For lots of individuals for example myself, who has love-hate relationship with sleep, the concept of Polyphasic sleep is an intriguing one - is it feasible to cut out sleep practically altogether and only exist on a total of 3 hours sleep per 24 hour period, spread over multiple naps?
Before looking at this statement further, let's investigate how the entire body is regulated via our internal body clock. Our body clock is located in the mind, and it regulates our physique so that in a 24 hour day, we have a period of 6 to 10 hours when we are sleepy and 14-18 hours when we are awake and operating optimally. We therefore tend to sleep in huge blocks of time, for about 6 to 8 hours at time. This is called monophasic sleep. Some folks naturally fall into one thing known as biphasic sleep, which is a shorter sleep duration the evening, but the complete sleep time is then made up through a nap during the day in the afternoon.
Some famous statesmen, most notably Winston Churchill, were biphasic sleepers. There's really great study to show that humans are basically biphasic, despite the commonly held western belief that taking a daytime nap is 'weak'. But some folks push things even further. Starting from close to the year 2000, and based on analysis work carried out by Dr Claudio Stampi, who is an expert in sleep, folks have started to experiment with something called polyphasic sleep. Dr Stampi has done extensive studies on polyphasic sleep in laboratory situations and especially concerning the application of it in competitive sailing, where a lone sailor needs to be nearly constantly awake in order to be ready to watch for weather situations and react to changing circumstances while sailing. He found that people who slept for 30 minutes at a time with 4 hours of wakefulness in between have been far much more alert than individuals who had three hours of uninterrupted sleep. This is referred to as the Uberman schedule.
Firstly we need to comprehend that while we sleep, the brain goes through cycles of NREM and REM sleep. NREM sleep is where no dreaming occurs and no eye movement takes place. With the Uberman schedule, you force the physique to go immediately into the REM cycle and skip the so-called 'non-essential' NREM cycle. This enables you to wake up after a 20-30 minute nap and being ready to go for another four hours before requiring another nap.
The difficulty with this schedule is that there's just not sufficient data obtainable about the essential or non-essential nature of NREM sleep at this stage. The assumption that it isn't essential for health can be a dangerous one. The human body has been programmed to fit into a natural monophasic or biphasic sleep pattern, with NREM and REM cycles that helps the brain to store info and 'reboot' your system ready for a new day.
Some folks manage to get into a polyphasic sleep pattern and keep it up it up for months at a time, but the long term effects have not yet been fully documented or understood - possibly simply because it's so hard to keep up! Not necessarily because it really is physically impossible - individuals in the polyphasic sleep pattern seem to cope well physically, but simply because most of the rest of the world is in a monophasic sleep pattern and it really is quite difficult to plan your life close to four hour wake cycles.
Imagine that your friends want to go out and party, but you can't since it clashes with your scheduled nap time. If you want to maintain your polyphasic sleep cycle you'll just need to decline. Missing a nap, just one nap, is often adequate to push you over the edge into normality!
Author Resource:
John Thackeray manages http://www.stopconstantfatigue.org. If you're always tired then your mind may require some retraining to fit into a proper monophasic or biphasic sleep pattern. This will allow you to to wake up in the morning without feeling tired and allow you to fall asleep at night for a good night's rest - now doesn't that sound like a great concept?
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