Ok, I'll believe it can be done. How were they able to get into that sleep schedule though? It doesn't seem like something that you could just one day decide you were going to do. I know it takes me more than 20 minutes just to fall asleep most of the time and I always feel worse after short periods of sleep.

 

The trick is actually sleep deprivation. Day 1 you try and sleep for 30 mins, if you can't you don't get to sleep during that nap time, same goes for the next nap. Day 2: By now you are tired, the naps don't seem to help because of the lack of rem sleep. (jump to day 5 due to largely the same occurrences) Day 5: your system needs rem sleep it begins to get it as soon as it can, adjusting to the 30/20 minute breaks it is given. This teaches your brain to get rem sleep as soon as you can get it.

So far I've seen only positive effects,sorry.

 

 

 

As for scientific usage, look at the spanish,U.S, and Canadian Military units who use diphasic sleep sessions to increase their activity. I cannot find the actual military test reports,however.

 

 

 

Here's one test on sailors.

 

 

 

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a782431473~db=all

 

 

 

Another blogger

 

http://polyphasic.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2002-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2003-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=25

 

 

 

The first test is interesting, although not that big of a decrease on amount slept and it doesn't say over how much time (it is just an abstract). It also only tested a single group, not the general population. Too much bias for my liking.

 

 

 

The second is a blogger. I don't think I need to say anymore than that.

I have to account for your biases against bloggers now? I'm really quite annoyed with you Quoi, you seem determined to point out a flaw in every post. If you don't believe this then thats fine, but please leave this thread alone. I don't have time to gallivant across the web searching for articles that you will accept.

I wouldn't try it myself, but it might work because I take naps all the time and I always feel so good afterwards, really refreshed. o_O

Have fun not having any muscle memory whatsoever.

Reb, next time please do not post nonsensical posts which ignores all previous arguements and causes fallacies regarding sleep.

I would try this.. If it weren't for having insomnia. Insomnia means I usually don't get to sleep for at least an hour once I get in bed, even at 2 in the morning. So trying to take a nap in the middle of the day, won't work.

I would try this.. If it weren't for having insomnia. Insomnia means I usually don't get to sleep for at least an hour once I get in bed, even at 2 in the morning. So trying to take a nap in the middle of the day, won't work.

 

It would work after not sleeping regularly for about 5 days.

Reb, next time please do not post nonsensical posts which ignores all previous arguements and causes fallacies regarding sleep.

 

What, that people instantaneously jump into REM sleep in a twenty minute nap?

 

 

 

No. That goes against anything and everything I've learned about sleep. You're talking about a revolution that would basically destroy everything that has to do with sleep research if this is anything beyond pseudoscience.

Reb, next time please do not post nonsensical posts which ignores all previous arguements and causes fallacies regarding sleep.

 

What, that people instantaneously jump into REM sleep in a twenty minute nap?

 

 

 

No. That goes against anything and everything I've learned about sleep. You're talking about a revolution that would basically destroy everything that has to do with sleep research if this is anything beyond pseudoscience.

 

I'm just about ready to kill all these morons who can't be bothered to read the explanation behind this before attacking it with their incredible quantity of insufficient knowledge. Reb, read pages 2+3 on this page, this explains why it works. Then click on my links of experimentation with this, and go explain to the people who sleep like this that it doesn't work.

Pseudoscience. Until I see a trusted medical site claiming this I'm not going to believe it. As Reb says it goes against all current logic of sleep. And blogs by some person don't really count as evidence.

Most of your sources are blogs, which are not credible. Since no medical source has confirmed this, it is not real science.

 

 

 

Also, "incredible quantity of insufficient knowledge" is an oxymoron.

I have to account for your biases against bloggers now? I'm really quite annoyed with you Quoi, you seem determined to point out a flaw in every post. If you don't believe this then thats fine, but please leave this thread alone. I don't have time to gallivant across the web searching for articles that you will accept.

 

 

 

 

 

Bloggers can write anything they wish on their blog - including making up facts. Which is why Quoi won't accept just random blogs you find off the internet and is looking for scientific evidence that this works, as that scientific evidence is much more reliable than a blog.

 

 

 

If you don't have time to back up your claim, then don't bother posting it.

It takes me 30 minutes to fall asleep :|

Most of your sources are blogs, which are not credible. Since no medical source has confirmed this, it is not real science.

 

 

 

Also, "incredible quantity of insufficient knowledge" is an oxymoron.

 

 

 

Very good, you have discovered I used an oxymoron,want a cookie?

 

 

 

As for blogs not serving as sufficient evidence, you have overlooked the experiment with sailors I have posted, the information about armed services using a similar method, and that it is not pseudoscience, it is just a new way of forcing your brain to enter desirable phases of sleep by ignoring other phases of sleep.

