Are Alternative Sleeping Patterns Effective? 260
shmookey asks: "Some people have adopted some unusual sleeping habits, which they believed help them work. The concept is simple: be active for a few hours, sleep for half an hour, wake up and then repeat. This supposedly maximized your effective REM sleeping time and cut back on wasted hours of idleness. Hack-a-day has a nice article and some links on this, which re-ignited my interest. Does anyone on Slashdot actually do this? How do you make it fit in with earning a living? What sacrifices do you have to make to live this kind of lifestyle?" Called polyphasic sleep, or "The Uberman's sleep schedule", this is not something to dive into lightly, as it requires rigid scheduling, and there may be unexpected complications and other issues. Has anyone tried this? What were your experiences?
More info on Uberman (Score:5, Insightful)
An excellent writeup on the Uberman sleep schedule can be found here [everything2.com].
In the past I've restricted my sleep to as little as three hours a night for several weeks without ill effects, but I've never tried the Uberman sleep schedule. Now that I'm older, I seem to need my sleep much more desperately than I used to (I get physically ill if I get less than five hours sleep per night), so I doubt I'll be trying it anytime soon.
I have a friend who decided to try it during his long period of unemployment (in fact, I first heard of it from him), but he dropped out after a few weeks. I suspect that he just enjoyed sleeping too much to give up so much of it. ^_^
Re:More info on Uberman (Score:3, Informative)
No wonder that you get ill with so little sleep for prolonged periods. It's not without reason that sleep deprivation is a torture method.
Re:More info on Uberman (Score:4, Informative)
There were some exceptions, but not all that many.
At first, I'd get about 2-3 hours of sleep a night and then crash for a few hours about every 10 days. After doing that for few months, I got to the point where I didn't need to crash very often.
About two years ago, I had some kind of infection that seemed to be more of a nuiscance than anything else. A couple of weeks later, I had a relapse that lasted a couple of weeks. During that time, I spent more time asleep. Since then, I haven't been able to get by on so little sleep.
Now I'm back up to 6-8 hours a night.
I miss all that extra time I had.
Re:More info on Uberman (Score:5, Funny)
'Fess up, you still do it, otherwise how else are you going to get all those first posts?
Re:More info on Uberman (Score:5, Informative)
My solution was to sleep in a 12 hour cycle rather than the normal 24. For 2.5 months I was fully rested, never cranky, and hangovers didn't seem to phase me. I would sleep from 3-6 am and pm every day. After the first two weeks I started to keep the cycle for weekends and I did feel that my body had adjusted to it. I fell asleep fast, but wasn't tired until just about time to go to sleep.
I guess part of the quation should be that you can sleep for short periods of time as long as you only need to stay awake for short periods of time. Maybe alcohol was the catlyst that made it all come together. Anyone who wants to fund a study on this idea should contact me ASAP.
P.S. - I like Vodka and Rum.
Re:More info on Uberman (Score:4, Interesting)
It's been a while since I've posted, but this one brought me back. Many years ago, I did the same thing.
When I was in high school, as an inquisitive young lad I had heard about alternative sleep patterns. Upset at the wasteful 8.5 hours I was used to sleeping, I decided to try one. School forced to be awake from 7:30am - 2:45pm, so I decided to adopt a pattern of sleeping 3-6, both am and pm. I would get to stay up later, and get a whole 2.5 hours extra. I kept this up for nearly a year, as I recall. There was one major drawback, though, that forced me to stop.
It wasn't fatigue, weight loss, narcolepsy, or a steady erosion of mental faculties that forced me to stop though. In fact, I felt better than I had previosly. No it had nothing to do with the how much I was sleeping, but when.
See, the problem was I was sleeping through some of the more important hours of the day. That time after school was a prime time for socializing, running errands, keeping appointments, in short doing anything that involved interacting with the outside world. The time I got in return, roughly 10pm to 3 am, was next to useless. Due to curfew laws, it wasn't even technically legal for a 16 year old to be out for most of that time. If I did go out, who was I going to see? Who the hell is up at 2am on a Tuesday? Nobody I knew. So I had really nothing to do besides read and watch late night television. I was trading the prime hours of my day for late night infomercials. (Back then, there were no MMPOGs, and the internet was not much to look at, but the point remains salient today. Perhaps even more so.) That's why I stopped.
As a side note, after I stopped, it took a long time for me to completely shake the habit. Even in college, if I wasn't careful, I would fall asleep around 3 in the afternoon, whether I was tired or not.
