Alternate Sleep Cycles: You Don't Really Need 6-8 Hours!

Alternate Sleep Cycles: You Don’t Really Need 6-8 Hours!

Most people only think that there is one way to sleep: Go to sleep at night for 6-8 hours, wake up in the morning, stay awake for 16-18 hours and then repeat. Actually, that is called a monophasic sleep cycle, which is only 1 of 5 major sleep cycles that have been used successfully throughout history. The other 4 are considered polyphasic sleep cycles due to the multiple number of naps they require each day. How is this possible? How is this healthy? Well the most important of every sleep cycle is the Stage 5 REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, which has been shown to provide the benefits of sleep to the brain above all other stages of sleep. When changing over to a polyphasic cycle, the lack of sleep tricks the body into entering REM sleep immediately instead of 45 to 75 minutes into sleep like in the monophasic sleep. This way, you still get the benefits of 8 hours of sleep without wasting all of the time it takes to get to REM cycles, resulting in a much more efficient sleep cycle. Here are polyphasic cycles:

Uberman Cycle:



20 to 30 minute naps every 4 hours, resulting in 6 naps each day. The uberman cycle is highly efficient, and usually results in feeling healthy, feeling refreshed upon waking and extremely vivid dreams. Many uberman-users report increased ability to lucid dream as well. However, the rigid schedule makes it near impossible to miss naps without feeling horribly tired. Blogger Steve Pavlina tried the cycle for over a year and had amazingly positive results.He only reverted to monophasic sleep so that he could be on the same cycle as his wife and children. Read his articles and updates on the cycle (link at bottom of post)



Everyman Cycle:



One longer “core” nap that is supplemented with several 20-30 minute naps. The most successful variations that I have read about are either one 3 hour nap and three 20-minute naps or one 1.5 hour nap with 4-5 20 minute naps, all of which have equal amounts of time in between each nap. This cycle is much easier to adjust to than the Uberman and allows for more flexibity in nap times and in skipping naps when necessary. It is also still extremely efficient compared to monophasic with only 3-4 hours of sleep per day. Many bloggers have tried out this cycle and reported no negative effects on their health.



Dymaxion Cycle:



Bucky Fuller invented the cycle based on his belief that we have two energy tanks, the first is easy to replenish whereas the second tank (second wind) is much harder to replenish. So Bucky began sleeping for 30 minutes every 6 hours. That’s 2 hours a day of sleep! He reported feeling, “the most vigorous and alert condition I have ever enjoyed.” Doctors examined him after several years of using the cycle and pronounced him perfectly healthy. In fact, Fuller only stopped the cycle because his business associates were still stuck on monophasic cycles. This is by far the most extreme of the 4 alternate cycles, but also the most efficient.


Biphasic/Siesta Cycle:


Not even worthy of a diagram, the biphasic cycle is basically that of every college student in America. The biphasic cycle consists of sleeping for 4-4.5 hours at night, and then taking a 90 minute nap around noon. So not all that different, still more efficient than monophasic, but not by much.


So which cycle is right for you?


That completely depends on your lifestyle. Keep in mind that if you decide to switch to either the Dymaxion or Uberman cycles, you will be a zombie from day 3 to around day 10 until your body fully adjusts to the cycle. Here are some other tips I have gathered from reading other people’s accounts:

- Eat healthy, avoid fatty foods and the adjustment will be much easier

- Make sure you have a project to work on during all of your new awake hours as it makes the time go by faster

- Also make sure you have two or three weeks of freedom to adjust to the cycle so that you don’t go to work or school completely dead from sleep deprivation

- Hang in there. Each of the cycles will get exponentially easier all of the sudden after the first 2 weeks or so. Just be patient and diligent! Don’t skip naps or change your nap times around or you will basically have to start your adjustment period over.

