
Alternate Sleep Cycles - googletron
http://www.highexistence.com/alternate-sleep-cycles/
======
furyg3
I really think people need to change their perspective on sleep. People wake
up, do thing A,B,C,D,E ... "shit... I really wanted to do F-J today too, but I
have to sleep!"

Sleep is not the enemy. Sleep is fantastic.

I'm no expert on sleep in general, but a good nights sleep makes _me_ feel
great upon waking up (usually for the rest of the day). I can remember things
from the day before with much more clarity and recall, giving me a tremendous
edge over those who didn't. Plus, I'm pretty sure it feels fantastic nearly
the whole time I'm doing it... I just happen to be unconscious for that part.
:) It certainly must be better than a good deal of the things I do while I'm
awake.

A close relative of mine is on the uberman cycle. He's narcoleptic. He sleeps
nearly instantly upon his head hitting the pillow (seconds, not minutes) and
wakes up 15-20 minutes later, unable to continue sleeping. It's _literally_ a
nightmare, not only because the world is 'monophasic', but also because he's
in a fog, can't focus/falls asleep when not moving (e.g. driving a car), and
has a hard time distinguishing reality from dreams (since they all run
together).

Thanks, but I'd rather continue hacking the other parts of my lifestyle to
make room for more fulfilling activities, like sleep.

~~~
skore
To be fair - that's a problem of narcolepsy (if he indeed has that) and not
polyphasic sleep. I have not tried uberman yet, but from my own experiences
with everyman and from what I have read of others, it can actually help give
you focus and clarity.

Whatever floats your boat, I guess?

------
gurkendoktor
I have tried überman for fun two years ago, mostly to practice napping. It did
not work at all, people on IRC didn't have success either, but hearsay and
wishful thinking were plenty.

It's crazy that Steve Pavlina's series of blog entries is still the #1
reference _even though he turned his back on it_ afterwards.

That said, sleeping less at night and taking a deep nap or two after lunch is
awesome. I wish it would've been socially acceptable in my German university.
There is a lot of progress to be made (flux et al) without drastic and
dangerous sleep cycles.

~~~
Afton
I'm deeply skeptical about these massively shortened sleep cycles too, but to
be fair, Steve Pavlina gave it up for the same reason Dyson did; it's too hard
to interact with the 'awake-during-the-day, asleep-during-the-night' crowd,
not because "it didn't work" for him.

~~~
stinkytaco
I never bought that excuse. There's zero scientific evidence for breaking a
habit humans and our ancestors have been doing for literally millions of
years. "Social interaction was hard" seems like a face saving excuse for "I
wasn't able to beat evolution."

~~~
gwern
FWIW, evolution actually is telling us to do _biphasic_ , not the current
monophasic. We slept biphasic right up until a century or three ago, and the
literature documents this pretty well. Let's see, to pull my canned refs from
my melatonin article (<http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin>); we have Stampi in
_Why We Nap_:

> “It is worth mentioning that anthropological studies conducted in tribes
> active at night show that human sleep can be highly polyphasic in certain
> cultures. Although they have different cultures and ways of life, both the
> Temiars of Indonesia and the Ibans of Sarawak have similar polyphasic sleep-
> wake behaviors (Petre-Quadens, 1983). Their average nocturnal sleep episode
> duration ranges between 4 and 6 hr, and nighttime activities (fishing,
> cooking, watching over the fire, rituals) at any one time involve
> approximately 25% of the adult members. Daytime napping is very common in
> both tribes: at almost any time of day, about 10% of the adult members are
> asleep. Whatever the cause of these polyphasic sleep patterns,whether the
> expression of an inborn ultradian rest-activity tendency or other factors,
> such populations exhibit extremely flexible and fragmentary sleep-wake
> cycles. The minimal contact with modern civilization could be one of the
> reasons for the preservation of this possibly ancestral sleep pattern.”

