Day 11 & 12 + Final Thoughts

Here we are, at our last polyphasic sleep blog. It has been quite an experience, one we wouldn't mind repeating.

On Friday morning we left home at 5:15 am, arriving at the CfA at 5:50 am. Why, you may ask? Just because we could. We napped immediately upon arriving, but eventually we did get to work and we worked very hard until we went home 12 hours later (taking a full 4 naps at the CfA). We intended to have a very fun night, goofing off with all our hobbies. This didn't work out as planned-we watched a movie and did a bit of writing. I (Maggie) determined that I myself played at least 50 DDR songs between Thursday night and Saturday night.

Saturday morning we were quite lazy and just hung around the house. Sarah was extremely cranky, probably due to sleep deprivation. In the afternoon we went shopping on Newbury street and basically forced ourself to stay awake for the afternoon. We visited a number of vintage and second hand clothing stores - Sarah got some 'new' jeans and I got a skirt and a jacket. We finished up the evening by going out for dinner with Wen-Fai. We ate at Cafe Brazil so I could earn 1500 bonus airmiles. It turned out to be very good. Then we came home and attempted to watch the Wrath of Khan but we only got halfway through and then we intentionally crashed at around 10pm.

And yes, by crashed I mean that our polyphasic sleep experiment has come to an end. We went to sleep Saturday night and slept until Sunday. For those of you who are are going to argue - we know it was not exactly 2 weeks but it was all the time we had. We miscounted the days originally but had always intended to finish it up this weekend because Sarah needed time to recover before she leaves for Switzerland tomorrow (tomorrow is the actual 2 week mark).

I slept soundly for 12 hours Saturday night; Sarah woke up every hour and a half. In one night, we basically fully recovered and returned to a normal schedule.

(Sarah jumping in here) My personal new favorite story from the past few days involves Maggie and her computer. We were chatting in the kitchen in our PJs when Maggie sat on her computer. Now, despite being not being at full mental alertness, I did notice this odd behaviour. "Maggie!" I said, "You are sitting on your computer!?" She calmly responded, "So? It can take it." Well apparently it couldn't as now there are several cracks in the screen, a blanked out spot, and a large crack diagonal through the center. She tried to argue that the sitting didn't cause this damage, but I ignored these feeble attempts to justify her sleepy decision making. She also stated today, now having two full nights sleep, "Maybe the screen isn't really cracked." Two minutes later she responded, "Yeah...it is..." Polyphasic sleeping can be quite the expensive endeavor. Note: In Maggie's defense, the computer was her old DDR dedicated PC, not her awesome new macbook.

I also had my share of blonde moments. I forgot many things, poured my loose leaf tea in the wrong spot of my tea mug, and had other just plain clumsy moments. Nothing quite so epic as computer sitting, unfortunately. I vaguely remember something particularly idiotic but neither Maggie or I can remember the details now. Must be lack of REM sleep catching up with us. (End Sarah's comments)

Final Thoughts:
We would say over all our experiment was both a success and a failure. It was a success because we did what we set out to do and were able to function normally throughout it. But it was a failure because we never really fully adjusted to the sleep schedule and we became quite lax near the end and overslept quite a few naps.

Our sleep schedule was not ambitious enough which I think contributed to the lack of success. We were never felt seriously sleep deprived (with the possible exception of 3am-7am) so we never really reached the 'hump'. Instead of reaching a state of catatonic sleep deprivation and then recovering, we just went along our merry way, continuing to function (mostly) normally until the lack of sleep started to catch up with us. We then started to lose motivation since we knew we didn't have time to get over the hump. It would be better to try the experiment when you have the freedom to be totally unproductive for a few days, maybe even a week and stick to 6 naps not 8.

We recommend getting a 30 minute timer rather than trying to set an alarm for each nap. We set quite a number of alarms incorrectly in our sleepy state such that they did not go off at the correct time. Although, like video experiment guy it got harder and harder to wake us up and we could easily just sleep through our alarm even if it did go off. Near the end we had to offset our naps from one another so we could wake each other up.

I think we now know that we are capable of polyphasic sleeping and may try it again in the future when we have either more time or a good reason to try it (like a new baby or a thesis deadline). At least we now (like Nick) have and instant conversation starter in awkward social situations... 'Well, the time I was polyphasic sleeping....."

