How to hack your brain - Part I: Sleep | Hacker News Reader

How to hack your brain - Part I: Sleep

dustincurtis.com

128 pointssymptic84 comments

Now, I'm certainly not an expert on sleep, but my current night reading just happens to be "The Promise of Sleep" by Willam Dement, founder of the Stanford sleep center and student of Kleitman, the discoverer of REM sleep. And this article contradicts what he writes in so many ways. Here's what I took away from the book:

Just as a start, the author got that thing about REM sleep being the only sleep that matters exactly backwards. Depriving people of REM sleep has not shown any effects on increasing sleep debt (ie feeling tired), it's the non-REM sleep that you need to not feel tired. (Which makes sense because in REM sleep your brain is essentially awake.) What the purpose of REM sleep is, is not known.

Furthermore, the idea that you can "train" yourself to need less sleep has no basis in science. This does not mean there aren't a few people who have all kinds of strange sleep issues, but for the majority of people there seems to be no scientific evidence that this works at all.

About the "intrinsic 28-hour pattern", in most cases (not all, there are probably people with real physiological disorders) this tendency to have a longer day than 24 hours is induced by artificial light in the evening. Electric lighting, and certainly staring into a bright LCD screen, is bright enough to register as daylight to your biological clock, and cause it to shift forward. In studies where people were isolated from artificial lights, people who normally would have a rhythm slightly longer reverted back to almost exactly 24 hours.

Rather than "hacking your brain", it would probably be more beneficial for the majority of people to just learn about how sleep works and of the importance of managing it properly.

That explains why I slept so well when I was locked up (back as a young'n in juvie): You didn't have control of the light in your cell, so from ~10pm to ~7am lights were out whether you liked it or not. I'm a life-long insomniac.

The reverse - going to sleep as the sun creeps up - is difficult for me. It feels worse to me to try to sleep as dawn comes than just an hour earlier.

I'd expect to fall quickly and pleasantly asleep after an all-nighter, but the combination of dawn, the pounding of my heart and racing of my mind actually leave me awake and thinking for an extra few minutes. It's possible that going to sleep in that state gives me extra insight on what I was working on, but it doesn't feel good.

Light is an indicator to our body to wake up. If you pull an all-nighter and want to go to sleep, avoid the sunlight as much as possible.

Conversely, I like to sleep with the shades open, because I feel it's easier to wake up in the morning if there's natural light in my room.

Interestingly, the effect of light on the biological clock reverses in the middle of the night, so that light in the early morning tends to make the cycle shorter. Which I guess also makes sense since that's how it would have to work with jetlag.

I am trying to find a couple primary sources to back up your suggestion that I got the REM/other phases backwards. That would be quite embarrassing, but I am pretty sure I am correct. Does anyone know of any of any good studies done on REM deficit?

Polyphasic sleep does not train the body to "need less sleep" directly. But it appears the body adapts to use the naps more efficiently than it would use a longer chunk of sleep. To suggest there is "no basis in science" for this seems kind of a stretch. There is science that describes this process.

I'm aware that people claiming to have messed up biological clocks tend to have environmental or physiological factors that cause the problems. I have done pretty much everything sort of isolating myself from artificial light for a period of time longer than about a week, and my body is stuck on a 28-hour clock.

Also, you suggest that people deprived of artificial light snap into a "exactly" 24-hour schedule. This is actually not correct. Many studies have been done showing that the default schedule ends up being about 25 hours when you deprive people of clocks and light sources.

Dement's book does not have any real references, but on p 257 he discusses a study by Tom Roth and Tim Roehrs where paired subjects were awakened when one of them entered REM sleep. The pairs thus had identical sleep disturbances and were different only in whether they were woken up in REM sleep or not. He says "The results were striking. The daytime sleep tendency did not change in the REM sleep-deprived group ... whereas the yoked control group (which lost much more non-REM sleep) became significantly sleepier in the daytime."

