Mechanics of Polyphasic Sleep

[David Hausladen]

This thread is meant to discuss how and why polyphasic sleep works. This initial post is based on the research and experimentation that I've done on alternative sleep schedules over the past few months. Of course, all of these points are open to debate.

I realize that many of my points contradict the most common understanding of polyphasic sleep, but I base my understanding of it on the work done by Dr. Claudio Stampi--pretty much the only scientist who's seriously researched polyphasic sleep. As you'll see, polyphasic sleep is not about REM sleep.

How "Long" Sleep Works

There are five stages of sleep: Stages 1 through 4 sleep, which are collectively called NREM (Non-Rapid Eye Movement), and REM (Rapid-Eye Movement) sleep. For our purposes, we can consider Stages 1 and 2 to be identical and Stages 3 and 4 to be identical.

Our sleep occurs in sleep cycles that average 90 minutes. About the first half of this is Stage 1/2 sleep. Next, we progress to Stage 3/4 sleep and then go into REM sleep. At the end of REM sleep we start another cycle, returning to Stage 1/2 sleep. Early in our daily sleep, we get proportionately more Stage 3/4 sleep, while later in our daily sleep, we get proportionately more REM sleep.

Stage 1/2 sleep functions mostly to get us from wakefulness to the other two stages of sleep. It does recover energy somewhat, but it generally doesn't address the deeper issues that manifest as sleep deprivation. In other words, it can bring you back from a short lull in energy, but it can't comprise all your sleep. It's much easier to wake from Stage 1/2 sleep, especially the first few minutes (Stage 1 sleep), than from any of the other stages.

Stage 3/4 sleep is what's most useful in fighting sleep deprivation. It's very deep sleep, though, and getting woken from Stage 3/4 sleep can leave you groggy enough to negate the whole benefit of the sleep cycle you were woken from.

REM sleep is most useful in the developing brain (i.e. during childhood), assisting newborns in proper nervous system development. Thus, the amount of REM sleep generally decreases with age. It's thought that dreaming only occurs in REM sleep, but dreaming can actually occur in any stage of sleep.

From an understanding of the sleep stages, it's clear that it's easiest to wake at the beginning of a sleep cycle, and doing so generally results in the maximum benefit for the sleep time gotten. In fact, waking from the wrong stage of sleep can cause enough of an energy drop that you can actually end up feeling more tired that you would with less sleep, but properly timed. So for planning out most sleep schedules, planning your sleep periods in unbroken increments of 90 minutes will result in the maximum benefit for the sleep gotten.

From what I've read and experienced, the body needs from 3 to 6 sleep cycles a night, depending on how consistent your sleep is and whether it's all together (monophasic sleep) or split into two or three chunks (biphasic or triphasic sleep).

If you plan your sleep around 90-minute increments and sleep consistently on that schedule, your body will eventually be able to shorten your sleep cycle so that it's 80 or 70 minutes, with the effect that you often wake up before your alarm.

How Short Sleep Works

In contrast to long sleep, we have short sleep. This is the term I use for the "Uberman" sleep schedule and pretty much any schedule which is based on sleep periods of less than 90 minutes. Given what I've said regarding the sleep cycle, why does short sleep work? 30-minute naps are not nearly enough to reach any of the really important stages of sleep. Claudio Stampi's second experiment with short sleep shows us the answer. (His first experiment was unsuccessful.)

Before Day 21, his subject's naps happened just as we would expect--that is, with only enough time for Stage 1/2 sleep. This is why pre-adaptation ultrashort sleep involves really heavy sleep deprivation--the sleep cycles needed to fight it off can't be gotten!*

*Keep in mind when you consider this 21-day adaptation period that the first 10 days included a gradual shift from 8-hour monophasic sleep to 3-hour polyphasic sleep. The "cold turkey" form of adaptation which is most commonly used today seems to adapt much more quickly.