One thing this experiment did determine is that we must be very good friends because we could spent 20 hours a day together and not kill each other or even get really catty. At worst we were a little cranky but thats pretty understandable under sleep deprivation. This may be because we are practically the same person and its easy to spend 20 hours a day with yourself.

Days 8, 9, and 10

If you read anything in this blog, read the later half of today's entry. 

In our last post we said we were changing the sleep schedule in an effort to be more productive at the CFA. We started to only sleep every 4 hours while at work, and then every 3 at home. Big mistake! Rule number 1: Do not mess with your polyphasic sleep schedule until you are over the hump. Pushing to stay awake longer during the day definitely had dire consequences for Maggie and I around 3am, Wednesday morning. Although during the day we were still alert, that night we were exhausted. We ended up oversleeping by 2.5 hours. This wasn't aided by the fact that I had a rather stressful day due to some family drama which kept me awake during all my afternoon and early evening naps. Sleep deprivation definitely was to blame in this case. I woke up in the middle of this deviation and went into Maggie's room to try and persuade her to get up. Maggie didn't even hear her alarm which went off for 1 hour, nor does she remember our conversation.

After we woke up I snapped the following pictures.

We managed to finish the rest of the night with polyphasic success, but that event definitely sobered us. With renewed vigor we set out again to try and get back into our schedule. Our mistake here was to try and stick with the adapted work schedule. We think that, especially during the first 2 weeks, a polyphasic novice should not deviate at all from a rigid and symmetric schedule so that the body really becomes prepared for each nap. As well, contrary to what one might think, since our oversleeping event, we have been way more tired. Especially in the first few nap cycles after. Again the problem is that oversleeping allows your body to try and slip back into normal length cycles. Setting multiple alarms is key for this. 

We spent a large portion of our next night looking for Dr. Claudio Stampi's contact information. No, we are not stalkers. Dr. Stampi is the original researcher who examined the feasibility and effects of a long-term polyphasic life style. He wrote the book, "Why We Nap: Evolution, Chronobiology, and Functions of Polyphasic and Ultra-Short Sleep" which includes a lot of interesting research on Polyphasic sleeping. We watched a Scientific American video on PBS that detailed Dr. Stampi's study of 50 days in the life of someone adopting the polyphasic sleep cycle. At somepoint, they tried to wake the test subject from his nap, but even shaking his shoulders was unsuccessful. When he did awake, however, his mental functions were slightly improved from before his polyphasic sleep days. (The video can be found here: http://vvi.onstreammedia.com/cgi-bin/visearch?squery=+ClipID:5++VideoAsset:pbssaf105&query=sleep&user=pbs-saf)

In general, Dr. Stampi found memory retention and analytic abilities actually seem to increase for polyphasic sleepers when compared to monophasic and biphasic sleepers. Another thing we had completely wrong early in the blog was that the proportion of different sleep stages remains the same in a polyphasic sleep schedule. In other words, it's not all about REM sleep. Some naps will be deep sleep, others REM. The body chooses a lesser proportion of light sleep, but otherwise the body still gets the same distribution of sleep stages, though potentially out of order. Dr. Stampi believes that evolutionarily we are predisposed, like most animals, to a polyphasic schedule and that our ancestors slept polyphasically. He advocates this sleep schedule for doctors, paramedics, solo world-sailors, and anyone who must perform for over 20 hours a day. 

The amazing part is he lives in Newton, MA and his Chronobiology Research Institute was, at least 10 years ago, located in Cambridge. We looked everywhere, but the institute seems to have shut down. We do have a home phone number, as he is a consultant for sailors who need to adapt a polyphasic schedule. We sent an email, but it's been 3 days and no response. If we get the nerve, we may call him.

As an unexpected bonus, sleep deprivation makes people say some very interesting things. My favorite examples came from Maggie in the middle of Wednesday night. We had just got up from a nap and she was beyond loopy. All she wanted to do was sleep, but I wasn't about to let her. This put us at odds for awhile as I flicked water at her and she tried to hit me, several times. Thankfully her motor skills were equally impaired. She said many weird things during this time, and if I had to do it over, I'd get a voice recorder to capture every golden statement. As it was, I was limited by my writings speed since I started recording them in a notebook about 10 min into our conversation.

