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Today I am starting to feel the zombie affect. I’ve failed to adapt at this before, mostly because of scheduling. Right now I’m trying a 3-hour core with 3 twenty-minute naps. In my other attempts it took me several days before I could actually sleep during my naps. Well, I am already starting to sleep during my naps now. Why? I think it’s because in the first 2 days I didn’t do any naps, only the core sleeps, so my body decided that I really need any extra sleep I could get. I’m on day four and I feel like I did after a week of the last attempts. I’m getting the muscle fatigue, distractedness, and zoning out that I started to in the last attempts. Actually, I didn’t get the zoning out quite this bad until after a week had already passed in the other two attempts. So this is kind of interesting. I decided to try again after speaking with a sleep specialist (physician). He thinks that it may be useful, but isn’t sure. Partially he told me that was because there hasn’t been enough research into polyphasic sleep. And he thinks that while I might benefit from being able to function on less sleep than I am now, it may not stop my drowsiness that I always have on monophasic sleep. And the only way to know, he said, was to try. And he warned me that it’s extremely hard to adapt to! He has also said that it can take over a month for some people to adapt. And that as far as he knows polyphasic sleep should not be done for more than a two to three months at a time, switching back and forth from polyphasic to monophasic or biphasic sleep. That last bit seems odd to me, since there are several people I know of who have adapted long term, some for years. But he did mention Leonardo da Vinci as someone who did it for years, and he thinks that da Vinci was bipolar, and that’s why he was able to sleep the way that he did. And that the polyphasic sleep may have helped control that. Isn’t that interesting? One thing I am noticing already is that while I don’t feel particularly tired, I tend to nod off if I am sitting too still and not being active. It might be necessary for me to get an exercise ball to sit on at the office, since the chair is too comfortable and easy to nod off in, thanks to complete body support. Oh, and I get distracted really easily. And I’m getting hungry quicker than I used to. All this after only four days! I am being stricter with the naps, though. And it was nice to be able to actually sleep during my morning nap today. The noon one is the one that I’ve always had the hardest time falling asleep on, though. We’ll see how that goes over the next few days.
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Polyphasic Sleep