Convincing Parental Units to Let Me Nap

[AidanMatthews216]

"Hello, AidanMatthews216. It appears you haven't posted on our forums in several weeks. Why not take a few moments to ask a question, offer some advice, or just engage in friendly conversation with another member in any one of our forums? We miss you!"

Really? I'm touched. Well, I've been meaning to ask this anyway.

I am itching, dying really, to try polyphasic sleep. Since reading about it on Steve's blog, it has refused to leave my mind. I think I'd relish the challenge as well as the possible benefits (although I can only do it as an experiment; I'd have to drop it within a few months.) I am only 16 but I see no reason to believe I'm incapable of making the transition, or at least of trying. The only problem is my parents. I can't possibly do this under their noses. I need their support.

But how to convince them? Although my parents are very understanding and supportive and generally have difficulty saying "no," I'm not sure how this plan would sit with them. I can imagine that they'd be worried about the health risks, and a little incredulous as all the evidence comes from the claims of a few scattered bloggers, most of whom gave up after a short period. In light of the fact that I recently quit school (to unschool) I have all the time in the world, but rigidly timed napping may still clash with my schedule.

How could I go about this?

P. S. It would be extra wonderful to try PS because I'm sure I'd be given some kind of credit with my homeschool program if I did it as an experiment/project.

[Sam988]

I feel your pain.

I don't know how to explain it short so i'll explain the whole story: You see, my parents are "new born christians" and go to church every sunday and once a week they gather in a house with other christians. Three years ago, i was like them, but then i went to a site where atheists discuss with christians about all those religion stuff and i was initially trying to convince atheists to become christians but after some months i ended up becoming an atheist too!

Then after i told this to my parents including that i became an atheist (since then i've incorporated some beliefs like LOA) they went crazy and since then they think that all new stuff i tell them which has come from the internet is BS and i'm naive for believing it; and i'm just like whatever, i'm tired of arguing with them without any results. I'm 19 now so i can do what i want even if they think its not good.


So you see some parents just haven't got used to the flow of information that internet gives us and they think most of it is not very good for us.

If you show them the information about polyphasic and still they aren't convinced i suggest you to not try to argue with them anymore, dont try getting them happy about it, just do what you can to make them let you try it out (this includes whining and saying "just let me try it! I wont die or something...!"), this should work to at least make them let you do the experiment, which is what you want.

[MercuryLime]

I've brought it up to my parents before (I'm 16, also). I want to try it, but I'm not in any hurry right now.

My suggestions are to help them acclimate to the concept by bringing it up a few times, then showing them how passionate you are about trying it. Let them know that at the very least, you will stop if you feel ill or can't take it anymore.

"On the bright side, Mom, I'll be able to do more chores around the house..."

[AidanMatthews216]

Originally Posted by Sam988

I feel your pain.

Not all of it, I hope.

I don't know how to explain it short so i'll explain the whole story: You see, my parents are "new born christians" and go to church every sunday and once a week they gather in a house with other christians. Three years ago, i was like them, but then i went to a site where atheists discuss with christians about all those religion stuff and i was initially trying to convince atheists to become christians but after some months i ended up becoming an atheist too!

We're contagious.

If you show them the information about polyphasic and still they aren't convinced i suggest you to not try to argue with them anymore, dont try getting them happy about it, just do what you can to make them let you try it out (this includes whining and saying "just let me try it! I wont die or something...!"), this should work to at least make them let you do the experiment, which is what you want.

I think they'll allow me to do it as long as they're not concerned with the health issues. So, it's a matter of assuring them that, yes, it won't kill me.

[Tristan]

I'd be careful with it because polyphasic sleep can upset your delicate stress hormone balance and cause health issues such as weight gain by throwing off cortisol levels. From a natural health point of view, polyphasic sleep is probably one of the worst stresses you can subject your body to. Ask any qualified health practitioner about that and they would agree. It's even worst if you do any regular exercise along with it because then you are not allowing your body to repair itself and worst still if you are a teenager where your body is rapidly rebuilding itself and going through hormonal changes as well as a high-demand for nutrient absorption needed. From an efficiency standpoint, polyphasic sleep sounds attractive, but there is a reason mother nature built us to take real sleeps and not sporadic ones.

