The beginnings of a sleep experiment

A common problem that I, as well as most college students face all the time, is not having enough time to do everything that you wish you could- socialize, eat, write that essay, read that book, and in my case, make that movie. And the thing that we like to devote the least time to, sleep. But sleep is pretty much inescapable. Sure we try to battle off the symptoms of drowsiness with red bulls, late night movies and adrenaline rushes, but ultimately, we will not be happy, or healthy for that matter, if we aren't sleeping properly.

My boyfriend, Damon, recently began doing research about healthy sleeping patterns. In the process he began to become very attracted to the idea of polyphasic sleep. Polyphasic sleep, I would soon learn, is a sleep pattern consisting of taking 6 20-30 minute naps each day, on intervals of about 4 hours. This pattern is in opposition to the normal monophasic pattern, which is getting all of our day's worth of sleep in one 8 hour session. Polyphasic sleep has been utilized by various politicians and artists who (though perhaps a little eccentric and possibly insane) were all great geniuses who were masters at partitioning their time. When you do the math you'll see why. If you are taking 6 20-30 minute naps every day, in total you are only sleeping 2-3 hours. Unhealthy? Actally, no. If you got two hours of sleep in one chunk every night, than yes, this is very unhealthy. But breaking it up into chunks and getting sleep in small portions every time your body needs it is an entirely different matter. In fact, it has been said that polyphasic sleep is one of the healthiest sleep patterns out there. . If you think about it, it makes sense. Polyphasic sleep patterns are common in both babies and in animals in nature. Furthermore, polyphasic sleep trains your brain to enter REM sleep (the most important phase of sleep, the one in which you dream) as soon as you begin your nap. The idea began to seem more appealing to both Damon and I. Healthy sleep, more frequent dreaming, and more time to do things in waking hours? What reason is there not to try it? Plus, as we are both film students, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to make a documentary about something that the general population has never heard about.

So, we began doing more research. Apparently sleeping habits are very difficult to break. The first few days are the hardest in changing your routine, because the body is very bad at falling asleep quickly enough to have naps with a sufficient amount of REM sleep, and of course your monophasic tendencies will rebel against the change. We decided that our nap times would be 9am, 1pm, 5pm, 10pm, 2am, and 6am. It is very important when training your body into polyphasic sleep to stick to a very specific schedule, and make sure you don't oversleep on your naps. It is also very important that you eat more than you normally do when you begin polyphasic sleep. Because you are awake more hours you need more sustenance and nutrients to sustain you and help keep up your energy. You also, of course, have to make sure that you are mentally active at all time in order to stave off drowsiness.

Last night we began our first 24 hour napping cycle. We took our first nap at 10pm, and right off the bat we went off schedule. We slept right through the alarm I had set for 10:30 and woke up at about 12:15. And when we awoke we were very drowsy. It took about a half hour for me to feel fully awake again. Then, when we took the 2am nap, I wasn't feeling very sleepy. It look me about 15 minutes to fall asleep and so I woke up from it with very little rest. I got hungry in the middle of the night and ate a small snack and tried to drink a lot of water. When we took our 6am nap we, again, overslept, waking up with a start at about 7:10. Hopefully the next 12 hours of napping go better. It will be impossible for us to adjust to a new sleeping schedule if we do not stick to our commitments and to the plan. Right now I feel a little sleepy, a little tired, and a little hungry, but overall I'm doing fine. Tonight will be a lot tougher I think. I'll continue to update this blog as things occur. I guess we'll see how the next 24 hours go!