Polyphasic Sleep: The End and The Why

Hello, audience. Last time we spoke, I was feeling pretty enthusiastic about this whole experiment and its potential for success. And a few days ago, that was the case. But in the last two days, a few things have come up that have changed my decision to remain on polyphasic sleep.


Thursday went pretty well, and Friday was okay too, until I left my phone at my Raven's house. She lost her keys a few weeks ago, and she didn't have the house key that day because her roommate was coming home late, while Raven was going to be at work the whole night and therefore didn't need the keys. This meant that my phone was going to be stuck at her house till at least the next day and maybe longer. I can live without my phone, something I've done for months at a time before. I'm not addicted to the social interaction. The problem was, without my phone, I had no alarm system to make sure I woke up on time, in case my brain failed to wake me before the alarm like it has been doing of late.


I ended up staying over at Poncho's boyfriend's house so that I could have someone around to wake me up if I accidentally overslept. The midnight nap was perfect, and I actually woke up exactly 25 minutes after I laid down to sleep, no alarm needed. For the 6am nap, I set an alarm on the computer that would ring loudly to wake me up if I overslept. Unfortunately, it didn't repeat, and I didn't hear it when it did go off, and my brain didn't wake me up either. So I ended up sleeping for about an hour before waking. It continued downhill from there, as I overslept at noon and 6 as well. After the 6 nap, I had become incredibly drowsy, completely unable to keep my eyes open for most of an hour, and then lacking the energy to want to move for the time after that.


The drowsiness was rooted in sleep inertia, which is the feeling of wanting to go back to sleep if woken mid-cycle. You feel tired and grumpy and generally irritable about everything, something scientists have actually proven during lab testing. Subjects woken during REM felt refreshed and optimistic, while subjects woken during other phases woke feeling irritable, and reflected that with generally negative responses when faced with a fill-in-the-blank word exercise immediately after waking. The only way to avoid this is to wake up during the REM cycle itself or the natural waking state at the end of an REM cycle.

Me, perpetually, when I don't have enough sleep.

First in my decision to end the experiment here was the fact that I would have to be slave to some safety net, else I oversleep and set myself into a self-destructive pattern thereafter because of drowsiness and irritability. I was without my phone for 24 hours and the entire set of progress I made thus far fell apart in no time. But, as I said, this was not the only deciding factor.


My appetite has continued to be completely insatiable, and I am never in a place where I can eat to fullness at every meal. This results in either constant or near constant hunger, and then feelings of being light-headed and weak due to lack of nutrition and proper sustenance. A major problem, because it means that I must always have a full, healthy meal at hand, which is not always going to be possible. And, in the future, it would mean my budget for food would have to be massive in order to accommodate my food intake, which is a very undesirable end.


Third, and the most selfish of the reasons to call this experiment done, was the major changes to diet I've been having to make. Not only do I have to eat more food at strictly regular intervals, I had to eat healthier at every meal to maintain good nutrition. Lots of fruits and veggies constantly, less greasy or fatty foods, and more fresh prepared meals. All of which are not easy to keep at hand all the time unless you have a majorly inflated food budget, mentioned before. Alongside that is the necessity to drop caffeine or high sugar intake in all forms. No soda, no energy drinks, no coffee, not even most teas. I was limited to water, juice, and milk, or nothing at all. This limitation was the one that really caught me, as I really enjoy drinking coffee, teas, energy drinks, and sodas, and I was not about to convert to diet soda to compromise.


I will die before I drink diet soda instead of regular soda or coffee. 


I want you to hear that sentence in your head in the most serious tone of voice you can imagine coming from my mouth. Or, those of you who haven't met me in person, them most serious tone of voice you can attribute to the voice you have given me in your imaginations. I love coffee more than almost anything else I ingest. I love Mountain Dew in all of its flavors, and as proof, I actually co-founded a cult formed around the worship of its holy citrus-based deliciousness. And Red Bull flows in my veins, not blood.