In an attempt to keep her awake, I asked Maggie what she wanted to do until the next nap. She responded, "I want to do that thing. You know, that thing." When I asked for clarification, she frustratedly replied, "You know what it is. I want to do that thing, that I already said." Similar statements such as this continued for the next several minutes. 

Eventually Maggie started falling asleep in the middle of an uncompleted sentence. I pointed out that she was falling asleep and reminded her that we were polyphasic sleeping, and thus couldn't go back to bed until our next scheduled nap time in 3 hours. She said, "I don't think it matters if I fall asleep. I've slept at your place before." Considering I am in her apartment, I was quite confused. I asked for clarification, though at this point I wasn't expecting coherence. In fact, I would have been disappointed if she had snapped out of it. There was no need to worry, however, as she replied, "

It doesn't matter if I sleep now. I've already done the important part of being awake." I was not quite sure what "the important part of being awake" entailed other than staying awake. But as she was definitely proposing something else, I tried to get her to explain what she meant. 

Maggie was getting frustrated with my slow wit. She exasperatedly explained, "There is a reason I have to be awake. A special task. Like the with the Sword of Truth, Richard had a special task. To kill Darken Rahl. They (referring to the characters Richard and Kahlan from Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series) have to be asleep sometime and awake sometime. When they're been awake long enough to know where they are going, there is no purpose to being awake anymore. We also have a special task. There is some grand task that has already been completed, so it is ok to sleep." QED. Why would I ever question this logic?

Thankfully I snapped a picture of Maggie on my couch during her ramblings. 

In a more alert state, Maggie explained that what she meant by all this incoherent rambling was that for her, the hard part was waking up. So once she had woken up (which clearly in this case she never really did come to full consciousness) she could go back to sleep as her "special task" was done.

In addition while at the bus stop that morning Maggie commented, "The people at the bus stop are different. It's like we are in a parallel universe." Not to be outdone, I had my conversation of grogginess, though (un)fortunately Maggie didn't write it down for posterity. I am sure it was similar in style to her's, though without the creepy references to killing Darken Rahl. I do remember saying, while at the physiotherapist, "How do I connect the theraband to the dog?" Where dog <=> door. Mixing words actually happens quite frequently with me now, as well as my mid-term memory is much worse. 

Day 7

Written by Maggie (Sarah was lazy and didn't contribute to today's blog entry...)

Today we tried adjusting our nap schedule to maximize productive 'awake' time and to minimize early morning drowsy battles with consciousness. Our new schedule is 8am, 12pm, 4pm, 7pm,10pm,1am, 4am, 6am - changed from 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 6pm, 9pm, 12am, 3am, 6am.

This was harder than I expected and I found that I became drowsy in the 3.5 hour window between naps. Previously we had been wide awake during the late morning and afternoon. It was, however, a lot easier to be productive. Today I felt rather weak, possibly as a result of hunger. I think that my food intake is not keeping up my 24 hour DDR habit. Previously, bloggers have reported vastly increased food intake and/or rapid weight loss on the polyphasic sleeping regime - maybe it could be the new fad diet? Tonight we had fondue for dinner again though so I feel much much better.

We tried a new yoga video that we got from Netflix this morning, but we were not impressed. Too much  "centering" and weird "meditation" and not enough stretching and exercising which is what we got it out for in the first place. We spent most of the time laughing at the various aphorisms of the scantily clad host. This severely limited our success at "conscious relaxation" or whatever it was we were supposed to be doing. 

Neither of us slept well during our CfA naps today. The 1st floor washroom with a bed seemed much busier at 4pm than is at 3pm, but the Pratt nursing room was free.  On Sunday, since no one was around, we napped in the grad student lounge. The comfortable couches and blackout blinds make it an especially good nap location.  Unfortunately I feel the printer would be much too noisy on a weekday to allow much sleep. I dedicate so much space in this  blog to critiques of CfA nap locations because I expect, given the interest it is generating, that polyphasic sleeping may become a new trend among the grad students.

Now that we have proved to ourselves that we can do it, we are tending to be less strict about nap times - allowing them to extend overtime on occasion. I think this is starting to affect the experiment so we will have to be more disciplined in the future.

Days 5 & 6

Today's post is a double header for days 5 and 6. We ended up not writing yesterday's blog entry due to an exciting movie event of Star Trek: First Contact followed by a Star Trek Series 1 episode: Naked Time during the wee hours of the morning. 