To be fair, he then goes on with some cautionary notes about the small numbers of the study and how some older studies had not found a difference. There was no mention of studies finding the opposite, though.

Yeah, there appears to be very little hard research on the subject, but my personal experience from reading neuroscience journals has led me to the understanding that REM sleep removes tiredness. In fact, people with REM sleep behavior disorder -- that is, people who naturally do not go into REM sleep normally, and when they do, they have odd physical behaviors -- complain of chronic tiredness and sometimes end up with serious mental disorders.

The other phases of sleep are even less understood than REM, so I am going to trust my instinct and go with the real research that has been published on polyphasic sleep.

IIRC, Counting Sheep by Paul Martin has some references in this area. I'll try to dig them up later.

"Why We Nap" - Stampi - next to impossible to find. It coined the word polyphasic (and monophasic) sleep.

It's exploratory, but pretty good science. It's basically a study of solo sail-boat racers- long distance. They have to get little naps in, but they have to stay awake enough to take advantage of wind and water currents for days and days.

Other than that, at least last time I checked a year or two ago, all sleep scientists had written it off as "sleep deprivation" which they feel they already have a good handle on (it's evil), and therefore they are very disinterested in actually studying it.

you can download the pdf version of "why we nap" here if you suscribe :

http://www.sleepwarrior.com/why-we-nap-claudio-stampi-pdf

This was a pretty interesting read: http://books.google.com/books?id=90Vh8wUThAgC&pg=PA43...

Also, I remember reading a study where rats were deprived of REM cycles and the result was they were never exposed to nightmares. The hypothesis was that nightmares prepare us for real world dangers, and once the rats stopped dreaming, they were also less skittish in dangerous situations. I'll try to find the article again after work.

This is of course anecdotal, but a few years back I did the polyphasic experience, and I can confirm that dreaming consistently occurs during those 20 minute naps, which strongly suggests REM sleep. In fact, those dreams were some of the best and most vivid dreams I've ever had, presumably because you're never more than 20 minutes away from consciousness, so you remember the dreams clearly, and the dreams are strongly correlated to your mental state going into the nap.

Everyone should try the polyphasic experience for at least a few months of one's life. It radically alters the way you think about time.

To reference Dement's book again, this seems to be well established. If you deprive people of REM sleep, it will start occurring sooner and sooner after falling asleep, so that after a while the subjects would fall asleep and start dreaming almost instantly. (Which made the experiment difficult to continue since the subjects would get very angry after being repeatedly awoken immediately after falling asleep... ;-)

The first week of going polyphasic involves substantial sleep deprivation. You are basically worthless for 1-2 weeks, though you can catch up on some light reading (as I recall, I used the opportunity to dig back into PAIP...).

After a couple of weeks though, you are really refreshed by those 20 minute naps. It's rather amazing. You wake up much more alert and ready to take on the world than after any normal 5-8 hour night of sleep. And you can continue on this pattern, sleeping only 2-3 hours every day, for a seemingly indefinite amount of time, while feeling great.

That's the personal anecdote that appears (with a small and self-selected sample) to contradict your interpretation of Dement's statements.

According to the book, the 25h result was a result of previous studies not controlling the presence of lights carefully enough (just a single light bulb in a room is bright enough to make a difference), and when this was recognized, the natural circadian period was ~ 24h 10m. This was a study by Chuck Czeisler at Stanford and has apparently been confirmed by other studies.

I did an uberman polyphasic schedule for a year and everyman for about 6 months. Stage N1 is likely an adjustment period where your body rhythms slow down and things get ready. Studies have shown that stage N2 and N3 (deep cycles) are essential for healing and muscle growth- they are also when HGH hormones are released. REM has shown to be essential for memory retention and some studies have linked lack of REM to schizophrenia and other psychosis.

When I was polyphasic, roughly 70% of my polynaps were REM and 30% were deep cycles. Interestingly, if I was sore from a workout or something, it would continue to be sore until I had a deep cycle.

