Polyphasic Sleep Week 5

Today marks the end of my fifth week conducting this polyphasic sleep experiment and the third week of sleeping biphasically. It's been a good week. Very stabilized and normal. I'm still feeling twice as good than I was on monophasic. I no longer have high levels of background anxiety, something I wasn't expecting, the dark circles under my eyes are now virtually non-existent, and my health is twice as good. My muscles and bones don't ache half as much as they did before, and of course my mind is more alert throughout the day. I rarely feel sleepy. You'd think it'd be the opposite but it's not weirdly enough.

I now have an application to compile graphs for me and measure how much sleep I'm getting average. Over the last week it reports that I've had an average of 6.2 hours of sleep. This average obviously went up on the weekend, which by the way, I regret. Friday night I slept-in, waking up naturally after 7 hours, almost 2 hours more than usual and although it was the best sleep of my life I felt super ill all day. I really should stop doing that.

Earlier on in the week I was having trouble with the correct times to wake up as I'd become pretty reliant on my smart alarm to wake me up at the right stage and because I was falling asleep too fast, under 5 minutes, I found myself waking up in deep sleep. I had to shorten my core sleep from 5.5 hours to 5.1 hours. That fixed the problem and I felt ok again.

As for my mid afternoon naps, they are a force to be reckoned with. I love them. They no longer feel like an inconvenience, I absolutely love them. Now that my body's adjusted I have an average of 15mins sleep, although occasionally I'll still sleep up to an hour, just because it feels so good. I've also started dreaming at the beginning of my mid afternoon naps, which is an odd experience to say the least. It feels like I slip straight from wakefulness into dreaming, and although I don't actually realize that at the time, it's made the beginning of about half my naps this week pre-lucid. I'll often question whether I'm awake or asleep, often to wake myself up twitching realizing that I was actually asleep and dreaming. I call them micro-dreams, brief periods of REM unlike hypnogogia.

Wrapping up, this schedule is the best I've ever slept, and I highly recommend it, but now my curiosity is getting the best of me and I've decided that from today I'll be going triphasic, which I'll go into in my next post.

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Days 15-17

These last days have been good, so to speak. I've been falling asleep straight away at 2:30am, waking up at 7:00am to do some exercise and then having a 45 minute nap in the afternoon. According to my sleep graphs I've been sleeping like a brick for the most part, gaining at least 70% of deep sleep per core. But now I've hit a fork in the road.

I've now been functioning perfectly on only a maximum 5 hours sleep for two and a half weeks, but every time I look in the mirror all I see are these terrible black circles, black holes, under my eyes. It is a bit odd seeing as I would say that I actually feel more awake throughout the day on 5 hours sleep than I do on 8 to 9 hours sleep, but I can't keep on ignoring this.

The circles under my eyes are now so bad that even concealer won't cover them up and I'm worrying constantly that they'll be fixed there permanently. For reference, if I was a hermit and living on my own then I wouldn't mind so much, but now I think my mum is starting to worry. And it just looks plain ugly for everyone to see. I need to get more sleep, but the problem is I don't really want to.

I love this sleeping schedule and function amazingly on it. I really don't want to stop, especially so soon in, but the truth is these black circles under my eyes are a sure sign that I do need more sleep. I won't be going back to my old 8 to 9 hours of sleeping but I will be sleeping more. I'll still be doing the biphasic thing too, because I really enjoy that, but I'll be sleeping enough so that I could miss a nap and not suffer from it.

Grudgingly, here is my new schedule for the week, with length and nap length shown in brackets:

Mon- 2:00am to 7:30am (5.5h + .5h) = 6h
Tue- 2:00am to 7:30am (5.5h + .5h) = 6h
Wed- 2:00am to 8:15am (6.25h+.5h) = 6.75h
Thur- 2:00am to 7:30am (5.5h + .5h) = 6h
Fri- 2:00am to 8:15am (6.25h+.5h) = 6.75h
Sat- 2:00am to 9:30am (7.5h + .5h) = 8h
Sun- 2:00am to 9:00am (7h + .5h) = 7.5h

To those who aren't polyphasically sleeping it probably still seems like not nearly enough to survive on, but for me it seems like too much. Either way, it's something I have to do for the sake of my aesthetic health. My average amount of sleep over this last fortnight has been about 4.75 hours of sleep. This new schedule will raise my amount of time sleeping to about 6.75 hours. That does mean I'll be losing about 2 hours of waking time per day, which grieves me to no end, but it's still gives me about 2 hours more per day than before I started sleeping polyphasically. 6.5 hours is seen by experts to be the optimal amount of time sleeping for women, so I'm hoping a week or two of this new schedule will begin to fix those dark circles under my eyes.

