I’m really glad we’re having this discussion, as it’s causing me to hash out my thoughts in more detail and research more than I would have if I were merely writing a note to myself. I broke this up into two comments.
While that’s certainly claimed by some polyphasic sleep advocates there are others who read a bit and who therefore don’t make that false claim and still advocate polyphasic sleep.
Even more, those people who do make the claim don’t know that they claim something that in conflict with the academic literature on sleep. That’s quite different from the case of homeopathy where the conflict is obvious.
While perhaps excusable, I don’t think the ignorance of some short polyphasic sleep proponents is a point in their favor.
There are many proponents of short polyphasic sleep who are aware that more than REM is necessary. Take the Polyphasic Society as an example. They make the more argument that polyphasic sleep is more efficient because it reduces time spent in light sleep, but maintains time spent in deep and REM sleep (they even mention the K-complex in stage 2 sleep!). At first, this struck me as plausible, but I see that Stampi has something to say on the subject of sleep architecture on a short polyphasic schedule (p. 172-173):
Summarizing what was presented in this review, it appears that the organization of sleep within a nap under polyphasic schedules is quite different from that occurring in monophasic nocturnal sleep. Naps are indeed “not miniatures of the normal 8-h sleep pattern” (Weitzman et al., 1974), and only rarely are they replicas of the first part of anormal nightly uninterrupted sleep. For example, REM sleep onset episodes are quite frequent during polyphasic schedules, and it is interesting to note that REM sleep and SWS appear to be mutually exclusive under such conditions: they rarely occur together during short naps. Despite sleep architecture being remarkably different, long-duration studies indicated that all sleep stages (and not just SWS) appear to play an important functional role under these sleep reduction patterns. Indeed, after the initial adaptation period in which daily amounts of all stages but SWS tend to be reduced in amount, sleep percentages become remarkably similar to baseline conditions.
The claim that short polyphasic schedules reduce light sleep but don’t reduce deep sleep (SWS) and REM is false. And this book isn’t unknown among polyphasic sleep proponents. I’m having a hard time believing that they didn’t read it, but it seems they have not. At this point, I don’t know of any mechanism by which short polyphasic sleep could work, but I’d accept that it works if I saw empirical evidence suggesting so.
I am somewhat floored by this, to be honest. I want to note that I haven’t read Stampi’s book in much detail due to time constraints, but I’m not finding anything other than this conclusion in there. For those with the book, please point out if I’ve highlighted an opportunistic passage, as I am not trying to cherry pick; I just have not read the book as fully as I’d like.
I’ll detail a few other major problems with one other claim the Polyphasic Society makes. I have not verified all of their other claims, but I became aware of this when investigating long sleep. They cite a study that suggests people who sleep less live longer. There are a number of such studies, and they appear to be confounded by depression and low socioeconomic status. I have not read the study I just cited beyond the abstract, but I should now. This study was not difficult to find, and I’m disappointed that the Polyphasic Society website did not put the effort in to think or find alternative explanations. There also is the issue, as you’ve suggested at Stack Exchange, that correlation does not make causation; simply changing your own sleep duration may not actually change your longevity. Perhaps people who are naturally predisposed to sleep longer would reduce their longevity if they slept less. That certainly would make sense as short sleep is associated with many health problems. For some reason the Polyphasic Society forgot to mention those studies.
If you know any short polyphasic sleep proponents who make better justified claims on average, I’d be interested in seeing them, as this is the best I’ve seen.
While perhaps excusable, I don’t think the ignorance of some short polyphasic sleep proponents is a point in their favor.
There are two distinct questions:
1) How does it come that a bunch of rationalist people advocate polyphasic sleep?
2) Does polyphasic sleep work?
Both are interesting questions.
Stampi seems to recognize that falling asleep fast is difficult if you are well rested and don’t have the help of your circadian drive, as well as the very real effect of sleep inertia.
I think falling asleep fast is a learned skill. It’s just about switching from one mental state into another. I do think that doable to build anchors in hypnosis that instantly allow people to switch off consciousness and go into a state similar to stage 1 or stage 2 sleep.