There's
[http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2006/10/what_is_a_natural_slee...](http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2006/10/what_is_a_natural_sleep_patter.php)

And then, for all the European examples, see
[http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/106.2/ah00034...](http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/106.2/ah000343.html)
The author apparently has a book on the same topic which I really ought to
read, but the preceding is the article mentioned on his profile-page:

> _At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past_ (W.W. Norton, 2005), a sweeping study
> of nocturnal culture before the Industrial Revolution, which garnered four
> prizes, including an award given by the history honor society Phi Alpha
> Theta for the “best subsequent book” in all fields of history. His article
> in 2001, “Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-Industrial Slumber in the British Isles,”
> in the American Historical Review, earned two awards, including the James L.
> Clifford Prize given by the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

~~~
stinkytaco
Sure. What this amounts to is sleeping at night, maybe going to bed late or
getting up early and taking a nap during the day. We all want to take a nap at
about 1:30 in the afternoon or so, up to about 6 you actually get to do it,
too. But "taking a nap" is really different than "structured polyphasic sleep"
that Pavlina more or less made up.

------
knodi
I tried überman couple months back. I started of by not sleeping for 2 days so
when I do start to sleep I go right in to rem sleep. It was really rough for
the first week and then I started getting the hang of it 30mins of sleep every
4 hours. The problem was that around the 3 hour 30 mins mark my brain would
just shutdown, I couldn't think straight until I got that 30mins of nap in. If
I was driving it become really dangerous. I did it for about 3 week and gave
up on it as it become really hard to keep social interaction on this sleep
cycle. I also had to stop drinking alcohol and coffee just to maintain this
sleep cycle and avoid high in suger food before my naps as they always led to
be not geting into rem sleep right away. All in all I will not be doing this
again, I'm happy with my 7 hours a night of sleep.

------
lee
The fact that these sleep cycles have been used by "bloggers" for a few months
and that they are still "healthy" does not give me the warm fuzzies.

It would take a much longer experimental time frame, under more rigorous
scientific study, to convince me that any of these alternatives are safe and
worthwhile.

~~~
Karunamon
I can almost detect the disdain in your "voice" as you use the word
"bloggers".

Was there something wrong with the article?

~~~
jerf
The fact that if you travel further down the blog stream for almost any of
these practitioners, they always give it up for not working. (Giving it up
because "everybody else is on a monophasic sleep cycle" is just a social-face-
saving excuse. If it worked, you wouldn't give it up. You've got six extra
hours a day to make up whatever the problem is!) The evidence that I've seen
suggests that alternative sleep cycles are basically persistent urban legend
more than anything else.

And yes, failing to mention the little tiny detail of it not working at this
date is a reason to be "disdainful" of an article like this; it encourages one
to wreck weeks or months of ones life on something that we pretty much know
doesn't work. Negligent at best, evil at worst.

(Excepting "siesta", which there is some evidence for, but isn't the promised
miracle, either.)

~~~
billpatrianakos
I agree with you but youre going to upset a lot of people with that. They're
going to demand you show them scientific studies and hard proof. Even if you
did it wouldn't be good enough for them.

This belief in polyphasic sleep reminds me of a guy I used to know who was a
huge conspiracy theorist. He used to tell me that you could build a perpetual
motion machine and generate unlimited energy from home and that he was doing
it. I tried to reason with him and let him know that stuff was bunk but he
never changed his mind despite his machine not working (for which he made some
dumb face-saving excuse about not using the right material or something). No
matter how much evidence and reasoning you present someone with beliefs like
this they refuse to change their mind. The absence of evidence is not evidence
for something.