Despite the vast, vast multitude of sleep studies (and departments, and journals) out there, I've only seen one study on polyphasic sleep and it was very exploratory. People who study sleep at all immediately associate it with sleep deprivation, which has been studied so much all they can do is spew forth the negatives (there are tons) associated with it. The premise of functional polyphasic sleep is that the body actually adjust so there is no sleep deprivation.

I didn't end up blogging about it, and I don't write about it much, because frankly, after doing it for a month or so- when I was really well adjusted- I ceased having something to prove. It kind of feels like talking about my bowel movements or something. I guess it could be vaguely interesting to someone, but it bores the crap out of me (forgive me).

So quickly: I would not recommend it. You can't exercise much, the adjustment period is very, very difficult (only 10 days, but that's 6 naps a day == like getting up way earlier than you wanted to 60 times in a row. Most people can't even get up earlier than they want to once in a row.) You need an environment where you can have all the lights on and make all the noise you want all night. You can't have other people imposing meetings or any kind of schedule on you. You can't do anything that takes longer than 4 hours. And here's the real kicker: you can't work for more than ~50 hours a week without getting burned out! Yeah, having more hours doesn't help that. And don't even think of starting it if you have something remotely stressful coming up or not enough to do. And don't think of starting it if you live somewhere where it's cold at night. Etc.

All the debate over the health effects are meaningless- it's people who haven't experienced it or frankly studied it. Sleep deprivation only applies in the first 10 days. After that it feels far less harmful then, say, caffeine. shrug

EDIT: Hypothesis (in case someone actually wants to _study_ it- I sure couldn't find any takers when I was doing it): The body seemed to eliminate N1 altogether- my heartrate and body temperature would drop within 30 seconds of lying down- for over a year. 2nd part of the hypothesis- the the first one or two REM cycles at night are essential and the rest is padding built in by evolution to keep you asleep until dawn. 3rd part- other body functions relying on the circadian rhythm adapt- especially digestion, which is _totally_ different when fully adjusted to polyphasic sleep. 4th- there is a reservoir of... something... built up for when you get injured or sick by having that extra sleep in monophasic sleep.

Also, I stopped because I got lazy.

Finally, if you get colds easy, don't even try. A single cold will wipe you out for a day or more.

Thanks for posting your experience.

What do you mean with you got lazy? Were you too busy (eg meetings) keeping the right sleep schedules? How hard is it to wake up at the right time if you are accustomed to it?

If you would have the possibility to do it again, would you do it again?

lazy- yes. We were moving from Maui back to the mainland and between logistics and the kids and everything my sleep schedule got totally chaotic. Then when we were here on the mainland I wasn't in a position where I could have lots of lights on, cook, and make noise during the night.

I stopped using an alarm clock after about a month- so for 17 months I didn't even need an alarm clock after I was accustomed to it.

Doing it again... yes, if the circumstances were just right. Looking back now I realize I was in a unique position with work, family, stress levels, weather, etc. It took a couple of weeks to adjust back to a monophasic schedule- and it was not fun. I'm not excited for the adjustment back to polyphasic sleep. But yeah, I might do it again after our move to Silicon Valley later in the year.

I was thinking of that study of a guy who lived without clocks for several weeks (I think it was underground), and he tended to a 25-hour pattern (IIRC). But of course (apart from the sample size), he had electric lighting.

there seems to be no scientific evidence that this works at all

Do you know if there has been a serious scientific study of this technique? Otherwise, you're being a bit disingenuous in subtly applying the "unscientific" label. The set of things that are true is much larger than the set of true things that have been proven scientifically.

Like I said, I'm just restating what I read in Dement's book, which hasn't talked about this technique at all except to say that people who wake up frequently (like people with sleep apnea) are much more tired than they should be, because the awakenings actually don't change the total amount of sleep that much. So there seems to be evidence indicating that many short chunks of sleep are less effective at reducing sleep debt than one chunk of the same total length. It's as if there's a "startup cost" to falling asleep, and it doesn't start to benefit you until after some time has passed.

