Is surviving on 20-minute naps bad for you? | Hacker News Reader

Is surviving on 20-minute naps bad for you?

bbc.co.uk

43 pointsTuxMulder47 comments

I vary my sleep schedule a lot. I'm 40. I've given up on any hope of reducing the amount of sleep I get without bad effects. I do believe you can manage when you sleep to maximize productivity, though.

I have a 6 year old son, and I lie down for a nap when he goes to bed between 8.30 and 9pm - it's convenient timing. I tend to aim for 90 minutes. If the alarm wakes me, it wakes me, and I'll stay up for 2-3 hours and if I feel I have the energy I load up on caffeine and stay up all night. The next couple of nights I'll probably sleep straight through from my nap time and never notice the alarms, or at most wake up briefly.

The end effect for me is that I regularly get 6-8 hour long concentrated periods at night where I feel rested and alert, and still have enough energy to last it through the work day and early evening afterwards.

With the caveat that any deficit accumulates. If I don't "pay for it" immediately I'll feel more and more tired as the days goes by and end up taking a week or so of going to bed early to recover. That part was easier to avoid when I was younger.

I did the "uberman" sleep schedule for a few months about 10 years ago. It works; you can definitely survive and stay surprisingly functional on a 20 minute nap every 4 hours. You do lose some cognitive ability, though.

The advice in the OP is pretty bad, though. Any nap of more than 20 minutes will leave you feeling groggy when you wake up, especially if you're sleep deprived, which could be catastrophic for a pilot.

I also did Uberman, a few times, for a few weeks at a time. The first week was always rough but once you get beyond that I felt like I was Superman.

It didn't last forever though. For me I was young and trying to fit work in with going out at night and perfecting my social skills. But once I had a partner, I found myself missing us sleeping together at night, and the long night hours being productive a little lonely compared to cuddling in bed. So I gave it up.

Of course pilots are in a different world. I don't think that would be a great idea.

I felt like Superman, too. My SO later told me I was more like stupid-man. It was still early enough in our relationship that she wasn't comfortable saying such things to my face.

I tried it for a few weeks and felt really unproductive. I think it is similar to being drunk. A lot of drunk people think they are awesome when they really aren't.

That's not entire true. Getting a full sleep cycle is important - More over, the reason you don't feel groggy after sleeping for 20 minutes is because you didn't actually enter into the deeper levels of sleep, which are important for actually being rested.

If you sleep for aprox. 90 minutes, a full sleep cycle, then you also won't feel groggy.

I still feel groggy after a 90 minute sleep; it's not as bad as waking up in the middle of the cycle, but I still feel groggy. If I nap for 3-15 minutes, I wake up feeling as awake as I am during exercise.

Are you sure you're not still waking up in the middle of the cycle? 90 minutes is just a loose generalization. Different people have different sleep cycles and take different amounts of time to fall asleep.

Personally, 2 hours works well for me but 90 minutes does not.

Isn't the theory around the uberman that in those 20 min you go straight into deep sleep?

yup, parent is talking without knowledge of uberman

The reason uberman works is because you are getting REM sleep during those 20 minute naps. Your body adjusts to the 20 minute nap cycle and throws you into REM faster, hence why that first week or so adjust period is rather hellish. Before your body adjust there is a lack that much needed REM sleep.

It is a really crappy article though

Do you have evidence (i.e. randomized, blinded) that uberman actually does work?

I'd be really interested to see it, all I have managed to find is evidence that some people who do it believe that it works well for them, which isn't at all the same thing.

Polyphasic sleep schedules are interesting, but I've always thought these extremely short cycles were problematic.

It's impossible to do double-blind experiments on behavior changes. But randomized, blind-evaluator experiments would be a good start.

Of course you're right, behavioral studies make subject blinding (nearly?) impossible. Typing quicker than thinking there, I'll edit original for clarity.

How old were you? It seems like if you're in your teens or twenties you can pretty much do any crazy sleep schedule and be fine with it as you're in the "superpowers" stage of your life.

Its a little different in your 40s. As someone with sleep apnea, sleep quality is so important to me. I can't imagine messing with it, especially considering we don't fully understand sleep and if there may be long term consequences with weird sleep schedules. We do know that sufferers of apnea have increased risk of stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes, and depression.

Another sufferer here (mid 30s). Latest exams are already showing a blood pressure increase (yay).

