I almost can't believe it. Today I've been polyphasic/biphasic for three weeks. This way of sleeping has become a way of life for me, it feels entirely natural. For some reason I've started writing my logs in the morning though instead of the afternoon. I'm not sure why that is exactly but it is currently the holidays so maybe I'm making up for the lack of studying in the morning. Either way.
Yesterday I remember writing that I wasn't going to take a nap because I'd slept 8.5 hours monophasic the night before and I wasn't tired. Well that notion fell through the floor. At about 5:00pm I developed an awful headache. In fact it was a cluster headache, the beginnings of a migraine. I've never had that before, it was absolutely freakin awful. I took a handful of anti-inflammatories and painkillers and it died down for the most part, but I was just super tired. After dinner at about 6:00pm I got into bed and fell asleep for about an hour and a half.
The cluster headache, as it turns out, happens usually right after or before sleep, and is caused by having either too little sleep or too much sleep. I know it would be obvious to blame me having too little sleep as the cause here, but the fact is I got the headache about an hour or two after my normal nap time, after already sleeping about 4 hours more at night than what I have done in the entire last three weeks. My body was apparently rejecting my old monophasic system of sleeping, which is incredibly interesting.
As for the nap itself, taking such a long one at such a late time was a really bad idea. I was still tired when I woke up and wanted to go back to sleep but I forced myself awake. An hour later and I was jumping around like a lunatic, super hyper. That lasted all night, and it got to about 2:30am before I ended up forcing myself to sleep. It took me about half an hour to get to sleep, and according to my sleep graph it wasn't at all that restful either:
Still, I woke up at 8:30am naturally, after 5.5 hours, possibly about to go back into REM sleep. I've felt great all morning. I feel awake, alert, happy, and not to mention hungry (it's almost lunch time). I didn't feel any of those things yesterday. Next weekend when I have a monophasic sleep-in maybe it'll be more productive to keep the time around 7 hours instead of 8 hours, for fear of my body rejecting it again.
Other than that I've noticed another peculiar change. I'm surprised it's taken this long for this to happen but maybe it is more proof that my body's almost adapted. Basically, for the last few days throughout the day, especially towards the evening, I've noticed that I've been freezing cold. I'll be wrapped in bed under a duvet with tons of clothes and a thick woolen jumper on, slippers and all, and I'll still be shivering. This is in the middle of summer. Then all of a sudden I'll have a sporadic hot flush, feeling like I've caught a fever, before turning back to normal.
Apparently sleeping less causes your body temperature to go up, ultimately making you a lot more sensitive to the cold. The hot flushes themselves are caused by the body's self regulated rise in temperature. It's an odd feeling, and not too nice, but apparently it's healthy. Healthier than sleeping 8 hours monphasically. This is because when you sleep your body temperature drops, although it's at it's highest between 5 to 6.5 hours. This means that for some scientific reason, waking up between those hours is both healthier and easier, unlike waking up after 8 hours where your body temperature has drastically dropped again. Consequently your body temperature is somehow higher throughout the day. Apparently though I'll eventually adjust to these changes too, so no problems there.
Otherwise everything is pretty good. My under eye bags are virtually non existent now and my left bottom eyelid has stopped swelling up, whatever that was.
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