Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme
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Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme
#2One unintended consequence of Covid19 related lockdown/work from home has been less commute and more hours to sleep.
This is the most regular/high quality sleep i've had in years and I'm only now seeing how badly my normal sleep habits have been effecting me. Experimenting with any non-monophasic sleep pattern sounds exhausting and I'm afraid could have serious health impacts...would love to see the science/literature evolve to a point of consensus though.
Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme
#3I think the article points out a useful fallacy: that polyphasic sleep means you can get away with less sleep. We should probably move away from trying to get less sleep, and move toward getting better sleep. This may reduce our waking hours, but would make those hours more productive. Having 18 hours a day available isn't much help if you're a tired confused angry mess.
> Polyphasic sleep purportedly had famous practitioners such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Napoleon, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Edison, but there is scant evidence to prove such claims. Buckminster Fuller appears to be one of the first documented polyphasic sleepers
Roger Ekirch did some work around historical accounts of sleep and found "the second sleep" referred to biphasic sleep, and that this was common and well known.
https://www.history.vt.edu/Ekirch/sleepcommentary.html
And some reporting of his work:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783
https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-used-to-sleep-in-two-shi...
Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme
#4One unintended consequence of Covid19 related lockdown/work from home has been less commute and more hours to sleep. This is the most regular/high quality sleep i've had in years and I'm only now seeing how badly my normal sleep habits have been effecting me. Experimenting with any non-monophasic sleep pattern sounds exhausting and I'm afraid could have serious health impacts...would love to see the science/literatur…
> Experimenting with any non-monophasic sleep pattern sounds exhausting and I'm afraid could have serious health impacts
I assume you speak for yourself. Biphasic sleep is not an abnormal occurrence and actually quite embedded in some non-anglo cultures (e.g. late afternoon opening times). Even when occurring naturally, it isn't extravagant to be aware of provisions so that nap time doesn't cause a naturally avoidable interference.[1]
Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme
#5Having recently experienced raising an infant, let me tell you, getting all my sleep in I was getting what this article suggests would be a viable polyphasic sleep schedule (total of 8 hours per 24 hour period, in chunks of 1-2 hours throughout the day and night whenever the baby slept), but I started hallucinating, got deeply depressed, and felt like I was losing touch with reality. All the symptoms vanished as soon as I started getting longer chunks of sleep at night.
Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme
#6I think the article points out a useful fallacy: that polyphasic sleep means you can get away with less sleep. We should probably move away from trying to get less sleep, and move toward getting better sleep. This may reduce our waking hours, but would make those hours more productive. Having 18 hours a day available isn't much help if you're a tired confused angry mess. > Polyphasic sleep purportedly had famous prac…
> isn't much help if you're a tired confused angry mess.
Depends. I can go through a lot of email like this.
Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme
#7I think the article points out a useful fallacy: that polyphasic sleep means you can get away with less sleep. We should probably move away from trying to get less sleep, and move toward getting better sleep. This may reduce our waking hours, but would make those hours more productive. Having 18 hours a day available isn't much help if you're a tired confused angry mess. > Polyphasic sleep purportedly had famous prac…
My experience agrees that sleeping less through alternative sleep patterns is possible. However, the benefits of sleeping less are spurious: While I can improve motivation and concentration in my observation, work results when inspected later do not agree, at least for the concentration. It is easier to get stuff done, but the overall quality of work and thought is diminished. I would equate the state to being intoxicated: Certain inhibitions to motivation are removed, but so is a part of your intelligence and concentration as well as the ability for self-observation and self-judgement. Therefore I would suppose that many who report improvements while sleep-deprived are just inadvertently fooling themselves. However, all this is just based on my observation, ymmv.
Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme
#8I did tried my best to keep to the dymaxion schedule (thirty minute nap every six hours) in college for about two months for a blogging assignment. The first two weeks were pretty terrible but it got better after that. I can confirm what was written in the article, that oversleeping or missing one of those naps would be disastrous for continuing to keep the schedule. On a positive note, I was more productive during that term than I ever had been before. I was working out, cooking my own meals, and finished all of my assignments long before they were due.
Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme
#9One unintended consequence of Covid19 related lockdown/work from home has been less commute and more hours to sleep. This is the most regular/high quality sleep i've had in years and I'm only now seeing how badly my normal sleep habits have been effecting me. Experimenting with any non-monophasic sleep pattern sounds exhausting and I'm afraid could have serious health impacts...would love to see the science/literatur…
> Experimenting with any non-monophasic sleep pattern sounds exhausting and I'm afraid could have serious health impacts I assume you speak for yourself. Biphasic sleep is not an abnormal occurrence and actually quite embedded in some non-anglo cultures (e.g. late afternoon opening times). Even when occurring naturally, it isn't extravagant to be aware of provisions so that nap time doesn't cause a naturally avoidabl…
I would guess that biphasic sleep was killed by the common consumption of stimulant drugs like tea or coffee in western culture.
Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme
#10I tried polyphasic sleep and exactly what the text said, I stopped because social pressure of a monophasic world. It worked, but some other things like meeting friends more than four hours was more important for me.
So, I read three screen sites of text with only one argument: Polyphasic animals are sleeping longer.
I don't think thats a really good argument compared with reports from people that are doing polyphasic sleep for months.