In my early twenties I could spend the whole night partying and drinking, then sleep half an hour and show up for work on time and still manage to do useful work.

Should I try these shenanigans now, I'll either be zombified and nauseated for the whole day or, if I try napping, collapse for the whole day, alarm clock or not. And that's without apnea.

My personal belief is that any schedule involving an alarm clock is wrong at best, and damaging at worst. The schedules may seem to 'work', but who knows what kind of damage they may be doing to the body.

Steve Pavlina did an experiment with polyphasic sleep when he was 34. It worked great for him. But he quit because that sleep schedule is unsociable. He is a personal development guy, though, so he isn't that keen on chanting the old "everything is hard or impossible after 40" which people on HN seem so keen on. "You did what? Oh, but you're probably young so it doesn't count. I could do anything too when I was your age."

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

I did uberman for a month when I was first starting out and just doing freelance. I could set whatever schedule I wanted so, I decided to give it a shot.

The big thing for me is, I really like the kind of concentration that the nigth brings, but I also like the early mornings. I've even been contemplating switching to a two-sleep cycle system again so I can enjoy both my mornings and nights.

Back to the uberman: week one was hell. Weeks two and three were amazing. I felt like I was getting so much done and I could fully enjoy any time of the day. Things started to fall apart around week four though. I began having difficulties with grasping at causation. I seemed to still be going through my day and somehow getting things done but I saw the world as just a snapshot of present moments and couldn't quite grasp how one moment transitioned into the next. So I gave it up.

I wonder if some people are just somehow (genetically?) more predisposed to functioning well on the Uberman sleep schedule.

It seems more likely that we are all biologically predisposed to function badly on such a schedule.

Some people probably deal with the deficits better than others, but all of the "positive" results from something that extreme I've heard of are subjective and self-reported, so not worth much as evidence. There is, however, lots of empirical data about loss of cognitive function due to sleep deprivation; to be fair I don't think any of the studies I've seen targeted precisely that (self imposed, cyclic) sort of pattern. On the other hand, none of that research suggests a good outcome would be expected. I'm not referring to all sleep patterns here, just those that rely on very short cycles, e.g. 20 min.

I've posted this challenge a couple times here, so it's as good a time as any: Has anyone done the Uber sleep schedule for, say, at least a year, and preferably still doing it?

Last time I asked this was: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6258098 (thanks https://hn.algolia.com ) and, well, the score I have for this remains at "zero accounts I trust", even from this relatively interested forum.

(Caveats: I recognize there is significant sleep variation in humans. Science has confirmed this, even if it doesn't know why. I also believe in "bi-phasic" sleep of shorter nights and significant naps, again, this has been established reasonably well. This isn't generalized skepticism, it's specifically the Uber & other variants that I've never heard even solid anecdotal evidence for.)

As far as I can tell (without doing any sort of comprehensive survey), I think most people who do this regularly are people who cross oceans solo, and they only do it for that period of time.

I'm willing to tack on to my caveat list that it can be possible for a brief period of time. Since we know that no sleep leads to death, and people have clearly done Uber for longer than that threshold and not died, it can clearly be done for a period of time and you stay alive.

It's just that there does not seem to be any hope of doing it indefinitely. Sad. My personal biases and desires, like many here, lead me towards really wishing it could be, but I just don't see the evidence.

I agree - I feel that trying it for a few weeks or even a month or two isn't long enough to really know if it works or not.

I tried a 28 hour day cycle (awake for 20 hours, asleep for 8; 6 day week) for a few weeks when I was in uni (as Mondays through Thursdays had me awake at relatively normal times and this suited my lecture schedule at the time) but then other obligations knocked me off schedule for a few days and I reverted back to normal. I feel like it could have been successful longer term, but I didn't do it long enough to know for sure. I guess the hardest part is making sure other things don't interfere.

I find a lot of irony in people's anecdotal "I did the uberman sleep schedule, it works."

Key word: did. As in, past tense. Clearly it does not work better than the alternatives, or you'd still be doing it. Don't mistake short-term survival for long-term viability.

The article is talking long-term viability in the sense of its impact on health and longevity. From what I've seen in comments here and experienced myself, the reasons for abandoning uberman are largely social in nature.

Your statement that clearly it doesn't work as well as the alternative (as relates to the article) is unfounded.

It does work - health-wise.

Socially, not so much. It added a ton of extra strain to my relationships.