Re:More info on Uberman (Score:2)
Someone on kuro5hin awhile back posted about his experiences changing to the uberman schedule, which admittedly is different from the schedule you were on. He said if he stayed up for more than 5 hours or so straight, he would just turn to a zombie, until he got the necessary 20-30 minutes
25 Hour day is most natural (Score:3, Informative)
Re:25 Hour day is most natural (Score:3, Interesting)
It turns out that I naturally fall into a 28-hour day, with 20 hours waking, followed by eight hours of sleep. Conveniently enough, the number of hours in a week is evenly divisible by 28, so I also ended up with six-day weeks, with 120 total waking hours per week. A normal, sleep-8-hours, wake-16-hours week produces only 112 waking hours, so I e
Re:25 Hour day is most natural (Score:4, Funny)
I had a similar experience, but my wake/sleep ratios were the opposite.
Re:More info on Uberman (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem was that friday night, I sat down on the edge of the bed, and slept straight through for 15 hours. (the first several in an upright position, until my roomie came home and tipped me over) Maybe spacing out cat-naps would work better, but I'd be c
Mailing list (Score:2)
E2 Article: Thanks; I wrote a follow-up too (Score:2, Informative)
'Tis here: http://pure-doxyk.livejournal.com/229675.html [livejournal.com]
Hmmm. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Hardly Know-It (Score:2)
Belief in the man as a factual historian is stupid to say the least.
This is yet another example of why sources on the Internet, now percolated through hundreds or thousands of sites one to the other like some kind of parasitic frenzy, are worthless as a research source.
So gimme a break already!
Re:Hmmm. (Score:2)
Re:Hmmm. (Score:2)
Re:Hmmm. (Score:3, Interesting)
All things considered, I'll stick with ol' Ben Franklin's advice.
Re:Hmmm. (Score:4, Informative)
Some assembly line thing or another.
I would argue thatchances are that the folks who work graveyard have higher exposure to potentially cancerous materials than your average 9 to fiver.
They compared them directly to their daytime counterparts. They also found that exposure to light prevents melatonin release (or manufacture - I don't remember), and confirmed that the night shift workers had much lower blood levels with no peak during the day when they would be sleeping. They also ran lab tests on rats (I think) and saw that cancerous tumors grew at a rate inversely proportional to the melatonin blood levels. Finally, they saw that the night works had higher cancer rates.
If I seem hesitant, it's because I don't have the article nearby and don't know any more about the study than what was in the article, but they made the gist of it very clear: being awake at night increased some people's chance of getting certain types of cancers.
Oops, I take that back. The full article, along with references is available at Science News [sciencenews.org]. It's much clearer than I could hope to be.
Re:Hmmm. (Score:3, Interesting)
I've always been skeptical of studies that claim the body does something best between certain numbered hours. How does the body know that it is 12 AM? What if you suddenly cross a time zone; would that throw off this process? Perhaps melatonin is best processed a certain number of hours after awakening, but how would a certain time have anything to do with it?
Re:Hmmm. (Score:2, Insightful)
The six most important words in the English language are, "May I please see the report?" Rather than just being skeptical, read the research.
Re:Hmmm. (Score:2)
Re:Hmmm. (Score:2)
IIRC, the human body basically schedules its sleep requirements according to two basic schedules, one related to daylight and one related to how long you've been awake and how active you've been. For most people, that combination puts the most effective melatonin processing in the early hours of the morning.
And yes, suddenly changing across several time zones does mess it up. Jet lag is basically the resulting shock to the system while the two stimuli seem to be contradictory.
Re:Hmmm. (Score:2)
What do you mean we? Humans are biologially different from one another in small ways. Some people are tall, short, fat, skinny... Whats to say some people process more melatonin best at 12noon?
Re:Hmmm. (Score:2)
Yeah, but they're aussies and kiwis, so we don't talk about them! :)
Re:Hmmm. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm under doctors orders to be in bed by midnight and to get up when I wake up and not use an alarm clock (& I usually ready to get out of bed about 9.30am).
Life gets in the way of this sometimes and if I have a few late nights or early mornings then I get pain in my intestines.
It's not so much of a hardship and I don't complain but I know that whenever I ever have to catch a flight in the wee hours of the morning then I pay with more than feeling sleepy.
Re:Hmmm. (Score:3, Funny)
You mean you have to batch-schedule your sleep?