It seems like the older you get, the more you value sleep, and the less you get. When I'm working twelve hour shifts, there's no way I'm taking 20 minute naps. And yeah, it takes me 30-60 minutes to fall asleep.

It seems like the older you get, the more you value sleep, and the less you get. When I'm working twelve hour shifts, there's no way I'm taking 20 minute naps. And yeah, it takes me 30-60 minutes to fall asleep.

 

That's because your body isn't craving sleep.

 

 

 

Disclaimer: the models presented below are used for illustration only and are a remote approximation of real processes occurring in sleep

 

 

 

Alarm clock is bad for you

 

 

 

A metaphor that may help you get some sense of what alarm clocks do to sleep is a comparison of NREM-REM cycles to your PC. During the day, while learning and experiencing new things, you store your new data in RAM memory. During the night, while first in NREM, you write the data down to the hard disk. During REM, which follows NREM in the night, you do the disk defragmentation, i.e. you organize data, sort them, build new connections, etc. Overnight, you repeat the write-and-defragment cycle until all RAM data is neatly written to the disk (for long-term use), and your RAM is clear and ready for a new day of learning. At waking up, you reboot the computer. If you reboot early with the use of an alarm clock, you often leave your disk fragmented. Your data access is slow, and your thinking is confused. Even worse, some of the data may not even get written to the disk. It is as if you have never stored it in RAM in the first place. In conclusion, if you use an alarm clock, you endanger your data. If you do not care about your intellectual performance, you may want to know that there are many biological reasons for which using alarm clocks is basically unhealthy. Those run beyond the scope of this article. Many people use alarm clocks and live. Yet this is not much different from smoking, abusing drugs, or indulging in fat-dripping pork. You may abuse your brain with alcohol for years, and still become president. Many of mankind's achievements required interrupted sleep. Many inventions were produced by sleepy brains. But nothing is able to change the future as much as a brain refreshed with a healthy dose of restful sleep.

 

 

 

You cannot sleep polyphasically without an alarm clock

 

 

 

Your whole sleep cycle can be explained with the clock and hourglass model. Deep in your brain, your body clock is running on a 24 hours cycle. Every 24 hours, the clock releases a sleepy potion that puts you to sleep. If you try to sleep at wrong hours, without the sleepy potion, you may find it very hard to fall asleep. All insomniacs suffers from the lack of sleepy potion. If they go to sleep too early, before they get their fix of sleepy potion, they will toss and turn. Often for hours. You need to listen to your body clock to know when it is the right moment to go to sleep.

 

 

 

Yet the sleepy potion produced by the body clock is not enough to put you to sleep. The brain also uses the hourglass of mental energy that gives you some time every day that you can devote to intellectual work. When you wake up, the hourglass is full and starts being emptied. With every waking moment, with everything your brain absorbs, with every mental effort, the hourglass is less and less full. Only when the hourglass of mental energy is empty, will you able to quickly fall asleep.

 

 

 

To get a good night sleep, you need to combine two factors:

 

 

 

* your body clock must be saying "time to sleep"

 

* your hourglass of power must be saying "no more mental work"

 

 

 

If your sleepy potion tries to put you to sleep but your hourglass is full, you will be very groggy, tired, but you will not fall asleep.

 

 

 

If, on the other hand, you try to sleep without the sleepy potion while the hourglass of power is empty, you may succeed, but you will wake up very fast with your hourglass full again. That will make sleeping again nearly impossible.

 

 

 

Insomniacs go to sleep before the body clock releases the sleepy potion. When you wake up early with an alarm clock, you can hardly get to your feet because your body is full of sleepy potion, which begs you to go back to sleep. When you are drowsy in the afternoon, your hourglass of mental power might be almost empty. A quick nap will then help you fill it up again and be very productive in the evening. If you drink coffee in the morning, it helps you charge the hourglass and add some extra mental energy. But coffee combined with the sleepy potion produce a poisonous mix that engulfs your brain in sickly miasma. If you try to drink coffee to stay up in the night, you will feel like a horse kicked you in the stomach. That's the acme of a criminal attack on your brain's health.

Most of your sources are blogs, which are not credible. Since no medical source has confirmed this, it is not real science.

 

 

 

Also, "incredible quantity of insufficient knowledge" is an oxymoron.

 

 

 

Very good, you have discovered I used an oxymoron,want a cookie?

 

 

 

As for blogs not serving as sufficient evidence, you have overlooked the experiment with sailors I have posted, the information about armed services using a similar method, and that it is not pseudoscience, it is just a new way of forcing your brain to enter desirable phases of sleep by ignoring other phases of sleep.

 

 

 

:| I question what you were thinking if you actually used the oxymoron on purpose. It doesn't help your argument in any way. Seems more like an accidental occurence resulting from you trying to be condescending.

