@ Brutha
People who do non-stop sports ultramarathons all have declining returns in performance across the board. I know....I completed the Honolulu Ironman, after having failed twice before due to poor nutritional considerations. It's rough. I also did military boot camp, which is very close to polyphasic sleep, and your performance, both mentally and physically, starts to decline very dramatically....granted it was only for 3 weeks, but still, I felt like crap. While Steve did do an extended amount of polyphasic sleep, he did not perform a baseline and challenge test on his strength or or test his maximum athletic capability against known measurements, which is not a knock on him because it was not an academic research study, but it would have been interesting to see the results of those tests.
@ AidanMatthews216
Fair enough.....I'll outline the science for you as I have studied it for numerous years. Whenever light stimulates your eyes or your skin, your hormonal system thinks it's morning and in response to that light, it will release cortisol, which is an activating hormone that the body releases in response to stress--the stress here being electromagnetic stress aka light. Cortisol is the hormone that the body releases to prepare it to move, work or fight. Therefore, light = cortisol release = movement.
Our bodies therefore responds directly to the amount of exposure to the sun and our cortisol levels peak at around 0900 hrs. and in the mid afternoon, our cortisol levels begin to drop significantly. Now cortisol is an inhibitor of melatonin and growth and repair hormones, so melatonin is suppressed during the waking day and when cortisol levels drop at the time when the sun starts to go down, then our level of melatonin increases and with it our growth and repair hormones. Natural sleep patterns (meaning as nature intended) is set up so that we should be winding down and fall asleep about 2200 hrs. Physical repairs to the body occur between 2200-0200 hrs.
Now polyphasic sleep is a stressor which will elevate levels of cortisol. I forgot to mention that cortisol was a stress hormone. To address again Brutha, Cortisol is what helps ultramarathoners do their thing, but continual release of cortisol is not a natural or healthy occurance. The effects of cortisol when elevated by polyphasic sleep will in turn prevent the normal release of melatonin and growth and immune hormones, which will in turn hinder your body's repair time. This can cause pyschogenic disruptions which in turn can lead to musculoskeletal injuries, headaches, and neurological disorders.
Probably the most significant side effect of polyphasic sleep is adrenal fatigue. Chronic production of cortisol by the adrenal glands causes adrenal fatigue. The symptoms of adrenal fatigue can include: chronic fatigue syndrome, viral infections, fungal and bacterial infections, an overall weakened immune system, and headaches.
It's quite simple....we were designed to sleep at a given time and for a given amount of uninterupted time. Specific healing processes go on during the night that polyphasic sleep can't handle. |