[AidanMatthews216]

Originally Posted by Tristan

I'd be careful with it because polyphasic sleep can upset your delicate stress hormone balance and cause health issues such as weight gain by throwing off cortisol levels. From a natural health point of view, polyphasic sleep is probably one of the worst stresses you can subject your body to. Ask any qualified health practitioner about that and they would agree. It's even worst if you do any regular exercise along with it because then you are not allowing your body to repair itself and worst still if you are a teenager where your body is rapidly rebuilding itself and going through hormonal changes as well as a high-demand for nutrient absorption needed. From an efficiency standpoint, polyphasic sleep sounds attractive, but there is a reason mother nature built us to take real sleeps and not sporadic ones.

Have you read Steve's account of the experiment? I'm sure the transition period is hard on the body in the ways you've mentioned but what about after the switch has been made and your body adjusted?

[Tristan]

Yeah, I've read Steve's "DIY" experiment and enjoyed it thoroughly. It's important not to confuse conditioning with adjusting. We can condition our bodies to do what it was not designed to do through repetition, but that does not mean our bodies will adjust to it the same at the biological level. The problem is that the body is not designed to adjust to this unnatural way of sleeping without side-effects and while you can condition the body to do it, just as Marines are conditioned to go through Polyphasic sleep, the results are sub-standard human performance. Have you ever seen a top athlete who doesn't value a good sleep? There is a reason for it and the detriments of polyphasic sleep may not be immediately apparent, but they are there.

[openeyes]

Congratulations on unschooling.

I wouldn't recommend attempting to reduce sleep or food intake (fasting more than a day or caloric restriction) until your body is largely done growing (around age 20 or perhaps even later). Adding a nap during the day, without necessarily sleeping less at night, could be quite helpful though.

[Brutha]

I think I'd relish the challenge as well as the possible benefits (although I can only do it as an experiment; I'd have to drop it within a few months.)

You won't succeed without commiting to it.

In general you should promise your parents to quit the shedule at the moment you become ill.
In addition you could reduce all driving, if you own a motorbike for the first time to reduce that risk factor.

Their is no reason from a traditional perspective on sleep to believe that you die when you try Uberman. Traditional knowledge would simply say, that you won't get your body to awake on that shedule.

I just ask your parents, when I ask mine I also excepted resistence but their was no real resistence (then I failed for various reasons).

Have you ever seen a top athlete who doesn't value a good sleep?

People who do non-stop sports like the Ultramarathon or sailing use low amounts of sleep.

Ask any qualified health practitioner about that and they would agree.

Those people who speek about would say that it isn't possible to live that way for more than six month (which Steve did). That makes them unqualifed on the topic.
In general I don't know for most athletes how much they sleep.

But I know that a large study has shown that people who sleep six hours per day have a higher life expectency than those who sleep eigth.

In general our postmodern culture is poised with the meme "More is better".
Get more money, get more sleep, get a larger house, eat more vitamins, get a bigger TV etc.
More isn't the answer to our problems.

I'd be careful with it because polyphasic sleep can upset your delicate stress hormone balance and cause health issues such as weight gain by throwing off cortisol levels.

Nobody of the people who tried it reported massive weight gains.

[AidanMatthews216]

Originally Posted by Tristan

Yeah, I've read Steve's "DIY" experiment and enjoyed it thoroughly. It's important not to confuse conditioning with adjusting. We can condition our bodies to do what it was not designed to do through repetition, but that does not mean our bodies will adjust to it the same at the biological level. The problem is that the body is not designed to adjust to this unnatural way of sleeping without side-effects and while you can condition the body to do it, just as Marines are conditioned to go through Polyphasic sleep, the results are sub-standard human performance. Have you ever seen a top athlete who doesn't value a good sleep? There is a reason for it and the detriments of polyphasic sleep may not be immediately apparent, but they are there.

How do you know? Obviously Steve's experiment isn't the final word, but it's interesting that he not only "adjusted" but seemed to be doing even better after the transition period. Has scientific experimentation done that shows it has harmful/suboptimal effects?