We know polyphasic doesn't work not only because of all the failed attempts
and what you talked about in your comment but also because of what we know
about how the brain and human body works.

~~~
jerf
That's why I phrased it the way I did. It isn't "just" scientific studies,
it's that if you examine the frequently-cited evidence of successes and follow
it downstream, you find it actually ended in failure. (Or in the case of
famous figures in history who putatively followed bizarre sleep schedules,
generally apparently made from whole cloth, or on occasion, simply one of the
people who didn't sleep polyphasically but simply slept less, a phenomenon not
well understood but abundantly documented and with no evidence there is any
ability to become a low-sleep person by any known activity, and certainly not
as easily as simply sleeping less.) As gurkendoktor pointed out, citing Steve
Pavlina as a _success_ story is not a good sign. It's hard to even come up
with solid or real _anecdotal_ evidence that this works!

Also, as I said with "siesta", there is definitely evidence of alternate sleep
schedules, basically to the point that it is so uncontroversial it is almost
not worth discussing. What I don't see is any evidence that anyone not simply
genetically disposed (for unknown reasons) to two-hour sleep nights can cut
their required sleep _per day_ by 3/4s or more by some crazy scheduling
regimen.

------
jrockway
I was won over by a recent article that said 7.5 hours of sleep wasn't as good
as 8 hours, but 8.5 hours was. I started setting my alarm clock for 8 hours
from when I go to bed, and I try not to get up until the alarm goes off. It
has gone really well; I never feel tired and I can easily stay up for 24 hours
if I need to. If you're permanently "maxed out" on sleep debt, you can
function, but you can't take on any more debt. If you're always all paid up,
then you can function the one time when you need to sleep for three hours and
then be up for an entire day. That's my theory, anyway.

(One key to this is not going to bed too early. Sometimes I'm tired in the
middle of the day, and then sleep from, say, 6 to midnight. This fucks
everything up.)

------
lambada
Everything I hear about these sleeping patterns is anecdotal. As far as I'm
aware there haven't been any serious studies done of people on these sleeping
patterns, and most especially on the health effects (if any) it causes.

~~~
Killah911
I agree, these so called "models" in the article are based on anecdotal
evidence. However, I know that there are a number of sleep studies/experiments
out there... From what I've read, only 8-hour or nap in the afternoon sleep
patterns were scientifically proven to be adequate.

------
kapitalx
Since alot of us consider ourselves as having "Delayed sleep phase syndrome"
I'll also share my sleep cycle.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_syndrome>

I sleep at about 2-3am every night. On weekdays I'll sleep 5-6 hours. On
saturday, around 10 hours, and on sunday around 8 hours. That averages to
around 6 hours per night.

I've been on this cycle for over 10 years, and even though I always feel bad
about it and want to "fix" it, it works quite well.

~~~
th0ma5
I recently went through treatment (melatonin + lightbox) and I'd say I feel
like a million bucks compared to when I basically just slept only when I was
tired and woke up naturally. I'm not sure how long I can stay on the
treatment, and if I'll snap back afterwards, but so far (about a month and a
half into it) it's pretty great, and I feel way more rested and in sync with
the world.

~~~
cowpewter
Can you elaborate on 'treatment'? I'm pretty sure I have delayed phase sleep
syndrome or something like it. I also have fibromyalgia syndrome.

I feel like I'm constantly fighting my body's natural cycle. When I had
school/a job that required a specific schedule, I used an alarm clock to get
up, and had constant fms flareups and frequent insomnia. When I switched to my
current job (at a startup, and no longer required to stick to a specific
schedule as long as I'm getting my stuff done), I ditched the alarm clock, and
my fibromyalgia pain has vastly improved, just from not trying to force my
sleep schedule.

But the problem with that, is left to my body's own devices, I tend to want to
be awake for about 20 hours, then sleep around 7. Then I start feeling guilty
about coming in later and later every day, and there's still a limit to how
many hours straight you can work and be productive, and even as flexible as my
schedule is, there's still a bit of pressure to work 5 days a week for 8+
hours, not 4 days a week for 10+ hours. And coming into to work between
10pm-4am just never feels right. Once I get to the point where I'm waking up
at 8-9pm, I usually have to waste a weekend forcing myself to stay up 24hrs or
more to "flip" my schedule back to something reasonable. I hate doing that,
because then my entire weekend is spent feeling like a zombie and then it's
straight back to work again.