 

 

 

The Sailor experiment shows what, an hour and a half less total hours of sleep in the most extreme cases? Not a huge difference. Plus sailing is a physically demanding job and they are most likely tired enough to find sleep when they can. In fact that's the whole reason they adopted that sleep schedule in the first place. A poor study overall, as it focuses on one specialized group instead of a more general population and 99 people is not a lot. Not a lot at all, especially for this kind of study.

 

 

 

I don't see a source for the army claims.

 

 

 

EDIT: It was in the Wiki article, I see.

 

 

 

"Each individual nap should be long enough to provide at least 45 continuous minutes of sleep, although longer naps (2 hours) are better. In general, the shorter each individual nap is, the more frequent the naps should be (the objective remains to acquire a daily total of 8 hours of sleep)."

 

 

 

I don't see how that supports this, to be honest. They still get 8 hours of sleep.

 

 

 

As said, it's pseudoscience.

Most of your sources are blogs, which are not credible. Since no medical source has confirmed this, it is not real science.

 

 

 

Also, "incredible quantity of insufficient knowledge" is an oxymoron.

 

 

 

Very good, you have discovered I used an oxymoron,want a cookie?

 

 

 

As for blogs not serving as sufficient evidence, you have overlooked the experiment with sailors I have posted, the information about armed services using a similar method, and that it is not pseudoscience, it is just a new way of forcing your brain to enter desirable phases of sleep by ignoring other phases of sleep.

 

 

 

:| I question what you were thinking if you actually used the oxymoron on purpose. It doesn't help your argument in any way. Seems more like an accidental occurence resulting from you trying to be condescending.

 

 

 

The Sailor experiment shows what, an hour and a half less total hours of sleep in the most extreme cases? Not a huge difference. Plus sailing is a physically demanding job and they are most likely tired enough to find sleep when they can. In fact that's the whole reason they adopted that sleep schedule in the first place. A poor study overall, as it focuses on one specialized group instead of a more general population and 99 people is not a lot. Not a lot at all, especially for this kind of study.

 

 

 

I don't see a source for the army claims.

 

 

 

As said, it's pseudoscience.

 

 

 

I really don't think that's an oxymoron by the way, due to it being true, one can have incredibly vast amounts of insufficient knowledge.

 

 

 

On topic: You missed the point of the sailor article, it shows that polyphasic sleeping is a viable alternative to monophasic sleep. The time of polyphasic sleep is the only thing different here. I wonder why you think its pseudoscience, the vast majority of people have already altered their sleep schedule. Humans are by nature biphasic, which we alter by being largely monophasic, so we know it is possible to change the nature of ones sleep cycle.

 

 

 

Due to me not wanting to use a variety of medical terms to explain this, I will use this explanation, he explains it very well.

 

 

 

 

 

Some of the biological argument presented in this article may not be entirely suitable and convincing for teenagers, esp. those who slept polyphasically through their biology class. Let's then reword it all in baby language. Experience shows that "for dummies" sections are most popular and most effective in conveying the message. Disclaimer: the models presented below are used for illustration only and are a remote approximation of real processes occurring in sleep

 

 

 

Alarm clock is bad for you

 

 

 

A metaphor that may help you get some sense of what alarm clocks do to sleep is a comparison of NREM-REM cycles to your PC. During the day, while learning and experiencing new things, you store your new data in RAM memory. During the night, while first in NREM, you write the data down to the hard disk. During REM, which follows NREM in the night, you do the disk defragmentation, i.e. you organize data, sort them, build new connections, etc. Overnight, you repeat the write-and-defragment cycle until all RAM data is neatly written to the disk (for long-term use), and your RAM is clear and ready for a new day of learning. At waking up, you reboot the computer. If you reboot early with the use of an alarm clock, you often leave your disk fragmented. Your data access is slow, and your thinking is confused. Even worse, some of the data may not even get written to the disk. It is as if you have never stored it in RAM in the first place. In conclusion, if you use an alarm clock, you endanger your data. If you do not care about your intellectual performance, you may want to know that there are many biological reasons for which using alarm clocks is basically unhealthy. Those run beyond the scope of this article. Many people use alarm clocks and live. Yet this is not much different from smoking, abusing drugs, or indulging in fat-dripping pork. You may abuse your brain with alcohol for years, and still become president. Many of mankind's achievements required interrupted sleep. Many inventions were produced by sleepy brains. But nothing is able to change the future as much as a brain refreshed with a healthy dose of restful sleep.

 

 

 

You cannot sleep polyphasically without an alarm clock

 

 

 

[hide=]

Most of your sources are blogs, which are not credible. Since no medical source has confirmed this, it is not real science.

 

 

 

Also, "incredible quantity of insufficient knowledge" is an oxymoron.

 

 

 

Very good, you have discovered I used an oxymoron,want a cookie?

