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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Days 18 & 19:

I had 6 hours sleep on day 18 and 5 hours sleep on day 19. I felt a lot better on this amount of sleep rather than on 4.5 hours sleep. Problem was I found I wasn't tired enough to fall asleep in the day for my nap. I only managed 10 minutes sleep both days, and I woke up feeling super refreshed, but it wasn't enough to help me ride out the whole day, meaning I got incredibly tired at night. It was a struggle just to stay awake.

The dark circles under my eyes have started to retract, but for some reason my bottom left eyelid had swollen up, like the beginnings of sty or something. I've never had anything like this before, so I'm thinking it may very well be related to the lesser amount of sleep I'm getting, and me being the hypochondriac I am means I'm quite worried.

Today I had my first purposely taken oversleep. Last night, day 19, it got to about 11:00pm and I was quite tired due to not having much sleep in the afternoon. I was also really bored because I'd finished watching Heroes, and didn't have the motivation to start watching or do anything else. I was also feeling quite ill and was emotionally compromised. For some unexplainable reason I'd broken down in tears three times during the day. So I returned to the true and tried method of sleeping it off.

Day 20:

I fell asleep straight away. I think I slept like 8.5 hours. Apparently according to my sister I was so heavy asleep that I was snoring. I never snore. I woke up a couple of times in the night, something that rarely happened when I slept less, and I remember thinking each time, "Am I still supposed to be asleep?!" To be totally honest it felt like an eternity times two, and not to mention that for some unfathomable reason I found it unbelievably difficult to get out of bed in the morning. Again let me stress, it felt like i was in bed FOREVER. It's now mid afternoon, I would usually be taking a nap at this time.

The main advantage is that after 8.5 hours sleep I don't feel tired at all during the time that I would usually be taking my nap, meaning I won't be taking it. The main disadvantage though is that I feel like I've thrown half my day away in the bin. I can't believe how short this day feels. I hate it. It's absolutely revolting.

Although I'm feeling a lot better, I'm going to go back to polyphasic. I still think my hours need to be shifted around though. According to some articles I read, deep sleep is more effective in the hours from 10am to 3am due to the way our circadian clocks are naturally written. Based on that, I've decided to go asleep at my natural time of anywhere around 11pm to 1am depending on the day, and wake up earlier. I'll have anywhere from around 5 hours to 6.5 hours sleep on the weekdays depending on how I'm feeling. I've decided I'm going to go based on how I'm feeling and not keep a certain time because every day is different.

If I have 6.5 hours sleep then I won't necessarily need a nap during the day, unless I'm feeling tired of course, but anything less than that and I'll need at least 20 minutes of nap time in the mid afternoon. Going to sleep earlier will also mean that the tine between my nap and core sleep will be more equal either side.

On weekends though I think I'll sleep anywhere from around 6.5 hours to 9 hours. I think I may need the extra sleep to make up for anything I may have lost during the weekdays. Like I said, despite the horrible feeling of wasting my whole day away, I feel amazing and definitely needed the full sleep. I think balance is important.

I need to keep reminding myself that I haven't failed, I've merely just learned more about my personal sleeping patterns. I'm working towards understanding my optimal times awake and asleep. I'll keep a daily log again starting from tomorrow because I want to look back in seven days time and figure out how many hours I've gained by adhering very loosely to a schedule based on how my body clock is feeling instead of sticking to it like glue. After all, a biphasic schedule is pretty flexible, unlike an Uberman schedule.

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I wanted to write a bit about the pros and cons of polyphasic sleep, based on my experience as a whole. This list should try and help other readers make up their mind as to whether they want to try it or not, but to be totally honest I'm not sure what I prefer myself. I guess this is just another type of log.

-Pros:

1) You gain more waking hours in the day. This one is pretty obvious. Depending on what schedule you try, you can gain as little as one hour or as much as six hours per day.

2) You spend more time awake in the night and the early hours of the morning. This basically means that if you have an elaborate project you need to work on, you can do it and be rest assured that you won't be disturbed by friends or family members ect.

3) You tend to fill some of the spare time with exercise. This is because you may get sleepy initially, or bored later on, or just because you never had time to do it monophasically. Obviously this means that you end up fitter and a lot healthier.

4) The general feeling of wellbeing increases substantially. Because of the way the schedules are timed, you can be a late sleeper and an early riser and feel better for it. At first it's a very euphoric feeling, but once that stabilizes you feel twice as good than you did on monophasic.

-Cons:

1) The adjustment period feels like death. You have chronic sleepiness, intense hunger, inertia, mood swings, extremely sore eyes, lack of coordination, slurred speech, muscle aches, nausea, hallucinations ect. Most of these symptoms pass after about a week at most, but if you have no will power then you won't last two days.