So I should have formulated myself more carefully by saying: Studies indicate that short periods of sleep is less effective than long ones, and that each individual requires a certain amount of sleep per night (but which varies with individual and then as you age).

He did go so far as to say something about how he thought methods advocating that you can train yourself to sleep less are "dangerous", given how much sleep deprivation affects your health and ability to do things like drive or operate other machinery safely.

What I worry about is recent studies that suggest that declarative memories (memories of events, objects, and so on) are consolidated during slow-wave sleep. I'm thinking specifically of Rasch et al., 2007 (DOI: 10.1126/science.1138581).

Since the theory behind these polyphasic schedules is that it mainly reduces the time spent in slow-wave sleep, I would expect that the declarative memory would be affected.

This study http://www.oniros.fr/A1350.pdf seems to indicate that sleep duration has no effect. Their interpretation is that a process is triggerd when you enter sleep but once triggered it is independent of wheter you sleep or not.

You are definetely right but let me just comment about the physiological exception.

In the in the case of this blog post the might actually be some differences. The writer may really have some genetic problem in his/her circadian clock. Sleep is known to be under regulation of two mechanism: a circadian mechanism (about 24 hour for most of us) and a homeostatic mechanism. It is known (it is actually one of the few things we actually know pretty well about sleep) that the NREM is under control of the homeostatic mechanism while REM is under control of the circadian mechanism.

The blog author has a longer cycle and it is likely that his/her REM kicks in later on in their night, therefore being incompatible with obtaining enough REM. By doing polyphasic he/she might be able to compensate for that.

I always wonder about these people who claim to have adjusted sleep cycles (i.e. 28 hours). Personally I find that I also drift to staying awake later and later if I'm not exercising during the week.

If I get in a solid hour workout daily (like I usually do), I'm out like a light in 5 minutes as soon as it's time for bed. Do enough physical work during the day and your body will have no problem passing out because it's simply exhausted.

I also love how he labels the 8-hour sleep "the waste". Any other athletes here will confirm that you can't possibly recover, build muscle, and have the energy for hard workouts with 20 minute naps during the day. Polyphasic sleep might allow one to just barely function, but it's hardly functioning at your best.

How do you know that your muscles only recover during night and not during day.

You could still lay on the coach and read a book and your muscles would recover as well, or not?

According to the NIH, Sleep is one of the events that modify the timing of secretion for certain hormones. Many hormones are secreted into the blood during sleep. For example, scientists believe that the release of growth hormone is related in part to repair processes that occur during sleep.

http://science.education.nih.gov/supplements/nih3/sleep/guid...

Right, and what first came to mind for me was Melatonin. I was looking into sleep hacks a couple years back and studying up on Melatonin drove me away from trying out anything that would disturb a "normal" amount of time sleeping in the dark. I remember seeing a study that linked a lack of Melatonin production to some kinds of cancer. Can't seem to find it now.

That NIH page on sleep is fascinating.

That's actually a really good point, I just posted on my blog (blog.aximilation.com) an article about how I got sick and polyphasic sleep was not enough for my body to get the rest it needed at the time. (article: http://blog.aximilation.com/blog.php?title=the-sickness&...) Excerpt: "...if you begin working out, do some hard labor, experience a lot of stress or get sick, your body may need more downtime, physically, in which case a polyphasic schedule may not be sufficient..."

You may or may not be functioning at your best, puredoxyk, one of the pioneers of polyphasic sleep is very active in kung fu and various physical activities and has no trouble. I would not say that it's hardly functioning at your best, it depends on what your body needs, what it is used to, and also your lifestyle.

Jay Cutler (Mr. Olympia 2006, 2007) is reported to sleep no longer than 3 hours at a time with his weight-lifting regimen. It's not polyphasic, but it's entirely possible to build muscle with a reduced sleep schedule.