 

 

 

As for blogs not serving as sufficient evidence, you have overlooked the experiment with sailors I have posted, the information about armed services using a similar method, and that it is not pseudoscience, it is just a new way of forcing your brain to enter desirable phases of sleep by ignoring other phases of sleep.

 

 

 

:| I question what you were thinking if you actually used the oxymoron on purpose. It doesn't help your argument in any way. Seems more like an accidental occurence resulting from you trying to be condescending.

 

 

 

The Sailor experiment shows what, an hour and a half less total hours of sleep in the most extreme cases? Not a huge difference. Plus sailing is a physically demanding job and they are most likely tired enough to find sleep when they can. In fact that's the whole reason they adopted that sleep schedule in the first place. A poor study overall, as it focuses on one specialized group instead of a more general population and 99 people is not a lot. Not a lot at all, especially for this kind of study.

 

 

 

I don't see a source for the army claims.

 

 

 

As said, it's pseudoscience.

 

 

 

I really don't think that's an oxymoron by the way, due to it being true, one can have incredibly vast amounts of insufficient knowledge.

 

 

 

On topic: You missed the point of the sailor article, it shows that polyphasic sleeping is a viable alternative to monophasic sleep. The time of polyphasic sleep is the only thing different here. I wonder why you think its pseudoscience, the vast majority of people have already altered their sleep schedule. Humans are by nature biphasic, which we alter by being largely monophasic, so we know it is possible to change the nature of ones sleep cycle.

 

 

 

Due to me not wanting to use a variety of medical terms to explain this, I will use this explanation, he explains it very well.

 

 

 

 

 

Some of the biological argument presented in this article may not be entirely suitable and convincing for teenagers, esp. those who slept polyphasically through their biology class. Let's then reword it all in baby language. Experience shows that "for dummies" sections are most popular and most effective in conveying the message. Disclaimer: the models presented below are used for illustration only and are a remote approximation of real processes occurring in sleep

 

 

 

Alarm clock is bad for you

 

 

 

A metaphor that may help you get some sense of what alarm clocks do to sleep is a comparison of NREM-REM cycles to your PC. During the day, while learning and experiencing new things, you store your new data in RAM memory. During the night, while first in NREM, you write the data down to the hard disk. During REM, which follows NREM in the night, you do the disk defragmentation, i.e. you organize data, sort them, build new connections, etc. Overnight, you repeat the write-and-defragment cycle until all RAM data is neatly written to the disk (for long-term use), and your RAM is clear and ready for a new day of learning. At waking up, you reboot the computer. If you reboot early with the use of an alarm clock, you often leave your disk fragmented. Your data access is slow, and your thinking is confused. Even worse, some of the data may not even get written to the disk. It is as if you have never stored it in RAM in the first place. In conclusion, if you use an alarm clock, you endanger your data. If you do not care about your intellectual performance, you may want to know that there are many biological reasons for which using alarm clocks is basically unhealthy. Those run beyond the scope of this article. Many people use alarm clocks and live. Yet this is not much different from smoking, abusing drugs, or indulging in fat-dripping pork. You may abuse your brain with alcohol for years, and still become president. Many of mankind's achievements required interrupted sleep. Many inventions were produced by sleepy brains. But nothing is able to change the future as much as a brain refreshed with a healthy dose of restful sleep.

 

 

 

You cannot sleep polyphasically without an alarm clock

 

 

 

Your whole sleep cycle can be explained with the clock and hourglass model. Deep in your brain, your body clock is running on a 24 hours cycle. Every 24 hours, the clock releases a sleepy potion that puts you to sleep. If you try to sleep at wrong hours, without the sleepy potion, you may find it very hard to fall asleep. All insomniacs suffers from the lack of sleepy potion. If they go to sleep too early, before they get their fix of sleepy potion, they will toss and turn. Often for hours. You need to listen to your body clock to know when it is the right moment to go to sleep.

 

 

 

Yet the sleepy potion produced by the body clock is not enough to put you to sleep. The brain also uses the hourglass of mental energy that gives you some time every day that you can devote to intellectual work. When you wake up, the hourglass is full and starts being emptied. With every waking moment, with everything your brain absorbs, with every mental effort, the hourglass is less and less full. Only when the hourglass of mental energy is empty, will you able to quickly fall asleep.

 

 

 

To get a good night sleep, you need to combine two factors:

 

 

 

* your body clock must be saying "time to sleep"

 

* your hourglass of power must be saying "no more mental work"

 

 

 

If your sleepy potion tries to put you to sleep but your hourglass is full, you will be very groggy, tired, but you will not fall asleep.

 

 

 

If, on the other hand, you try to sleep without the sleepy potion while the hourglass of power is empty, you may succeed, but you will wake up very fast with your hourglass full again. That will make sleeping again nearly impossible.