Re:Hmmm. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hmmm. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hmmm. (Score:2)
Nope.
You'd have to be going a lot faster than 6 times our current rotation to fall off.
The short proof - a low earth orbit satelite orbits in a little more than an hour, and it's only a tiny distance from the earth's surface compared to the earth's radius.
The long proof: the acceleration needed to keep us stuck to the earth is given by omega^2 r, where omega is our angular velocity. For omega = 2pi/day, that gives a=0.0034 m/s, or around 0.34% of the acceleration gravity at
Re:Hmmm. (Score:2)
Re:Hmmm. (Score:4, Informative)
The idea is that you take a very small dose (0.05-0.5mg) of melatonin a certain number of hours before your natural melatonin release would occur, and this acts to cause your body to think that your natural melatonin release has already begun, meaning that the next night, the natural release will start earlier. You can shift your time schedule in this fashion. Similarly, you can delay your sleep by taking a very small dose after you wake up, so that your body thinks that your natural melatonin release occurred later. Once you get your sleep schedule in the right place, a well-timed very small dose is effective at preventing your natural tendency to advance or delay the onset of sleep.
This method has proven clinically effective even in blind patients, whose retinas release melatonin on a completely free-running schedule because they never receive the light stimulus to suppress melatonin release which synchronizes them with the 24-hour day.
However, a large dose of melatonin (5-10mg) will still be present in the bloodstream well beyond the onset of sleep (if you're trying to advance it), which can cause the melatonin to be present not only during the advancement phase but also during the delay phase, which can cause the effects on your natural sleep schedule to be unpredictable (it advances the natural onset of sleep in some people, delays it in some, and has varying or no effects in others).
See http://www.dialogues-cns.org/brochures/19/htm/19_
By the way, please note that I'm not denying that large doses are effective for use as a sedative for a one-shot get-me-to-sleep-now treatment - I'm just saying that small doses can be effective for manipulating one's sleep schedule in a more delicate manner.
We all know... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:We all know... (Score:3, Funny)
Let me tell you... (Score:5, Funny)
Create a self-test first. (Score:5, Informative)
Before embarking on this, I'd get and baseline some cognitive tests (memory, reaction time, logic) to ensure that the new schedule isn't adversing affecting your brain.
Re:Create a self-test first. (Score:2, Interesting)
4 hours a night for 20+ years (Score:2)
As far as cognition goes, I'm a surgeon and my patients do well.
I'll sleep more when I'm dead
Re:4 hours a night for 20+ years (Score:2)
Re:Create a self-test first. (Score:2)
One thing he mentioned specifically was polyphasic sleep wasn't sleep deprivation.
I think the idea is that you're never more than 4 hours away from sleeping
at any time during the day.
Re:Create a self-test first. (Score:2)
I don't recall there being any ads at all back in... November? October? I think he was a week or two in at the time, and I definitely remember the "A Wife's perspective" entry. Maybe an AdWords box. Though I suppose I could have had a stricter AdBlock config on that computer.
But an ad banner below each headline on the category archives? Three sets of Google Adwords on the individual posts? Plus the other sidebar ads? That seems a bit exc
Re:Create a self-test first. (Score:2)
Doesn't the guy sleep?
Re:Create a self-test first. (Score:2, Funny)
Good Idea / Follow-up Info (Score:3, Informative)
I think you make a good point--and I think the advice to do some initial, during and post-testing is a great idea; somebody should totally do that. Um, I can't at the time being, so it'll have to be so
polyphasic sleep (Score:2, Informative)
Sleeping in cities around the 1900's (Score:5, Interesting)
If I recall correctly, they would go to bed early, wake up about midnight, play around and eat for a few hours, and then go back to sleep. Then they would wake up early in the morning.
You could find vendors who would go down the street offering apples and such for sale in the middle of the night at that time.
Pretty weird.
Our habit of sleeping all in one chunk is probably a result of World War II, where the military enforced that sleep habit. Other than that, rural people live like this (sun up-sun down) for obvious reasons. They couldn't miss a moment of daylight.
I wouldn't be surprised if various patterns of sleep were highly effective. I know my children like the naps during the day, even if it means they only get 8 hours of sleep at night instead of 10.
Re:Sleeping in cities around the 1900's (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Sleeping in cities around the 1900's (Score:4, Funny)
Someday they're going to be successful.