Old FHM Article http://forum.bodybuilding.com/archive/index.php/t-3330281.ht...

Source found Googling http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0KFY/is_3_22/ai_n6108... (bottom of page)

I wonder how this affects learning and memory.

anecdotes:

My wife and I are both very attuned to our learning processes, and we both notice immediate skill improvements after "sleeping on it". This applies to learning, retention, and even physical skills (sports and video games).

Because sleep affects cognition, being poorly rested can amplify all kinds of bad habits. When I'm fully rested, I'll think "let me sketch out a solution and plan my code changes". When I'm sleep deprived, I just jump in and flail. It's literally the difference between "oh, I know I should do X, but I'll just dive in 'cause that's fun" versus just doing X, and having fun anyway.

There were times in university where I would get up at 6 pm, and go to sleep at 6 am. I couldn't understand so-called "morning people".

Now, though, if I go to bed tired at 10:30 pm, I wake up rested at 6:30 am. It really is a matter of training. I rarely go to bed later than midnight now, after 20 years of rarely going to bed before midnight.

That feeling of being fully rested was a vivid surprise. My eyes open, and I realize I'm lying down, but I could just as well be standing up. There's no friction. There's no pain. I'm ready to go.

So, in summary ... be very careful about messing with your sleep patterns, and don't assume that you're somehow incompatible with the standard sleep schedule. i suspect that a lot of it is just plain old boring training, not sexy hacking.

There were times in university where I would get up at 6 pm, and go to sleep at 6 am. I couldn't understand so-called "morning people".

I actually had a very different experience. In college I spent a month trying to become a "morning person." After the initial adjusment period, it worked great for a little under two weeks - I'd go to sleep at 10:30, and hop out of bed at 7:00 feeling fresh and ready to go. But suddenly (perhaps once I finally caught up on my sleep debt) I stopped falling asleep at 11. Instead I'd lie in bed wide awake for two or three hours, and feel as grumpy as ever the next morning. After three consecutive days of that, I gave up on being a morning person and have yet to look back.

> even physical skills

That would be expected. Physical skills are still resident in the nervous system, just somewhat removed from consciousness. What is stressed during the day is strengthened at night.

I've always wondered if the polyphasic sleep hackers have girlfriends or wives. It seems like you'd either have to be chaste, or else have a very odd relationship with your significant other. I can't imagine having sex, then taking a 20 minute nap, then getting right back to SEO strategy or whatever it is the polyphasic crowd needs all that extra time for.

The other thing is that I've never heard of a woman trying polyphasic sleep or even being mildly interested in trying it. It seems to be one of those things that only guys with blogs care about.

Ahem. PureDoxyK, the one who posted about polyphasic sleep on a couple of sites (kuro5hin, everything2) a few years ago, who mostly started the whole craze and who still tries various sleep patterns out, is female: http://www.puredoxyk.com/index.php/about-me/

And Steve Pavlina who tried out polyphasic sleep for quite some time is married.

I've read through Pavlina's polyphasic sleep blog entries and some of PureDoxyK's entries before, and IIRC neither of them went into detail about how it affected their sex lives.

Dude, I wrote a whole page about it, and put it on the main polyphasic page of my site with the link "Polyphasic Sleep and Sex"! What more do you want??!

;)

It's here: http://www.puredoxyk.com/index.php/index.php/about-polyphasi...

(P.S. Yes, girl, and married. And pro-nookie. ;)

Steve Pavlina is married, and he describes the effect his sleep cycle had on his relationship to his wife. I can't remember if he discusses sex at all, but you may be interested in finding out for yourself:

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/

Steve Pavlina also became polyamorous after trying (and quitting) polyphasic sleeping. Infer what you will about his marriage from that.

Having done the polyphasic experience some years back, and having a long-term girlfriend, I can confirm that it does not negatively impact the important things in life.

