Polyphasic Sleep 2 Week Summary
The past two weeks have been very interesting and educational to say the least. I now know more about sleep than ever before. This article is me sharing that knowledge with you in hopes that it can help you improve your sleep as well.
For me, slowly adjusting to polyphasic sleep just made more sense. Your body doesn’t like rapid change. Slow adjustment can make adaptation much easier and that’s exactly what I’ve been doing for the past 2 weeks. It has made adjustment take much longer (and I’m still not 100% there), however I believe that it has made it much easier.
Here’s a full day-by-day summary of how I slept with notes below. Each line is a day.
8h core (normal)
6h core, 1h nap
6h core, 30min nap
4.5h core, 2 30 min naps (driving 400 miles to visit parents)
4.5h core, 2 30 min naps (optomitrist appt, didn’t know how lack of sleep would effect eyes)
6 28 min naps (first full 6 phase day)
2 90 min naps, 3 28 min naps (Christmas day)
6h core, no naps (visiting relatives)
6h core, 1 27 min nap (driving 400 miles back home)
6 30-26 min naps (playing with different times)
6 27 min naps
5 27 min naps, 1 90 min nap (decided I needed extra sleep)
6 27 min naps
6 27 min naps (New Year’s eve, 2 naps taken at friend’s house resulted in little to no sleep)
8h core (New Year’s recovery)
6 27 min naps, 1 3h nap (added extra and then overslept the next one by 2.5h)
6 27 min naps (Today)
As you can see, I have yet to stick to the entire 6 phase cycle for more than a few days straight. Had it not been for New Years I would have made it almost a week. Between the two naps with no sleep and a bit of drinking I decided a “normal” 8h night would suit me well. One of the most interesting results from this is that I now feel tired in a normal way. As I posted before I hadn’t been feeling a normal tired state and wasn’t yawning. Since New Years I’ve been yawning when tired and I have returned to my normal tired state with microsleeps. I don’t know what caused this but I find it quite interesting. Also, I am back to my normal mental state. I feel that I am at 100% again and the pressure in my head is gone. It seems that taking a monophasic day in there may help adjustment.
The cold feeling still remains. I still feel colder than before changing my sleep. I’m hoping this will go away after adjustment has been completed. Speaking of adjustment, I think that I’m almost there! Last night was a bit hard in the 2-6AM range. I ended up taking an extra nap. It didn’t seem to mess me up like on Christmas (see other blog entries) but it did mess up my sense of time. After waking I forgot that it was an extra and showered as if it were my normal 6AM sleep. By the time I was done showering and whatnot it was 6AM and I realized what I had done. I hopped back into bed and proceeded to sleep 3h. My first major oversleep! I’m not sure if I slept through the alarm or if I shut it off and fell back asleep. I’m going to put a new battery in it today and move it father away from my bed. I’m so close to adjusting, I just need to keep these minor screwups in check.
Watching 24 Season 3
Dreams have been extremely unusual, and I don’t mean the content of them. The content has been normal but my dreaming seems to be a bit less visual and more mental. When I was sleeping 8h a night I would remember images from my dreams quite vividly. Now it’s more what the dream was about than a visual image. Also, my sleep has been extremely light. It isn’t unusual for me to wake up 5-10 times per nap. It will usually be in the middle of a dream. I will wake up for a few seconds and then fall back asleep extremely rapidly. Then I will have a new dream. It’s very strange having 5 unrelated dreams in 20 minutes.
As others have observed sleep often seems much longer than 25 minutes. Sometimes I will wake up before the alarm thinking I overslept when it has only been 15-20 minutes. It has been taking me roughly 3-5 min to fall asleep so I’ve been setting my alarm to 28 min (target of 24-25 min of sleep). Remember to account for this!
So what are my suggestions to those interested in attempting this?
1. Change one thing at a time! If you’re planning on improving or changing your diet or adding exercise do it at least a week before you try polyphasic sleep (or a week after adjusting). That way it will allow your body to adjust to one thing at a time. Too many major changes can do strange things to your body.
2. Don’t rush it. I see so many people blogging about changing their sleep the day the first read about it. Don’t do that! First, educate yourself about sleep. Learn about the cycles, your body’s rhythms, sleep deprivation, and what has worked for others. You’ve been a monophasic sleeper your whole life, there is no need to rush and change that today. A few days aren’t going to make a difference.
3. Don’t give up. Don’t worry about minor setbacks such as oversleeping. You should plan that everything won’t be 100% perfect. There will be times when you’ll oversleep. Pick yourself back up and continue where you left off. You may even choose to sleep a little longer on certain days when you are extremely tired.
4. Change slowly. Try changing your sleep patterns gradually. Use core sleep with naps or long naps. Your body typically adjusts to slow changes better than instant ones.