I'll definitely be switching back to it, but I'll be coinciding it with some self-imposed hermitage.

I found that switching to a night shift was productive. It helped me eliminate social distractions during the day.

I would work in the wee hours when everyone's asleep, sleep all day, but then get up for a few hours before 5pm to get errands done. With the limited daylight and business hours it made me focus and prioritize chores and other busy-work. Social life didn't take too bad of a hit because I got it all in the evening before working the rest of the night and early morning.

I think my mileage experience with uberman is on the crappy end. I did it for 2 weeks, and toward the end, I felt I was unable to focus on anything for more than 30 seconds, and ultimately had to stop when I started seeing blood in the toilet. To this day, I have no idea if my uberman sleep schedule actually caused it or not, but seeing dark red in the water definitely scared me and correlation is one hell of a incentive to stop doing something.

Dark red is an indicator of colorectal cancer- You should get that checked out

I hate when an article states a question making you expect an answer.

This article ends with exactly the same question it starts out with.

Or no[1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines

The article ends with:

The answer

- 20-minute naps are arguably too short for a restorative nap

- 30 minutes a time would be better, but 90 minutes allows a full sleep cycle

Interestingly, newborn babies are on a 90 minute schedule. So are the parents...

Though to be fair, that only lasts a few months until it's 2x90 min, 3x90 min, etc.

I haven't ever heard a parent say they felt like Superman on that schedule, though.

Most parents gets the bad side (waking up at night) without the good side (napping during the day), though.

I really loved the weekends when my son was younger and would still have an afternoon nap and we ended up napping at the same time.... But I did certainly not enjoy when he was a baby and woke up around 4:30am full of energy and I had to offload his mom and keep him busy until it was time for me to get ready for work just as he decided it was nap-time again.

If I got to go down for a nap again whenever he did I think I could have quite enjoyed it. Unfortunately I doubt work would have agreed.

Some articles just ask really in-depth questions. Like this one on whether too much sugar is bad for you: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.htm...

I tried the everyman sleep schedule and made my first B+, ruining my 3 year run of straight As as a result of a sleep-deprived test.

I was 3 weeks in and still having trouble waking, and feeling groggy most of the time. I might try it again now that I'm out of school, but my boss will be pissy if I'm sleepy all the time.

That said, I was amazed at how much more I got done. The sense of time dilation comes on really fast. It starts to feel like everyone else is lazy when you describe everything you accomplished in a day or two. I've heard that it gets better after you adjust. We will see.

I tried this 9 years ago. Does not work whatsoever. It's a really stupid idea. Cognitive abilities go down the toilet.

I used to work nights and go to school during the day so I learned really quickly how to break my sleep into 90min cycles. This kept me functional however, a string of successive sleep cycles let's you get a much deeper and energizing rest, in my experience.

I long had sleep problems most of my life. Like 10 or 12 hours and I would not be rested. During tours with the Army overseas, a couple hours here and there. It was a nightmare waking up like an asshole every single day. It created a core component of the person I am. But after my 33rd birthday, I started forcing myself to nap for 90 minutes after work, and 5 hours during the night. It's not everyman or uberman, but it has been a miraculous change for me. Just a straight up miracle. I should mention too that I also hit the gym pretty hard six days a week, and so I don't think going any closer to every/uberman would be possible.

That's the siesta schedule, I think. It's pretty successful, but when I try it, I get a lot of pushback from my family about being available right after work...

after having experimented with all sorts of sleep 'arrangements' in college, 10 years later i can pretty much say without a doubt i like going to bed around midnight and getting up exactly 8 hours later.

There have been tons of studies on sleep and how much you need is pretty well understood: - Most people need ~8 hrs of sleep a day. - Any less than what your body needs and you'll be cognitively impaired from sleep deprivation. - Sleep deprivation will cause health problems and early death. - 20 minute naps will give you a boost but never get you fully rested since you don't go into deep or REM sleep (for which you need a full ~90 minute sleep cycle). - High levels of caffeine intake will disrupt sleep in most people, leading to sleep deprivation.

Link to the original article about Uberman: http://everything2.com/title/Uberman%2527s+Sleep+Schedule

It was definitely bad for me. I switch to "short days" when I have to build a large number of identical things, but when I'm doing design or coding that's even a bit creative, I need my beauty sleep.

Sleep is a physiological need. Lack of food, water or sleep and the body and mind cease to function properly before completely shutting down.

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