In fact, because you have so many extra hours at your disposal, you can seem almost magical. You can work 12 hours a day and spend another 9-10 hours doing engaging things with other people in your life.

Why did you stop?

It sounds so great! I can't wait to take 2 weeks of to try it! :-)

My time spent polyphasic was massively productive. The software and systems I developed during that time formed the foundation of my business. But then I acquired customers, resellers, contractors, and other business partnerships, which made incompatibility with the rest of the world more difficult to handle.

The other major downside is a distinct lack of flexibility. In a monophasic sleeping pattern, if you have a situation and need to work and/or be on phone calls for 24 hours straight, you can do it easily. In a polyphasic pattern, tiredness hits you like a brick wall if you put off a scheduled nap just an hour or two.

Still, if I was starting a new business from scratch, I would seriously consider going polyphasic again for a few months to build the initial foundation.

… and that's probably one great reason why monophasic sleep 'won' in an evolutionary sense. Robustness usually wins out over efficiency, and not being able to stay awake for a few hours to finish a hunt/avoid a predator/avoid freezing to death/etc. is a pretty big reduction in robustness.

That's an important point. The author says that sleeping "is intuitively an evolutionary disadvantage". That's false, the fact that many species do sleep shows that is is an advantage indeed. Otherwise, there would not be these species.

having done it for a year and a half, I heartily agree with that summary. On monophasic sleep I'm able to recover from soreness & illness overnight thanks to the extra sleep buffered in. On polyphasic sleep I'm both more efficient and more vulnerable and as you pointed out, less flexible.

Yes, hi, only myself and my best friend were the first ones that I know of since Bucky Fuller to do it and write anything about it, and we're both women.

After you get done going to the store and buying some Google-fu (you'll need a lot, it seems), you can also check out the post I wrote in January about polyphasic sleep and sex. Enjoy!

http://www.puredoxyk.com/index.php/index.php/about-polyphasi...

Sorry, Dustin. Your writing and sense of design (as always) are really wonderful. But your medical suggestions... not so much.

It's really not possible to "hack" your sleep schedule effectively for any length of time. True, some people, called "short sleepers" do function rather well on 3-4 hours of sleep a night. But, most people require an average of 7-9 hours of sleep, and when they deviate from that for any length of time, they eventually rebound to their required length of sleep.

When you do try to "hack" your natural sleep schedule, you end up tired, and functioning sub optimally. Scientific studies have shown that people who are chronically sleep deprived are as dangerous behind the wheel of a car as someone who is legally intoxicated. Why would you do that to yourself willingly?

There is a lot of good scientific research being done in the field of sleep medicine. There are physicians who specialize in sleep. I've been going to one for the past year. And, while sleep medicine is a young discipline, a sleep doctor can be quite helpful.

If you're tired all the time, may I suggest you see a physician who has studies and specialized in such things instead of trying to diagnose and treat yourself via the internet.

I have several friends who have successfully gone on and off of the polyphasic sleep cycle. Just as with most things in life, you need to be open and willing and dedicated to make it work. This relates to forging your way with a startup, gaining muscle, adjusting sleep patterns, dating... everything.

It's fair to go from your own experiences, but I know polyphasic sleep is doable, reasonable, and even better for some people. My cup of tea? Definitely not.

Like dieting but more so, few can stay on a short sleep + naps regimen permanently.

I'd guess that napping efficiently is difficult unless, you're sleep deprived enough so that you can nap under almost any condition, which doesn't sound like it feels good.

> I have several friends who have successfully gone on and off of the polyphasic sleep cycle.

The big question is do you know anyone who went on, and did not go off.

From the reading I've done, people tend to go off it when external factors make it difficult to adhere to such a rigid nap schedule, e.g. every four hours on the dot, rain or shine. As with any habit that requires discipline, like being vegan or practicing the violin 6 hours a day, it's not necessarily a life-long thing.

