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Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme

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Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme

#121

Post by ASalazarMX »

bonniemuffin wrote: post #5

Having 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…

I tried polyphasic sleep a month for fun, and this was my experience as well: feeling a bit out of touch with reality.

I've never done drugs, alcohol or tobacco, but I've been a messy sleeper most of my life. Night owl as long as I could get away with it, pulling all-nighters, sleeping a whole day, staying awake for a few days to set a personal record, etc. Even for me, polyphasic sleep was too disorienting, as if I wasn't fully awake when awake, and not fully asleep when asleep.

Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme

#122

Post by forgotmypw17 »

ashtonkem wrote: post #27
seven4 wrote: post #2

One 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…

Biphasic and triphasic are actually pretty normal, historically. Modern humans go to bed super late compared to our pre-electricity brethren; most people the world over would go to bed super early and have a “first” and “second” sleep, plus maybe an afternoon nap. You’ll notice this effect if you go camping. The moment the sun goes down you’ll crash much sooner than you would at home, and you might find yourself full…

I have adopted this type of strategy, though I've had to adjust it for city life.

Because of round-the-clock lights, I do not get the same signals from the sun and the darkness as before.

So I stay up as long as I will until I feel tired. Then, I sleep for as long as I want to until I want to get up.

If I only want to take a nap, I lie down on the carpet without taking my clothes off. If I want to sleep longer, I go to bed.

This is similar to when I am outdoors. If I only want to take a nap, I just lie down wherever, as long as it's out of the way. If I want to sleep longer, I put everything away, get in my sleeping bag or blanket, etc.

The way I feel now compared to how I felt when I was working office jobs, coming in at the same time every day, working the same hours, and then going home, and having to force myself to sleep in order to get up in the morning, is night and day. I feel fully rested, clear-minded, like I've run a full defrag, charged my battery to 100%.

This is despite the office work being in my 20s, and me now being in late 30s.

Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme

#123

Post by trickle_learn »

jsf01 wrote: post #113

Having tried doing a polyphasic sleep cycle around four years ago, the one thing that I really missed was the clear delineation between days. On a normal sleep schedule, you wrap up your day with an evening routine and begin the next day with another routine. Each day is a single discrete unit you can look back on and remember easily. On a polyphasic schedule each day blends into the next. It’s like one long neverend…

Love the insight about the days blending together.

I know there's lots of science supporting what you say about sleep being essential for consolidating memory.

Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme

#124

Post by popotamonga »

jjeaff wrote: post #120
codr7 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sleep training, so that's what they call it now. My mom tells me it was standard practice back when I was born, they used to say it was good for their lungs as well, but she couldn't do it either. They will eventually shut down in self-defense to escape the terror of being abandoned by their parents. All I can say is it doesn't sound like a very good idea to me, no matter how convenient.

How much crying without being tended to do you think is terrifying? Most sleep training I have seen says to let them cry for up to 15 minutes before getting them. We usually let ours cry for up to 5 minutes before picking her up. She would rarely cry for more than a minute or two before just falling asleep.

My 2yr old cries/screams so loud i'm starting to get hearing issues. And can do so for 1 whole hour until i give up first.

Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme

#125

Post by codr7 »

scandox wrote: post #105
codr7 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sleep training, so that's what they call it now. My mom tells me it was standard practice back when I was born, they used to say it was good for their lungs as well, but she couldn't do it either. They will eventually shut down in self-defense to escape the terror of being abandoned by their parents. All I can say is it doesn't sound like a very good idea to me, no matter how convenient.

I think "convenient" may be a mild understatement. Many parents are enduring serious mental health issues because of their inability to sleep. I should say that was not our case. > They will eventually shut down in self-defense to escape the terror of being abandoned by their parents Perhaps. I don't think we actually know what's going on in a baby's mind. Children appear to be amazingly resilient and also quite logi…

I have two children, I get it. But no one ever promised it was going to be easy.

Lack of sleep wouldn't be as big of a problem if we didn't force parents to work as well as raising children. Children are our future, messing them up to fit our messed up society is not a long term solution.

I agree about trusting your instincts, but that's not what I'm seeing. When a child cries the typical parental instinct would be to hold them.

Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme

#126

Post by dhruvkar »

dhosek wrote: post #106
dhruvkar wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've attempted this with our daughter several times from 6 to almost 10 months now. Just can't do it, it feels wrong. Obviously not science-based, but we haven't been able to do it for more than a few days at a time.