There are people who can fall asleep in an act of will and wakeup at a predestined time with +-5 minutes whether it’s 3 or 7 hours after getting to sleep.
Don’t underrate the effect that determined decisions can make. Yes, your average Westerner might need to be tired to fall asleep but that’s simply because he’s not much in control over what his brain is doing.
If you know any short polyphasic sleep proponents who make better justified claims on average, I’d be interested in seeing them, as this is the best I’ve seen.
I would be surprised is the leverage research people who attempted polyphasic sleep think all naps during polyphasic sleep are completely REM and that’s a good thing.
I also don’t think that puredoxyk believes it these days.
Perhaps people who are naturally predisposed to sleep longer would reduce their longevity if they slept less.
I don’t like the word “naturally” in this context. Part of sleep is regenerating the body. If someone has a depression that puts stress on the body. It then makes sense that the body needs more time in regeneration mode.
There a claim where I don’t know whether it’s true, that switching from a normal diet to a vegetarian diet reduces sleep needs by roughly 30 minutes. It’s certainly possible that a body that doesn’t has to digest animal protein requires less protein.
I also want to iterate, that it might be a bad idea to think of sleep needs as a one dimensional thing.
The amount of time you sleep without an alarm clock is not the same thing as the amount of sleep that you need to not feel tired. I don’t think either of those is the amount of time you need to not have reduced performance on reaction time test. Memory consolidation is a fourth thing.
It’s certainly possible that there are interventions that solve most dimensions that are immediately but that don’t solve dimensions of sleep needs that aren’t well visible.
I do have experience with mostly exchanging a night of sleep for meditation (I can’t say whether stage 1⁄2 sleep occured, but no REM or deep sleep).
On the one hand it regenerated energy but I still felt tired.
I know that I wake up after fewer hours if I spent a night dancing Salsa and being really in flow then when I’m not in flow while dancing.
I think falling asleep fast is a learned skill. It’s just about switching from one mental state into another. I do think that doable to build anchors in hypnosis that instantly allow people to switch off consciousness and go into a state similar to stage 1 or stage 2 sleep.
There are people who can fall asleep in an act of will and wakeup at a predestined time with +-5 minutes whether it’s 3 or 7 hours after getting to sleep.
Don’t underrate the effect that determined decisions can make. Yes, your average Westerner might need to be tired to fall asleep but that’s simply because he’s not much in control over what his brain is doing.
Do you have any more information about this ability and how one can develop it? I’m interested in trying the same in reverse (i.e., making myself wake up faster).
Do you have any more information about this ability and how one can develop it? I’m interested in trying the same in reverse (i.e., making myself wake up faster).
What do you mean with “wake up faster”? Reducing the amount of time between waking up and getting out of bed? That’s a different issue than waking up at a predefined point in time.
As far as I understand a good way to go about it is to have a specific routine of getting up out of bed, that you do the same way every time. You shouldn’t have to think while in bed about whether you first dress yourself or first put toast into the toaster. The routine should be clear.
Steve Pavlina suggests doing dry practicing of the routine. When you have some time at the weekend you train the routine. You lay down in bed with an alarm clock that rings after 15 minutes and then you do your first 5 minutes of the morning routine. You do that a bunch of time to train automatic conditioning.
I have only anecdotal evidence for that method working and it sounds straightforward and low risk to me.
You might also look at motivation issues. If you aren’t motivated to get up to do something, you will have a harder time.
Sleep deprivation can also make it harder to get up. Personally for me my first priority is that my body has the time to do it’s regeneration processes. I think it makes more sense to first fix the needs of the body.
As far as developing the skill to wake up at a specific period of time, that more complicated. There’s some evidence that well educated people have a harder time. It takes interacting with your intuition.
I have encountered normal people without much training having the ability.
Self hypnosis is one way to get there, but I have no idea what kind of time investment it would be to learn the skill to a sufficient degree.
Ah, I was unclear. By “wake up” I mean “feel fully alert”. I do not have much difficulty getting out of bed. And I do find the idea of waking up at a prescribe time to be interesting and perhaps useful for myself. I’ll investigate the latter further.