2) Intense sleepiness at first, followed by periods of intense boredom. The thing is, you only have creative periods at certain times of day, meaning brain racking at night may be extremely difficult and you'll find yourself in deep contemplation not knowing what else to do. You find yourself counting down the remaining time until your nap.

3) Highly inflexible. Sleeping more than two periods in a 24 hour period can be extremely inconvenient, not to mention impractical. What if you're not feeling sleepy? You have to stick to nap times quite rigidly, if not then you end up grumpy and suicidal for the rest of the day, or until you can get your next nap. Often times you'll be disturbed, or you can't carry the naps out for social reasons.

4) Your chances of becoming majorly sick increase by double. You have to make changes in your diet and the way you manage your time. If you're sat around doing nothing for an extra five hours instead of using some of that time to exercise, there's a large chance that you'll end up severely ill.

These are probably just a few reasons of many that I have observed myself. Whether or not it's worth it is up to the individual.

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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 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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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 13

Day 13:

I'm really enjoying my personally biphasic adjusted version of the Everyman 2 Schedule. It's simple, not inflexible nor demanding, and I genuinely feel good on it.

Last night before my core sleep was a breeze, I basically watched Heroes most the time. Waiting till 2:30am to fall to asleep rather than till 3:30pm is a real blessing, it's no way near as hard. It took me a while to fall asleep though, probably down to the fact that for the last week and a half or so my body seems to have adapted to falling to sleep at 3:00pm.

My 4.75 hour sleep itself was good, here's the sleep graph for it:

As can be seen, last night's sleep was a lot more restful. According to the statistics, out of the 4.75 hours I was actually asleep, I spent about 4 hours of it alone in deep sleep. Unfortunately though I only spent about twenty minutes of my sleep in REM, which isn't nearly enough. The other twenty-five minutes or so left of the sleep was spent in transitional phases. Overall though I slept extremely well, the amount of deep sleep I was calculated to have have incredible.

I did some exercise immediately upon waking in the morning after my core sleep, but all that extra physical pressure left me feeling a bit sleepy during midday, so I decided to take my 45 minute nap. Here's what the sleep graph shows on my nap:

I still don't exactly understand how this awesome app works, especially with such an incredible sensitivity, but it does work. Today I was pretty much in the house on my own so I decided to forfeit the usual earphones/eyepatch that I use to energetically isolate myself from the world at such an active time of the day. I didn't think I'd fall asleep, especially with my failure yesterday and the consideration that I'm such a light sleeper. Anyway, last thing I remember was shifting into a more comfortable position, which can be seen as the two large spikes almost halfway through. Next thing I know I'm suddenly conscious and wondering how the time went so fast. I knew I'd fallen asleep but it was just so unexpected.

Also, I thought it'd be worth mentioning that with this nap I actually fell asleep before my previous nap time of 20 minutes and woke up about 20 minutes naturally before I was about to fall into deep sleep. I woke up after this.

Unfortunately I made the stupid mistake of drinking alcohol tonight, and too much of it too. I got severely intoxicated, and since it coming to pass I've felt super tired and nauseous. Right now as I'm writing this I'm having auditory hallucinations and my eyes can barely focus. That's definitely the alcohol combined with what's probably counts as a favorable amount of sleep deprivation.

Due to the tiredness from the alcohol, and the need to recover from my fortnight of accumulated amount of sleep deprivation, I've decided to truly try and sleep at least seven hours, just this one week a day a week. I am slightly concerned as to how I would go back to adjusting on monday, mind, but I'll leap that hurdle when I get there. What'll also be interesting to see is what my graph will look like.

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 12

Day 12:

Yesterday I found it incredibly easy to stay awake in the early hours of the morning before my core sleep. I think this is both down to the fact that I had mu first proper twenty minute nap earlier in the day and also the fact that despite the tiredness my body has actually got used to sleeping at 3:30am. I initially planned to go to sleep at 2:00am, but I was too energetic and it took me half an hour of conscious effort to help me become tired.

When I did eventually fall to sleep I remember it being incredibly restless, waking at least a couple of times during the night. All my core sleeps so far have been quality, yet this one wasn't. The only thing I can think of to put this down to is the fact that my body had already acclimatized to being awake until 3:30am. A couple of nights should fix the time difference though.

Here's a picture of my sleep cycles for the night:

According to the information not shown on the picture, I slept an average of 4 hours and 45 minutes. The reason for it being 45 minutes instead of 30 minutes is because I set the smart alarm to wake me up at my lightest stage of predicted sleep within half an hour either way of my designated alarm time. I woke up instantly, and so far this app has seriously impressed me.