So if you've got some more details on how melatonin and a lightbox worked for
you, even just a blog post you could point me at, I'd be really appreciative.

~~~
th0ma5
what you describe sounds a little more like
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep-wake_syndrome> but i am not a
doctor!! i can tell you though the "flipping" thing was something that I would
go through like once a month or so, i would basically stay up all like friday
night, but then go to bed like 2am sunday morning.

so, my thing was like my boss was like "you're just getting insane with your
schedule" so I started googling around and came across DPSS, which sounded
like me, so I had a visit with my GP, who sent me to a sleep clinic.. their
first advice was to do sort of like you and just give into whatever happens
naturally, and i wound up doing like a 2~4 am to 10am~12noon thing most of the
time, and I felt, well, better rested, and it seemed safer to drive.

i work an on-call job for a fortune 500, so they had to go back and forth with
the doctors to figure out something that would work in regards to making sure
i could sleep uninterrupted. this was an ADA thing.

once that was figured out, i started the treatment which was to take melatonin
in a small dose at like 11pm and then go to sleep when it felt like i could
(and generally practice a whole litany of sleep hygiene practices like
avoiding naps unless absolutely necessary, watching caffeine and nicotine in
the evening, keeping a journal of it all) ... and then set the alarm for like
8am, and ASAP be in front of a 10k lux light box at the rated distance for a
half hour. there are a lot of caveats to all of this, so i would recommend to
you or anyone else reading to consult a doctor about all of this. I may be
missing sometime important here, so just FYI.

I started this on a Friday night into a Saturday as that's when I got the box
delivered, and the correct low dosage of the pill. I would say I felt like a
million bucks every since then, which was like well, a month ago. Over
thanksgiving I was travelling and had two days without the box, and I could
definitely feel the afternoon and evening dragging on, and a little more awake
at midnight than I had been.

That's about all I could say for now. I've pushed this back an hour to see if
I can get in a little earlier to work, but that was just yesterday, so we'll
see how that goes. I go back for a follow up in February.

~~~
cowpewter
Thank you! Yeah, I mentioned the 20hr/7hr thing because that's what it feels
like my body is trying to do. It's hard to say for sure because I've never
just completely let myself go natural and journaled it for any length of time
- I always get caught up in schedule guilt. I'll also randomly have nights
where I sleep 12-18 hours straight, then easily stay up with no fatigue for
24-26hrs, then sleep 4, then stay up only 15-16 then sleep 7-8 again and... It
just feels like chaos sometimes.

I can definitely relate to the boss saying "your schedule is getting insane."
That's where the guilt starts to come in, and boy, all I can say is it's a
good thing I'm good at my job and it's worth it to the company to let my
schedule fall where I'm most productive. (EDIT: By which I mean, I feel
unbelievably grateful and lucky to have such a flexible job.)

~~~
th0ma5
i recommend talking to a doctor, and making sure you don't drive while sleep
deprived. keeping a log of any kind of it may help, but again, i'm not a
doctor! :P anyway, bust of luck to you, and for me at least, the "getting
away" with something because i was "good" got to be old, and i realized i
wasn't getting away with anything or something, i dunno... i guess my point is
I felt that way too, and my perspective on it has changed some. best of
luck!!!!!

------
jmilloy
<http://www.amazon.com/Why-we-nap-STAMPI/dp/0817634622>

I always link to this source; in a subject full of anecdotes and
misinformation, this book is essential for providing substantial and concrete
scientific results.

~~~
botker
I was prepared to buy until the page loaded. Yikes.

    
    