We used the methods in this book http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345497791/donhosek (there's a non-twin version as well) with good results. We didn't just let the kids cry it out, and we had kids sleeping through the night by three months and a regular sleep schedule at four months. It's worth noting that most young kids are sleep deprived and making sure that they get enough sleep makes a big difference in t…

That's awesome.

What sorts of techniques did you try? Sort of a gradual letting them soothe themselves for longer and longer periods of time?

Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme

#127

Post by bccdee »

sjf wrote: post #114
lcall wrote: post #110

Years ago I tried this, after having read a lot about it, trying multiple times, hard, as I was determined to get more done on things that were important to me. I can be very self-disciplined and almost fell asleep dropping to the floor while standing at one point. For a while I thought it helped me get more done. Today I have health problems (CFS), and these attempts at the polyphasic or "uberman" sleep cycle (~28 m…

I think alternative sleep schedules are like alternative medicine. If they were actually feasible and beneficial, they would be commonplace, and even recommended. Especially considering how often posts like this come up here, there is obviously a high level of interest.

I think what normally happens is people see the unbelievable claim of "6 20-minute naps" and think "wow that's incredible." Then they try it, fail horribly and never try a less extreme schedule. In my experience, Uberman requires a superhuman constitution, but some of the less-extreme schedules are perfectly viable.

I figured social distancing would be a great opportunity to give some polyphasic sleep schedules a try. I started with Uberman (6x20-minute naps), but that was awful. It was just a long slow crash, and it was totally unsustainable.

I recovered my lost sleep and then started Everyman 2 (4.5 hours at night + 2x20-minute naps) at the start of May, and I've really been enjoying it. I feel just as awake as I did before, but I'm waking up at 3:30am now. Only time will tell if my 2pm nap survives the end of social distancing, but for the moment it's going great.

Under normal circumstances, the failure of my first attempt would have totally ended the experiment, because I can't normally afford to tamper with my sleep for months on end ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. But once I swallowed my pride and set some reasonable goals, I managed to have a really good experience with the whole thing. I'd definitely recommend giving it a shot if you're curious, with the caveat that anyone interested should start with a moderate plan like Everyman 2 rather than gambling on one of the extreme schedules.

https://polyphasic.net/ is a good resource for prospective polyphasic sleepers.

Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme

#128

Post by tonyarkles »

FirefoxIsSlow wrote: post #12

Does biphasic sleep count as polyphasic? I've been doing it for years following the 6 hr core and 20 minute nap. (Basically this https://efficiencyiseverything.com/sleep/ ) It's been extremely doable for over a year. Sure I sleep in when I'm hungover or on a lazy Saturday, but it's closer to a regular 8 hour sleep rather than 10 hours. I'm not in agreement of this overly simple article.

That’s awesome! I guess I’ve been doing that for a year or two now too, although without naming it. I started getting up early to get stuff done before the rest of the world wakes up, but found myself getting sleepy around lunch time. 25min naps ended up being my sweet spot: 20min feel like they end right when it’s getting good, 30+ make me groggy.

Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme

#129

Post by viklove »

elric wrote: post #82
gwd wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jared Diamond in "The World Until Yesterday" says that when he was on expeditions with natives in New Guinea, they would all go to sleep when the sun went down (near the equator so usually pretty close to 7pm), then wake up around midnight and chat for an hour or two around the fire, before going back to sleep again and waking up at sunrise (again around 5 or 6).

That's 10 hours of sleep at night? Or are you being euphemistically and are you including time spent on sex?

7-12 (5 hours sleep) 12-2 (2 hours chatting around fire) 2-5 (3 hours sleep)

How are you doing the math here? I count 8 hours of sleep.

Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme

#130

Post by BrandoElFollito »

mrweasel wrote: post #75
monkeydreams wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That must have been the happiest days of your life! We woke up and thought he had died. 10 minutes later everything was awesome.

We had the same thought after the first night when my daughter slept through the night. We woke up at around 6AM thinking: "She's dead... She'll be just as dead in another hour, so let's get another hour of sleep."

This is verbatim what I told my wife and mother when my son slept 3 times its normal sleep length for the first time.

It took him 3 years to have a complete night.

Now a teenager, it takes me 20 minutes to drag him out ofbhis bed at 10 in the morning.

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