Re:Sleeping in cities around the 1900's (Score:2)
Re:Sleeping in cities around the 1900's (Score:5, Interesting)
Actaully, my boss is EXACTLY like this. And frankly, as someone with a normal sleep cycle, it's annoying as hell.
Imagine coming in to work on a Tuesday and have 15 e-mails from your boss timestamped 9pm, 9:10pm, 1:13am, 2::20am, then a few more in the morning.
I first thought that he never slept and never stopped working. As it turns out, only the latter is true. But that must go hand-in-hand with being the owner and manager of a company.
Either way, he comes across to his employees that he's insane. But perhaps that is what he needs to run a business.
Re:Sleeping in cities around the 1900's (Score:2)
Re:Sleeping in cities around the 1900's (Score:2)
If I recall correctly, they would go to bed early, wake up about midnight, play around and eat for a few hours, and then go back to sleep.
It's called a disco nap, or if you're from Texas, a honky zonk.Be careful. (Score:3, Informative)
If you forcibly deprive someone of sleep, they end up with physical brain damage and then die. You're unlikely to be able to do that to yourself, but... take care, okay?
I knew it! (Score:5, Funny)
If you forcibly deprive someone of sleep, they end up with physical brain damage and then die.
So it is true that my boss is trying to kill me. I though I was just being paranoid.
Re:Be careful. (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_Paralysis
This is a possibility when you mess up your sleep cycles. It happens to me when I'm travelling, almost never in normal life. It is said that it can happen when youre brought quickly back from REM. Fear and bewilderment are felt, but it can really be scary at times.
I think other dangerous states can
Re:Be careful. (Score:2)
Eh. Being half-asleep is weird. (Score:3, Interesting)
The truly odd part was that I retained voluntary control over my fingertips and toes, and I could eventually wake myself up by twitching around until it moved my hand, then use that to move my arm, and so on. Also, math tended to make more sense when I couldn't move...
Re:Be careful. (Score:2)
Got a reference for that? I'd be interested to hear about it. It might well be true, but it's certainly new to me. I'm not expert by any means. But, as an amateur sleep deprivation enthusiast I'm not totally ignorant of the subject.
I've never heard of humans dying, or suffering any long term ill effects associated with sleep deprivation. (Not counting what happens when you drive your car into a tree or halluc
Re:Be careful. (Score:2)
Well, most of that came from the same rat study you mention (via Wikipedia). But there are occasional diseases in humans that cause an inability to sleep (fatal familial insomnia) and they seem to always lead, via dementia and permanent personality changes, to death, via rather
Sleep is for the weak (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Sleep is for the weak (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Sleep is for the weak (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Sleep is for the weak (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Sleep is for the weak (Score:2)
Less yap, less kidnap.
Idiocy! (Score:5, Informative)
As well as this, there have been quite a few studies that have examined what happens to people who try polyphasic sleep. The results tend to involve an ever-increasing sleep debt. You could try looking for the '90 minute day' - most participants who come out of those experiments will afterwards sleep for quite a while. That's pretty strong evidence that they've built up quite a bit of sleep debt.
You don't WANT to maximise your REM sleep at the expense of slow-wave sleep. While it's true that REM sleep tends to happen in 90 minute cycles mostly unrelated to the sleep/wake cycle, REM sleep is not the only goal of sleep. In normal people, it tends to happen most towards the end of the sleep period. It's also interesting to note that people suffering from clinical depression tend to have a greater ratio of REM sleep to non-REM sleep.
It would be much more effective in my opinion to gradually decrease the amount of sleep you get each night by something like 15 minutes. Once you get down to around the 5-6 hour mark, you're likely to start to suffer for it, but if you break the rigid routine, you're likely to require less sleep than you did before decreasing sleep time. The theory goes that people who do this sleep more efficiently - they also tend to get greater periods of slow-wave sleep early in the sleep period.
And of course, the so-called 'Uberman' cycle completely ignores the effects that light and dark have on people. Try looking up the research of Dr. Leon Lack into bright light therapy. If you are stupid enough to try polyphasic sleep, you might want to make sure that during your wake periods, you're exposed to quite strong light and during your sleep periods, you don't get any. Even if your sleep/wake cycle becomes uncoupled with the time of day - which is unlikely considering that people with different sleep patterns like this STILL find it more difficult to get to sleep at certain times of day - bright light and darkness will probably have a big impact.
yeah idiocy alright (Score:5, Interesting)
the whole point of polyphasic sleep is to get to a point where your body can instantly go to sleep. the first week is the problem because you arent trained for that yet, it takes forever to go to sleep after you slept four hours ago. the trick with polyphasic sleep, the way to learn how to do it is, you only put your head down on the pillow for the alloted time. sleep or no. by the end of day three a 15 minute nap is instant and divine. there is no "wasted minutes", only ever growing debt and madness which payoff latter by sending you instantly to sleep.