      1 used from $314.52
    

I hope there are some other publications on the subject of greater or equal
quality that have yet to go out of print.

~~~
skore
The comments here[1] suggest _ahem_ alternatives.

[1]
[http://www.amazon.com/review/R3W1ZLVUQ1N867/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt...](http://www.amazon.com/review/R3W1ZLVUQ1N867/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0817634622&nodeID=283155&tag=&linkCode=#wasThisHelpful)

------
skore
To add my own anecdotal evidence: Yes, it works, but not in the way most would
want it to work. And hell yes, it's a serious strain on your connection to
reality and community (family, friends etc.).

A couple of points from my own blog post on this ("Cheating the brother of
death" <http://sk.or.at/p6YBXf> ):

\- This is _mostly about mental strength and perseverance_ , not so much about
just following plan X and having more free time.

\- _Having more free time is not as simple as you'd like it to be._ You do
have to have something to fill that time. And it has to something actually
meaningful that you care about.

\- It is a good idea to have _something to wake up to_ so you don't have to
search for an answer to the "why do I _have_ to get up _now_?" question when
you're in it.

\- The hardest part is _setting the right boundaries and anticipating how bad
your mental situation will be_ \- so you can deal with it appropriately even
if your experiment means that you might not be in the right state of mind _at
that moment_. Because you were before, when you started it and _that's_ when
you need to make the right plans.

------
adrianpike
Another round of anecdotal evidence:

I did the everyman for about three months when my startup was doing a big
pivot a few years ago. It took about two weeks of being completely blurry to
transition, but once I did, it was very effective.

I would wake up ~7AM and get to work, have my first ~1/2 hour nap at 11AM,
next nap at 6 in the afternoon, and then a nap at midnight. I'd be totally
awake and aware until ~3:30AM, and then I'd go to sleep.

After the transition, once my body got settled, I'd usually be awake a few
minutes before I set an alarm, and my caffeine needed to stay alert went way
down.

Like most of the other anecdotal evidence, I stopped for social reasons - my
girlfriend wasn't a fan of me coming home from work at 6, immediately snagging
a nap, and then be up rattling away until 3 in the morning every day.

Also I wasn't able to fill the day - I'd be burnt out on work after 12+ hours
of grinding away on some Rails code, and have to do something else, so I'd
either tinker in the garage, cruise the web, or play games. Once I started up
with the video games, I decided it wasn't worth it, and flipped back to a
"normal" sleep cycle.

It took ~2 nights to go back to a normal cycle.

------
beagle3
From collecting others' anecdotal evidence, it seems that it technically works
for some people (though not for a large percentage), but socially it works for
no one.

I wonder if there's a way to make this become socially acceptable. People
always think these things take a lot of time, and sometime they do (e.g. phone
use that would have been considered obnoxious 15 years ago is not impolite
today. Today's obnoxious would have been casus belli 15 years ago). However,
there are cases of nearly spontaneous social change -

In many places in the world (a lot of countries in Europe, not sure about the
US), chewing gum after a meal is considered an acceptable and healthy
practice; This change was brought on within 3 years thanks to an ingenious
Wrigley Orbit campaign.

------
egypturnash
I tried uberman a while back. It was a royal pain to deal with the
intermittent day job I had at the time, and it really didn't work well with my
home life either - I just didn't have a comfortable place to sit around and
slack off for some of the awake cycles. I was definitely adapting to it after
a couple weeks but the only place to lay around lazily in an underheated
apartment was in a bed full of sleeping boyfriend, which was a pretty powerful
argument for just curling up and going to sleep!

Now that I have a very inviting living room in my home wih a comfy couch, I
might try it again once spring hits. Or maybe the Everyman schedule.

The big problem, IMHO, is interfacing with the entire rest of the Western
world, which is on the one big sleep schedule.

~~~
egypturnash
More thoughts. One commenter here snarked about this article for linking to
Steve Pavlina's writings on polyphasic sleep, which he gave up after about six
months. This is an _old_ article so I kinda feel that's okay, it's from around
2010 - though Pavlina did it in '06 or so.

That said I was thusly looking at Pavlina's blog. And at the entry where he
looks back on it, one year later
([http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/03/polyphasic-sleep-
on...](http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/03/polyphasic-sleep-one-year-
later/)) and talks about how it's transformed his sleeping, even when he's
gone back to "normal" sleep. And I think my month or so doing polyphasic left
me with a little something, too: I now have a very well-tuned alarm clock in
my brain. I don't have to get up for a day job any more, so I don't have to
use it very often - but as I'm going to sleep, I can tell myself "I'm getting
up at 7:00" or whatever, and I _will_ be awake when the alarm goes off.