But people commonly say things like "I did it for a year; best year of my life". Apparently you can literally go for a year getting a total of 2 hours of sleep in each 24-hour period. After a week of forcing it on yourself, if you're brave, determined, and a little lucky, a switch flips in your brain.

If that's a fact, in spite of the nay-sayers, then that's really something. I intend to find out for myself.

Yet many people are vegan for years, and practice violin for 6 hours a day for years. As far as I can tell, there is not one documented case where someone who has maintained polyphasic sleep for more than six months or so?

OPEN SOURCE BED PROJECT?

We have the latest technologies when it comes to automobiles and other products, yet our bed is still using the same technology that's existed for thousands of years. Let's rethink our sleeping apparatus.

Here's my inventive thoughts on sleeping.

Why not use all the technology at our disposal to create the ultimate sleeping bed?

Here's the basic design:

1. The bed has a lid that closes over top (think coffin but roomier inside).

2. Bed has temperature control system to vent air and adjust to sleeping preferences.

3. Bed mattress has cooling pipes to control mattress temperatures.

4. Lot of control systems to monitor air temperature, mattress temperature and body temperature and keeps them all in check.

5. Integrated lighting in the dome of the bed is used for waking and mood setting

6. Bed sits on motorized incline to help with morning assist routines

The fun with this projects comes in setting up the control system for optimal sleep cycles. With the variable being temperature (air and mattress), light, sound, and bed angle.

Any takers?

Edit: additional note is this could be considered a "green" bed because it has a self contain heating/cooling system which is more efficient than heating/cooling your entire house. So at night, you can lower your overall energy requirements for hvac related bills.

Aside from claustrophobes, this might work alright. But it would require a lot of material, and it would have to look good, because people like beds that are made out of nice looking wood. And it's expensive building a roomy king-size coffin out of maple ;)

Well it wouldn't be claustrophobic assuming you make the dome with sufficient headroom. You could do some human factor studies and determine what size of enclosure people can lay down inside and still feel fine.

In terms of material, I'd prefer something more techie than wood - some sort of composite material to make the canopy light and moder looking. Maybe like a large oval shape.

Yeah, there's probably enough of a niche market for unconventional beds that making them out of conventional materials isn't the best solution.

You're silly. I love you.

What's conspicuously missing from this article is the author mentioning which method he is using, and how long he has maintained it.

Without that, it reads like an article about what he wants to do, but has never managed to maintain. It's akin to taking diet advice from someone who has lost and gained weight many times in their lives and has never proven they can stop the cycling.

I think there are two major problems with "hacking" one's sleeping patterns like this. First is physiological side effects that can go undetected for a very long time and cause permanent damage. Lack of sleep increases blood pressure, for instance.

Or the effectiveness of the thinking process itself (which is more difficult to measure) -- I was told at school that when I sleep my brain "processes and sorts information". Well if you reduce the amount of sleep four times perhaps you become more prone to make mistakes when working (and lose time fixing them).

The original article's claims, and your counter-claims, need to be proven/disproven by a study of individuals practicing poly-phasic sleep for e.g. 10-20 years. Until then, we're basically in anecdote territory.

Why hasn't that study been done?

I think it's because this is something that is very hard to stick with. After the physical adjustment, one has to be willing to organize one's life in a way consistent with this, and that is tough when everybody uses this other mode of sleep.

Relevant discussion from the last time this came up: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=652747

Again, here is the link to my experience doing polyphasic sleep: http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/category/polyphasi...

I agree with Dustin - it works but you have to be strict on the schedule. My life didn't accommodate the schedule so I had to stop, but it did work for the short time I could schedule it.

No one's life accommodates that sleeping schedule - which is why we don't naturally sleep like that.

If the rest of the world wasn't so rigorously attached to monophasic, I don't see why it would be so difficult. It's not an inherently unworkable schedule, it's just that our work, commerce, and socializing all take forms that don't accommodate it.

