Polyphasic Sleep Experiment: Days 4 and 5
I stated in the days 2 and 3 summation that I was worried about the following two days… we went camping* for these, with a large crowd of others.
* Not really camping…we were in a cabin. At least the cabin wasn’t heated, and we (read, “I”) had to build a fire so everyone could stay warm.
This had concerned me. My activity level was about to go through the roof. Usually at these weekend camping trips, I run myself down physically, coming home on Sunday and crashing really hard for most of the day. Since I wasn’t doing as much sleeping, my body would have as much time to heal sore muscles and the like (based on “conventional” wisdom that the non-REM sleep stages are for physical body repair).
I’m happy to say that it was not an issue. I spent the weekend performing as I usually would, except that I didn’t go to sleep when everyone else did, and briefly took naps in the car at night (so my alarm wouldn’t wake everyone else).
What really makes me most happy about it is that after this weekend, I’m actually less sore and run down than I usually am. The soreness is probably from Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS), because I lead a programmer’s life and do not exercise as much as I should (and then these weekends are almost constant activity of literally running around or hiking).
Why the difference? My theory: My usual camping activity levels go something like - run around at very high level and then crash out late in the night with no cool down. This is almost asking for DOMS. But now, since I’m not crashing out into sleep (because, well, I hardly sleep), I was much more likely to have time to cool down after activity. At the very least, I wasn't becoming completely immobile shortly after activity.
Alternate theory: Given my misgivings on my ability to heal, I was much more careful about stretching, not over exerting myself, etc…
Alternate Alternate theory: It was just one of those weekends where I didn't overexert myself. It happens sometimes.
In any case, it did not interfere with my weekend in the slightest, and again, my life was enhanced by my chance to do more reading or other activities while everyone else slept (plus, I kept the fire stoked while they slept, so that worked out, too).
A few stumbles on the way, though:
* My lunchtime nap became an hour long nap before my wife awoke me. Nothing huge.
* My 4 am nap (my schedule shifted a little on the weekend) extended itself to a spotty on-off snooze-a-thon for about 2.5 to 3 hours. I seem to have nabbed my alarm clo, -- er, phone in such a way that, as soon as the alarm went off and caused me to be startled, my hand would clench and press the snooze button (yes, my cell phone has a snooze button). I’m so sneaky like that. Whoops. :)
I’m not worried about it, though. Every time I hit on of these snags where I oversleep, or miss my target, or whatever, I just take it as another datapoint in the test. Yes, it’d be nice to skip it all fast and get into a full blown Uberman, but I’m learning. I’m gradually learning little tips and tricks to keep myself from oversleeping. I don’t know if they’ll be useful, but I will see about sharing them with everyone else, too. Maybe later polynappers will have no problems with the schedule transition because of the information all these blogs are collecting. (Yeah, right) ;)
Also, the oversleeping generally causes me to feel exceptionally well rested and happy during the next few waking periods. Perhaps I should consider a core sleep approach…? For now, I’ll stick with just the 30 minute naps and see what happens.
Other noteworthy events over the weekend: Dreams during maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of the naps. Notably for me (which has me most excited) was that my dream during a midnight-ish nap was lucid dreaming for large parts of it. That was nice.
And finally: Socially, I was really pleased as well. This would be the first chance for me to explain my odd trial to people that were more acquaintances than friends (I had previously explained it to a good friend). I had expected a bit of odd looks and rolling of eyes, but actually, I was greeted with sincere curiosity. Some people even had a basic knowledge of it (“Isn’t that the schedule Edison used?”). Throughout the weekend, people would ask about time to my next nap, my current status physically and emotionally, etc. Any time I needed a nap, I just excused myself quickly, said I’d be back in ~45 minutes (given travel time to bed and such), and went and slept. Everyone was real cool with it.
Steve Pavlina’s polyphasic Q&A post brings up the point of his readers’ concerns over the schedule being weird and potentially distancing them from everyone else… maybe I just felt distant in general before, but after this weekend and the concern and interest shown, I only feel more connected.
The deeper I go, the better it gets… hmmm…
-sean
* Not really camping…we were in a cabin. At least the cabin wasn’t heated, and we (read, “I”) had to build a fire so everyone could stay warm.
This had concerned me. My activity level was about to go through the roof. Usually at these weekend camping trips, I run myself down physically, coming home on Sunday and crashing really hard for most of the day. Since I wasn’t doing as much sleeping, my body would have as much time to heal sore muscles and the like (based on “conventional” wisdom that the non-REM sleep stages are for physical body repair).
I’m happy to say that it was not an issue. I spent the weekend performing as I usually would, except that I didn’t go to sleep when everyone else did, and briefly took naps in the car at night (so my alarm wouldn’t wake everyone else).
What really makes me most happy about it is that after this weekend, I’m actually less sore and run down than I usually am. The soreness is probably from Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS), because I lead a programmer’s life and do not exercise as much as I should (and then these weekends are almost constant activity of literally running around or hiking).
Why the difference? My theory: My usual camping activity levels go something like - run around at very high level and then crash out late in the night with no cool down. This is almost asking for DOMS. But now, since I’m not crashing out into sleep (because, well, I hardly sleep), I was much more likely to have time to cool down after activity. At the very least, I wasn't becoming completely immobile shortly after activity.
Alternate theory: Given my misgivings on my ability to heal, I was much more careful about stretching, not over exerting myself, etc…
Alternate Alternate theory: It was just one of those weekends where I didn't overexert myself. It happens sometimes.
