15 July 2006

Polyphasic Sleep Experiment: Day 3

Posted by Greig under: Sleep Experiment .

Here I am, finally zombie-like. I guess that means I’m doing something right. My naps are every 3.5 hours approximately and I feel refreshed now and then and exhausted right now. In case you’re wondering, yes that is how i should feel right about now. Sleep deprivation supposedly forces the body to go into REM sleep faster and without the inital deprivation period there’s no forcing any changes. Plus, it’s more fun this way.

Wikipedia says:

Ordinary “monophasic” sleep consists of several stages, some of which may not be necessary in the amounts or proportions that naturally occur. It is believed by advocates of polyphasic sleep that after undergoing controlled sleep deprivation during an initial adjustment period, the brain will start to enter the essential sleep stages much more quickly, as a survival strategy. Once this adaptation is learned, the theory goes, a comfortable and sustainable equilibrium of sleeping in only naps can be established.

More about Polyphasic sleep at wikipedia
I don’t find it particularly difficult to get up after a 30 minute nap if my alarm works. It doesn’t seem like it’s enough time for me to fall into a deep sleep. When I’m going for these naps I try not to let myself feel like I am falling into a deep sleep. I try to think of it as a light nap and then I basically just daydream until I really fall asleep. I’d say my best estimate for the amount of time I’ve spent dreaming during the initial period is about 10 minutes. I think this happened once. After, I woke up and thought I’d really overslept the alarm. The dream was vivid and I still remember it now. In fact, the three or four dreams I’ve had have been very vivid and real.

My philosophy on this is that as long as I don’t rest for more than 30 minutes, it doesn’t really matter too much how many naps I have during the day. They idea is to get your brain to adapt to getting REM sleep in short naps and the more practice I get, the better and faster I will become at it. I try to keep my waking hours to a minimum of 90 minutes and I’ve had no problem doing that, although in the past two nights I’ve needed to break that rule.

Both nights between 4 and 7 am I’ve felt exhausted and needed to have another nap about 20 minutes after waking from the previous. The first night there was a disaster because I set my alarm to wake in the pm not am. As a result, I slept for a two hour block of time. Somehow I managed to do this, or something similar, again last night (I’m using a computer alarm called the Banshee Screamer) and overslept for 38 minutes or so. However, I still am sleep deprived and getting a lot of practice at napping. What a goal - this week I’m going to practice napping. Sweet.

My approximate sleep schedule for the last 24 hours:

July 14th

10am - Result: unsuccessful due to my girlfriend cleaning the one-room apartment

2pm - Result: assumed unsuccesful because I don’t remember it and Jenny was still there.

6:30pm- Result: This was the most awkward because I had to do it at school in an empty classroom. I sat there in a 1 foot high kindergarten desk and maybe got 5 minutes of a half daydream/dream (what’s the difference? I don’t really know but you can read this)

10:45pm - Result: A nice nap but was woken up in the middle by a phone ringing or something. I did have a dream for about 10 minutes though.
July 15th
3:00am: Result: Not bad at all. I believe I had a dream. I woke up feeling a little tired but more refreshed than before the nap.

This where things get vague. I think I tried another nap around

5:15am - Result: woke up tired, decided to have another nap after 30 mimnutes. I woke up 38 minutes after my alarm was supposed to go off on this one (at 7:38am). It should be noted that I bolted upright out of bed wihtou an alarm. I thought I had way overslept and did not want to ruin the experiment two nights in a row. I felt good after that, but 3.5 hours later I really needed another.

10:45am - Result: Woke up feeling groggy but quickyl recovered and felt fine for a while.

Between 12 and 2pm I did some private ESL tutoring. At the end of the second hour I was starting to yawn uncontrolably and the student started to notice but I was still funtional.

2:30pm: Result - I think it was good… not sure, even though it was less than 4 hours ago.

I think I’m experiencing some memory loss therefore I’m going to keep track of this more strictly. Maybe I’ll keep a dream log too.

Greig Out