Polyphasic sleep Schedule - Day 21

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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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 14

Day 14:

I feel like I've been in bed all day. Seriously.

Last night I went to sleep at 2:30am and decided not to set an alarm for the morning. I wanted to see how long my body would let me sleep-in after being poly/biphasic after two weeks. It probably wasn't the most reliable of experiments though seeing as I'd drunk loads of alcohol. I woke up at 8:30am mentally trying to force my body back to sleep to make up for any sleep deprivation I may have built up over the last fortnight, but no such luck.

I woke up bright and dandy after 6 hours sleep, which is incredible compared to sleeping monophasically. To be honest though, sleeping that long after being so used to sleeping 4.5 hours after the last couple of weeks felt like an absolute eternity. It felt like I'd temporarily died or something, it felt that long. Problem was though, I got really tired about two hours after waking. I felt like absolute shit until I had my nap, which is weird considering I slept more, but then again I'd drunk alcohol the night before and the sleep I did have was actually really restless. Here's the graph:

As can be seen, my sleep was quite erratic and not very restful at all. Interesting to note that after the 4.5 hour mark everything starts to go crazy, and actually I do remember waking up after 4.5 hours naturally. Overall though I really was restless. According the statistics I only spent about the half the actual time sleeping in slow-wave-sleep, which I suppose is still a good 3 hours, but it didn't really feel that long.

Surprisingly, today I could barely keep my eyes open leading up to my nap. I started my nap at about 3:15pm and for the first time ever I actually got to sleep under about ten minutes, but then annoyingly I got disturbed by family stuff. I tried getting back to sleep for another half an hour invaded by more distractions before deciding to give up and sort out some stuff.

I returned to bed about half an hour later at about 4:00pm and decided to try again because I was still tired, despite the fact I'd already spent half an hour in bed previously, and the fact that I didn't think I'd fall to sleep again. I decided to try though and put in some earphones and listened to some brainwave entertainment to block out all external noises. Next thing I know I'm waking up at 5:00pm feeling absolutely incredible. According to my sleep graph it'd taken me about 15 minutes to fall asleep, meaning I'd slept for a grand total of about 45 minutes. It actually had felt like I'd slept for about an hour as well.

I won't be posting the nap graphs up though seeing as the first one was all quite erratic due to the distractions, and the second one barely showed any data thanks to me resting my phone too far away from my body whilst I was sleeping.

I've often heard that the optimal nap time is 20 minutes, although it can be as long as 45. For me 20 minutes doesn't cut it, I feel as if I haven't slept at all. After 45 minutes though I feel incredibly rested, if a little groggy, but the grogginess doesn't last long. After about 25 minutes of light sleep a person will fall into the first stage of deep sleep, which lasts about another 20 minutes. Waking up any longer than the combined time of 45 minutes maximum is near impossible and can leave a person feeling awful for hours on end due to it being the deepest stage of sleep. Thankfully I woke up naturally before this deep stage hit, and I've been feeling amazing for the remainder of the day, much unlike the first half of the day.

Like I said at the start though, I feel like I've been in bed sleeping or trying to sleep all day. Technically all together it was only like 7.5 hours, still less than when I was sleeping monophasically, but being in bed for that long really does feel like an eternity now. I feel like I've thrown away most of my day. Sleeping in probably wasn't worth it, although then again the results may have been different had I not have drunken any alcohol, and considering the fact it is sunday I guess it's ok to feel like that. Otherwise, I think I'll do the same experiment next sunday but sober.

Other than that, the only other thing I can report is how I woke up this morning and almost died when I looked in the mirror. The dark circles under one eye had advanced to being a full on bag. I'm pretty sure this was mostly down to the alcohol induced dehydration the night before. After half an hour of the ice treatment though it was ok. Actually the ice helped take away the bruising on both sides too, so until I completely adapt I may use that more often.

I know many people say you shouldn't start messing around with the schedule until about a month or so in until your body is completely adjusted, but a week is actually enough for most people to begin to understand their circadian rhythm and optimize their time around that. For me personally, I now believe that anywhere from 4.5 hours to 5.2 hours of core sleep followed by a 45 minute midday nap is perfect for me, maybe 6 hours when I've had an unusually stimulating day, or on weekends. If I ever had the flexibility I also believe that having 3.5 hours of core sleep followed by either a 1.5 hour midday nap or two 45 minute equidistant naps would work really well for me. For now though, I really enjoy this schedule. Who would've ever have thought that being asleep for six hours would feel like a lifetime.

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