As well as this, there have been quite a few studies that have examined what happens to people who try polyphasic sleep. The results tend to involve an ever-increasing sleep debt. You could try looking for the '90 minute day' - most participants who come out of those experiments will afterwards sleep for quite a while. That's pretty strong evidence that they've built up quite a bit of sleep debt.
like most things in nature, growth is bounded. if you dont sleep for four days straight, you dont need 24 hours of consecutive sleep. polyphasic sleep simply finds that upper bound of sleep debt very quickly and forces your body to adjust to recieving and maximizing the short duration payments it recieves. That restlessness before sleep you spoke of, the inability to get to sleep... the point of polyphasic is to overcome that.
REM sleep is not the only goal of sleep
indeed, some people naturally have no REM at all. on the other hand, it does signify a very deep state of slumber. if you can get to rem directly, you're skipping many of "entering sleep" stages most people go through.
"If you are stupid enough to try polyphasic sleep, you might want to make sure that during your wake periods, you're exposed to quite strong light and during your sleep periods, you don't get any."
As for light cycles, most people sleep through some part of daylight. 15 minute and one hour naps throughout the day is not seriously going to injure your daylight exposure. Sitting in cublices all day will.
---
In summation;
You list a number of barriers to starting polyphasic sleep; trying to get to sleep in the middle of the day, trying to sleep during the light, &c &c. Its true taht these all can be barriers to entry but the point of the exercise is to overcome these barriers, to adjust your system, maximize sleep value and reap enormous temporal rewards. the question is "can we go to the moon?" and you start talking about how gravity's keeping us down... well great, the question wasnt "is it easy", the question is, is it possible.
Polyphasic sleep isn't an effective long-term way to decrease your overall sleep time.
Yes and no. Polyphasic sleep is an exceedingly effective way to get the magic 26 hour day. Yes, it really is. It works great, you feel fine (after you get adjusted & break through the problems establishing the cycle) and you're sleeping one third the time.
What makes your statement right is the terms "long-term":
Actually living a polyphasic sleep cycle, once you've started it, is extremely difficult. The cycle continues itself fine, without problems, but it is extremely inflexible to the callings of real normal life. It is an unstable equilibrium, waiting for the first moment of deviation to go spiralling out of control. Accidentally oversleeping can have devestating effects, missing a regular rest interval will crush you. When its working, it works fine, there are really no self evident mental defects, no externally discernable oddities (besides the disappearing every four hours)... but keeping it up is exceedingly hard to manage in a relatively busy world. Thats the biggest problem with polyphasic sleep, with normal sleep you can skip nights here&there,
Maybe different people are different??? (Score:2)
Most of the studies I am aware of on how humans react to different things (be it different sleeping patterns or food additives) fail to consider that the people in their sample group might be from a similar gene pool and so might react the same.
Consider the different 'races' (don't flame me for using that word please
Solo Circumnavigators (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Solo Circumnavigators (Score:3, Insightful)
Simple way to force this schedule (Score:5, Funny)
this is not something to dive into lightly, as it requires rigid scheduling
Pfft. Just have a kid. I guarantee that at least one parent will automatically do this.
Re:Simple way to force this schedule (Score:2)
My own sleep "experiments" (Score:5, Informative)
I have, in the past, maintained sleep schedules where I averaged just under 3 hours of sleep a night for well over a month at a time. I know precisely how much I was sleeping because I kept precise logs, as per my doctor's request. This wasn't by choice--I simply couldn't sleep.
You see, I've always struggled with insomnia, and twice in my life it's gotten this bad. As such, I've come to be aquainted with what affect sleep patterns can have on a person. I can say that a lot of what I'm reading in the "Uberman's Sleep Schedule" seems plausible, except the bit about not being tired. You're tired, damn tired, but you can't tell after a while.