On Day 21, the subject's sleep deprivation turned around. His naps changed from getting just Stage 1/2 sleep to getting all stages of sleep, and with about the same proportion of NREM to REM as in long sleep (though not the same amounts).

This is the secret behind the Uberman schedule and other short schedules: not that the body learns to only get REM sleep, but rather that the body learns to get all the stages of sleep without having to get an entire sleep cycle.

Another interesting factoid: the subject's mental performance was measured with two tests. Baseline levels were recorded at the beginning of the experiment (under monophasic sleep). On Day 21, his performance on one of the two tests jumped above the baseline and stayed there. A couple weeks later, he was allowed to sleep as long as he wanted for one sleep block, but then immediately returned to short sleep; this caused the other test to jump above the baseline and stay there. This gives us the rational for the idea of an occasional (weekly or monthly) long sleep inserted into a short sleep schedule.

The Applications: Sleep Schedules and Catnaps

The difference between long sleep and ultrashort sleep means you have long sleep schedules and short sleep schedules. All the monophasic, biphasic, and triphasic sleep schedules I've seen have been long sleep schedules; while all the schedules I've seen with 4 or more naps have been short sleep schedules (I've seen one exception to this, which is 4 naps of 90 minutes each; that's long sleep).

With a long sleep schedule, there's the concept of a catnap--a sleep period of 30 minutes or less. Because a catnap stays in Stage 1/2 sleep, it's easy to wake up from. It can be very useful for getting an energy boost in the middle of the day, but as stated above, it won't fight sleep deprivation. Sleeping longer than 30 minutes but not in increments of 90 minutes is not recommended since you'll likely wake up from Stage 3/4 sleep or REM sleep, doing yourself more harm than good.

One type of sleep schedule that's becoming popular is a sleep schedule with a core sleep of several hours and then a small number of catnaps. Despite the use of short sleep periods, this doesn't force the body to adapt to a short sleep schedule, so it's classified as a long sleep schedule. The most popular version of this is the Everyman sleep schedule, with a 3-hour core sleep and four 20-minute catnaps, which I'm trying now.

Other Issues, Ideas, Things I've Missed?

I know I've probably missed some things in here or failed to explain a few things well...there's a lot to this, and I've tried to summarize where possible. Please let me know if anything's unclear here or if you have ideas to add or that you want to discuss.

I hope this is helpful to you!

[Scott]

A couple of comments...

Originally Posted by David Hausladen

This is the secret behind the Uberman schedule and other short schedules: not that the body learns to only get REM sleep, but rather that the body learns to get all the stages of sleep without having to get an entire sleep cycle.

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?

Originally Posted by David Hausladen

The most popular version of this is the Everyman sleep schedule, with a 3-hour core sleep and three 20-minute catnaps, which I'm trying now.

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.

Nice post!

[taylor]

Interesting post David. Where did you get the info on Stampi's experiments?

[David Hausladen]

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.

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.

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.

[jjenkov]

Hi,

I have read about the same things about Claudio Stampi and the division of

I've been trying to adapt to the uberman for about 14 days now.
Need I say I didn't make it? I constantly overslept in the beginning.
Especially during the night. I did get to something though, like a medium length
polyphasic sleep schedule (not long napping, nor short napping, nor core sleep),
as I'll explain in this post.

After about 8 days I changed the strategy a bit. I started to log all sleep and wake
periods in a spreadsheet, so I could see if I was making any progress. I also put
more effort into making sure that I never got any longer coherent periods of sleep
than about 30 minutes. Then I just took more of them, 10-12 a day. Of course I
still overslept some of them for up to 1-2 hours. At first I felt disappointed
about the oversleeping, because the total hours of sleep apprached 5-7 a day.
Not very impressive.

But then I noticed something in the spreadsheet. I was writing down too how
the naps were going, and I noticed that on several naps I never made it to
sleep. In other words, I wasn't really getting 10 x 30 minutes a day, because 2-3-4
of the naps a day I never quite fell asleep. This lack of sleep was probably
what led me to oversleeping some of the naps.