I have a morning routine, but the issue is that I often don’t feel fully alert at the end of it. This is likely due to inadequate sleep duration and/or delayed sleep phase disorder, and it may be difficult to use conditioning to counteract either effect.
I have a morning routine, but the issue is that I often don’t feel fully alert at the end of it. This is likely due to inadequate sleep duration and/or delayed sleep phase disorder
In that case the mainstream response would be: Go to bed earlier so that you get enough sleep.
The second question would be: Do you do enough sports? Have you tried doing sports in your morning routine? Showering both warm and cold would be options.
Getting more sleep is easier said than done in my case. I’m working on it. I suspect I have a mild case of delayed sleep phase disorder, so it’s not as simple as going to bed earlier. If I did sleep then, it’s not likely to be very restorative. Instead, I’m going to try starting sleeping at a later time this fall and see if that helps.
In terms of physical activity, I commute by bike and run. I’m probably at the 95th percentile or higher in terms of duration of moderate or high intensity physical activity. I do think this helps, but it does not help enough. Not sure showering has ever made much of a difference either way.
I’m really glad we’re having this discussion, as it’s causing me to hash out my thoughts in more detail and research more than I would have if I were merely writing a note to myself. I broke this up into two comments.
While perhaps excusable, I don’t think the ignorance of some short polyphasic sleep proponents is a point in their favor.
There are many proponents of short polyphasic sleep who are aware that more than REM is necessary. Take the Polyphasic Society as an example. They make the more argument that polyphasic sleep is more efficient because it reduces time spent in light sleep, but maintains time spent in deep and REM sleep (they even mention the K-complex in stage 2 sleep!). At first, this struck me as plausible, but I see that Stampi has something to say on the subject of sleep architecture on a short polyphasic schedule (p. 172-173):
The claim that short polyphasic schedules reduce light sleep but don’t reduce deep sleep (SWS) and REM is false. And this book isn’t unknown among polyphasic sleep proponents. I’m having a hard time believing that they didn’t read it, but it seems they have not. At this point, I don’t know of any mechanism by which short polyphasic sleep could work, but I’d accept that it works if I saw empirical evidence suggesting so.
I am somewhat floored by this, to be honest. I want to note that I haven’t read Stampi’s book in much detail due to time constraints, but I’m not finding anything other than this conclusion in there. For those with the book, please point out if I’ve highlighted an opportunistic passage, as I am not trying to cherry pick; I just have not read the book as fully as I’d like.
I’ll detail a few other major problems with one other claim the Polyphasic Society makes. I have not verified all of their other claims, but I became aware of this when investigating long sleep. They cite a study that suggests people who sleep less live longer. There are a number of such studies, and they appear to be confounded by depression and low socioeconomic status. I have not read the study I just cited beyond the abstract, but I should now. This study was not difficult to find, and I’m disappointed that the Polyphasic Society website did not put the effort in to think or find alternative explanations. There also is the issue, as you’ve suggested at Stack Exchange, that correlation does not make causation; simply changing your own sleep duration may not actually change your longevity. Perhaps people who are naturally predisposed to sleep longer would reduce their longevity if they slept less. That certainly would make sense as short sleep is associated with many health problems. For some reason the Polyphasic Society forgot to mention those studies.
If you know any short polyphasic sleep proponents who make better justified claims on average, I’d be interested in seeing them, as this is the best I’ve seen.
Continue to part 2 of this post.
There are two distinct questions:
1) How does it come that a bunch of rationalist people advocate polyphasic sleep? 2) Does polyphasic sleep work?
Both are interesting questions.
I think falling asleep fast is a learned skill. It’s just about switching from one mental state into another. I do think that doable to build anchors in hypnosis that instantly allow people to switch off consciousness and go into a state similar to stage 1 or stage 2 sleep.
There are people who can fall asleep in an act of will and wakeup at a predestined time with +-5 minutes whether it’s 3 or 7 hours after getting to sleep.
Don’t underrate the effect that determined decisions can make. Yes, your average Westerner might need to be tired to fall asleep but that’s simply because he’s not much in control over what his brain is doing.
