Sleep Secrets

Polyphasic Sleep

Used to describe some alternative patterns of sleep, Polyphasic sleep diminishes time of sleep to 2-6 daily hours to accomplish better sleep quality. This process can be fulfilled by dispersing sleep into brief naps of approximately 15 minutes to a half hour within a day, and in several deviations, a core period of sleep several hours per night.

The Adaptation of Polyphasic Sleep

Adapting to a schedule for Polyphasic sleep contains a physical and mental process can be quite thorny. The transition period is normally one to two weeks—referred to as the Uberman sleep. Thus, testers of an independent nature usually claim to endure no obvious decrease of alertness or cognition, although they achieve hours of sleep daily. However, Polyphasic sleep usually entails a strict schedule that makes it unattainable for many individuals. There has been minimal research of a scientific nature regarding Polyphasic sleep. Bloggers normally volunteer the information pertaining to the alternative sleep experience.

Traditional sleep—or Monophasic—has some stages, several which may be unnecessary in the proportions that occur organically. Those that support Polyphasic sleep feel that subsequent to undergoing sleep deprivation that’s regulated during the first adjustment duration, as the brain begins the necessary sleep stages more rapidly—known as a strategy of survival. Moreover, after the adaptation to Polyphasic sleep is acquired, according to theory a sustainable and comfortable sleeping equilibrium in naps. Boat racers, astronauts and military pilots in the United States and Canada have attempted similar techniques.

Adverse Effects of Polyphasic Sleep

It is believed by experts of Polyphasic sleep that the majority of tiredness disperses approximately 10 scheduled days, and it dissolves fully about 14 scheduled days. Nevertheless, self-testers of this scientific experiment usually inadvertently oversleep in an attempt to transform to a schedule for Polyphasic sleep, and as a consequence fail to completely adapt, or defer their modification.  Thus, they remain lethargic subsequent to the 14 scheduled days and the majority terminates the Polyphasic sleep experiment.

Polyphasic sleep doesn’t pertain to any specific schedule, but only refers to sleeping within 24 hours a multiple of times. The most popular kind of Polyphasic sleep is the Uberman sleep—in application, it’s also the strictest. The Uberman schedule requires 20-25 minutes of six naps each, which occurs about four hours apart in the course of a day. In regards to the solo long distance races on boats, Claudio Stampi advocates the scientific experiment to ensure maximum performance. However, Claudio doesn’t recommend Polyphasic sleep in a daily lifestyle. While several consider this experiment to be unsound due to the fact that there is very little brain control involved to ensure a switch from a customary pattern of biphasic sleep—or monophasic—to a system of multiple naps. They believe Polyphasic sleep endures an incessant adaptation period.

Of late, terms such as the “Uberman Sleep Cycle” and “Polyphasic Sleep” have slowly gained popularity in scientific journals, magazines and even in newspaper articles dealing with sleep research. Before we pursue a short discussion on the Uberman Sleep cycle, let’s be sure of what the term means. Uberman is a German word that means “over-man” or more loosely “Super-man” and so Uberman sleep schedule actually means a superman sleep cycle!

Uberman sleep cycle is a typical example of a polyphasic sleep schedule. Most of us are naturally trained in the monophasic sleep mode where we try to enjoy a long (four to eight hour) sleep period over the whole night and keep ourselves awake during the day. In shifting to a polyphasic sleep pattern, one abandons this long single block of sleep, and instead, naps for short intervals (of typically twenty to ninety minutes duration) spread over the course of the day.

There are two major arguments for giving up a monophasic sleep pattern and practicing polyphasic sleep. Firstly, polyphasic sleep drastically reduces the time spent asleep per twenty four hours. Practicing an efficient Uberman sleep cycle where you take short twenty minute naps after every four hours of wakefulness, reduces the net sleeping time to about two hours, thus providing you with twenty two hours of wakefulness. The additional hours of wakefulness can be used productively. Secondly, polyphasic sleep is theoretically as (if not more) efficient compared to common, monophasic sleep. This means that the total two hours of sleep enjoyed by someone practicing the Uberman sleep cycle is high quality sleep that is sufficient to provide adequate rest to both the brain as well as to other organs of the body. In order to more fully understand this statement, we need to briefly consider the phases of sleep.

The first three or four hours of normal, monophasic sleep is characterized by lower blood pressure and slow brain waves and is dubbed non-rapid eye movement or Non-REM sleep. The subsequent hours of sleep constitute REM or rapid eye movement sleep that is marked by higher blood pressure and greater levels of electrical activity in the brain. There are scientific reports emphasizing the importance of REM sleep in memory consolidation and in resting key areas of the brain. The Uberman sleep cycle is believed to help a person enter REM sleep much faster than a subject undergoing monophasic sleep. Thus, the two hours of sleep enjoyed by an individual pursuing Uberman sleep cycle, is mostly dominated by REM sleep. These couple of hours of quality sleep, spread out over the course of the day may substitute the single eight hour long monophasic sleep.

Those attempting to shift to the Uberman sleep cycle find that they require anywhere between a week to a month to train their brains to follow the new sleep regimen. This transition period can indeed be a testing one, abound with problems of falling asleep at the predestined timings, lack of concentration, etc… But once the body clock resets to the Uberman sleep cycle, its benefits can be reaped continuously.

It is believed that many famous personalities of historical prominence practiced polyphasic sleep. The list includes, among others, Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison. Let this fact be a stimulus for you to try the Uberman sleep cycle!