My sore throat disappeared, leading me to believe it was related to the SCUBA practice more than anything. Health for both of us seems fairly strong. Our alertness during the day is still great followed by a groggy time in the early mornings. Though I think the total groggy time is decreasing. 

We had some oversleeping problems in the past few days but not for more than an extra 30 min or so. Once I forgot to switch my alarm from PM to AM. Another time, I set the alarm for the wrong hour. I wonder if these careless mistakes are due to decreased mental function. I have also noticed I am more forgetful and struggle with words more than usual. We are still optimistic despite these setbacks. I think it will have little impact on our overall goals but may push back the timescale to fully adjust to a 30 min sleep cycle. 

On Saturday we had a nice writing session at a smoothie shop for a few hours. Sunday we decided to work at the CfA all day to catch up on research. I only had one other lucid dream, but most of my naps contain dreams now. I hope I will be able to control them with modest frequency before the end of the experiment.

Summary:

Energy Levels: Again pretty good in the day. The nights are getting better as well, though slowly.

Health: No problems so far. *crosses fingers*

Daily Functioning: I notice I am more forgetful and struggle to find words sometime. 

Academic Performance: Good, though I think I get more frustrated than normal when something doesn't work.

Social Performance: No change.

Maggles concurs with the above. 

Lucid Dreaming

NOTE: This is not today's blog. Today's blog is already posted and is below this entry. This entry just deals with my first lucid dream. I had heard polyphasic sleep helps you have lucid dreams, and have been waiting for this moment.

Success! I just had my first lucid dream (a lucid dream is a conscious dream that you can control). I don't remember the entire dream, only the last part as I started to became aware. I was in a compound, with many doors, and most of them had a high-ish level of security on them, requiring passcodes to get in. I went through one, and then saw a man in a blue shirt come out of a door across the courtyard and I knew in my dream he was coming for me to do me harm. I hurried through the door and made sure it shut behind me. Inside this door was a long hallway with window paneled classrooms and lots of technical computer/business workers. I walked through it and then went through another door with a bolt lock. I was peaking out through the crack in the door watching for the man in the blue shirt. 

This is when I became really aware I was dreaming and started to take control. It was very strange. I knew I was dreaming and thought I was about to wake up. Instead, I thought of Paul and what he had said yesterday about lucid dreaming. So I thought, I need to stay awake and try to control this dream. 

In a room directly across from me there was a woman who saw me looking through the door. She knew I wasn't supposed to be there but I don't think she raised an alarm. She seemed sympathetic. I quickly backed away from the door. I knew the man in the blue shirt was coming and I didn't know how I was going to get out of this situation. I remember actively thinking as I was dreaming, I want Christian in this dream to help me out of this. So I looked around and there he was across another room with many people. Christian saw me and started coming over. I quickly opened the bolted door to let him in. But then almost immediately the man in the blue suit entered. Suddenly the room had cleared of people and it was only Christian, me and this strange man. Here I had another active thought to control the dream along the lines of making Christian have James Bond like skills. He then had secret-agent like fighting abilities, and quickly neutralized the situation when the man attacked. 

After this dream I then had a much more peaceful dream of Christian and I eating together with lots of family members (non of whom I recognized as real family) at long folding tables.

After writing these dreams out, I vaguely remember the dream that occurred before. It contained two cats as the primary characters along with a few humans that I don't remember well. I just remember the cats had very distinct personalities and were extremely intelligent. Most of my dream was spent hugging these cats. They were 43 weeks old and were for sale at the very beginning of the dream. The interesting part about that is the advertisement for them was a moving picture, like the pictures in Harry Potter. 

 

Day 4: Yet another day in the life of polyphasic sleeping

It is hard to believe we are in the middle of Day 4 of our experiment. I would say today was much the same as yesterday as far as energy goes. The only difference I found was that I have now fallen asleep in all my naps, though I often either don't dream or don't remember. How much REM sleep I am getting is questionable at this point. I am also starting to feel a slight scratch in my throat. This is possibly due to the second SCUBA session as breathing dry air from the tank always makes my throat scratchy. Or it could be the signs of a real sore throat. Only time will tell.