I wouldn't recommend attempting to reduce sleep or food intake (fasting more than a day or caloric restriction) until your body is largely done growing (around age 20 or perhaps even later). Adding a nap during the day, without necessarily sleeping less at night, could be quite helpful though.

I would probably never attempt doing it now except that I'm not sure time will ever allow again in the future. Right now I'm 16, jobless, and unschooled. There's no better time.

[JudyR]

I've recently read Steve's blog entries about his experiment with polyphasic sleep. I felt no temptation to try it myself, but I did find it interesting to read his account of the experience.

I'm middle aged and have two sons who are in their twenties. If one of my sons had wanted to experiment with polyphasic sleep while they still were living at home with my husband and me, I would not have objected -- in theory. But in practice it might have presented challenges.

Actually, in the last few years in which they lived with us, they did practise something akin to polyphasic sleep, and it was a challenge for my husband and me. They didn't call it polyphasic sleep, but they lived in a different time zone from my husband and me.

They were attending university. Some days of the week their classes were at night. That's just how their schedules happened to work out. They would come home after classes, sometimes with friends. They'd go into the kitchen at night -- at 11.00 p.m. or midnight or 1.00 a.m. -- and cook meals for themselves and sometimes for their friends as well.

The noise would keep my husband and me awake at a time when we were trying to get to sleep. It would be quite frustrating for us. We'd be lying there, wide awake, knowing that we ought to get to sleep because we had to get up for work the next morning.

Conversely, my sons might be fast asleep on a Saturday morning, at a time when I wanted to vacuum the house or something like that. I would make some effort not to make a noise early in the morning. But eventually it would reach the point where I needed to get on with it, and I would.

My husband, our sons, and I had conversations about this, and we experimented with different ways of accommodating each other. Each experiment helped to some extent, but no method that we tried was entirely satisfactory.

The only solution was their moving into their own apartments, which they eventually did. Now we all get together for a meal once a week or once every other week. We enjoy visiting with each other, but we're relieved not to be living under the same roof any more. I know my sons feel that way as much as my husband and I do.

So, if you and I were living in the same house, my concern about your polyphasic sleep experiment would be that your schedule would conflict with mine and make my life uncomfortable.

If I understand you correctly, AidanMatthews216, you haven't floated this idea out to your parents yet, so you don't actually know what their reaction will be. So far you've only guessed what their reaction is likely to be.

I assume you've switched to homeschooling with their consent. That seems to suggest that they're more open minded than many other parents are. Perhaps they'd be more amenable to your experimenting with polyphasic sleep than you anticipate.

But I think it would help if you considered what pratical effect it would have on their lives, apart from the concerns they may have about your health, etc. It would be useful if you anticipated, and addressed in advance, the challenges that your experiment might pose for them.

If you were my child and you asked me if you could do this experiment, I would say, "Sure, go for it." The reason I would do that would be my faith that the matter would sort itself out, one way or another. You might like polyphasic sleep, and find that it suited you. As long as it didn't interfere with my life too much, my attitude would be, "More power to you." If you found that you disliked polyphasic sleep after all, you in any case would give it up.

[openeyes]

Originally Posted by AidanMatthews216

I would probably never attempt doing it now except that I'm not sure time will ever allow again in the future. Right now I'm 16, jobless, and unschooled. There's no better time.

Around age 14-16 I pushed myself a lot with fasting and sleeping as little as possible. Also I'd started lifting weights at 9, and did so fairly seriously in my early teens. Sometimes I wonder if all that kept me from growing as fully as I could have. I'm 5'9'' which is about average, and in better shape than anyone else in my family, but I'm also the only guy in my family going back for generations that is less than 6 feet tall. So I would say at the very least not to put too much stress on your body unless you're okay with your current height (perhaps at 16 you've grown enough). Even with so much experience, a lot of people are still fairly unsure about whether intense exercise can really affect growth. Polyphasic sleep is even more of an unknown.

As for making time for it, I have my last final for the summer tomorrow, and will then have a month free in which I could attempt something like polyphasic if I wanted to. Spring/winter break offered similar opportunities, in which I had at least 10 days off. If it's something you really want to do, you likewise should be able to make time for it later on. As many people can take a year off to travel the world during/after college, taking time off to work on sleep sounds do able. Better yet, why not plan on doing it somewhere like northern Sweden or Alaska during the summer, when the days are naturally quite long anyhow?