So, at the end of everything, I really did enjoy the extra hours I gained during polyphasic sleep. I was achieving success in the adaptation, and at the end of only five days I was starting to wake naturally at the end of my cycles. I was not drowsy except for the occasions on which I slept too long or had to push a nap back so I could fall asleep properly. Polyphasic sleep worked for me, and my experiment was successful overall. But at a high cost to my personal choices. One of the blogs I read, and probably the greatest source of hope for polyphasic sleepers, was actually written by a person who had been a practicing vegan for many years before he began the Uberman sleep cycle, so his diet was already perfect for the kind of restrictions polyphasic sleep demands. I, however, am not a vegan and wouldn't ever consider the change.


I'm an egoist at heart, and my decisions are always dictated by what I want in the end. In this case, I want to drink soda, coffee, and energy drinks, and want to keep my diet the way it is, more than I want to pursue the extra hours of sleep everyday. And that's all that really matters. As happy as I was with all that time on my hands, I wouldn't really be happy if I had to give up some of the things I enjoy most in life. Call me hedonistic, but  I have chosen personal pleasures over discipline and a more effective method of time management. I could swear by Ayn Rand's Anthem, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged, and I've just decided that I'm going to blog about how much I love those works and her egoist philosophy very soon, as they form a large portion of my own core philosophy and worldview.

Somewhere deep down inside, I am Hedonism Bot.

There you have it, audience. Polyphasic sleep does indeed have its benefits, but only if you are willing to discipline yourself so far as to make it work. And I know that there are many out there dedicated enough to make it work. As disciplined as I would like to live, I really enjoy being chaotic neutral more. I could never be a lawful alignment, as all of the restrictions and guidelines I would be submitting myself to would kill the essence of what I really was. At the end of the day, I'm a lazy, selfish, egotistic, and arrogant soul, and you can be damn sure I'm happy that way. I wasn't going to be myself if I sacrificed my favorite things to get some extra time to do things I wanted, and therefore, I chose to stop trying.


So, till next time my dear audience, don't settle for what you've got if you think there's something better waiting for you, and don't compromise what makes you truly happy for something you think will make your life better. Stay true to yourself and who it is you really want to be, not who you think you should be. End of story.

"...What else am I supposed to stand on?"

Polyphasic Sleep: Days 3-4

Hello again, audience! This is a groundbreaking week for me in the realm of blogging, as I have now posted three blogs within three days. I forgot my early amusement with blogging and how much fun it was to just rant on and on at people I couldn't see and would probably never meet. But here I am again, with more things to say concerning my experiment with polyphasic sleep.

The last two days have gone by pretty uneventfully, as the experiment is going as planned, meaning one step at a time and with very little frustration. Wednesday, I had trouble napping at noon due to a lot of light in the room, and I ended up just drowsing for the planned half hour, then slipping into accidental sleep for around 30 minutes after staring at the ceiling for a while. I chalked it up as success, as it basically counted as a nap taken later than I planned. The same thing happened later at my 6pm nap, as I was not properly tired when I tried to sleep because my nap was coming early. I ended up taking that nap closer to 7:40pm, and still slept for only half an hour or so before awaking naturally.

My midnight nap went off as planned, and I fell asleep smoothly after reading for the hour or so beforehand. After that, I had a long night of struggling to want to do anything. Thus far, I had spent every night of the experiment with other people around or a preplanned period of things to do. Last night, my plan was to begin writing a short story Poncho and I came up with earlier this week. The plot basically consists of a fumbling young necromancer in modern times who breaks into a morgue and resurrects a body as a thrall, only to find that the guy is completely aware of what is going on and is confused. Hilarity ensues. I eventually got around to starting, and I ended up the proud author of five handwritten pages before my 6am nap. Unfortunately, all of those pages were written in the last hour of the awake cycle, as I spent most of the cycle half conscious and drowsing on and off.