According to the statistics, out of the 4.75 hours I was asleep, I spent about 2 hours of it in deep wave sleep and about 1.5 hours of it in REM, meaning the other 1.75 hours were spent on transitions stages. Personally I'm not completely sold on the idea of totally eliminating these supposedly less useful stages of sleep, the last thing I want is to die an early death due to thus far inconsequential data. The interesting this is though, when you look at my graph and consider the amount of REM I actually got.

According to this graph and the detailed statistics, I went through all five stages of sleep in 4.5 hours, as can be seen by the fact that apparently I slept the scientifically recommended amount of REM stage sleep in that short amount of time. Now I'm starting to see why I was finding it hard to nap during the day; for some inexplicable reason my sleep stages have actually repartitioned and compressed themselves during my core sleep. That's not normal. I've seen many sleep graphs posted on the internet of long experienced polyphasic sleepers and they still only go through about the average of two to three cycles with no more than 45 minutes of REM in that same period of 4.5 hours. Maybe I'm actually just naturally resilient to sleep deprivation or something and only now I've had the chance to find out. I'll be keeping an eye on this for sure, maybe last night was just a fluke.

As for my nap, that didn't go too great today. I got to about twenty minutes before I was, unknowingly to her, disturbed by my mum. I decided to try again twenty minutes later and managed to fall into a light dream for about five minutes before being disturbed yet again! I gave up after that, there was just too much going on and there was no way I was gonna get much more sleep done my laying down. It left me feeling irritated and grumpy though for about an hour afterwards.

Other than that, and the still horrendous black circles under my eyes, I've been feeling fine. I haven't been feeling sleepy or tired or anything. Apparently week two is supposed to be the hardest yet I seem to be breezing through it, and that's without barely any day time sleep. I have literally been living on 4.5 hours monophasic for the most part of the last two weeks, if you consider the fact I just can't nap during the day. I would be concerned about the REM rebound but that should've happened by now, and technically if my body is somehow actually squashing all five cycles together in such a short core sleep, then supposedly I wouldn't need the day time nap. I have to admit though, even if I don't sleep during the day it's nice just to switch my brain off for a while. It seems to have become more of a meditative exercise than anything, which is just as beneficial as actual sleep in its own ways.

I have 3.5 hours minimum before I can drift off to sleep for the night. My eyes are feeling somewhat dry tonight, but I think more than anything that's down to the lack of water I've had today. Over all I still feel quite alert. As for tomorrow morning, I think I've decided to skip the sleep-in for now and carry on with the schedule, I don't want to confuse my body and thereby my sleep cycle test results.

Also, I feel like this tweaked schedule is a lot better, due to it being more in sync with my body's natural inborn circadian rhythm. I've written down a list of things I've always wanted to do, but have never had the time nor the energy to do, and I've loosely arranged them around the extra waking hours in my life and the best optimal times for that specific activity. I say loosely because I've given myself a total of three hours to procrastinate through the day on the internet. So with that included, this is a brief outline of what I currently want to achieve during a period of 24 hours:

7:00am-8:00am ~ I'm going to take up martial arts for self defense, going along with a morning workout video thing. This is is to get my blood pumping and to fully wake me up to be awake and alert for the day to come.

8:00am-2:00pm/2:30pm ~ This is when I have to get ready and do some homeschooling. I have both breakfast and lunch in this time period.

2:00pm-2:30pm/2:30pm-3:00pm ~ Read a book. This is because it's the time right before my nap, and personally I don't find reading at all that much stimulating. I feel it's a good activity to wind down to sleep from.

3:30pm-4:30pm ~ Learn Russian for half an hour or so between this time period. My mind will be tired but ready to tackle new problems after my short term memory being wiped clean and given a new slate thanks to the nap.

4:30pm-7:30pm ~ Make dinner, eat, do house jobs, chat with family.

7:30pm-9:30pm - Write fiction/write music. This has always my most creative phase of any 24 hour day and I can do incredibly creative things during this time of day.

9:30-10:30~ Get sent to bed (yes I'm 18, yes I know), and use the time to write my blog, ect.

10:30pm-2:00am ~ Catch up on the tv shows I never watch. This is quite a relaxing period, and personally I can't stand doing anything too creative before sleep, it interferes with my ability to get to sleep.

The main thing I want to get out of this really is learning how to use all this extra time effectively. There's no point of me gaining all this extra time just to wile it away on double the amount of pointless procrastination. I think many people don't prepare for this hurdle of polyphasic sleeping when they start. They enjoy all the extra time, yet have no idea what to do with it because it's onslaught is so sudden, and they have no idea how to loosely schedule it around their body's own natural circadian clock. I have been a victim of this over the last couple of weeks and that's why I've finally ventured to do this scheduling my day thing.

Otherwise, I'm intrigued as to how tomorrow will go. Everything's going well so far but I'll probably return with another log anyway, albeit a much shorter one. Untill then.

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