Polyphasicsleep - 7:24AM - 10/18/2006

I just woke up.. its been around 6mins that I woke up.. From today I will be practicing polyphasicsleep (let me call it PPS for short).. when ever I kind of feel bored or have nothing to do.. I will update my blog of how I am doing with my polyphasicsleep transition. This transition, according to research, will take 1-2 weeks.. After the transition I should be able to get into REM phase with in 2-5mins of sleeping.

This PPS will give me 21hours to work and I think I will use it to the best by making sure all my clients are very happy with my service and work on products which I want to.

I am not going to follow the uber sleep method, but I will sleep for 30mins when ever I feel damn sleepy.. and do it 6times a day. I will make sure there is a minimum gap of 2-3 hours between each of 30mins nap.

Polyphasicsleep (PPS)
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep

Polyphasic sleep (also known as Da Vinci sleep or Uberman sleep) is a sleep pattern intended to reduce sleep time to 2–5 hours daily. This is achieved by spreading out sleep into short naps of around 20–45 minutes throughout the day.

The process of adapting to a polyphasic schedule involves a physically very difficult one- to two-week transition period. Thereafter, independent testers claim to experience no apparent drop of cognition or alertness, despite the few hours of sleep attained each day. On the other hand, polyphasic sleep requires a rigid schedule, which makes it infeasible for many people.

Little scientific research has been performed on polyphasic sleeping. Much, if not most, of the information about it comes from the claims of independent testers.

Theory

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.

Boat racers have used a similar technique to avoid dangers of sleeping for extended periods alone at sea. Astronauts have also occasionally tried similar strategies during extended crises. There is a substantial interest in polyphasic sleep at NASA and among the US military, especially the Marine Corps.


Practice

Self-testers often "crash" several times while testing and accidentally sleep through for several hours longer than intended. Current polyphasic users and scientific evidence (Stampi's) both suggest that problems relating to tiredness dissipate around 10 days into the schedule, and disappear completely around 14 days into the schedule, but many self-testers do not effectively plan their two week transition period. Therefore, they remain tired long after the target 14-day end date and eventually terminate the experiment.

Mechanism

According to Claudio Stampi's book ("Why We Nap: Evolution, Chronobiology, and Functions of Polyphasic and Ultrashort Sleep"), in sleep deprived condition, measurements of a polyphasic sleeper's memory retention and analytical ability show increases as compared with monophasic and biphasic sleep (but still a decrease of 12% as compared with entrained free running sleep). According to Stampi, the improvement is due to an extraordinary evolutionary predisposition to adopt such a sleep schedule; he hypothesizes this is possibly because polyphasic sleep was the preferred schedule of ancestors of the human race for thousands of years prior to the adoption of the monophasic schedule.

There are at least two schools of thought as to how polyphasic adaptation affects sleep patterns. One school claims that REM sleep is the most necessary stage, and that the body needs multiple hours of this stage each day, so therefore every nap taken by a polyphasic sleeper consists entirely of REM sleep. Another school acknowledges research done on users of this schedule (Scientific American Frontiers 1991), which suggests that the body will enter different stages of sleep during the different naps—REM during some, deeper sleep during others—in order to get some of each essential stage.

The idea that polyphasic sleepers experience only REM sleep is relatively popular among advocates, perhaps because some theories of sleep suggest that REM is largely responsible for the mental rejuvenation effects of sleep. However, the role of REM sleep has been disputed in recent years. It has been documented that depriving rats of REM sleep in particular leads to death in 3 to 8 weeks, but the notion that REM sleep is the most important phase of sleep, or even necessary for good health, is dubious: depressed people are known to have excessive REM sleep [1]; and monoamine oxidase inhibitors nearly completely abolish REM sleep, yet patients who take MAOIs do not exhibit any obvious cognitive deficits (Siegel 2001).

REM Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_eye_movement

Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is the stage of sleep characterized by rapid movements of the eyes. During this stage, the activity of the brain's neurons is quite similar to that during waking hours; for this reason, the phenomenon is often called paradoxical sleep. Most of the vividly recalled dreams occur during REM sleep.

REM sleep is so physiologically different from the other phases of sleep that the others are collectively referred to as non-REM sleep.

During a night of sleep, a person usually has about four or five periods of REM sleep, which are quite short at the beginning of the night and longer at the end. It is common to wake for a short time at the end of a REM phase. The total time of REM sleep per night is about 90-120 minutes for an adult. However, the relative amount of REM sleep varies considerably with age. A newborn baby spends more than 80% of total sleep time in REM mode, while people over 70 years old spend less than 10%. The average is 20%.


Uber Sleep

Is likely to be the most widely known type of polyphasic sleep, and also the most strict. It consists of six naps of 20–25 minutes each, occurring four hours apart throughout the day. This is also the closest schedule to the type that has been studied by Claudio Stampi in connection with long-distance solo boat races.