The physical downside to polyphasic sleep.

June 28, 2009 11:29 PM

I have been tossing around the concept of polyphasic sleeping for years now and the only thing that is stopping me from converting is this question. How would this affect my body? There seems to be no real mention on articles covering polyphasics of how this affects your body. Plenty say that you get enough sleep for your mind, although as I would like to form my own opinion on the mind part, my issue is that they are quick to say that the other "Five something" hours of non REM sleep are essentially wasted. My hypothesis is that you need these hours of downtime for your body itself to regenerate. If my hypothesis is correct is there any ways to ensure a rest like state for my body while in a waking cycle during full on uberman style polyphasics? Related Link

As I'm not really interested in the affect this has on the mind, as there's plenty of reading material on such, I would hope to keep the answers mainly body centric, so that I get lots of good answers and strategies for my attempt.

This one falls under science and nature category as well but I can only choose one.

posted by Chamunks to health & fitness (8 comments total)

A side question, I would be interested in how you will deal with the other problem of polyphasic sleep, which is this: how will you cope with the whole world not being on polyphasic sleep?
posted by devnull at 11:48 PM on June 28 [2 favorites has favorites]

I'm currently a nights worker who is hoping to retain my decent job whilst also regaining my days.

But besides bringing a extremely compact sleep mask and set of earplugs and some kindof personal body alarm or variant. I cant see too many troubles as long as you plan ahead somewhat. Just be at home whenever you cant borrow a mattress or similar. Most people wont even notice you missing if your only taking 20-30 minute naps every handfull of hours.

I would imagine an mp3 player with Noise canceling earbuds with a track thats simply white noise would block out most of the world for your nap than gently plays a wake up sound to get you to snap out of it.
posted by Chamunks at 11:58 PM on June 28

I personally was not affected much (tried it for about a year, three years ago). But most people I know who tried it complained about their immune system being vulnerable, or complained of vague being-sick-type symptoms.

The only other thing I can think of is stomach distress, which I had while adjusting and have to this day when I stay up for long (~36 hour) stretches of time. My vague explanation is that your stomach is getting used to a more constant influx of food, or something.

Worth noting: I switched to being vegan about 6 months before my run at polyphasic, and since that switch I haven't ever gotten sick. So maybe there's some immune system interaction there, since most of my friends who tried it (and complained about immune system problems) were not vegan. But this might just be muddling together various data that shouldn't actually be muddled. *Shrug*.
posted by Jacen Solo at 12:41 AM on June 29

I can't remember if he goes into the physical effects specifically, but Steve Pavlina's blog entries on trying a polyphasic sleep cycle go into a lot of detail that might be helpful.

(I appreciate you're asking for body-specific reading, and I'm sorry I can't remember enough detail to know how relevant that link is.)
posted by insipidia at 2:52 AM on June 29

My antique knowledge on the body and sleep holds that your heart needs the break. Just in that case that suggests an avenue of investigation.
posted by Goofyy at 3:50 AM on June 29

Anyone who has children has survived at least part of their life as a polyphasic sleeper. Since we all have parents, and some of those parents lived well into their 90's. Aside from being freaked out as a first-time parent, I had very little problem transitioning into this when suddenly presented with my daughter. My performance was not terribly damaged. She survived.

Now on that same front and I'm no evolutionary biologist, but there is clearly some reason why we move as we age in the first months of life from sleeping in irregular bursts into a diurnal, "sleep-through-the-night" pattern. Having been there with my daughter, I don't believe it is a social construct, we never pushed her sleep patterns, rather she lead us and she (or rather her body) determined when she would transition to the overnight mode (with ever diminishing mid-day naps). More than observation bias, this seems to be the norm for chldren to transition into overnight sleep.
posted by Pollomacho at 5:51 AM on June 29

but there is clearly some reason why we move as we age in the first months of life from sleeping in irregular bursts into a diurnal, "sleep-through-the-night" pattern.

I think the reason has more to do with the industrial revolution than with evolutionary biology. Polyphasic is extreme, but it seems that segmented sleep has been the norm for most humans in most of human history, as it remains in some parts of the world.
posted by jeb at 6:01 AM on June 29

Speaking of which, I found that after my year of polyphasic sleep, I can now create my own sleep schedule at-will, with no regard for circadian rhythms. (I can usually fall asleep on demand; I can usually wake up after any desired length of time; I can stay up for much longer stretches...) So that might count.
posted by Jacen Solo at 8:40 AM on June 29