 

 

 

Insomniacs go to sleep before the body clock releases the sleepy potion. When you wake up early with an alarm clock, you can hardly get to your feet because your body is full of sleepy potion, which begs you to go back to sleep. When you are drowsy in the afternoon, your hourglass of mental power might be almost empty. A quick nap will then help you fill it up again and be very productive in the evening. If you drink coffee in the morning, it helps you charge the hourglass and add some extra mental energy. But coffee combined with the sleepy potion produce a poisonous mix that engulfs your brain in sickly miasma. If you try to drink coffee to stay up in the night, you will feel like a horse kicked you in the stomach. That's the acme of a criminal attack on your brain's health.

 

 

 

Here is why polyphasic sleep will never work naturally:

 

 

 

* in the morning, if you are fresh and rested, your sleepy potion is cleared and your hourglass is full of mental energy, you are not likely to fall asleep. Trying to take a nap at that time is a waste of time. You will waste time for nap preparations. You will waste time trying to fall asleep

 

* in the afternoon, if you hourglass is getting empty, you may be able to take a nap. That's ok. Your nap will be short because the sleepy potion is not there

 

* in the evening, your sleepy potion is still not there. If you took an afternoon nap, your hourglass is almost full of energy. If you try to take another nap, you will be staring at the ceiling. You will waste your time again

 

* in the night, your sleepy potion is released. Napping should be easy, but if you fall asleep, you will not wake up. Not naturally. You will need an alarm clock. You may manage to recharge your hourglass fast, but the sleepy potion will make you groggy and tired. You may need a double alarm or a loud alarm, or some help from your Mom (if she ever agreed to this polyphasic insanity). You will fight and struggle. You will never wake up naturally. Not while the sleepy potion is in action

 

 

 

If you decide to sleep polyphasically. You will have to use an alarm clock. Otherwise you will not wake up in the night. Once you use the alarm clock, you will be sleep deprived. That will make your hourglass conveniently drained of energy. Empty hourglass will make napping easier indeed. But it is the hourglass that determines your mental powers. With the hourglass empty, you will be nothing more than an empty-headed zombie.

 

 

 

To generate naps at equal intervals, you would have to kill the 24-h circadian component of sleepiness. You would have to kill your body clock, and prevent the release of the sleepy potion. That is not possible. The sleepy potion will be released every 24 hour and make you sleepy; however, much you fight it. The shortest natural night sleep rarely goes beneath 3 hours. Many biphasic sleepers can do well on 4 hours. Yet most adolescents may need 7 or 8 hours of night sleep to function optimally.

 

 

 

In healthy sleep, daytime naps are either impossible or very short. If you track your sleep with SleepChart freeware, you will see it on your own. You will see how naps tend to cluster at night time (which may be midday for you). That's exactly what polyphasic guru Dr Stampi observed with solo sailors. Remember, that for the picture to be true, you should avoid alarm clock, which naturally, is not possible in polyphasic sleep. Yet even on a forced schedule you will see regular patterns of naps being longer and more frequent at nighttime (each time your relax your discipline, oversleep, etc.). The daytime naps will be shorter, esp. at subjective evening hours (which may be midnight for you).

 

 

 

Body clock training has its limits

 

 

 

I hear it again and again that all biological reasoning is of no consequence because the body can always adapt to training and pressure, and that science has not yet studied successful polyphasic sleepers. Here is a reply based on the clock&hourglass model:

 

 

 

* body clock is controlled by genes, and we do not know pharmacological factors that could significantly affect body clock period. Polyphasic sleep would require shortening the body clock period six-fold!

 

* body clock phase can be shifted with light, activity, melatonin and other factors, but the length of the period in which sleepy potion is released is hard to control. Drugs can reduce the impact of sleepy potion, but this should be avoided, as this affects the sleep stage cycles (i.e. not all your PC data may get written to the hard disk and get defragmented)

 

* the speed with which the hourglass of energy is emptied can be affected by drugs (e.g. caffeine); however, faster hourglass would produce more sleep (instead of less), while slower hourglass would make multiple naps even less possible

 

* science have not studied successful polyphasic sleepers because they do not exist (although there are as many claimants to the title as there are UFO spotters)

 

* polyphasic sleep in laboratory conditions is possible if the alarm clock is used to interrupt natural sleep. Entrained free-running polyphasic sleep is not possible in healthy individuals

 

 

 

Summary

 

 

 

Healthy body clock runs a 24 hour cycle. This cycle will make you sleepy during the subjective night (which can be midday too). This is why you won't be able to wake up from your nap in your subjective night without an alarm clock. Alarm clocks are unhealthy. They prevent sleep from fulfilling its function. The choice is yours: either (1) sleep polyphasically or (2) sleep naturally and let your brain develop its full intellectual potential.

 

 

 

If someone tells you he is doing naps every four hours, and that the naps last 20 min. and that he wakes up naturally, you can safely fire back: "I have seen Loch Ness monster too". That will bring it home.