As yesterday, energy was great in the normal daylight hours. And again, as yesterday, around 3am staying awake has become more and more difficult. My 3am nap was rudely disturbed in the middle by a loud car alarm outside my window that went off for around a minute. I think this had a severe impact on my alertness after the nap as illustrated in the following story. I was talking to Christian on Skype after that nap, complaining that I couldn't find my ear plugs. I was getting quite upset since they were my favorite pair since they had a cord between them. (Before this pair, I used to often wake up with only one ear plug, having had one fall out and forever disappear.) I knew they were near since I had them not more than 10 min prior, but I couldn't find them anywhere. As soon as we started the video chat, Christian pointed at me and said, "What's that?" Sure enough the cord was caught in my hair and I had failed to notice this key fact as I tore apart my bed, distressingly searching my sheets, pillows, etc. 

Maggie was in a similar state of groggyness. We both took an extra nap around 4:45am for 30 min.  I walked into Maggie's room after and asked. "Would you like a smoothie now or after our 6am nap?" She just looked at me and closed her eyes. I said, "Hey!" She looked again, and closed her eyes, clearly falling asleep. I woke her up again. The third time of her utter non-responsiveness, I said, "What's your answer." She looked at me and asked, "What's the question again?" You know it's bad when your partner in polyphasic sleeping starts falling asleep as you are standing there asking a question.... She pulled through, and we decided to write our blogs now, drink smoothies later.

I find to push through the groggyness is in large part a matter of sheer willpower. Mentally I have to determine to be alert and then I am after a few minutes of doing an activity I wake up. For example, when I started to write this blog, I was not so coherent. Now I feel fine as I am nearing the end of it.

Health: Starting to maybe have a sore throat? Hopefully echinacea tea and vitamin C will stave off any oncoming illness.

Energy Level: Surprisingly good during the day and upto around 3am. Dismal in the early hours of the morning.

Daily Functioning: Ear plug story says it all.

Academic Performance: Will work on Sunday to catch up missed hours due to napping. I am as productive as normal while working, it's more the lost time due to the rigid schedule.

Social Performance: Finally, was able to have dinner with my friend between my 6 and 9pm nap.

Maggie's Post:

Today I slept during almost all of my naps. However this seems to rather have caused me to feel groggier than when I didn't sleep at all.  I am going to remove the delta waves from my binaural beat regime in hopes of avoiding being awakened during very deep sleep and feeling groggy. DDR(Dance Dance Revolution) has proved to be invaluable in getting through the rough patches. All I need is to play one song to get my blood pumping and myself woken up so that I can comfortably keep my eyes open. I am still in general less tired than I expected, particularly during normal waking hours. However, the hours between night naps are beginning to stretch interminably. My usual problem with staying awake once my alarm goes off is proving to be a problem. I make poor decisions when I am tired and now that I am groggy when I wake up I keep closing my eyes and falling back asleep.  I need to get to the DDR immediately- it is my only hope. Especially when Sarah abandons me to my own weakness at 3:30 am so she can talk to Christian. 

Health: Still fine

Energy Level: Groggy immediately after waking up, especially during the night. 

Daily Functioning:   No real 'brain fog' but reaction times are slowed and during night hours it is all I can do to keep my eyes open sometimes.

Academic Performance: Few hours spent working at the CFA, need to spend some additional time this weekend. However, focus and productivity during the hours spent working was pretty good. 

Social Performance: Need Sarah to make sure I don't keep falling back asleep. Otherwise little social interaction at night anyway. Was able to have some nice Skype conversations with friends between naps yesterday though. 

Day 3: Zombies?

Currently my eyes are refusing to focus, so this post may be interesting and/or grammatically laughable. Day 3 has definitely been the hardest, but still nothing terrible. We expected day 3 to be tough. Blog guy, Steve, crashed on days 3 and 5. He wrote that he spent 90 minutes sitting on the couch staring at a blank wall. Maggie and I approached this level of tiredness at two points in the day. Last night, shortly after our last blog post, we were zombies. It took every effort to keep or eyes open. In fact, at one point Maggie was falling asleep on my couch. I pulled her up onto her feet. My plan was to spout words of encouragement, but nothing came out. I couldn't think beyond, "Must not succumb to sleep...help keep Maggles awake!" We stood there for a few moments, Maggie tried to sit down again, and I just pulled her up. There was little else I was able to do other than force ourselves to stay awake. 

