What if I told you that you could sleep less without feeling more tired? Not only sleep a little less, but a lot less - up to five hours less a day by taking short naps every few hours. Imagine what you could do with that time! Start a new hobby, work an extra job, spend more time with your family, etc. At this point I probably sound like a late-night infomercial, but that is the basic premise behind polyphasic sleep. I would say that it’s a highly controversial subject, but the medical community seems to ignore and dismiss it (you can’t really have controversy if one side doesn’t see an issue). For something so potentially beneficial and so (relatively) simple to test, it’s shocking that there has been no widespread studies and the majority of “data” out there is anecdotal evidence presented by those who have tried it.
What is Polyphasic Sleep
Polyphasic sleep is the practice of breaking up your sleep into more than one session in any 24 hour period. In contrast, the standard “8 hours” is considered “monophasic” sleep because you only sleep once per 24 hours. In general, when people mention polyphasic sleep it usually refers to more than two sleep sessions - sleeping twice in any 24 hour period is usually referred to “biphasic”.
Breaking up your sleep is sometimes considered OK by the medical community, as long as you still achieve the same amount of total sleep. According to the Wikipedia article on Polyphasic Sleep, the military uses polyphasic sleep to help soldiers get enough sleep around their demanding schedule:
An Air Force report states: “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).”
Now, the controversy comes in when people try to adapt something called Uberman sleep, an extreme form of polyphasic sleeping where you nap approximately 20 minutes every four hours (when you say “polyphasic sleep” most people immediately think of Uberman). The idea behind Uberman is that you “trick” yourself into falling directly into Stage 5 REM sleep, the most beneficial sleep, reducing your sleep cycle from 100 minutes to 20 and therefore reducing the time you sleep in a day from around 500 minutes down to as low as 120 minutes. Adding to the folklore and mystique of Uberman is that it is reported that several famous historical figures like Leonardo da Vinci, Napoleon, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and Winston Churchill have slept on Uberman-like sleep schedules (although proof of this is scant at best).
Potential Benefits
Aside to the obvious benefit of increased free time, the following benefits have been reported:
- More energy
- Reduced drowsiness
- Ability to remember your dreams
- Ability to wake up automatically
- More endurance during heavy physical work
Potential Risks
Most sleep experts still look at polyphasic sleep as a sleep disorder:
It used to be thought by scientists that REM is the main reason we sleep and that REM is largely responsible for the mental rejuvenation effects. Scientists no longer believe this. Humans typically (normal pattern) get their daily sleep in one long stetch (go to bed at night; get up in the morning), while other mammals are usually practice polyphasic sleep patterns. This pattern may have evolved in an attempt to remain vigilant against predators.
There is not much scientific evidence to support the polyphasic sleep theory. Sleep researchers do not work in this field, and the medical establishment, including sleep specialists, do not recommend this technique.
However, different people vary widely in their sleep needs, and there are anecdotes of geniuses such as Leonardo Da Vince and Thomas Edison sleeping in a polyphasic pattern. This has led to some people thinking they can increase their productivity by employing polyphasic sleep.
In a recent issue of Men’s Health Magazine, a writer attempted (unsuccessfully) to adapt to the Uberman sleep schedule. Despite trying, he was unable to find any doctors who would really vouch for polyphasic sleep. Christopher Winter, M.D., a board-certified sleep-medicine specialist and the medical director of the Sleep Medicine Center at Martha Jefferson Hospital in Charlottesville, Virginia, had the following to say:
All kinds of things could happen to individuals who are sleep deprived. Changes in blood pressure, heart rate, hormones, glucose metabolism, temperature regulation, and appetite can be seen quite quickly. The sleepless individual is probably cold [due to increased energy expenditure], so hypothermia could be an eventual cause of death. So could catabolism — that is, an increased metabolic rate and protein breakdown — and susceptibility to disease from a weakened immune system.
In sum: you’ll have a very hard time finding anyone in the medical community who will even listen to the argument that an Uberman sleep schedule can be healthy.
Who Has Tried It?
The information available is almost all personal case-studies, the most famous (and most successful) being personal productivity blogger Steve Pavlina’s almost 6 months of practicing an Uberman sleep schedule. He eventually stopped not for health reasons or stress, but because the rest of the world sleeps on a monophasic schedule:
The #1 reason I decided to call it quits is simply that the rest of the world is monophasic. If most of the world was polyphasic, I probably would have stuck with it. Obviously when you go polyphasic, you fall out of sync with the way other people live. You’re awake most of the night while everyone is asleep. If you sleep like most people, then the hours you’ll gain from polyphasic sleep will come in the middle of the night. And as I gradually learned, nighttime hours are not the same as daytime hours when you live in a monophasic world.
Tastefully Driven Forum user “Timmy” posted about his failed attempt to adapt to a Uberman sleep schedule, which ultimately is what gave me the idea for this article. If you Google polyphasic sleep you’ll find hundreds of others who have tried with minimal success to adapt to some form of a polyphasic sleep schedule.
So is there ANYONE in the medical community who supports polyphasic sleep? It’s scarce, but there are a few. Most notably, sleep researcher Sara Mednick, Ph.D., has posted about Uberman on her blog:
This practice rests upon one important hypothesis that our biological rhythms are adaptable. This means that we can train our internal mechanisms not only when to sleep and wake, but also when to get hungry, have energy for exercise, perform mental activities. Inferred in this hypothesis is that we have the power to regulate our mood, metabolism, core body temperature, endocrine and stress response, basically everything inside this container of flesh we call home. Truly an Uberman feat!
There is evidence in favor of this hypothesis from studies of humans and other animals. During the summer season in the northern latitudes, millions of people every year acclimate to long lit days without any sign of deterioration to the aforementioned internal mechanisms. During periods of migration, birds will travel for days apparently without the need for sleep. Our 24/7 culture has hospital staff, plant workers, and drivers of goods toiling into the wee hours. These members of society are in fact not living as long, more often infirm, and getting into more accidents than their 9-to-5 working counterparts. But the fact is that they ARE doing it.
Should You Try It
Should you try polyphasic sleep? If you are a new mother or work odd hours, getting your ~8 hours in several different sessions might be the best way to ensure you don’t deprive yourself of sleep. Should you try an Uberman’s sleep schedule? At this point in time, all I can say is proceed at your own risk. No one really knows or understands the long term detriments that such a sleep schedule can cause, so proceed with caution. Even those who have tried it admit that they are unsure if they are doing serious long term damage or not.
The other factor in all of this is whether or not your lifestyle will allow for polyphasic sleep. Your life and your job need to be extremely flexible to allow for sleep every four hours. For most, this factor alone will eliminate them from contention. IF you do attempt an Uberman schedule, you might want to try easing yourself into it with a slightly reduced biphasic sleep schedule similar to the one Devin Reams reportedly does.
We Need More From the Medical Community
The big question I have is why hasn’t the medical community studied polyphasic sleep more? Think of all of the wacky drugs and crazy diets that get funding for studies at all of the labs and universities around the world, yet no one can do a large scale study on Uberman? To truly test Uberman there needs to be a third party monitoring the exact amount of sleep, what stage of sleep (can you really “trick” your brain into REM sleep?), and the impact of Uberman on cognitive functioning, metabolism, stress, blood pressure, happiness, and anything else critical to a long and healthy life. Until that happens it’s impossible to say whether or not extreme polyphasic sleep schedules like Uberman are healthy.
08.15.2008 | Filed under: Uncategorized
