[dbskdbsk]

when i googled the benefits of napping for my psych class, i stumbled onto something called polyphasic sleep.

polyphasic sleep replaces monophasic sleep (uninterrupted sleep once per day) with short naps at set intervals throughout the day.

there have not been any long-term research on ps & relatively little research on it in general, but i found this site where some dude ps'ed for over 1 year and took detailed logs of his experience. he took 20-30 minute naps every 4 hours throughout the day, and after the first week, he followed that sleep schedule without any mental or physical repercussions (he never got sick while ps'ing). i recommend looking at his site: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/

he switched back to monophasic sleep b/c he started to become lonely at night (LMAO). & the nap schedule is pretty rigid, so if you delay or miss a nap you're screwed for the rest of the day. he said he would have kept on ps'ing if the rest of the world wasn't monophasic. who knows? maybe ps will be more widespread in the future.

supposedly ps is easiest to adjust to for vegetarians, then omnivores, then carnivores....of course ps is not for everybody. there have been some accounts of people having bad side effects, but they slacked off a lot on keeping with the nap schedule.

anyhoo.....i'm thinking of trying this. i always feel that there aren't enough hours in a day for me to get all my stuff done w/ all of the mini cooperload of crap that i have to do....i'm currently a senior in hs, so i can't start this now. i'll probably experiment over the summer & if it works i'll continue it in college.

so what do you guys think of this? would you try it? do you know anyone who ps'es?
yes, i love my 8 hrs of sleep too, but an extra 5 hrs each day sounds preetty tempting....

[Mercetti]

To me it would not be plausible.. I can not fall asleep on a whim.

How ever, I have read about it before. But supposedly you only start to feel fine with such a short period of sleep after like.. 2 weeks? I can't remember how long.. : )

Good luck btw.. My bags are horrible enough.

[Brusky]

http://www.menshealth.com/cda/article.do?s...00013281eac____

just an article on men's health about one of the writers who tried that polyphasic/uberman sleep cycle for a month or something. turns out it didn't work out very well for him, but read it for the details.

[maoling]

tempting yes. my friend tried this before, she failed because she likes long sleep times. Haha. I'm gonna try this when I have more freedom.

[eyxyelhsa]

Check out this vid>>>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myi2sRph69A

I heard about this before, but I never had the guts to try it

[kikkie.kl]

How in the world do you get all your REM sleep in just 30 minutes?

[boka]

I find myself quite prejudiced against this idea.

The sleep schedule they describe doesn't seem to allow for someone to be fully rested and alert on waking. Take for example the "multiple sleep latency test", which is sometimes used to justify the prescription of stimulants. This test has a rested patient napping multiple times through the day and from memory, patients that are not sleep deprived will take around 15min to fall asleep each time, whereas anything under 5min indicates a sleep/arousal disorder. With this in mind, if this napping is actually providing adequate sleep, then one should be spending around 15min actually falling asleep in this kind of frequent-napping schedule so for a person to be able to switch off on-cue every four hours, they'd almost constantly need to be in a state of sleep deprivation.

Aside from that, the schedule just seems horribly inconvenient and inefficient. 20-30 minutes per 4 hours yields 2-3 hours per day, but you have to consider travel time going to and from bed so many times a day, the aforementioned sleep onset latency and other things like fixing your clothes/hair afterwards, getting back to whatever you were doing, grogginess/down-time from being abruptly woken from certain stages of sleep, poor quality of sleep during the day due to light/heat/noise etc. Some might end up spending a lot of time sleeping in chairs/couches in noisy environments.

In the end, your body clock controls all sorts of physiological processes and putting so much effort into messing around with it on a long-term basis just doesn't seem to be worth it.

[Intuition]

Hey dbskdbsk, if your looking for a simpler version of polyphasic sleep, look up biphasic sleep. Its basically taking a nap in the afternoon that lasts about an hour and a half, and a sleep at night for about 4-5 hours? I've been researching it a lot lately haha

[meilotus90]

My lecturer sleeps 2 hours every day (He's a very busy man, teaching, business, medicine..). He finds it absurd that I nap for 2 hours because that's how long he sleeps. LOL. He didn't recommend me doing it though because it requires lots of practice (from yoga, according to him.).

[Lie]

Yeah, seems pretty difficult based on the way most of the world is structured currently. For some reason I don't think there are a lot of bosses who would be cool with their workers taking nap breaks.

[desertrose1290]

kikkie.kl: technically, you don't need to sleep into REM to get a good rest. there was a study done at Stanford by Dr. Dement (he gave a presentation at my school) and he said that students were stuck in a room to sleep and woken up every 30 minutes after they fell asleep for 6-8 hours and they still felt fully rested.

bizarre, isn't it? who in the world would stay up to wake them up every 30 minutes, i wonder..




i was sort of on something like this when i was in high school, but not purposely haha. i slept from 4am-7am at night and then 6pm-8pm during the day.. it was hard to break the habit -____- but wasn't too exhausting, i suppose.

[faithpuppy]

o-o yeah i would do this if it didn't affect my school routine!!
well i do sleep when I come home after school...but that's probably because I stay up late... [now its 12:45am >_>]

[marasshi]

This is really interesting. I wanna try out biphasic sleeping -- polyphasic sleeping just won't work because of my schedule.

[Tyki Mikk]

haha if i remember correctly, there was an episode of seinfield where Kramer was trying this and omg it was hilarious he was like so out of it.

i don't think i could survive doing this.. 3 hours is like a nap for me

[Christinaisweird]

look at those naps.
i would sleep longer than those naps.
plus, i feel that sometimes 8 hours isn't enough.

[dbskdbsk]

i'm gonna try biphasic sleep...so i'll sleep 4.5 hours at night at then take a 90 min nap...i already sleep 6 hrs monophasically & i feel dead tired so this might work for me.

[pprMNTE]

How in the world do you get all your REM sleep in just 30 minutes?

That's what I was wondering.
It takes a while for your body to enter "deep sleep." That's the type of sleep you need to really reset your body. It's crucial to your health and alertness on waking.

[Tutu Loli]

hmm i'm tempted to try this...

[Kathy88]

3 hours? I don't think I could survive this though,
I sleep 8 hours a day and I still feel sleepy
what more 3 hours? Lol.

[angel_cutie]

now i want to try this..
xDD im so curious if it works
just like how i wondered if coffee and red bull keeps you awake for real XD