Naturally, the circumstances for me were a bit... different, but I can't really recommend a schedule like this. When you don't get enough sleep, you're never really awake. Worse, you can't really tell how much it's affecting you while you're still suffering from sleep deprevation--it's a lot like being drunk in that regard. Only the incredibly foolish (or incredibly experienced) think they can tell how drunk they are.
What's the point of spending more time awake if you're only sort of awake?
On the other hand, it's only fair to mention that my curiosity is in fact piqued. I'm tempted to try it myself, and see what happens. Worst comes to worst, it could trigger another long-term disruption in my sleep schedule, but hey, at least that's a known evil!
Re:My own sleep "experiments" (Score:3, Funny)
Tried this once, would like to try again... (Score:4, Informative)
I've been working up a plan to get a schedule like this going again, but it's really tricky due to the various circumstances of real life... separate weekend activities/schedules from the rest of the week, parties or dates might last more than three hours... it's almost a catch-22 scenario for everyone past the age of four or so.
But the 'thirty minutes every four hours' schedule isn't the only alternative... as another poster mentioned, sleeping in a couple separate blocks also works -- e.g., a 3-1-2-2 schedule (a total of eight hours sleep with one block of 3 hours, a block of 1 hour, and so on), or similar. I've heard rumors from some psychology friends that the most effective sleep schedule is different for each person; perhaps experimenting with a few representative schedules is worth trying.
There is some good discussion on this very topic on everything2, just follow the wikipedia link through (e2 probably doesn't have quite as much server power): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uberman_sleep_schedu
Steve Pavlina on polyphasic sleep (Score:5, Informative)
Steve Pavlina, apparently a man with a huge amount of people following his blog about various ways of self-improvement, has rather nice coverage on his experiment with polyphasic sleep [stevepavlina.com]. Long story short, he's been doing it for over 90 days now and claims to have improved his quality of life tremendously. It's a nice read, go check it out. Here's an excerpt from his entry on day 90:
Personally, I do think polyphasic sleep can have a positive effect. It just takes a lot of character and a suitable life situation to make it work. Not for everybody, but not bogus either.
Warm jacuzzi brain? (Score:3, Insightful)
Am I the only one who is alarmed by the phrase "it sort of feels like my brain is soaking in a warm jacuzzi" or by the idea that one might constantly feel like they just woke up in the morning?
Don't we drink coffee because it gets rid of those sensations?
Re:Warm jacuzzi brain? (Score:2, Insightful)
And hey, it gets me out at 4 pm. You can't beat that.
I did this for a while, last year (Score:5, Interesting)
It was REALLY great for me. I definitely got more accomplished. On the other hand, it was driving those around me bonkers. I was either sleeping or going 100 miles an hour at various, and always changing, times of the day/night; so, they could not rely on me for help/conversation/etc unless they could fit it in a certain period.
Had to go to Europe and a "regular" sleeping pattern for a few months, so I changed back to "night" sleeping.
When circumstances allow it I will DEFINITELY go back to what I now know to be poliphasic sleep.
a pharmaceutical rather than behavioral approach (Score:5, Interesting)
There are two remarkable qualities to the drug. First, you can use it for days at a time, and it only loses effectiveness after about 120 waking hours. At that point you need to sleep - but you never crash; you just sleep a normal 8 hours, wake up refreshed, and swallow the next pill.
One of the problems with a polyphasic sleep schedule is that it doesn't jive well with the normal structure of society. But with Provigil, you can still be fairly well synced-up with everybody else.
Besides, why change your behavior when you can just use drugs?
Re:a pharmaceutical rather than behavioral approac (Score:2)
Links please... Something like this would be considered Major enough that the users will need to instantly plop something in their bookmarks listing - just like everything else on the Internet that gets plopped into a single bookmark listing never to be looked at again. :)
On a more serious note, such drugs could easily be classified as
Modafinil (Score:2, Informative)
Re:a pharmaceutical rather than behavioral approac (Score:3, Insightful)
Oi. I'd say that's a bit of an exaggeration. I found that Provigil (or Alertec) was better than Ritalin, but not
Re:a pharmaceutical rather than behavioral approac (Score:3, Informative)
Weird (Score:2)
I cant do short cycles, and I could never do afternoon naps. Once I'm out, I'm out at least 7 hours, preferably 12 hours.
Re:Weird (Score:2)
I started a similar schedule working rotating shifts as a mainframe operator long ago (10 years or so). I've always been a night owl, but working a day shift then a swing then two graves then a day made it possible for me to experiment. To this day, I'm most comfortable being awake 24-28 hours then sleeping for 6-10 (it seems to rotate seasonally). I also have to force myself to sleep and have trouble getting up. Apparently, Frank Zappa [cableaz.com] was a similar sleeper to us.
