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Has anyone tried biphasic sleep?
Started by tco
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I sleep pretty good for 4 or 5 hours and then my cat wakes me up, in the middle of the night, every bloody night. I feed her, admonish her, and then collapse back on my bed, have odd thoughts, and then go back to sleep, usually have very weird dreams after the cat episode, often watching a tsuami approaching, in a beach cabin, and the waves are 100 feet high, and as the wave approaches, I wonder if the glass windows in the cabin will hold when the wave hits. Last night the windows did not break and the water receded, and I took a deep breathe and woke up. Bloody cat.
I read through this guy's blog a long time ago documenting his experience with polyphasic sleep and thought it sounded extremely cool. Before school started, I thought I may give it a try. After I found out how variable our schedule was, there's no way it would work. This guy's experience was positive - lots of extra waking hours, etc - but if he missed a scheduled nap, he crashed hard and had to ease back into the schedule. He really liked it but ultimately quit because it was so hard to wrap daily life around the "mandatory" nap schedule.
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True, but I don't even think it could work in a med student's life.
Well, I spent an entire summer on Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion sleep schedule, which entailed sleeping 30 minutes every 6 hours. I did 12a, 6a, 12p, 6p.
For the bulk of the summer, I had a 9-5 type job, and spent 30 minutes of my 12p-1p lunch break sleeping in my car. It worked just fine.
That said, transitioning to any polyphasic sleep schedule requires a great deal of fortitude, as it is essentially minor self-imposed torture. I recommend having a lot of things to do, as it is (or was for me) really hard to fill 22 hours a day for weeks on end.
I have read that blog too. I tried polyphasic sleep about a year ago, but couldn't maintain it because of my schedule. There is just no way around it. Assuming that it is not too weird to go to your car to sleep during the day, you have to assume that you are actually going to be comfortable. Most of the time your car is either going to be too hot or too cold...
So when the polyphasic failed, I tried biphasic and it worked fine; however, I did not gain that much extra time during the day. With biphasic you still sleep like 5-6 hours a day. This could be great if you sleep 8 or more hours a day, but for me this was the same as one block of sleep. What I usually do is a mixed schedule - I might not sleep one night, sleep one hour the next night, and then sleep as long as 8 hours the third night, but often shorter. This way I only stay up when I have extra things to take care of and not during a special set-time. The point of sleeping less is to be more productive. If you're not because you have to stay up during times when you can't do much, then this defeats the purpose. Keep this in mind.
I must say that on the days that I go to the gym in the evening where I do a lot of sprinting, I am pretty tired by 12am and will easily sleep 6-7 hours. It just depends on your day as well. I have found that if you are spending a lot of time solving tough problems, such as physics, you again get unusually tired.
By the way, if you do these sleep experiments you'll start having vivid dreams about your daily activities. I often dream about everything I see, write, and study the given night. It's almost like you are witnessing your own memory consolidation/defragmentation. Since I often post late at night on SDN, once I also had a dream about an SDN thread! In the morning I was trying to figure out what was real and what wasn't. I even dreamt about Sotomayor confirmation and for an entire afternoon thought that she was already confirmed until I read the google news! So this stuff is really messing with your head. On one hand we have the clinical brain physically consolidating your memories. But on the other hand you have this extra layer of Freudian subconsciousness where your brain not only replays real events, but also modifies them according to your wishes or fears.
So when the polyphasic failed, I tried biphasic and it worked fine; however, I did not gain that much extra time during the day. With biphasic you still sleep like 5-6 hours a day. This could be great if you sleep 8 or more hours a day, but for me this was the same as one block of sleep. What I usually do is a mixed schedule - I might not sleep one night, sleep one hour the next night, and then sleep as long as 8 hours the third night, but often shorter. This way I only stay up when I have extra things to take care of and not during a special set-time. The point of sleeping less is to be more productive. If you're not because you have to stay up during times when you can't do much, then this defeats the purpose. Keep this in mind.
I must say that on the days that I go to the gym in the evening where I do a lot of sprinting, I am pretty tired by 12am and will easily sleep 6-7 hours. It just depends on your day as well. I have found that if you are spending a lot of time solving tough problems, such as physics, you again get unusually tired.
By the way, if you do these sleep experiments you'll start having vivid dreams about your daily activities. I often dream about everything I see, write, and study the given night. It's almost like you are witnessing your own memory consolidation/defragmentation. Since I often post late at night on SDN, once I also had a dream about an SDN thread! In the morning I was trying to figure out what was real and what wasn't. I even dreamt about Sotomayor confirmation and for an entire afternoon thought that she was already confirmed until I read the google news! So this stuff is really messing with your head. On one hand we have the clinical brain physically consolidating your memories. But on the other hand you have this extra layer of Freudian subconsciousness where your brain not only replays real events, but also modifies them according to your wishes or fears.
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I tried it and I woke up in a sack floating in the East River.
Is there an internet abbreviation for a slow clap? All I can say is thank you for that one.
Yeah, that works fine unless you are at work as a med student/resident for 2 of those and cutting it close with a third.
Lunch break? What's that? I'm lucky to pee during my work day.
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Very true. However, that kind of sleeping is usually the nodding-off kind, and you probably don't enter REM sleep at all.
Biphasic sleep sounds a bit like what some of us do third year.
The 30 hour workday doesn't scare me. Being yelled at doesn't scare me. Knowing the subjective grades you get in rotations have a huge impact on your future doesn't scare me.
But as someone who needs to pee constantly due to a small bladder and a tendency to drink too much water, I'm now scared of 3rd year rotations.
Don't worry, you won't have time to drink water. Plus, you won't be allowed to have it (no food, drink at the nurses' stations or in patient rooms).
During college when I played baseball for a few months during preseason I would sleep twice during the day for about 4 hours. I would sleep from 12am to 5am (then have indoor early morning practice), go to class from 8-2, sleep from 3-7. repeat.
It kind of sucked...I wouldnt recommend it for med school. In med school I sleep from 1am to 7am for the most part.
It kind of sucked...I wouldnt recommend it for med school. In med school I sleep from 1am to 7am for the most part.