[/hide]

 

Unless I'm mistaken from skimming that quickly, you basically just provided us with a source that states that polyphasic sleep is not only bad for you but impossible to do naturally. It also seems to claim that no one can do it successfully. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

[hide=]

Most of your sources are blogs, which are not credible. Since no medical source has confirmed this, it is not real science.

 

 

 

Also, "incredible quantity of insufficient knowledge" is an oxymoron.

 

 

 

Very good, you have discovered I used an oxymoron,want a cookie?

 

 

 

As for blogs not serving as sufficient evidence, you have overlooked the experiment with sailors I have posted, the information about armed services using a similar method, and that it is not pseudoscience, it is just a new way of forcing your brain to enter desirable phases of sleep by ignoring other phases of sleep.

 

 

 

:| I question what you were thinking if you actually used the oxymoron on purpose. It doesn't help your argument in any way. Seems more like an accidental occurence resulting from you trying to be condescending.

 

 

 

The Sailor experiment shows what, an hour and a half less total hours of sleep in the most extreme cases? Not a huge difference. Plus sailing is a physically demanding job and they are most likely tired enough to find sleep when they can. In fact that's the whole reason they adopted that sleep schedule in the first place. A poor study overall, as it focuses on one specialized group instead of a more general population and 99 people is not a lot. Not a lot at all, especially for this kind of study.

 

 

 

I don't see a source for the army claims.

 

 

 

As said, it's pseudoscience.

 

 

 

I really don't think that's an oxymoron by the way, due to it being true, one can have incredibly vast amounts of insufficient knowledge.

 

 

 

On topic: You missed the point of the sailor article, it shows that polyphasic sleeping is a viable alternative to monophasic sleep. The time of polyphasic sleep is the only thing different here. I wonder why you think its pseudoscience, the vast majority of people have already altered their sleep schedule. Humans are by nature biphasic, which we alter by being largely monophasic, so we know it is possible to change the nature of ones sleep cycle.

 

 

 

Due to me not wanting to use a variety of medical terms to explain this, I will use this explanation, he explains it very well.

 

 

 

 

 

Some of the biological argument presented in this article may not be entirely suitable and convincing for teenagers, esp. those who slept polyphasically through their biology class. Let's then reword it all in baby language. Experience shows that "for dummies" sections are most popular and most effective in conveying the message. Disclaimer: the models presented below are used for illustration only and are a remote approximation of real processes occurring in sleep

 

 

 

Alarm clock is bad for you

 

 

 

A metaphor that may help you get some sense of what alarm clocks do to sleep is a comparison of NREM-REM cycles to your PC. During the day, while learning and experiencing new things, you store your new data in RAM memory. During the night, while first in NREM, you write the data down to the hard disk. During REM, which follows NREM in the night, you do the disk defragmentation, i.e. you organize data, sort them, build new connections, etc. Overnight, you repeat the write-and-defragment cycle until all RAM data is neatly written to the disk (for long-term use), and your RAM is clear and ready for a new day of learning. At waking up, you reboot the computer. If you reboot early with the use of an alarm clock, you often leave your disk fragmented. Your data access is slow, and your thinking is confused. Even worse, some of the data may not even get written to the disk. It is as if you have never stored it in RAM in the first place. In conclusion, if you use an alarm clock, you endanger your data. If you do not care about your intellectual performance, you may want to know that there are many biological reasons for which using alarm clocks is basically unhealthy. Those run beyond the scope of this article. Many people use alarm clocks and live. Yet this is not much different from smoking, abusing drugs, or indulging in fat-dripping pork. You may abuse your brain with alcohol for years, and still become president. Many of mankind's achievements required interrupted sleep. Many inventions were produced by sleepy brains. But nothing is able to change the future as much as a brain refreshed with a healthy dose of restful sleep.

 

 

 

You cannot sleep polyphasically without an alarm clock

 

 

 

Your whole sleep cycle can be explained with the clock and hourglass model. Deep in your brain, your body clock is running on a 24 hours cycle. Every 24 hours, the clock releases a sleepy potion that puts you to sleep. If you try to sleep at wrong hours, without the sleepy potion, you may find it very hard to fall asleep. All insomniacs suffers from the lack of sleepy potion. If they go to sleep too early, before they get their fix of sleepy potion, they will toss and turn. Often for hours. You need to listen to your body clock to know when it is the right moment to go to sleep.

 

 

 

Yet the sleepy potion produced by the body clock is not enough to put you to sleep. The brain also uses the hourglass of mental energy that gives you some time every day that you can devote to intellectual work. When you wake up, the hourglass is full and starts being emptied. With every waking moment, with everything your brain absorbs, with every mental effort, the hourglass is less and less full. Only when the hourglass of mental energy is empty, will you able to quickly fall asleep.