I'll still update every so often, especially with experimenting with my new schedule. All I'm trying to find is my optimal amount of time asleep.

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 6

Day 6:

There's not much new to report today, the days feel like they're beginning to blur into one as the schedule is starting to feel more natural. I would still say that the second day was hardest by far.

Last 'night', I stayed up until 3:30am. I found it considerably easy. I basically spent a couple of hours writing fan fiction, and another couple of hours catching up watching more Heroes. I'm still trying to go easy with the extra activities though, I don't want to burn myself out too quickly.

This morning I had my alarm set for 8:15am, but I actually woke up at the end of my third sleep cycle at 8:00am exactly. Seeing as it's saturday I found it quite difficult to pull myself out of bed. I managed though.

It took me about an hour to get over the morning drunken state this time, which is a considerable amount less than yesterday. I generally felt good most the day, feeling sleepy at times my naps were due. A good sign that my circadian rhythm is resetting itself.

Today I had my naps at 3:40pm and 9:25pm. I know these are an hour or so outside my normal nap times, but the weekend in our house has a different schedule than the weekdays, meaning I still have to figure out what times work better for the weekdays. An hour or two difference either way shouldn't hurt with this schedule.

The first nap I kept drifting in and out of sleep for a few seconds at a time. I've now come to realize that it's basically micro-sleeping but with my eyes closed. My second nap, which I took just now, I fell asleep to again towards the end. I can't really judge for how long I was asleep, probably not longer than five minutes again, but my alarm woke me unexpectedly, me not realizing that I'd actually drifted off.

I really feel like my body is starting to understand and go along with the new changes. I'm really pleased. Personally I thought it'd be harder than this, especially after reading other people's logs. I won't be too quick to judge my progress though, apparently the second week is the hardest. I can't believe tomorrow will be a full week exactly!

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 3

Day 3:

To anyone who read my log yesterday: I am extremely sorry for the general incoherency of the post. When I was writing it I was dead tired. I don't even know how I got through the entire morning without falling to sleep prematurely. It was torturous. I don't remember getting anything done at all, I think I may have been zombified for at least two hours.

I had my core sleep of 4.5 hours, however, and I actually woke up before my alarm. It'd felt like I'd slept something akin from six to seven hours. It's impressive how pronounced the effects of time dilation are already.

As for naps, I had my first twenty minute nap at 2:30pm but I didn't fall asleep, again. I did experience some insane hypnagogic imagery though, seeing the type of stuff one probably only sees high on hallucinogens.

My second nap was half an hour late at 10:30pm thanks to an inconvenience. Due to the flexibility of this schedule though it's not a major spanner in the works, but I noticed that I suddenly got extremely irritated at the time I would usually be trying to nap.

On the second nap though I was pretty tired and along with what seems to be some more insane hypnagogic imagery, I reckon I may have drifted in and out of stage 1 sleep a few times. Difficult to tell for sure though because for some reason I kept coming to with a start. However, any sleep is progress, and now, unlike last night, I feel dandy as a spring daisy.

Also, I've started using iso-chronic tones to help me wind down quicker during the naps. I've been using a twenty minute track I found on youtube which starts with theta waves and cycles through to delta. I cannot emphasize enough how incredible this is. It stills not just my mind, but my entire body too, and even without managing to fall asleep I feel incredibly well rested after.

Generally, the way I've been feeling over the entire day as a whole could be described as unusually perky. Sort of like being drunk at times though. I was feeling bright and sparky all the way up until about 7:00pm, which is three hours later than the previous day.

The perkiness may or may not be a sign of adjustment to the schedule beginning to take effect. I say may not because I received a good old dose of the happy vitamin D from, abnormally, sitting in the sun today. I also drank equivalent to about twice the amount of water I usually drink to combat the sleep deprived dehydration. Both these may also be reasons why I felt so good.

