Polyphasic Sleep

[Excelsius]

I posted this thread in Steve's section, but since I don't know when or if he will answer it, I was told to post it in this section in hopes of getting some answers.

Here are the questions:

1. What is the effect of rigorous physical activity (e.g., gym, sex...) on polyphasic sleep? Do you get excessively tired?

2.If you don't have a flexible schedule, does biphasic sleep work (1.5 hours long, once every 12 hours)?

3. Is it wrong to use caffeine during the first difficult week of getting used to this new sleep cycle?

4. I have read that polyphasic sleep does not work when one is trying to carry out overtly intellectual activities: studying physics, differential equations, organic chemistry... Did you have ANY such experiences when you were practicing polyphasic sleep and what was your impression? Please be honest here. If you have not studied complex science while on poly cycle, you can't answer this question.



I also read that many of you sleep 8 or more hours. I was sort of surprised. At most, I sleep 7 hours a night. Nevertheless, I never drink any coffee.

I have found out something interesting in my experimentation with biphasic sleep: usually drowsiness begins to strike me around 11-12am. I tried to take half a caffeine pill (100mg) around this time to cope with the new cycle. Then I discovered that I could easily stay up till 2AM (or 4AM if I took the second half as well) and wake up around 6AM in the morning completely rested and full of energy. I have been doing this for a few days only, but if I can do this for months without ever getting tired, then perhaps this is way better than polyphasic or biphasic sleep? Since I'm already getting around 4hrs/night without any inconveniences, it doesn't seem to be worth it to go to polyphasic sleep to save just an extra hour a night (but I wish I could if I had a flexible schedule)

[TeroMiettunen.com]

2. Probably not. 1.5 hours * 2 per day is reportedly way too little.

3. It will make sleeping harder and less restful. Not recommended.

My opinion, which is based on everything I've been able to gather from the internet about Polyphasic Sleep is that you should only attempt it if you have a flexible schedule.

[Ati]

Originally Posted by Excelsius

I posted this thread in Steve's section, but since I don't know when or if he will answer it, I was told to post it in this section in hopes of getting some answers.

Here are the questions:

1. What is the effect of rigorous physical activity (e.g., gym, sex...) on polyphasic sleep? Do you get excessively tired?

2.If you don't have a flexible schedule, does biphasic sleep work (1.5 hours long, once every 12 hours)?

3. Is it wrong to use caffeine during the first difficult week of getting used to this new sleep cycle?

4. I have read that polyphasic sleep does not work when one is trying to carry out overtly intellectual activities: studying physics, differential equations, organic chemistry... Did you have ANY such experiences when you were practicing polyphasic sleep and what was your impression? Please be honest here. If you have not studied complex science while on poly cycle, you can't answer this question.



I also read that many of you sleep 8 or more hours. I was sort of surprised. At most, I sleep 7 hours a night. Nevertheless, I never drink any coffee.

I have found out something interesting in my experimentation with biphasic sleep: usually drowsiness begins to strike me around 11-12am. I tried to take half a caffeine pill (100mg) around this time to cope with the new cycle. Then I discovered that I could easily stay up till 2AM (or 4AM if I took the second half as well) and wake up around 6AM in the morning completely rested and full of energy. I have been doing this for a few days only, but if I can do this for months without ever getting tired, then perhaps this is way better than polyphasic or biphasic sleep? Since I'm already getting around 4hrs/night without any inconveniences, it doesn't seem to be worth it to go to polyphasic sleep to save just an extra hour a night (but I wish I could if I had a flexible schedule)

Welcome, Excelsius!

Do have a look around this board at the other sleep related threads. A lot of good links as well as experience with poly and biphasic sleep have been posted, which might be of interest to you.

I'm finding biphasic sleep to work real well as long as I'm not distracted from my schedule and I'm in the process of finding out whether adhering to a particular schedule is actually the best way to go, that's not always easy in a primarily monophasic world

RE. your questions:

1. I think that muscle building or regular strenuous physical training adds a significant additional to the equation here, with many chemical changes involved. I'd be paying attention to the training literature which addresses what I'm doing if in regular training (i.e., weight training, cycling, track etc.). Also listening to my body about things like sleep. A different thing altogether.
On the other hand, episodic physical activity--that seems like just something to respond to as it comes along. For example, after skiing or an afternoon of hiking in the mountains, I might go for an extra 90 minute block of sleep if I felt significantly fatigued.