I would be surprised is the leverage research people who attempted polyphasic sleep think all naps during polyphasic sleep are completely REM and that’s a good thing.
I also don’t think that puredoxyk believes it these days.
I don’t like the word “naturally” in this context. Part of sleep is regenerating the body. If someone has a depression that puts stress on the body. It then makes sense that the body needs more time in regeneration mode.
There a claim where I don’t know whether it’s true, that switching from a normal diet to a vegetarian diet reduces sleep needs by roughly 30 minutes. It’s certainly possible that a body that doesn’t has to digest animal protein requires less protein.
I also want to iterate, that it might be a bad idea to think of sleep needs as a one dimensional thing. The amount of time you sleep without an alarm clock is not the same thing as the amount of sleep that you need to not feel tired. I don’t think either of those is the amount of time you need to not have reduced performance on reaction time test. Memory consolidation is a fourth thing.
It’s certainly possible that there are interventions that solve most dimensions that are immediately but that don’t solve dimensions of sleep needs that aren’t well visible.
I do have experience with mostly exchanging a night of sleep for meditation (I can’t say whether stage 1⁄2 sleep occured, but no REM or deep sleep).
On the one hand it regenerated energy but I still felt tired.
I know that I wake up after fewer hours if I spent a night dancing Salsa and being really in flow then when I’m not in flow while dancing.
Do you have any more information about this ability and how one can develop it? I’m interested in trying the same in reverse (i.e., making myself wake up faster).
What do you mean with “wake up faster”? Reducing the amount of time between waking up and getting out of bed? That’s a different issue than waking up at a predefined point in time.
As far as I understand a good way to go about it is to have a specific routine of getting up out of bed, that you do the same way every time. You shouldn’t have to think while in bed about whether you first dress yourself or first put toast into the toaster. The routine should be clear.
Steve Pavlina suggests doing dry practicing of the routine. When you have some time at the weekend you train the routine. You lay down in bed with an alarm clock that rings after 15 minutes and then you do your first 5 minutes of the morning routine. You do that a bunch of time to train automatic conditioning.
I have only anecdotal evidence for that method working and it sounds straightforward and low risk to me.
You might also look at motivation issues. If you aren’t motivated to get up to do something, you will have a harder time.
Sleep deprivation can also make it harder to get up. Personally for me my first priority is that my body has the time to do it’s regeneration processes. I think it makes more sense to first fix the needs of the body.
As far as developing the skill to wake up at a specific period of time, that more complicated. There’s some evidence that well educated people have a harder time. It takes interacting with your intuition. I have encountered normal people without much training having the ability.
Self hypnosis is one way to get there, but I have no idea what kind of time investment it would be to learn the skill to a sufficient degree.
Ah, I was unclear. By “wake up” I mean “feel fully alert”. I do not have much difficulty getting out of bed. And I do find the idea of waking up at a prescribe time to be interesting and perhaps useful for myself. I’ll investigate the latter further.
I have a morning routine, but the issue is that I often don’t feel fully alert at the end of it. This is likely due to inadequate sleep duration and/or delayed sleep phase disorder, and it may be difficult to use conditioning to counteract either effect.
In that case the mainstream response would be: Go to bed earlier so that you get enough sleep.
The second question would be: Do you do enough sports? Have you tried doing sports in your morning routine? Showering both warm and cold would be options.
Getting more sleep is easier said than done in my case. I’m working on it. I suspect I have a mild case of delayed sleep phase disorder, so it’s not as simple as going to bed earlier. If I did sleep then, it’s not likely to be very restorative. Instead, I’m going to try starting sleeping at a later time this fall and see if that helps.
In terms of physical activity, I commute by bike and run. I’m probably at the 95th percentile or higher in terms of duration of moderate or high intensity physical activity. I do think this helps, but it does not help enough. Not sure showering has ever made much of a difference either way.
There are three things that you could experiment with before going to sleep:
1) Progressive relaxation/hypnosis MP3 to induce sleep in an healthy way.
2) Some form of breathing meditation.
3) Feldenkrais exercises right before going to sleep (Book: Awareness through Movement—Moshé Feldenkrais)