 

 

 

To get a good night sleep, you need to combine two factors:

 

 

 

* your body clock must be saying "time to sleep"

 

* your hourglass of power must be saying "no more mental work"

 

 

 

If your sleepy potion tries to put you to sleep but your hourglass is full, you will be very groggy, tired, but you will not fall asleep.

 

 

 

If, on the other hand, you try to sleep without the sleepy potion while the hourglass of power is empty, you may succeed, but you will wake up very fast with your hourglass full again. That will make sleeping again nearly impossible.

 

 

 

Insomniacs go to sleep before the body clock releases the sleepy potion. When you wake up early with an alarm clock, you can hardly get to your feet because your body is full of sleepy potion, which begs you to go back to sleep. When you are drowsy in the afternoon, your hourglass of mental power might be almost empty. A quick nap will then help you fill it up again and be very productive in the evening. If you drink coffee in the morning, it helps you charge the hourglass and add some extra mental energy. But coffee combined with the sleepy potion produce a poisonous mix that engulfs your brain in sickly miasma. If you try to drink coffee to stay up in the night, you will feel like a horse kicked you in the stomach. That's the acme of a criminal attack on your brain's health.

 

 

 

Here is why polyphasic sleep will never work naturally:

 

 

 

* in the morning, if you are fresh and rested, your sleepy potion is cleared and your hourglass is full of mental energy, you are not likely to fall asleep. Trying to take a nap at that time is a waste of time. You will waste time for nap preparations. You will waste time trying to fall asleep

 

* in the afternoon, if you hourglass is getting empty, you may be able to take a nap. That's ok. Your nap will be short because the sleepy potion is not there

 

* in the evening, your sleepy potion is still not there. If you took an afternoon nap, your hourglass is almost full of energy. If you try to take another nap, you will be staring at the ceiling. You will waste your time again

 

* in the night, your sleepy potion is released. Napping should be easy, but if you fall asleep, you will not wake up. Not naturally. You will need an alarm clock. You may manage to recharge your hourglass fast, but the sleepy potion will make you groggy and tired. You may need a double alarm or a loud alarm, or some help from your Mom (if she ever agreed to this polyphasic insanity). You will fight and struggle. You will never wake up naturally. Not while the sleepy potion is in action

 

 

 

If you decide to sleep polyphasically. You will have to use an alarm clock. Otherwise you will not wake up in the night. Once you use the alarm clock, you will be sleep deprived. That will make your hourglass conveniently drained of energy. Empty hourglass will make napping easier indeed. But it is the hourglass that determines your mental powers. With the hourglass empty, you will be nothing more than an empty-headed zombie.

 

 

 

To generate naps at equal intervals, you would have to kill the 24-h circadian component of sleepiness. You would have to kill your body clock, and prevent the release of the sleepy potion. That is not possible. The sleepy potion will be released every 24 hour and make you sleepy; however, much you fight it. The shortest natural night sleep rarely goes beneath 3 hours. Many biphasic sleepers can do well on 4 hours. Yet most adolescents may need 7 or 8 hours of night sleep to function optimally.

 

 

 

In healthy sleep, daytime naps are either impossible or very short. If you track your sleep with SleepChart freeware, you will see it on your own. You will see how naps tend to cluster at night time (which may be midday for you). That's exactly what polyphasic guru Dr Stampi observed with solo sailors. Remember, that for the picture to be true, you should avoid alarm clock, which naturally, is not possible in polyphasic sleep. Yet even on a forced schedule you will see regular patterns of naps being longer and more frequent at nighttime (each time your relax your discipline, oversleep, etc.). The daytime naps will be shorter, esp. at subjective evening hours (which may be midnight for you).

 

 

 

Body clock training has its limits

 

 

 

I hear it again and again that all biological reasoning is of no consequence because the body can always adapt to training and pressure, and that science has not yet studied successful polyphasic sleepers. Here is a reply based on the clock&hourglass model:

 

 

 

* body clock is controlled by genes, and we do not know pharmacological factors that could significantly affect body clock period. Polyphasic sleep would require shortening the body clock period six-fold!

 

* body clock phase can be shifted with light, activity, melatonin and other factors, but the length of the period in which sleepy potion is released is hard to control. Drugs can reduce the impact of sleepy potion, but this should be avoided, as this affects the sleep stage cycles (i.e. not all your PC data may get written to the hard disk and get defragmented)

 

* the speed with which the hourglass of energy is emptied can be affected by drugs (e.g. caffeine); however, faster hourglass would produce more sleep (instead of less), while slower hourglass would make multiple naps even less possible

 

* science have not studied successful polyphasic sleepers because they do not exist (although there are as many claimants to the title as there are UFO spotters)

 

* polyphasic sleep in laboratory conditions is possible if the alarm clock is used to interrupt natural sleep. Entrained free-running polyphasic sleep is not possible in healthy individuals

 

 

 

Summary

 

 

 

Healthy body clock runs a 24 hour cycle. This cycle will make you sleepy during the subjective night (which can be midday too). This is why you won't be able to wake up from your nap in your subjective night without an alarm clock. Alarm clocks are unhealthy. They prevent sleep from fulfilling its function. The choice is yours: either (1) sleep polyphasically or (2) sleep naturally and let your brain develop its full intellectual potential.