2. I think yes, but have a look at the literature and reports on how much sleep/24 hrs work for people. I also think that 1.5hrs X 2 is likely to be too little.
I'm doing 4.5 + 1.5 and finding that when I'm doing this steadily, I'm very rested and energetic, have little trouble waking up and it works well for me for days to weeks at a time or longer. If I try the same 6 hours per 24 monophasically, I routinely feel increasingly sleep deprived after about the 2 days ! That's a significant difference for me.

3. Big variation on recommendations and opinion here. I have a cup of coffee (2 shots espresso) in the mornings, that's all and it feels good. I don't know about caffeine pills or using coffee to actually stay awake. It's just part of my morning routine and gets things going nicely. After my 90- minute nap, no caffeine, and none in between.

4. Good question there. I did those courses and later went on to medical school. That was a while ago and I slept monophasically. A friend of mine tweaked his sleep schedule and went to bed around 7pm, got up at 1am to study, studied til class in the am and this worked well for him. As I remember, he sometimes took 30 minute "power naps" during various parts of the day, head on the desk in the library. Not a biphasic sleeper but this routine seemed to do something for him.

Hope that's useful! Keep us posted on your progress!

[Excelsius]

Originally Posted by Ati

I'm doing 4.5 + 1.5 and finding that when I'm doing this steadily, I'm very rested and energetic, have little trouble waking up and it works well for me for days to weeks at a time or longer. If I try the same 6 hours per 24 monophasically, I routinely feel increasingly sleep deprived after about the 2 days ! That's a significant difference for me.

Very insightful! I do get a little tired as I progress into the experiment. You could be right. I will change to biphasic and see maybe if I could do 2X 2hours a day. Also, you mentioned that you went to medical school! Are you a doctor now? If so, you might have more interesting comments to add about this "ultradian" rythm. I'm a premed myself and the lack of time has forced me to reduce my 5-7hrs nightly sleep to 2-5 and I'm not even in the med school yet.

Scott, I don't drink cola. My only source of natural caffeine is tea that I drink 0-2 cups/week. As for caffeine pills, I don't take them regularly. I often don't have to take any or at most half a pill (100mg is less caffeine than contained in most cups of coffee).

In addition coffee may reduce the amount of "sleep deprivation" you have. But you need the "sleep deprivation" to tell your body to adjust to the shedule.

4. Some of the succesful Polyphasic's are programmers, does that count as intellectual activities?

That's an interesting point there. I was wondering that too since to me the idea behind success is to force the body to enter into REM cycle much faster and apparently it can't be done without real tiredness. Since finals are approaching, I think I should still rely on caffeine for help once in a while and afterwards, during Christmas, get rid of it completely.
Programming is definitely an intellectual activity, but I'm not sure whether it has enough difficult concepts to compare it to physics. A lot of repetitive processes there.

I thought about it for a while and I think caffeine should not affect any cycle as long as I take it 3-4 hours before sleep. By then all of it should be gone and I'll sleep as if I didn't take any.

Anyone in here has successfully slept 5 or less hours a night with biphasic sleep? If so, could you provide details or links (if another thread)?

[Scott Bird]

Originally Posted by Excelsius

Anyone in here has successfully slept 5 or less hours a night with biphasic sleep? If so, could you provide details or links (if another thread)?

Yes and no. My original switch to biphasic sleep was a 30 day trial (that article contains links to each of the individual days, as well as a summary), and I tried a 1.5/3 hr split a few times during that.

In the end, however, I settled into a 1.5/4.5 split which now (a little over two months later) feels great.

It's a personal thing, and definitely one for a bit of testing.

[David Hausladen]

Originally Posted by Excelsius

I will change to biphasic and see maybe if I could do 2X 2hours a day.

Great to see yet another person considering an alternative sleep schedule! If you have a few minutes to spare every day, please post your experiences in this thread so that others can learn from them.

I would say to make your sleep periods multiples of the length of your sleep cycle--which for the average person is 90 minutes. From what I've read and experienced, you tend to wake most naturally and get the most energy from sleep if you wake at the beginning or end of a sleep cycle--those are the times when you're in the lightest stages of sleep. So if you're looking for about 4.5 hours of sleep a day, a 3-hour core sleep and 1.5-hour nap would probably be ideal.

Originally Posted by Excelsius

Anyone in here has successfully slept 5 or less hours a night with biphasic sleep? If so, could you provide details or links (if another thread)?