After my 6am nap, which also went off without a hitch, I took my lesson in motivation and turned into a productive human being! I showered, ate breakfast, did laundry, listened to August Burns Red for a good long while and practiced screaming to myself in the bathroom, and planned out my next cycle, all before noon. My noon and 6pm naps also went wonderfully, and now I'm closing in on my midnight nap.

Observations:
As each day passes and my body becomes more accustomed to very little sleep, I have noticed that my grogginess has lessened with just about every cycle since the end of the second day. After waking, I feel refreshed but still a bit fuzzy for ten or fifteen minutes, and then I feel awake and aware like I do after a normal night of sleep. This short waking up period is a wonderful change as opposed to how I feel after monophasic cycles, as I usually spend the next hour or so fighting to find motivation to move or speak so I can shuffle off to the kitchen and eat.

Another notable event is my return to sleepiness in the last hour or two before my next nap. My body becomes tired much like it does after staying up for very long hours, but I've only really been awake for four or five. This leads me to believe that my body is indeed adapting to the cycle and is starting to work on 6 hour cycles rather than 14-20. And, as I mentioned before, the sleepiness only lasts until my nap and for the first ten or so minutes after, and then I feel at about maximum, considering how early into the experiment I am and the fact that I have only had a maximum of 12 hours of sleep in the last four days.

The last thing to note at this point is how hungry I am. All the time. I read about this occurrence in blogs of other sleepers, and it makes sense. My body is now conscious and at full metabolism for around 22 hours of every day. This means that I am consuming and digesting food and then using the energy at a more rapid pace than normal. Following that, I've been waking up hungry and eating a full meal just about every cycle so far, and still feeling hungry after. I have a naturally high metabolism, being that I am 18, stand 5'11", weigh 125lbs. average, and have a BMI of 12 at last calculation. I can eat anything and everything I want to and not worry that it is affecting my weight or my ability to engage in activities throughout the day. So an increase in hunger and need for food is shocking, and it makes me worry that I am not going to be able to keep up with my body's increasing need for nutrition all the time. Good healthy meals are not always available to me, so it's going to be difficult to keep myself nourished if this continues. I'll have to come up with a meal plan as to how I'm going to get my Daily Values each day, spread between the four cycles.

I'm really happy with my results thus far, and I'm excited for the days to come. I believe I have conquered the problems I've had in the last few days with just a few simple resolutions to keep in mind every time a problem arises. Getting out of bed immediately; planning out activities for my next cycle before I nap; not worrying about being unable to fall asleep in some locations or situations; and, following that, taking naps up to an hour later than scheduled to accommodate the situation; all of these have made today the most successful day of my experiment yet. And it will only continue to get better. :D

Stay tuned, my beloved audience. There is more to come in the days ahead, and my time dedicated to polyphasic sleep updates will dwindle as interesting news becomes less and less of a happenstance. But, be assured: I will continue to maintain my blog more fervently than before. I really do enjoy writing here, as much as I thought I wouldn't in the first place. Look forward to hearing from me more often and about a greater variety of subjects in the coming days and weeks. And thank you for allowing me a small portion of your lives to entertain you, if even for a moment.

Polyphasic Sleep: Interlude of interest...

Gasp! Two blogs in one day? Unheard of. But, dear audience, I felt like some words needed to be said.

I've been reading around the web for more studies into polyphasic sleep cycles, and I came across someone who decided to take it upon themselves to debunk the myths and present sheer facts as to how it works, and whether or not it can in the long run. The only problem was, the page was so full of bias and skepticism, I could hardly find a straightforward sentence in the entire thing. He spent his time talking at large about how the polyphasic sleep cycle is popularized by young, optimistic, testosterone charged males with ambitions to take the world by storm and show that they were masters of their own bodies. While I don't dispute the truth of that, he dedicated an entire section to mocking their efforts, and pointed out that the most common words in their blogs about their personal experiments were "I", "nap", and "tired".