Surprisingly though, from around 10am to 2:50am we were fairly alert. During the day at school I felt no tiredness and had trouble sleeping in all my daytime naps. The days and nights have continued to be enjoyable. Last night we went grocery shopping for a weeks worth of fresh fruit to make 2am smoothies and we spent at least 1.5 hour perfecting our binuraul rhythm playlists. Now we have a continuous 30 min track that gently leads us through Beta, Alpha, Theta and then finally Delta waves. Around 20 min are spent in the Theta proportion, which is where REM supposedly occurs in 20 minute cycles and then we finish with a 5 min section of deep Delta sleep. I am surprised that this seemingly pseudoscientific beat thing works, but there is no arguing, they definitely help. Even if it is all placebo, I always fall asleep or at least enter a close sleep-like state when listening to my beats. 

Main success of the day: we both had our first true REM nap. I've had at least two. The first one was last night and I don't remember much of the dream other than it happened. The second REM nap I had was just in this last nap cycle. This one I remember most of the details of the dream and it was quite long with a pseudo plot line and separate segments. In part of it, I yelled at an MBTA official for giving me a hard time while getting on the train. This clearly originates from my frustrations at now living in Allston and waiting 20 min for a bus, only for two to arrive at the same time. In Switzerland, all buses and all trains run precisely on time. Down to the second practically. I feel like this is definitely a solvable problem and am mystified that some statistician hasn't come in and predicted the route times more accurately at various times during the day. Or perhaps it's just a general lack of work ethic and apathy toward punctuality. Regardless, it annoys me to no end during our 45 +/- 25 min commute to work. What the US needs to do relax immigration requirements for Swiss nationals ....

Due to our extreme tiredness we napped between 3am and 6am at 4:15-4:45 am. As long as we are only sleeping in 30 min segments, we should be still depriving our body of it's comfortable 90 min sleep cycle and therefore training it to drop into REM quickly. Interestingly, I find I am much more groggy after a nap with dreams than one without. 

Ideally, our naps should be unflinchingly rigid though I pushed the limits of that today. In preparation for tectonic plate diving in Iceland, I went again to a pool SCUBA session to just re-familiarize myself with the equipment and skills. Though the extra SCUBA session was exceedingly useful, I completely missed my 9pm nap and didn't get home until 10:30pm. I unsuccessfully tried to sleep for 30 min then before our midnight nap. I am not sure now whether my tiredness is due to this missed nap or due to my body craving more REM now that it understands 30 min. naps are all it can get. Maggie reports having a non-sensical conversation with me after my midnight nap. I remember trying to explain something to her that I wanted/needed, but I am pretty sure it was all in my head and she couldn't even make out my words let alone their meaning..

Overall, today has been hard, but not nearly as much as I would have imagined. I normally can snap myself out of groggy states by activity of some sort. A lot of the groggyness battle is now mental. I have to convince myself each time to wake up, to get up, and to stay up. Otherwise today we ate fondue (mmMMmm), made smoothies (filled with peaches, plums, apricots, blueberries, strawberries and raspberries), played DDR when we were really desperate to stay awake, and finally wrote in our novels and in this blog. 

- Daily Summary -

Health: Surprisingly still great.

Energy Level: Good, has it's low moments, but definitely still functioning.

Daily Functioning: In general ok, unless talking to Maggie right after I wake up.

Academic Performance: Less productive today than normal due to late arrival time at CFA. Also I noticed on my terminal shell from last night that I spent a good portion grepping FG0 instead of PG0 which explains a lot of my frustration of grep not working late last night.

School Performance: Social? Do I have a social life other than hanging out with my awesome roommate?

Maggie's more tired story:

Today we started out exhausted and ended up exhausted but were strangely wide awake in between. After waking from my first REM induced nap at 6am it was a serious struggle just to keep my eyes open - which is how I also feel now at 4am today. But once I finally got out of the house this morning I could barely feel any effects of sleep deprivation and failed to fall asleep during my 12pm, 3pm, 6pm, 9pm naps.  I think that we are now reaching REM sleep near the end of the late night naps and when we get up we interrupt it it which is part of what makes us so tired. As to why we aren't tired during the day? No idea.

I do think the binaural beats are working though, I can now sense the changes in beat frequency as changes in my mental state. 