I've started applying aloe vera gel under my eyes to combat the dark circles. That stuff will cure any skin disorder, and believe me, already after one day of applying it I can notice a pronounced difference. The dark circles are supposed to disappear once adjustment has fully taken place anyway. We'll see.

I've had like no ill effects today. Only a headache earlier, but nothing like yesterday. Almost no lightheadedness, no feeling sick, barely feeling tired, and reduced hunger from the fact I've increased my daily intake of food. Also, my eyes no longer feel like sandpaper. F yes.

Just another four hours until my core sleep is due. I'm feeling good at the moment so I think I may just get through this morning in one piece. Peace. i.i

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 2

Day 2:

This morning at 8:00am when I woke up after 4.5 hours sleep I looked in the mirror and noticed ugly dark circles under my eyes. Thank god for concealer, the last thing I need is having to explain to mum that I'm staying up till god knows what time in the morning.

I still didn't manage to fall to sleep at the designated nap times in the day but thanks to being super tired I zoned out into a hypnagogic state almost immediately as my head hit the pillow. I reckon a day or two more and I'll be falling asleep at the right times during the day.

I was feeling relatively normal until about 4:00pm, then I started to feel really tired. Another thing is that whenever I'm hungry I feel sick, and I've been hungry probably something like twice as much than what is normal.

I've gone into quite a few short zombie states throughout the day. That's not exactly unusual for me anyway, but I was seriously out of it at times. I also noticed that for a split second I went into a very dark place emotionally, somewhere I haven't been for months. I almost didn't realize it, it was so brief. I need to be careful of this.

As the day wore on I began to feel lightheaded like yesterday and actually accidentally smacked myself in the face with a door from losing my bearings for a split second.

I've just tried having my second nap of the day and unlike yesterday at this time I feel majorly tired. For reference, my eyes feel like sandpaper glued together. And I'm so incredibly hungry, I've now a secret stash of cereal under my bed for the early mornings.

Just another four hours and forty-five minutes till I can sleep. I will stick through this. God save me.

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 1

I've decided to experiment with a Polyphasic sleeping cycle. Basically, without going too much into detail, it means that if I split my sleep into scientifically proven periods of time over the whole day, like naps, rather than sleeping all in one go I could theoretically sleep as little as two hours per day and have no ill effects for it, well, after the supposed initial transition period that is.

I've decided to do the Everyman 3 cycle. This means I'll sleep 4.5 hours every night, and in conjunction with that have two 20 minute naps separated throughout the day. Altogether I'll be sleeping an average of 5.2 hours per day. I figured this was perfect, not too easy, not too hard. It should gain me around three hours extra time per day.

The transition phase is the hard part. I'll be going through some major sleep deprivation that'll last from anywhere around two weeks to two months whilst my body is adjusting, so this will be like a mini daily diary on my progress.

Day 1:

I've been up since 8:00am. I went to bed at around 3:30am the 'night' before falling asleep almost instantaneously due to being so tired. Overcoming boredom was the hardest though. Reading is difficult when you're tired, so I ended up procrastinating my time away on social networking sites really. I almost gave up from boredom alone.

I saw it though, however. My first 20 minute nap was due at 2:30pm but I couldn't fall asleep and the alarm went off before I could even relax. I guess it's only normal, my body's not used to sleeping at such an obscure time.

My second 20 minute nap time was just recently at 10:00pm. I was more tired by this time so I managed to slip into a hypnagogic state, but I still couldn't fall asleep, despite almost being on the edge. However, I did feel more refreshed afterwards.

General sleep deprivation symptoms over the course of the day include: Headache, light-headedness, zoning out, neck strain, dry eyes, sensory overload, being hungrier than normal.

It's now 11:00pm and I've got around another 4.5 hours before I can turn in for my core sleep. After that light relaxation of a nap earlier I reckon it shouldn't be as hard as it was last night. Plus, I'm gonna be using the time this time to write more fanfic. I'm feeling surprisingly good and optimistic.

Note: I've been in a generally positive mood all day, so no irritability signs... Yet.

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