Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 28

Day 28:

So yesterday I forgot to take my nap because I was busy with something on the computer. That means I didn't do any exercise either and therefor I was really tired by the time dinner came around. I didn't want to take a nap then though because I knew it would keep me awake all morning. In the end I decided to take a 15 minute nap and keep it short. I feel asleep within 5 minutes and woke up just before the alarm, giving me a good 10 minutes of sleep.

That seriously perked me up and I didn't start to feel sleepy again till about 2:00am. I decided to go to sleep and not set any alarm and just wake up at whatever time: The thing is I'd stupidly forgotten to deactivate my weekday alarm and I ended up having my sister waking me up at 7:15am by dumping my phone on my bed. It had been vibrating since 6:00am! I switched it off but I didn't know whether to go back to sleep or not.

I'd had about 5.25 hours sleep at that point and considering this is around the period of my fourth sleep cycle that I usually wake up in I was all perky and awake. I considered staying awake and just having an extended nap in the day, but I find it difficult enough to find napping time in the day as it is.

I decided to stay in bed and try to fall back to sleep. It took me about half an hour to fall back to sleep, that's how alert my mind was. I don't think I've ever found it so difficult to go to sleep. I almost gave up but couldn't be bothered to move and eventually slipped into a light sleep. I remember waking up a couple of times before I fell into deeper sleep and was woken from a dream at 9:30am by my mum.

I was in bed about 7.5 hours but I reckon I slept around 6.5 hours altogether. It's a little weird. If someone had woken me up at the 7 hour mark before this experiment I would've been extremely pissed off at the disturbance. Now though I don't feel grumpy at all from the disturbances and I still feel like I've had a good sleep.

I do feel a little weird from the feeling of being in bed all day but seeing as I was disturbed twice it's not that pronounced. It actually feels like I woke up, had a brief waking period, and then had a 1.25 hour nap. I don't think I should be needing a nap in the day lest I feel like being awake all morning again. I think I'll do lots of exercise to tire me out and make all that extra sleeping time worth while. Maybe this sounds weird but I'm not sure I like sleeping anymore than 6 hours anymore, maybe 6.5 at it's max. I do feel absolutely fine on 5.5 hours of sleep.

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 27

Day 27:

Yesterday I got tired round about 3:00pm and found myself involuntary lying down in bed to take a rest. I didn't realize how tired I actually was until I started falling asleep but couldn't completely get there because it wasn't planned and I had no earphones in to block out sounds from around the house. I decided to put them in and just go along with it, setting my alarm for half an hour.

I think I fell asleep around the twenty minute mark, giving me about ten minutes sleep. I don't know for sure though because my trial for the sleep graph has ended. You wouldn't believe it but ten minutes perked me up for the whole day and again I didn't suffer from tiredness all day, or night. I decided to go to sleep at 12:30am though because I was bored.

I set my alarm for 6:00am, giving me 5.5 hours of sleep. It doesn't feel early, I actually find that the earlier I wake up the better I feel. I woke up half an hour earlier so I could get half an hour exercise in with the hour and a half of watching Supernatural. Tomorrow's Saturday which technically means up to a 7 hour sleep-in for me, but I really don't feel like I need it. I feel perfectly fine. I might just go to bed whenever and put my alarm on for seven hours anyway just to see after how long I naturally wake up.

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 26

Day 26:

Yesterday I had no problems. I wasn't even tired in the day so I decided to forfeit my nap again and do some exercise instead. I got tired a bit earlier in the night though. It was a struggle to keep my eyes open till 1:00am. I did though.

I woke up at 6:30am in the morning, giving me 5.5 hours of sleep. Being awake so early in the morning to me still doesn't actually feel that early and actually I'm thinking I prefer being awake in the early mornings compared to the late nights. It's very peaceful and calm, and of course my tranquil isn't being disturbed by tiredness. as it would do later in the night. My mind's a lot more active and creative early morning. Due to this I still think I could wake up an hour or two earlier in the morning. I don't know why exactly but it feels like time goes super fast first thing in the morning.

I know initially I wrote that I was going to move my bed time back a couple of hours and then I decided that I hated it, but my body's already adjusting to being awake earlier in the morning, meaning that although I still don't really want to to go bed too early, I'm too tired to argue with my brain. In future I'll just fall asleep when I get tired, after all, I do have a time frame of about 4.5 hours to choose from. And if I fall asleep at 11:00pm and wake up at 4:30am then all the better. It will be at least a very interesting experience.

A note for reference, I've been very probe to being emotionally unstable since I changed my hours asleep from 4.5 to 5.5. I don't know why this is exactly. I did read somewhere that too much REM sleep can cause depression, but that sounds pretty much impossible in relation to my situation. Sure, I've been getting twice as much REM sleep with just an hour extra sleep a day, but that's still at least half the amount compared to the amount people sleeping a normal 7 to 8 hour night have. Only thing I can think of is how my body got adapted to hardly having any the first couple of weeks and decided it didn't like it being doubled a while later. But that still doesn't make sense because when I was on 4.5 hours of sleep a day I wasn't getting nearly enough and should've had an REM rebound.

Otherwise, I'm thinking this experiment should be called something more along the lines of "super short monophasic sleep with a biphasic option to nap during the day depending on how I'm feeling." I've noticed that 5.75 hours is enough to ride me out the whole day perfectly yet 15 minutes less and I get super tired during the mid-aftertoon. Weird.

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Polyphasic sleep Schedule - Day 25

Day 25:

I know yesterday I had planned to write a lot but now I can't remember what I was gonna write so this'll probably be really short.