(I still set alarms, though, because they give me that extra boost of HEY YOU
HAVE A REASON TO GET UP!)

In fact, I'm taking a plane trip tomorrow. Flight's at 7:40 so I basically
need to be up and moving by 5:40 or so. I did those calculations and _told_
myself when I was going to be getting up, and I could FEEL my body going
through... something. Some adjustment of my cycles to get me to be tired in
time to be up and moving then, these weird little waves of... _levels_ of
awakeness kind of cycling in me for a few minutes.

As to people saying that "we evolved for the eight hours sleep and trying
anything else is fighting against evolution" - no, no we didn't. Babies
basically do polyphasic. It was considered completely normal in the pre-
industrialized days to go to bed around sundown, then wake up for an hour or
two in the middle of the night and do some stuff by candlelight. It's only
since the adaption of massive industrialized society that we've been expected
to be up ALL DAY, EVERY DAY.

(And hell, right now I'm visiting my mom. She basically does the Everyman
schedule since she's retired - it's not formalized, her throughout-the-day
naps are kind of randomized - but she's got one biggish core sleep at night,
and several midday naps.)

------
echaozh
Stop talking about "natural" sleep cycles or "natural" diet. Stop talking
about how the homo sapiens evolved into sleeping or eating like this. I
personally think our unwillingness to move away from our evolved instincts is
the reason why we're not a more advanced species.

Sleeping at night is obviously a result of lack of light during the night. I
don't believing sitting/lying consciously will be that different from sleeping
unconsciously as to providing rest for our bodies. It's just a learned habit
and we should be able to get over it.

Slavery and dictatorship is more natural, see how monkeys or any other animals
group their society? Why don't we give up democracy for something more
natural?

------
ry0ohki
Even if one of these other cycles is incredibly effective, they seem very hard
to use and be social. I don't know what I'd do with my extra time at 4am when
no one else is awake (on a consistent basis).

~~~
fullmoon
Reading a book, playing a game, Medidate? It is a very nice time to be awake

------
forkrulassail
I've done Uberman for 2 months at a time. I've found I can be highly effective
in certain areas - like coding. However, the brain needs quite a bit of sleep
for memories to stay longer term - so this isn't ideal for students or study.
Another caveat is that your metabolism increases but you usually
overcompensate consumption-wise. A lot of people that persisted with this for
longer periods of time, gain quite a bit of weight - so if you're ready for
that. Good luck with surviving the first two hell weeks. :)

------
jacques_chester
The simplest evidence against the thesis that all you really "need" is REM
sleep is obstructive sleep apnoea.

I have OSA. I had it for years before it was diagnosed. I would go to bed and
dream more or less non-stop for 10, 12, 14, 16 hours. All the REM sleep a man
could ever want.

And I was still tired as buggery.

My idea of a good night's sleep is the deep dreamless kind.

Not to mention sleep's centrality to recovery from physical exercise.

------
cbs
I thought this was worth putting somewhere people would actually see it.

 _coldarchon 49 minutes ago | link [dead]_

after being 5 years in research for brain activity during sleep and being a
natural lucid dreamer and short sleeper myself, I can only warn anyone about
polyphasic sleep if you never had a tendency for this in your life before.

It will literally turn off your Mojo ..

------
polychrome
Can we add something next to article denoting whether it comes from a
scientific peer reviewed source or just a blog?

------
Cl4rity
Biphasic and/or polyphasic sleep doesn't seem to work...even on monks who have
been doing it for several years:

[http://mindhacks.com/2011/11/17/the-dreams-and-
hallucination...](http://mindhacks.com/2011/11/17/the-dreams-and-
hallucinations-of-cloistered-monks/)

------
ryanewing
If anyone is interested, Puredoxyk has been doing it for nearly seven years
and even wrote a book about it:

<http://www.puredoxyk.com/index.php/polyphasic-sleep-portal/>

------
jsilence
The obligatory xkcd reference: <https://www.xkcd.com/320/>

------
hammock
This is a post on a blog where the sidebar poll asks, "Do aliens exist?"

(In case you were wondering, 63% said "Yes.")