On day 13 I noticed something else. After waking up from a 1-2 hour overssleep
period I awake and fresh for up to 6-8 hours afterwards. At first I thought
that it was just because I was getting so close to normal sleep amounts
(only 1-3 hours below). But then I thought about something else:

Perhaps I *needed* to fall asleep at all naps for them to be any good.
And since it is apparently hard for me to fall asleep on 30 minutes,
I changed the naps to 1 hour. Now I fall asleep, and I wake up pretty easily
afterwards. Today is day 15, and I seem to be able to adapt to a

3 x 60 min sleep schedule - 60 min every 8 hours = 3 hours a day.

This is different from the either long or short sleep schedules David Hausladen
mentions in his posts. It isn't really neither. Not 20-30 minutes, nor
90 minutes.

In my opinion this is actually superior to uberman. Yes, I sleep 1 hour
longer a day than uberman, but theres a major resulting difference: I have about 7 hours
between my naps. I believe I can push the schedule around a bit, meaning I can
muster about 8-9 hours together between two naps, and shorten the period between
the others. And that means I am able to ... yes... go to work for a full normal
work day (8 hours). Something you cannot really do on an uberman schedule,
because you need to nap sometime during the work time.

In addition, granted I get my 1 hour sleep after work, I am able to stay out
the whole evening until around 00.00 without having to nap. This means
that my sleep schedule interferes less with my social life too. This is
something the uberman practioneers seem to complain about too, that they
have to nap while being with friends and family. In my circle of friends we
do normally go home on weekdays (mon - thu) before 00.00 before people have
to get to work the day after.

It is still early on in the experiment, but adaptation seems to be kicking in.
I fall asleep faster, and when I wake up, I wake faster. When I wake up it feels
like I have been sleeping for hours! I also feel more awake between the naps
than on the earlier uberman attempt.

If anyone wants to hear how this progresses in the time ahead, you can
find me and some contact details on jenkov.com. I'll try to write a blog
post on the results later, when the experiment has lasted a little longer.
Hopefully I'll get to normal work days soon, so I can see how my sleep
schedule does in that situation.

[Wiseguy81]

I've been really interested in polyphasic sleep for a while, so thank you for consolidating and clarifying some of the points. Whn I first read about the practice I was also introduced to the concept of 'sleep debt'. The idea is that while each person needs different amounts of daily sleep depending on their different physiological factors, every person has a certain amount of sleep that they've missed out on which needs to be recouped before the full enefitsof polyphasic sleep can be achieved. The article (the source of which I cannot remember for the life of me) stated that before begining any regimented sleep cycles, a person should take 3 days and sleep for as long as their body wants to. This means nothing to wake you up, no alarm clocks, cell phones, anything-one should go to sleep at the time they want to begin their sleep cycles and sleep until they naturally awake. Each day (supposedly) the person will sleep less and less and after the 4th day have a metaphorically recharged battery, it is then much easier to adapt to a polyphasic sleep cycle. For myself, this also eliminated the need for 4 naps-I was able to adhere to a core sleep of 4.5 hours and 1 30 minute nap a day.

Additionally, I read of a rather abstract experiment which I have never had the chance to put into practice myself because it's primary action is the complete disregard of 'time' as we know and use it each day. In James Gleick's book "Chaos", the author recounts the story of an actual graduate student who altered his lifestyle by all-together ignoring time. Obviously he knew when the sun rose and set, but apart from that-no watches, no clocks; nothing to indicate to himself what man-made incriment of time had gone by. The only marker he had set for himself was to ask a friend to let him know when a month (if I remember right) had gone by. Long story short-without the psychological effect of time, he ended up sleeping for less than an hour at a time, three times a day, for the last two weeks of the experiment. Like I said, because of the requisits for the experiment I've never been able to do it myself (my boss and landlord are just two of the people that value promptness over scientific endevour) but it sounds like something I would love to try out.