A
My Experience (Score:2)
I tried it off-and-on for a couple of years without much success. In the end, it seems that my body firmly insists on at least 6 hours of sleep per 24, but that's a bit better than the 10 it would take if I let it. I eventually decided the schedule's disruptive effects and the incredible amount of effort it was taking didn't yield a net gain.
Probably the best bit of advice I can offer is to avoid caffiene entirely. When I experimented with having a little diet soda over the nighttime hours is the only time
sleep is a good thing (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no question that a nap has a great deal of restorative power. However, I'm not so sure that nothing but naps is best.
The best thing I have found for memory, sharpness of mind, general energy ved my level, and productivity is to NEVER use an alarm clock. Of course, I telecommute so it's somewhat easier for me to get away with that. Interestingly, once I gave up on the alarm blasting me out of bed, AND on staying up at night after I get tired, I found that I settled into a natural rythem where I sleep approximatly 8 hours a night. After still longer, it became ALMOST reliable. That is, if I need to get up an hour earlier in the morning, going to bed an hour earlier will do it.
It also greatly improved my general outlook (which was around the borderline of depression before).
I do know that sleep deprivation is insideous and causes it's sufferers to underestimate their impairment.
I attempted this about two years ago (Score:2)
I wrote a journal entry [slashdot.org] about it at the time.
the many phases of sleep (Score:5, Interesting)
I did doubledays (48-hour day cycles) extensively when I was working as a sysadmin and got stranded by Boston's subway (the "T") shutting down for the night. At first I took naps, but soon started working through the night and all of the next day, being awake for 36 hours of 48, and at my desk working for 30 of those. For reference, this is when I was about 27-30 years old.
You're all probably familiar with this one, so what's to tell? The 24 works far better with the rest of the world, but 28 is more natural and probably a bit more productive, if you function in near-total isolation, anyway.
I did this one for most of my sophomore year in college. Two 9-hour periods of awakeness, each followed by 3 hours of sleep.
I was on this schedule for only 2 weeks (when I was somewhat over 30 years old), but it felt great. It took me no getting used to, I never needed an alarm clock, and I felt invigorated. I spent 4.5 hours awake, then 1.5 hours asleep. Every meal was breakfast.
Long before I learned of REM cycles, back before the information age (in the 1970s), I plotted my waking times and learned that I woke easily at multiples of 90 minutes after I fell asleep. I would typically wake after 7.5 hours, but also woke easily after 6 or 4.5 hours. With effort, I could wake up after 3 hours. These are the 90-minute cycles of natural sleep. I think it unwise to go for a long time without getting 90-minute periods of sleep, and I've heard of research studies that back me up on that.
The more 90-minute sleep cycles you have in a row, the more "watered-down" the later ones become. The first hours of sleep are the deepest and most important, while the later ones are just a few steps down
I'm on it (Score:2, Insightful)
My sleeping pattern (Score:2)
Every once in a while I run into problems at work thanks to this (I'm a coder), and some people just don't seem to understand it. It can also make meeting up with friends more difficult. However, I'm far more productive - partly because I often end up workin
night shift (Score:2)
Re:Fibromyalgia and Delta Wave Sleep (Score:2)
Alternatively, since sleep deprivation can induce depression, and fibromyalgia is often symptomatically treated with antidepressants, then it doesn't seem impossible that the two are connected.
IANA sleep expert, but there you have it.
Re:Fibromyalgia and Delta Wave Sleep (Score:2)
On the other hand, none of them positively rule it out. They just haven't seen enough evidence to trust it as a diagnosis.
Re:Fibromyalgia and Delta Wave Sleep (Score:2)
I'm not saying jack, just pointing to a more eloquent version of what I'd heard friends and family imply. I am the wrong person to debate regarding physical or mental illnesses. However, I can relate with some certainty the idea that many doctors do not believe that fibromyalgia is a real illness, or at most that it's real but diagnosed far more often than truly ju
Mod down that one too, then! (Score:2)
In short, many primary care physicians,
Re:see http://stevepavlina.com/ (Score:2, Funny)
when it comes to sex, everybody agrees 3 quickies in the afternoon is just right.
Re:I tried this, but..... (Score:5, Informative)