~~~
sp332
Isn't most of NASA acting like the answer is "yes"? All the research into
earth-like exoplanets, and the expeditions to Mars to look for water etc?

------
billpatrianakos
Guys, there's a ton of evidence for polyphasic sleep just not working out.
We're actually built for biphasic sleep though we can get away without a nap.
As humans we are always trying to cheat nature but there are just some things
we cannot control.

I saw this on HN before and I think it's a great read if you have the time. It
really goes in depth and debunks these sleep cycle myths.
<http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic.htm>

~~~
zyfo
This again? As mentioned in those HN threads, it has been rebutted:

[http://www.puredoxyk.com/index.php/2006/11/01/an-attack-
on-p...](http://www.puredoxyk.com/index.php/2006/11/01/an-attack-on-
polyphasic-sleep/)

Fact is there's _not_ a ton of evidence for it not working out. There has been
virtually zero research on it, despite plenty of polyphasic people
volunteering for research.

~~~
gwern
That's hardly a good rebuttal. Most of it is just disproving some overreaching
by Wozniak and other anecdotal evidence, which leaves his basic point
untouched, and the rest is lacking in actual science. For example:

> * Everybody who needs an alarm to wake up is “seriously sleep deprived”. No
> really, he says that outright. I feel bad for my parents — apparently
> they’ve never been well-rested in their entire lives. Of course, while I’m
> sure it’s a better sign if you don’t need an alarm at all (like I didn’t
> when I had Uberman down pat?), this guy is completely ignoring the known
> fact that people will sleep extra if they can, just like they’ll have a
> second helping of pie if you let them. The existence of a second piece of
> pie on your plate is hardly an indicator that you’re starving!

No, people don't oversleep 'normally', they oversleep as a result of sleep
deprivation; this is the standard way to measure sleep deprivation, to see
whether, given the opportunity, they sleep more for a while and then start
sleeping less! And for that matter, the basic theory of polyphasic sleep -
forcing very fast REM rebound to get the REM done within the 20 or 30 minutes
- basically presumes constant deprivation because deprivation is what triggers
REM rebound.

If a polyphasicer wanted to disprove that, they'd have to switch back to a
monophasic or biphasic sleep _without_ immediately incurring any excess sleep
penalties compared to their normal monophasic/biphasic sleep lengths.

(I'd do this since I have a Zeo and that would give great data for this
purpose, but unfortunately, neither time I tried did I succeed in adapting to
polyphasic. Maybe one of the polyphasic sleepers using Zeos
<http://www.myzeo.com/sleep/forum/176> will do this at some point.)

~~~
zyfo
_In any case, I forgot to set my alarm tonight and woke up after exactly three
hours, wham. Anybody trying to adjust to a new sleep schedule would need an
alarm for some months to stay on track; that by itself doesn’t mean you’re
constantly sleep-deprived. In fact, the only times in my life that I didn’t
need an alarm, I was polyphasic!_

How's that for not immediately incurring any excess sleep penalties?

Rebuttal might be the wrong word but it points out some serious flaws in
Wozniaks conclusions. What of his in your opinion basic point is untouched?

Regarding REM etc, here's a polyphasic forum discussion on Wozniaks article:
[http://trypolyphasic.com/forum/topic/340/not-sure-if-its-
pos...](http://trypolyphasic.com/forum/topic/340/not-sure-if-its-possible-
now/)

~~~
gwern
It would be nice if there were any verification of that; if their anecdotal
word were enough, we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place.
('Oh, it works great for you? Great! Case closed.') Someone saying that, at
one point they slept without an alarm, is very far from showing polyphasic
sleepers have no sleep debt or deprivation.

~~~
wbeaty
The real problem is that it's an amateur discovery, and the professionals are
having none of it.

When something makes experts look questionable, expect irrational flamewars in
response. Or derisive dismissal, at the very least.

~~~
gwern
Lucid dreaming was an amateur discovery as well.

------
JohnQPasserby
I would not be surprised to find posts about healing crystals on that site.