Glen Rhodes claims to do well on 5 hours of sleep daily, but he also says his sleep cycle has shortened to about 75 minutes (as opposed to the average person's 90 minutes), so he is still getting four cycles a day. I have yet to see an example of a person who does well regularly getting just three sleep cycles a day--which is the usual for 5 or less hours a night--but I also haven't seen too many detailed accounts of biphasic sleepers to begin with.

Good luck with your sleep!

[Scott Bird]

Originally Posted by David Hausladen

Glen Rhodes claims to do well on 5 hours of sleep daily, but he also says his sleep cycle has shortened to about 75 minutes (as opposed to the average person's 90 minutes), so he is still getting four cycles a day. I have yet to see an example of a person who does well regularly getting just three sleep cycles a day--which is the usual for 5 or less hours a night--but I also haven't seen too many detailed accounts of biphasic sleepers to begin with.

Good luck with your sleep!

David,

I'm finding the same thing as Glen - the sleep cycles gradually shorten as your body adapts to the new pattern. Currently my cycles are around 75-80 minutes.

[Excelsius]

Scott, are you still doing biphasic sleep? If not, why?

Thanks David. I'll try to post my results as frequently as I can, but probably what I'll end up doing is just publishing the entire data after I'm done. I have made an excel spreadsheet and this is what I'm recording:

1. Date
2. Sleep start time
3. Sleep end time
4. Duration
5. Caffeine amount ingested
6. Time when caffeine was ingested
7. Time when began feeling tired
8. Tiredness level (scale of 1-5)
9. Physical Activity level (1-5)
10. Mental Activity level (1-5)
11. # of Hours of TV
12. # of Hours of Internet
13. Notes

Are there any more fields that you think I should add? After I have reliable data, it will be very easy to make 2 and 3D graphs and correlations will come through. It's not likely that I will take on a rigid discipline right away until my finals are over at mid-December, but I have started recording the data anyway. Recording qualitative data consistently (fields 8 to 10) is going to be the most difficult, but I'll do my best.
I believe that if all of us were able to unitize our time 100% efficiently (no TV, internet, etc.) we would not need to cut down time from our sleep. Including the # of hours spent on these can really make us realize our addiction to these media and thus take corrective action. In US, people watch more than 4 hours a day. In 75 yr lifespan, that adds up to 150 months or almost 13 years! Now consider that 20% or more of TV are ads. This means you spend almost 3 years watching only commercials! This is just crazy. Even tying shoelaces eventually adds up to several days. Unlike polyphasic sleep, these small things in our lives are much easier to control. I haven't been in a movie theater for 2 years and only watch 0-2 movies a week on commercial free HBO. BUT, I think I spend too much time on the internet, even though it is mostly for educational purposes.

[Scott Bird]

Originally Posted by Excelsius

Nevertheless, I never drink any coffee.

Hello Excelsius,

Apart from the caffeine tablets, do you currently have any other sources of caffeine in your diet (tea, cola etc)? Personally, I drink 2-3 cups of coffee per week as well as 5-6 cups of green tea per day. This doesn't appear to have any impact on biphasic sleep (I'd imagine that polyphasic is similar in this regard), but occasionally I have more caffeine than this and that DOES affect the quality of sleep.

The amount of caffeine defintely can make a difference (at least in my case).

[Brutha]

biphasic sleep (I'd imagine that polyphasic is similar in this regard)

If you haven't tried a week polyphasic you have no basis at all for such a claim. Biphasic sleep is something with everyone can simply do, it takes no will power at all.
But over 90% of those who try polyphasic sleep don't have the will power for it.

1. From what i have read on the Yahoo Uberman Mailing list, those folk haven't seen real changes with exercise.

2. No 1,5 hrs + 1,5 hrs probably won't work.

3. The greatest problem is not that you are too tired to stay awake. The problem is that you are too tired to wake up and that your subconscious hijack you to turn the alarm clock off without leaving any memory of it.
Unless you find a way to drink the coffee while sleeping to wake you up I think it would be a real bad idea.

In addition coffee may reduce the amount of "sleep deprivation" you have. But you need the "sleep deprivation" to tell your body to adjust to the shedule.

4. Some of the succesful Polyphasic's are programmers, does that count as intellectual activities?

Since I'm already getting around 4hrs/night without any inconveniences, it doesn't seem to be worth it to go to polyphasic sleep to save just an extra hour a night (but I wish I could if I had a flexible schedule)

People like Steve have quited Polyphasic sleep because of the fact that it isn't a flexible shedule.
4 hrs without inconveniences is probably better than 2 1/2 with the fixed polyphasic cycle. But most people get problems when they subsedize sleep with coffein.