Update on cafeteria lady -- she took the nap room at 3pm again to today but I think she has a legitimate purpose of needing the room to pray.  I am not totally sure but we accidentally walked in on her today and she was wearing a veil in the middle of the room and failed to look up when I entered. Awkward!

Health: Pretty good. No problems. 

Energy Level: Can't keep my eyes open between 3 am and 9am but otherwise wide awake. 

9pm, a little dazed. 

Academic Performance:Low productivity due to only 3 few hours spent working at the cfa

Social Performance: Missed BBQ due to rigid sleep requirements. 

Day 2

Today has been overall very successful. Last night Maggie and I accomplished many things including: writing our novels, playing DDR, watching Legend of the Seeker (awesome show based on Sword of Truth series), taking a refresher SCUBA course, showering, and creating this blog. The day went very well overall. I felt normal energy levels and mental acuity for the most part. I expect this to decline temporarily for the next few days. 

The main problem I encountered was not being able to fall asleep in that 30 min window. I have trouble getting to sleep quickly normally, but I had hoped my sleep deprivation would have made this moot. However, I haven't really been that tired today and have found napping difficult and sometimes frustrating. Sleeping in the Astrophysics building was also difficult as it involves lying on a bed in one of the bathrooms, which invariably people will use throughout your nap. I was unable to sleep at all at 12pm, 3pm, or 9pm today. 

The lack of sleep is starting to show, however. I was reading about a 64 year old man in Vietnam, Thai Ngoc, who hasn't been able to sleep at all (not even for a nap!) for over 33 years after a bad fever. He has remained in excellent health despite this. Unbelievable. My main loopy moment for the day started around 30 min ago when I had the thought process, that he must have some crazy genetics that is allowing him to even live, let alone healthily, on no sleep. I envied this physiological adaptation and surmised on how I could invoke time travel to change my parents and thus my genes. Needless to say, it wasn't a very coherent few sentences to Maggie's great delight.

Though I am too tired to check for more sources to verify the veracity of this tale, here is the article: http://www.thanhniennews.com/features/?catid=10&newsid=12673

Polyphasic sleeping may be impossible by oneself without extreme, superhuman, "Steve Pavlian" discipline. Maggie had to wake me up one nap since my phone was mistakenly set to a tone rather than vibrate which was useless to me since I was wearing ear plugs. Furthermore, I believe I would have succumbed the the pressures of oversleeping by now. I had a distinct feeling of "what on Earth are you doing? Are you crazy?" as I was waking up from a nap at our office. The moral support of someone else to get over the adjustment period is vital to one's resolve.

In our research of other people's experiences, grapes seem to be the food craving most often experienced. Maggie read that are supposed to help with sleep deprivation. We decided to preempt this craving and went to the grocery store from 10pm to 11:30pm to buy fresh fruit for smoothies and many, many grapes.  

- Daily Summary -

Health: So far so good. Not even the sore throat I usually get with little sleep.

Energy Level: Amazingly good considering. I was groggy after my 6am and 12am naps today.

Daily Functioning: Nearly same as normal. Though breaking up the day in 2.5 hour chunks can be unproductive if you aren't careful.

Academic Performance: Still was able to meet with my advisor and accomplish things. Phew. Thankfully she knows about this experiment.

Social Performance: Trying to make dinner plans with a friend is proving difficult. She is only available straddling my unflinchingly rigid nap times. 

Maggie's Thoughts:

I felt the day was relatively comfortable; 2.5 hour periods aren't that hard to get through and I only felt a slight overall tiredness throughout the day. Napping at the CfA is an interested experience -I feel funny walking through the halls carrying my blanket and pillowcase. We discovered a rival for the most private bed location - the cafeteria cart lady. She usurped our bed during the 3pm nap time, forcing us both to nap in the less private washrooms where women come in and out and pretty often. I am not sure how we can get around this since I heard she is often found in the nursing room (napping?) when not at her post. Unfortunately the cart closes at 2:30pm so it seems likely that she will beat us to the 3pm nap on a regular basis.  

In addition to the cafeteria lady, the MBTA also seems to be out to get us. A 20 minute bus delay caused us to be late for our 6pm nap. I was about ready to nod off on the bus.

Despite this, I am little surprised as how difficult it is to fall asleep during naptimes (even in my 9pm nap this evening when I was quite tired and it was dark outside). I only achieved actual sleep in about 50% of my  naptimes but I think I am getting closer to reaching the coveted instant REM cycle. 