Coming from an objective standpoint as to whether or not the sleep works, I find it hard to believe that this page was written without blatant bias against the sleepers. Though I don't know everything about sleep cycles or how the body determines its circadian rhythms, I must also point out that scientists don't either. Studies into sleep have been ongoing for decades and longer as scientists try to determine why we sleep, why there are different phases, what happens in each phase, and whether or not these phases are absolutely necessary to proper growth or not. A lot of the studies I have read about determined that sleep is still mysterious, but that the phases do seem to have some specific purpose, though humans can live without them in large amounts as long as they get some form of regular sleep. Sleep deprivation is dangerous and is not to be toyed with in the long term.

It seems my biggest problem with the webpage is that the author seemed set to prove that a bunch of stupid teenagers on the internet didn't know what they were talking about, and that no scientist in their right mind would put test subjects through the kind of torment that polyphasic sleep supposedly inflicts upon the body. My response to this: OF COURSE A BUNCH OF TEENAGERS ON THE INTERNET DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT. They're teenagers, none of which have a doctorate of any kind, nor have they done mass research on sleep. They heard that they could get more out of their days with less sleep and wanted to put it to the test. And in my opinion, that makes them more a scientist than the guy who said that it would be unethical to try. In line with that, of course a JOURNAL about the experiment from the test subject's perspective is going to have the words "I" and "nap" show up a lot. The entire experiment revolves around naps. Don't attribute it to their egocentrism and their longing for more sleep on a constant basis.

The point of science is to put things to the test, to experiment, and to reveal unknown things through the pursuit of knowledge. For hundreds of years, the higher intelligence of the human race has been dedicated to discovering new things through the field of science, and we've come an incredible distance. Scientists have had thousands of experiments of all different kinds in order to find answers to their questions. Deciding that one specific subject is unethical because it results in someone being drowsy and having a clouded mind for portions of the day is ridiculous and idiotic.

Here's some honesty for you: On the large scale, individual polyphasic sleep experiments end in failure. The test subjects end up oversleeping and taking extra naps, or compromising their schedules because it gets in the way of their social life. I read one blog about a group who embarked on the experiment together, and the poster had a very passive attitude about the whole thing. He claimed dedication to the experiment, but passed it off when he overslept his alarm by four hours multiple times throughout the first two weeks. Success won't come if you let your mistakes lie and hope for better results in the future. He eventually gave up and went to a biphasic schedule of sleeping through the night and taking a single afternoon nap, which is not polyphasic by any means. That's called taking a siesta, a practice that's been around for quite a long time.

At the end of this whole rant, it really comes down to one simple thing for me: Don't knock it till you've tried it. Honestly, if the idea of being a bit foggy at points throughout the day offends you that badly, then by all means, sleep your little heart out, Rip Van Winkle. But if you don't care that you might be tired sometimes and that it gets a little rough in places, and still decide that the extra time everyday is worth it, then give it a shot. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. My personal goal is to remain polyphasic as long as I feasibly can, because I'm tired of sleeping my days away when I could be using the time to do so much more.

I intend to be serious about this and make it work, regardless of being a little drowsy in the opening stages. That's called a side effect, and considering the side effects of some drugs these days, a little drowsiness could be considered an extremely low cost for the benefit. For the benefit of 5-6 more hours available to me every single day, and the calculated 11 extra years added to the total conscious period of the average expected western lifespan, a little drowsiness is nothing to be worried about.

So sweet dreams, audience. Enjoy your long stretches of beautiful, restful sleep. I'll be taking the shortcut, and at the cost of sleeping in on weekends or curling up for 12 to 14 hours of sleep when you have a day off, I'll be reading and writing and playing guitar and thinking and enjoying life for a few extra hours each day. To each his (or her) own.

Polyphasic Sleep: Reboot and Days 1-2

Hello again, audience! You may or may not have noticed the sudden disappearance of my last blog on polyphasic sleep. This is because, in an attempt to edit it, I accidentally deleted it from the site. Go figure. But! A lot has changed since that first post, so this is my reboot of the experiment, starting from scratch.