Yesterday it got to about 3:30pm and I realized that I'd forgotten to take my nap. I only realized that though because all of a sudden I was super tired and couldn't stop yawning. I decided to go for a nap then and there. and surprisingly I fell asleep within five minutes. I woke up five minutes later though before falling straight back to sleep. This happened about three or four times. I remember waking up for the last time with the phrase "remember I had a dream," running round and round in my head. I can't for the life of me remember what the dream was, although I have a nagging feeling that it was Doctor Who related. On top of that I couldn't get back to sleep after 20 minutes exactly, but I didn't really mind. I think I'm gonna shorten my naps to 30 minutes in future rather than 45.

I went to sleep last night at 1:10am and woke up at 6:50am. I slept a total of about 5 hours and 20 minutes considering it probably took me about twenty minutes to get comfortable enough to fall asleep. Last night though I actually got tired enough,, no more strange hyper-ness. Today though I've been feeling super lazy all day. I got through two episodes of Supernatural before 8:30am instead of writing this journal and exercising. I didn't exercise yesterday either. I might do some later. Otherwise, I don't particularly like going to bed at 1:00am, I've got used to falling asleep at 2:30-3:00am, which I prefer. If I go to bed that late though then I can't wake up earlier. So in a way it does feel like my day has been shortened, although this is only psychological and it doesn't feel bad as such.

Another weird thing I've noticed is that towards the evenings it feels like my brain is expanding, like a constant pressure coming from inside, from dilated blood vessels or something. This may be down to higher blood pressure levels due to increased Cortisol from sleep deprivation. As for my eyes, the weird swelling on my bottom eyelid disappeared but for some reason it moved to the top eyelid. I have no idea what that's all about. Also, my eyes do have slightly dark shadows underneath, but they're pretty much invisible in comparison to when I was sleeping 4.5 hours a day. I really want to go back to 4.5 hours a day with one long 45 minute nap actually, maybe even 3 to 3.5 hours with a one 1.5 hour nap, but I really can't fit all those naps into my day around my family. And of course I don't want anyone to see the black circles under my eyes that would ensue if I changed to such schedules.

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 24

Day 24:

Yesterday I'd actually forgotten that I had an orthodontics appointment in the mid afternoon so I never actually ended up getting my nap anyway. This is my first skipped nap, well, if you discount the night where I tried to sleep a long period of time monophasically again. Honestly, it didn't really affect me, I had a tired period around dinner but I would've have that either way seeing as social calls aren't my best of traits. The rest of the day I was perfectly fine.

Last night when 1:00am came around I was actually tired, but it felt really early, not something I'm too used to anymore. I did wake up at 6:45 again, just now actually, to counteract that, but it was during the middle of NREM sleep so I feel a little groggy. Only disadvantage I would say is the fact me waking so early is also waking my sister, who's also a light sleeper during her long periods of REM sleep, and I can't get much done in the mornings anyway for worry of waking her. Finding a balance is proving to be difficult.

Today I'll try to have my nap, although again I'm intrigued to see what happens if I don't. If I'm not tired I can't exactly fall to sleep anyway. I realize that the rest is beneficial though, and the fact that I am supposed to be doing a polyphasic schedule, not a seriously shortened monophasic one. Either way, we'll see.

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 23

Day 23:

Yesterday I tried taking at nap at about 2:30pm, but I wasn't tired and couldn't sleep. If this continues then I may just start forfeiting the naps all together. Last 'night' it got to about 1:00am and although I wasn't tired and although it felt really early I decided to force myself to sleep. One thing I've noticed recently though is that I'll fall asleep for about ten minutes before waking up again. It's not difficult to fall back to sleep, but it'a just a little weird. I'm thinking that maybe it's nap related.

This morning I woke up at 6:45am, and funnily enough it doesn't feel early. It just feels like I moved my bed time back a couple of hours, no big deal. On monophasic if I'd've done that I still probably would've slept in, and unlike monophasic, I feel awake, alive, and ready to face the day.

This is also probably like the shortest post ever.

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 22

Day 22:

So yesterday I was hyper again, not to mention today too. I'm starting to think that this isn't due to my body adjusting to this sleep schedule but due to something else. My mum's started giving me these herbal Rhodiola tablets to help combat my summer depression. The tablets aren't supposed to work for about a month, but those days where I was feeling down and depressed and slept 8.5 hours I'm pretty sure that's because I'd forgotten to take the tablets. Either way though, I'm not complaining, I genuinely feel good, although slightly more insane than normal.

Yesterday it got to mid afternoon and although I felt my body's natural down peak I I wasn't tired, and seeing as I'd woken up late in the morning I decided to pass the afternoon with some exercise and take my nap later after dinner. When evening came I still wasn't tired and ended up meditating in bed for 35 minutes before being disturbed. Again, me not being tired during the day may be a side effect of the tablets, or 5.5 hours really is sufficient now to pull me through the day, or maybe it's the two combined.

I didn't even get tired till about 2:00am, so I'm really starting to think it's the tablets. I went to bed at 2:30am, giving myself 30 minutes to get to sleep. That was a mistake. I fell asleep pretty much instantly and ended up sleeping for 5.75 hours, waking up at 8:30am, which frankly felt like an eternity. It also woke me in the middle of my fifth dreaming stage. I should've really woken up before that. Next time I'll give myself 15 minutes to fall asleep and 5.25 hours to actually sleep. That's more of natural time.

I didn't use the sleep monitoring app last night, and unfortunately there's only three days trial left on it, two of which my mum and sister want to try. Today I'm not sure I'm gonna take a nap because I want to fall asleep earlier, around about 1:00am. Either that or I'll try and nap in the mid-afternoon. I want to wake up early in the weekdays, 7:00am latest, to do some exercise, and also to get other interesting things done like writing, studying, reading, watching TV whilst it's light and I'm more awake. I realize that in the winter this'll change but I'll figure that out when it comes.

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