Polyphasic Sleep

[Adam]

Alright, so I just heard about this today and was wondering about what you guys think, maybe you know some stuff about the actual science regarding subject of sleep, and may be able to shed some light on this.

From what I know and remember off the top of my head, we sleep in cycles, consisting of 60-90 minute cycles, we sleep an average of 4-6 cycles a day, and each cycle consists of us going from the first most sleep stage to the deepest one and back.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep has an explanation of the sleep stages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep is the article I was redirected to several hours ago.


What it essentially says is that by depriving yourself of sleep for a little while, you can regulate your sleep so that you can sleep in short naps instead of one long period of sleep.

The reason you can do this is because after sleep depriving yourself your body adapts in order to get the deep sleep it needs, it progresses through the lesser sleep phases faster in theory

They cite some theoretical evolutionary/apating evidence about how hunters/gatherers couldn't sleep the whole night, and how some animals don't sleep in one sitting, etc.

Unfortunatly I couldn't really find any studies on pubmed about this, so I was wondering if any of you knew of anything regarding this subject.


--Adam

[Oscar]

"Polyphasic sleep involves taking multiple short sleep periods throughout the day instead of getting all your sleep in one long chunk. A popular form of polyphasic sleep, the Uberman sleep schedule, suggests that you sleep 20-30 minutes six times per day, with equally spaced naps every 4 hours around the clock. This means you’re only sleeping 2-3 hours per day."

I've heard of this before, but it seems very unnatural to me. Not necessarily because of the short sleeping periods, even though there might be repair processes in the body which take long than 30 minutes consecutively, but more because the rigid sleep-wake rhythm, which seems unnatural.

Also, don't forget the rest of the world is on monophasic sleep.
This is actually the main reason why Steve Pavlina returned to it. Read about that here: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/0 ... onophasic/

[Adam]

thx for the link, interstin read. I'm in college atm, but during summer break I may try this out

[Chin-Chin]

Let us know, Adam!

[Mr. PC]

Here's another objective-seeming link http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic.htm

I'm very curious about this, as I would like more time in the day to do everything. I just met someone who's on it, but he seems a little nuts, so uh, who knows.

[Mr. PC]

Edit - after reading that link it seems polyphasic sleeping is only a good idea if you want to maximize waking time, not boost creativity/alertness. Also there are no reliable sources proving Da Vinci et al were polyphasic sleepers.

[fictor]

I have yet to see one single scientific article about this thing actually working. My cousin and his friends tried out "Uberman" this summer and, as everybody else I know of who have tried it, failed miserably. It simply does not work in the long run.

The idea is cool, though