First off, a recap on what polyphasic sleep actually is. Monophasic sleep is the traditional pattern of sleeping, where you lay down at night for eight hours of sleep and wake up in the morning feeling refreshed and recharged. Polyphasic sleep is a modified sleep cycle designed to obtain the maximum amount of conscious hours and still get enough sleep by taking short 'naps' at various intervals throughout the day. The idea is that you train your body to slip straight into REM sleep, which is the deep restful sleep during which you dream. In a monophasic cycle, you progress from Stage 1 light sleep into Stage 2 sleep, then Stage 3 'slow-wave sleep', then Stage 2 again, then finally REM. Stage 2 sleep makes up 45 to 50 percent of your overall time sleeping, whereas REM sleep is usually only 20 to 25 percent. So in a polyphasic sleep cycle, you obtain the same amount of REM with one quarter of the amount of sleep.

Now, in all the studies and blogs I have been able to google up, I have not found any serious negative side effects as a result of polyphasic sleep. The most stressing part is the adaptation period, where you train your brain to slip directly into REM. You basically take the naps as you plan to and, over the course of about a week or so, your brain learns to skip the other phases of sleep and put you directly into REM sleep. During this period, you feel all the side effects of your lack of sleep leading up to the point at which your brain starts clicking into gear and immediate REM sleep becomes natural.

With all that nasty technical business out of the way, I can quickly recount the events of my last attempt at polyphasic adaptation:

 It didn't work.

I believe it had a lot to do with how I prefaced the week of adaptation with a weekend of very little sleep and sporadic cycles. As a result, I was already sleepy a lot of the time, and I ended up oversleeping or taking involuntary naps out of sheer exhaustion. On one occasion, I recall waking up, turning off my alarm, and then blacking out until almost three hours later. My body just didn't have it in it to make the transition because it was so sleep deprived to begin with. So, my blogs never got posted, and the experiment was abandoned for a while.

As of Sunday this week, I decided to try again. The decision was made in part as a longing to complete my original experiment and see how polyphasic sleep worked in the long run, and part because I've decided that I really hate sleeping monophasically. I tend to either not sleep enough and feel tired all the time, or oversleep and end up wasting most of a day. It started to really aggravate me last week when I slept for 12 hours straight on three different days, mostly because I just couldn't make myself stay awake when my REM cycles ended and I became conscious. And it really pissed me off. I wasted most of three days because I was sleeping.

Back in high school, 12 hours of sleep was the most beautiful gift that anyone could ever give me. I believe this is because most of my waking hours were spent at school, and the energy drain from that left me begging for sleep. Now, sleeping for more than 5 or 6 hours makes me feel like a bum who could be spending his time doing more worthwhile things. So polyphasic sleep has become my solution to that problem. I get the sleep I need and still have plenty of time to do anything I want with my days.

Last but not least, update as to how i'm doing now: Much better than my previous attempt. Getting proper sleep the weekend before I started really made a difference in my ability to stay awake between cycles. It's still difficult to adapt, as purposeful sleep deprivation is really hard on your body. I've had a couple slips in the last two days, but overall, my naps are restful, and my waking periods are spent keeping myself busy so as not to fall asleep accidentally. I'm following the Buckminster Cycle of taking one half hour nap every six hours, on the sixes and twelves. This seemed to be the best arrangement of naps for my current schedule, and it's easily adaptable to accommodate any changes that may need to be made later on.

So there you have it: The beginning of my polyphasic sleep reboot. From here on out, I will be posting regularly like I originally planned to so as to chronicle my time spent as a polyphasic sleeper. As things are, I intend to remain a polyphasic sleeper for the indefinite future, as I see no real reason to maintain monophasic sleep since I hate it so much. It's stupid and takes up all my time and that's dumb and makes me angry. To put it simply, anyway. Goodbye for now, audience. I have Farscape Season 1 to get moving on. :D

Oh! Almost forgot. My beloved Poncho now has a blog of her own! :D Check it out: thebullwell.blogspot.com