I think that I can attribute some of this success to my experiment with binaural beats. Binaural beats are created by the brain when it hears a mixture of two tones at slightly different frequencies. This can be achieved by playing a different tone in each ear with stereo-headphones. There is some 'evidence' that listening to binaural beats can encourage the brain to enter the state of mind whose brainwave frequency corresponds to the beat frequency. In particular 'theta' (4-7 Hz) waves correspond to REM sleep and 'delta' (<4hz)>

So far I can't say it has necessarily been working but I did notice that during one of my 'naps' at the CfA (during which I never actually fell asleep) I started to have more vivid imaginings in the theta wave portion of the cycle and even feel slight loss of bodily awareness around the delta wave portion. I am going to try improving the playlist by including a more gradual transition from the higher frequency beta and alpha waves which are normal for active cognition and pre-sleep relaxation. Hopefully this will help me fall asleep faster. 

Sarah noticed I am starting to lose mental acuity while at the grocery store. I stared unresponsively at the receipt quite some time while she asked if she could have my backpack to put the food in several times. In my defense I was handed a 10 foot long paper chain full of mysterious coupons - hard enough to figure out with a proper night's sleep. 

I did have a terrible time trying to submit some observation files today (it took me 4 tries to get one file right) but I don't know if that was because of lack of sleep or just me being distracted.

-Daily Summary-

Health: Pretty good. A little sniffly but my allergies were already acting up.

Energy Level: Minor overall feeling of tiredness except following afternoon naps when I was much more energized. Energy level degradation preceding and following evening and night naps.

Daily Functioning: Feel as though I am living nap to nap (2.5 hours is a bit short to accomplish things). Mental responses slowing down after 9pm, a little dazed. 

Academic Performance: Keep making stupid mistakes (might not be from sleep deprivation though) also low productivity due to only 3 hours actual spent working. 

Social Performance: No serious issues yet but anticipating problems with plans over the coming days.

Night One

It is 3:52 a.m. and Maggie and I are well into our first night of polyphasic sleeping. Originally inspired by Nick and blogger guy, Steve Pavlina, we set out on this journey for several reasons. First (for Sarah), to have more time in the day for hobbies which have fallen by the wayside. First (for Maggie), to have more discipline in all areas of life, in particular with her sleep schedule. Second, to have bragging rights. Third, to lucid dream and drop into REM cycles more quickly.

The basic idea is as follows. For mental functions, your body needs REM sleep. A REM cycle lasts around 20 min and occurs once every 90 min sleep cycle. The idea behind sleeping polyphasically is to deprive your body of REM sleep long enough so that you train yourself to drop immediately into REM within short naps. We are trying a modified Uberman cycle. Maggie and I are starting with eight - 30 min evenly spaced naps occuring at 12am, 3am, 6am, 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 6pm, and 9pm. Eventually, we hope to cut back to a more rigid Uberman schedule of 6 naps.

Our goal is to last 2 weeks, which is really only barely long enough to start enjoying the benefits of this new sleep cycle, but we are both traveling extensively after that point. From our reading of other peoples experiences, the first 3-10 days people are quite loopy, groggy, and as one person so eloquently put it "feel like a bus is perpetually running you over". However once over the hump, people report feeling more alert, healthy, and productive. Grapes are supposedly an essential food source, providing many nutrients that you need on this sleep-deprived schedule. 

We will update this blog at least once daily, probably at some random time in the middle of the night to prove that we are really doing this. For those at the CfA, feel free to stop by in the middle of the day (not between 12 and 12:30 or 3 and 3:30) to check in on our mental state. Early today in preparation we scoped out 4 beds and a shower in Perkins. Amazing.

- Daily Summary -

Health: So far so good. Not too surprising.

Energy Levels: Surprisingly good considering it's 5:02 a.m.

Daily Functioning: Normal.

Academic Performance: Normal.

Social Performance: We are hanging out and having a blast. To Nick and Paul: you are missing out....

Don't forget to take our poll on the homepage of this blog!

References (check out blog guy, who's other topics are equally fascinating):

Main blog guy, Steve Pavlina. He lasted 4.5 months and took around 5-7 days to adjust: 

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/

Other interesting blogs:

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/15/103358/720

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Everyman%20Sleep%20Schedule

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=892542&lastnode_id=124