[Tristan]

@ 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.

[Doku]

You might also want to consider doing it first, and asking forgiveness later. Odds are that they will just pass it off as the "strange habits of teenagers" and not really question you on it anyway.

[Brutha]

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,

It isn't the same as polyphasic sleep(after the uberman shedule) because you don't actually keep yourself awake but get controlled by your drill director.
Polyphasic sleeper on the other hand do it on their own will.

If someone gets raped, that is a very traumatic experience that probably produces all sorts of stress hormones in the body that aren't healthy.
When two people have sex with each other on their own will the body produces a lot of hormones that are healthy.

I would also doubt that you got to take naps six times a day at a military bootcamp.

At the moment nobody knows the exact effects of

Natural sleep patterns (meaning as nature intended)

Nature doesn't intend anything. Nature just Is.

It's quite simple....we were designed to sleep at a given time and for a given amount of uninterupted time.

Sorry, but I don't believe in intelligent design.

[kaushal1]

If u wish to make an experiment with polyphasic sleep then u should try for it.If u feel that u will be more comfortable in this routine u should try to carry on with this. U should try to convince ur parents and they will surely give u permission as after all ur happiness is must for them.

[AidanMatthews216]

If I understand you correctly, AidanMatthews216, you haven't floated this idea out to your parents yet, so you don't actually know what their reaction will be. So far you've only guessed what their reaction is likely to be.

No, I haven't told them I want to try it, but I've brought up the idea. I want to sort out some issues for myself and see if I really want to before I bring it up with them.

But I think it would help if you considered what pratical effect it would have on their lives, apart from the concerns they may have about your health, etc. It would be useful if you anticipated, and addressed in advance, the challenges that your experiment might pose for them.

That's a good point. My mom doesn't live with us and I can't think of how it could jar with my dad's schedule. I think it would be fine as long as I made sure to be quiet during the night, but I can bring it up when I talk to them about it.

If you were my child and you asked me if you could do this experiment, I would say, "Sure, go for it." The reason I would do that would be my faith that the matter would sort itself out, one way or another. You might like polyphasic sleep, and find that it suited you. As long as it didn't interfere with my life too much, my attitude would be, "More power to you." If you found that you disliked polyphasic sleep after all, you in any case would give it up.

That's generally my parents' attitude.

[AidanMatthews216]

@Tristan: I can't argue with you on the science and I don't want to come to any strong conclusion without having read up on this myself (I'm also wondering how the body adapts to polyphasic sleep and how that might change the processes you're talking about.) I would like to at least *try* polyphasic sleeping, and if it does seem to be causing physical harm, I can stop. How extensive do you think the damage could be if this were only done over a period of say, a couple months?

It's quite simple....we were designed to sleep at a given time and for a given amount of uninterupted time.

"Design" only runs so deep... perhaps we do naturally sleep a certain amount at a certain time... but we are also natural adapters in perhaps unexpected ways. Do scientists really understand polyphasic sleep?

It seems I'm getting a lot of conflicting information, and since I'm ignorant of the science I don't know what to say. At this point what I have to decide is if it's dangerous enough to warrant not doing it/putting it off. I don't believe it is, or at least if it's as fun as Steve makes it sound it's worth the risk.

[Tristan]

It's probably nothing that will hurt you for a short run, but I'll toss out the disclaimer that I wouldn't recommend it, especially if you're a teen.

As far as design goes....Human beings are marvelous machines. We do have the ability to adapt and overcome, but we are one of the few animals who can also ignore our body's messages and basically tell it to shut up and we change the way it functions.

From a natural health perspective, the body is designed to heal itself and instead of taking prescription drugs and eating crap that shuts down it's natural ability to do what it needs to do to make us well, we can help facilitate the body's natural inherent ability to fix itself by giving it the nutrients and the sleep that it needs. When we tell our body that it is stupid and we are going to do things how we want to do it, either by taking drugs that shuts down symptoms or by going through unnatural patterns of sleep, then the body will say, "Okay have it your way....Here's your disease. Go and fix it yourself."