.
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