In any case, it did not interfere with my weekend in the slightest, and again, my life was enhanced by my chance to do more reading or other activities while everyone else slept (plus, I kept the fire stoked while they slept, so that worked out, too).
A few stumbles on the way, though:
* My lunchtime nap became an hour long nap before my wife awoke me. Nothing huge.
* My 4 am nap (my schedule shifted a little on the weekend) extended itself to a spotty on-off snooze-a-thon for about 2.5 to 3 hours. I seem to have nabbed my alarm clo, -- er, phone in such a way that, as soon as the alarm went off and caused me to be startled, my hand would clench and press the snooze button (yes, my cell phone has a snooze button). I’m so sneaky like that. Whoops. :)
I’m not worried about it, though. Every time I hit on of these snags where I oversleep, or miss my target, or whatever, I just take it as another datapoint in the test. Yes, it’d be nice to skip it all fast and get into a full blown Uberman, but I’m learning. I’m gradually learning little tips and tricks to keep myself from oversleeping. I don’t know if they’ll be useful, but I will see about sharing them with everyone else, too. Maybe later polynappers will have no problems with the schedule transition because of the information all these blogs are collecting. (Yeah, right) ;)
Also, the oversleeping generally causes me to feel exceptionally well rested and happy during the next few waking periods. Perhaps I should consider a core sleep approach…? For now, I’ll stick with just the 30 minute naps and see what happens.
Other noteworthy events over the weekend: Dreams during maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of the naps. Notably for me (which has me most excited) was that my dream during a midnight-ish nap was lucid dreaming for large parts of it. That was nice.
And finally: Socially, I was really pleased as well. This would be the first chance for me to explain my odd trial to people that were more acquaintances than friends (I had previously explained it to a good friend). I had expected a bit of odd looks and rolling of eyes, but actually, I was greeted with sincere curiosity. Some people even had a basic knowledge of it (“Isn’t that the schedule Edison used?”). Throughout the weekend, people would ask about time to my next nap, my current status physically and emotionally, etc. Any time I needed a nap, I just excused myself quickly, said I’d be back in ~45 minutes (given travel time to bed and such), and went and slept. Everyone was real cool with it.
Steve Pavlina’s polyphasic Q&A post brings up the point of his readers’ concerns over the schedule being weird and potentially distancing them from everyone else… maybe I just felt distant in general before, but after this weekend and the concern and interest shown, I only feel more connected.
The deeper I go, the better it gets… hmmm…
-sean
posted by Sean @ 11/22/2005 11:12:00 PM
5 Comments:
you keep mentioning lucid dreams, had you had them before you started the polyphasic sleeping, or were you expecting them to start once you did? i've been trying to lucid dream for about a week now (just found out about it recently) and haven't had any success. I was just wondering if the reason you were mentioning lucid dreams was that you have had them before.
oh man, I see a big sleep crash coming soon! This "core sleep" idea is very good. And it leads straight back to healthy normal sleep. The struggle with the snooze button must have been quite painful. Do you not worry that your sleep is nor performing its physiological function. Never mind. Keep fighting. Once it is all over, you will recover and be back to healthy shape, I hope.
Mialn
you keep mentioning lucid dreams, had you had them before you started the polyphasic sleeping, or were you expecting them to start once you did? i've been trying to lucid dream for about a week now (just found out about it recently) and haven't had any success. I was just wondering if the reason you were mentioning lucid dreams was that you have had them before.
I realize that I was, ahem, not being lucid with my comments on the short amounts of lucid dreaming. I was seperating "lucid" from "non-lucid" dreaming primarily by my awareness of said dreaming. Of the dream in question, I would hover between being fully involved in the dream and saying to myself, "Hey, you're dreaming. Take control of the dream."
And yes, primarily the reason I mention lucid dreams is that I had experienced them before, on 2 occasions. In both cases I was again heavily sleep deprived (college midterms).
I fell asleep, planning to sleep for 4-6 hours, dreamed lucidly, and awoke after 1 hour feeling extraordinarily refreshed and excited (I find lucid dreams fascinating).
oh man, I see a big sleep crash coming soon! This "core sleep" idea is very good. And it leads straight back to healthy normal sleep. The struggle with the snooze button must have been quite painful. Do you not worry that your sleep is nor performing its physiological function. Never mind. Keep fighting. Once it is all over, you will recover and be back to healthy shape, I hope.
Your concerns are valid... a lot of the same questions have been running through my head. I have worried about my health considerably during this, and I've been keeping a close eye on any new symptoms beyond the usual sleep dep. But, as I make the arguments in my first post, it cannot be worse than the long term sleep deprivation to which I was subjected through college. Here, however, I have much more of a choice of where and when to stop, and I am receiving as much or more sleep.
However, if you've discovered some polyphasic-specific research on the long-term effects, I would be very interested in reading it.
Thanks for the comments and concern.
-sean
your experiment can be worse for the health than the college deprivation. after all you do interrupt the natural cycle several times per day. In college you always get a "breather" to recover (call it "core sleep" :)
as for research, only Stampi seems to torture people in solid scientific conditions, but his focus is probably on minimizing damage (say for yachting); not measuring the long-term health effects (?)
blogs like yours are a valuable source of data snippets; if I do not try to experiment myself, it is only because of some rudimentary knowledge on circadian cycles that tells me polyphasic is never gonna work long-term
please try yet a little in the name of science :) - your blog is one of the most honest ones around - no showing off, just a solid self-analysis :)
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