 

 

 

If someone tells you he is doing naps every four hours, and that the naps last 20 min. and that he wakes up naturally, you can safely fire back: "I have seen Loch Ness monster too". That will bring it home.

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Unless I'm mistaken from skimming that quickly, you basically just provided us with a source that states that polyphasic sleep is not only bad for you but impossible to do naturally. It also seems to claim that someone who can do this doesn't exist. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Sorry, I should have used less than this, this is just a representation of how it works, but the article does deem in implausible.What the article doesn't account for is that if you read the introduction it states it is possible but only for a smaller sample of people.

 

 

 

But yeah, my bad in posting all of that :wall:

 

 

 

But yes, polyphasic sleep is unnatural, and it is required to use an alarm clock.

So effectively you just completely countered what you were trying to say this entire time? Nice!

So effectively you just completely countered what you were trying to say this entire time? Nice!

Not necassarily, the author does deem it possible and actual science, but yeah, I meant to only take the model about computers, not the whole essay, :lol: :wall: 8-).

 

 

 

Here is another polyphasic sleeping style. This is another polyphasic style used by astronauts called the everyman polyphasic sleeping schedule.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Despite NASA recommendations that astronauts sleep 8 hours a day, they usually don't. Strange sights and sounds, the stress of riding a powerful rocket, the lack of a normal day-night cycle--all these things tend to keep space travelers awake. Studies show that astronauts typically sleep 0.5 to 2.5 hours less than they do on Earth.

 

 

 

see captionRight: Could you sleep like this? [More]

 

 

 

Although many astronauts report feeling fully rested after only six hours of sleep, the fact is, sleeplessness can cause irritability, forgetfulness and fatigue--none of which astronauts need to deal with while piloting complicated 'ships that hurtle through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour.

 

 

 

The solution seems simple: Take a nap.

 

 

 

But naps are a double-edged sword. Sometimes napping can leave you feeling even drowsier than before. If your body enters a deep sleep, trying to wake after only an hour or so can be very unpleasant, and you might remain groggy for some time afterward. This is called "sleep inertia."

 

 

 

Why do naps sometimes backfire? Researchers don't yet know the physical causes of sleep inertia, but they would like to be able to predict, at least, when it's going to strike. This could help doctors prescribe naps of the right time and duration for drowsy people in high-risk professions.

 

 

 

 

 

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Helping astronauts nap was the goal of a recent series of experiments funded by NASA in cooperation with the National Space Biomedical Research Institute. In those experiments, led by David Dinges, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, 91 volunteers spent 10 days living on one of 18 different sleep schedules, all in a laboratory setting. The sleep schedules combined various amounts of "anchor sleep," ranging from about 4 to 8 hours in length, with daily naps of 0 to 2.5 hours.

 

 

 

To measure how effective the naps were, the scientists gave the volunteers a battery of tests probing memory, alertness, response time, and other cognitive skills throughout the experiment. They also measured things like core body temperature and hormone levels in blood and saliva, all of which fluctuate in a natural daily cycle known as a person's "biological clock."

 

 

 

They also found that some cognitive functions benefited more from napping than others:

 

 

 

"To our amazement, working memory performance benefited from the naps, [but] vigilance and basic alertness did not benefit very much," says Dinges.

This suggests that another polyphasic system works.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Helping astronauts nap was the goal of a recent series of experiments funded by NASA in cooperation with the National Space Biomedical Research Institute. In those experiments, led by David Dinges, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, 91 volunteers spent 10 days living on one of 18 different sleep schedules, all in a laboratory setting. The sleep schedules combined various amounts of "anchor sleep," ranging from about 4 to 8 hours in length, with daily naps of 0 to 2.5 hours.

 

 

 

To measure how effective the naps were, the scientists gave the volunteers a battery of tests probing memory, alertness, response time, and other cognitive skills throughout the experiment. They also measured things like core body temperature and hormone levels in blood and saliva, all of which fluctuate in a natural daily cycle known as a person's "biological clock."

 

 

 

They also found that some cognitive functions benefited more from napping than others:

 

 

 

"To our amazement, working memory performance benefited from the naps, [but] vigilance and basic alertness did not benefit very much," says Dinges.

This suggests that another polyphasic system works.

 

if i'm understanding that right they actually got 4-8 hours of sleep plus naps so it sounds like its further contradicting your theory.

This whole idea is going down the drain quicker than I imagined :