Biphasic Sleep Update
April 20, 2007 by Greg
I’m like a super model really. Aside from my mean runway stomp learned from tireless hours spent studying Victoria’s Secret models, I have similar behaviors as well. I realized this with my current biphasic sleep problems. I want to sleep less and be awake more. So I starve myself of sleep for days at a time, and then, invariably, I binge. The past two nights I’ve laid down for a nap, and wound up in for 9+ hours at a time.
However, I’ve had this brief moments of undeniable success that make it impossible to turn my back on a not so distant future of the up all night lifestyle. These are nights where I would take a short nap in the early evening, wake up a tad groggy, party till 2 am, and awake the next morning at 6:30am full of energy. To be clear, this is not waking up feeling alright considering the circumstances, this is waking up feeling more alert than I normally do.
Crucial Lessons
- Moderate alcohol intake. Too many drinks before a short nap, or a short sleep at night, left me restless. A side note, I’ve been kicking around the idea of staying awake till the alcohol is burned out of my system. If I’m drinking, stop a few hours before I sleep to get the most out of my rest.
- Schedule caffeine in response to sleep. A caffeinated tea consumer a few hours before my nap kept me turning. Curiously, caffeine seems to be a crucial part in aiding the switch over.
- Commit to the practice. Doing it everyday, after about 3 or 4 days it got a lot easier.
Going Forward
At times I am not tired when I go for my nap. Caffeine regulation has helped with this, but there are times when I lay in bed for 30 minutes not being able to sleep. This in turn causes my alarm to wake me in the middle of my sleep cycle. Waking up groggy takes at least 20-30 minutes to rouse from.
I think this may have two causes. First, not taking a nap at the same time every night. By switching it up based on my schedule, my body is not allowing me to go to sleep. Second, sleeping too much. I think my 4.5 hour nightly sleeps and occasional weekend 6 hour nightly sleeps are leaving me too well rested. This affects my nap, which in turn affects my sleep.
Going forward this week, I’m switching to a 3 hour nightly sleep, and adjusting my schedule to allow for a nap around the same time.
As a side note, check out these cool products I’ve found. Apparently sleep studies will use attached motion detectors to determine sleep cycles (make forum)
Glad to hear you didn’t just drop off the face of the earth last night.
Good points all, and I’ll chime in with this from my last two nights worth of bi-phasic effort;
Sometimes I come home and accidentally (I’m still getting used to my new phone’s alarm clock feature) pull a two cycle (3hr) ‘nap’. The first time this happened, I awoke, stayed up to the requisite 1:30AM, but then found myself oversleeping in the morning (big time) clocking in 7.5 hours for the night. Not good.
Last night however, I pulled a 2 cycle nap, woke up, stayed up till 3:30AM, and then slept for just slightly longer than 1 additional cycle. Result: 5 hours total sleep for the night, and I literally lept out of bed feeling great. Once I had a couple of cups of coffee, I felt absolutely amazing.
I think the difference for me was actually increasing the amount of caffeine proportiante to my initial sleep cycle; if I nap for 1.5 hours; use less caffeine to transition. If I nap for 3 hours; use more. This not only keeps me up longer, which makes me sleepier when it is time to rest, but just seems to regulate things overall.
Plus, having Red Bull & Pravdas at 2 in the morning is total rock star fun in its own right.
We musn’t give up. Biphasic is the future.
Alternate sleep patterns seems like something I’d be really interested in trying. The one that intrigued me the most was reports of this one guy sleeping for 3 hours “at night” and then another 1.5 hour nap during the day, and apparently always had energy, etc.
I would *kill* for that much non-sleeping time.
However, I work a job with weird shifts, including 12 hour weekend ones (ugh!), which wouldn’t exactly permit me to plop down and take an hour and a half nap.
However, the links to the sleep-cycle trackers, specifically that watch, are interesting. I’d love to be able to wake up naturally, instead of jarred awake in the middle of a REM cycle, not wanting to get out of bed, etc. I might have to check it out!
People who meditate typically need much less sleep than those who don’t. Chew on that for a while…
Jess,
It sounds like a tough schedule to accommodate. We’ve been chatting with a few of the companies to get a few demos of their products. Check back soon for our reviews.
Steve,
Good info, I’m looking into it.