Anyways, I'm intrigued by what he calls the "Everyman" schedules - they seem like a compromise between the rigid Uberman and the monophasic that the rest of the world uses.

It's difficult because our bodies did not evolve to sleep to that schedule. Every account I've read concludes with "It's great! I'm happy with how it turned out! Oh, by the way, I don't do it anymore because it's so hard to keep up."

Read the thread I linked to, which is now at the bottom of this discussion.

The sleep cycle evolved before artificial lighting, when night was truly deep and dark.

That's not work, commerce, or socialization at work.

Just do heavy exercise, you will require more sleep and sleep deeper. I don't sleep well unless I'm doing 1.5 hours of exercise.

Doing mentally stimulating work before going to bed is the worst way to sleep well. I need almost 2 hours of mindless tv or something besides programming before going to bed to sleep properly. Otherwise I have programming dreams.

Perhaps Dustin exercises a lot, or maybe he's always been more into intellectual pursuits.

I can appreciate how effective these methods are, but I personally don't like the idea of stripping one of the enjoyable things in my schedule down to how efficient it is. Working hard is great, but I think there is such thing as too much of it at the cost of an enjoyable life (for me).

I imagine that trying to do weird sleep patterns will exclude you from that other great evolutionary need : sex. Not many partners would put up with someone dropping everything and running off for a 20 minute nap. They'd likely classify you under 'freak' and go and find someone else to share genetic material with.

great submission. Thanks. I really like hearing about this kind of hacking vs using something like provigil.

My experience has been that I can function with less sleep (4-5 hours with 1/2 hour nap), but less optimally, eventually. The naps can often be very refreshing, and sustaining even, but eventually it's not enough. At least for me. I've done these sleep patterns for about 6 months at a time - with longer sleep once a week.

Exercise (more precisely, blood flow to the brain) makes a big difference for me. Staying vertical in a chair for 12 hours a day with no exercise or nap vs 16 hours a day with exercise break/nap feels comparable.

Steve Pavlina has some extensive blogging on the subject, as well as his daily logs over at http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/

So did anybody try to do directly the uberman's sleep schedule (6 times 20 minutes sleep)?

A friend tried passing to it through multiple core sleep phases, but failed miserably after one week.

Until there's more research studying the long term effects of this, I really don't think it's a good idea.

Current research has identified that conventional sleeping helps memory, learning, creativity, and muscle repair/recovery (related to working out); not sleeping well can lead to stuff like high blood pressure and the hardening of heart arteries (which leads to heart attacks).

Then again if you don't have much of a choice if you have a hard deadline, this may be a useful tool to use now and again.

Polyphasic sleep != sleep deprivation unless it is not done correctly. Yes, not sleeping well (deprivation) can cause those things, but it does not mean that polyphasic sleep causes them. if you have adapted and are on a consistent schedule, you should be more rested than before.

" not sleeping well (deprivation) can cause those things, but it does not mean that polyphasic sleep causes them. "

Until there's research conducted on the long term effects of polyphasic sleep, who's to say it doesn't cause those things?

There’s no clearly defined biological reason for it, and it is intuitively an evolutionary disadvantage.

Sleeping during the night was extremely important for human survival. We evolved to find food during the day. Any waking hours at night time instead of sleeping means a huge amount of extra energy expended to support being awake. Sleep pressure has a huge evolutionary advantage. It may be a disadvantage now.

There's also biphasic -- 4 hours + 4 hours, but you could probably comfortably spread the two sessions out across 28 hours however you want

Humans are naturally biphasic, but more in the 6-7 hours + .5-1 hours range. Which is why some cultures have a midday siesta.

Famous people who actually slept biphasically include Winston Churchill, who was by all accounts energetic, hardworking, and did not sleep that much overall.

I just wish I remembered more of my dreams and perhaps even be able to control them to use as brainstorming sessions.

Didn't Kramer try this and fail?

You think military and some goverment agencies didn't spent millions and decades for it? =)

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