- Use natural cues for being waking up from naps like sunlight and loud music, while using darkness and silence for sleep (obviously)



If you are seriously considering making the switch over the a polyphasic sleep cycle, a really enjoyable and informative read is Steve Pavlina’s extremely in-depth report of his experience with the Uberman cycle, available here:

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[mr.brownfella]

I am going on 3 to 5 hours a day sometimes I get 6?

[dolphinskull]

i've messed around with a few of these but work, school and friends got in the way

I think i read somewhere that Einstein followed the Uberman during his adult life.

EDIT -- just googled it

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Looks like there is a lot of overlap between these 2 articles but
I found this:

Background

The Uberman sleep schedule is a method of organizing your sleeping time to maximize your REM sleep and minimize your non-REM sleep. The goal of the sleep cycle is that you are actively in REM sleep within a couple of minutes of falling asleep and remain in that state until you awaken. I originally read about the schedule on everything2.
In essence, someone utilizing the Uberman sleep schedule is actively modifying their sleeping habits so that they can immediately jump from waking to a few minutes worth of stage 1 sleep straight to stage 5 REM sleep, as described in this discussion of sleep stages.
It is important to note that there are no studies as to the long-term physical or physiological impact of this sleep cycle. I really don't know if this cycle is causing long-term damage to myself or not, and if this concerns you, I wouldn't attempt the cycle. However, the benefits are fantastic.


The Uberman's Sleep Schedule


Sleeping Hours
The Uberman's sleep schedule revolves around forcing yourself to rely on six twenty to thirty minute naps spread throughout the day for your daily dose of sleep. I stuck to thirty minute naps, currently having them starting roughly at 2 AM, 6 AM, 10 AM, 2 PM, 6 PM, and 10 PM every day.
How & Why It Works
Over the course of a normal eight hour sleeping period, your body moves through a continuous cycle of five distinct sleep stages. Of these, stage 5 REM sleep has been found to be the part of the cycle that provides the benefits of sleep for your mind.
Essentially, the trick of the Uberman's sleep schedule is to trick your mind into entering REM sleep as soon as you drift into a sleeplike state. Unfortunately, the only real way to do this is through sleep deprivation of sorts.
Adjusting To This Schedule
Adjusting to this schedule (as you might imagine) will make you feel like you've put your body and mind through a blender for a few weeks. Here are some general tips for adjusting that I found to be greatly helpful.

• Do the adjustment when you are in complete control of your schedule. I converted to the cycle during a three week vacation; it would have been impossible to get through a normal work day while adjusting to this cycle. I was by and large a zombie.
  
  
  
• Find a large project to work on while adjusting. If you don't keep busy, you will revert to a normal sleep cycle. In my first failed attempt at switching (on vacation more than two years ago), I didn't have an ongoing project to keep me focused.
  
  
• Use physiological "tricks" to teach your body the cycle. I found that using a dawn simulation trick worked nicely. Every time I went to lay down, I set my monitor to wait thirty-two minutes, then begin running a program that had a strobe effect along with some excessively loud music. I also used two alarm clocks, and during the day I would adjust my blinds such that the sun would start shining in my face roughly a half an hour later. These would force me to become somewhat conscious for a while, which was all I needed to keep going.
  
  
• Days 3 to 10 are the hardest and least productive. I spent the adjustment period working on two projects, one involving programming and another involving writing. At the start of day three, I stored a backup of these projects because I knew that my thought processes were starting to become nonsensical and bizarre. For the next week, I continued to "work" on the projects, but utterly failed to make any sensible progress (interestingly enough, the fiction I wrote in this period was entertaining in a Thomas Pynchon meets The Electric Company kind of way). Don't expect to be hugely useful during the actual forced adjustment to compressed REM sleep.
  
  
  
• Convert to a more nutritious diet. I've found that drinking a great deal of orange and apple juice makes the Uberman schedule easier to follow, as does eating plenty of vegetables and avoiding fatty foods like the plague.

You will discover that after day ten or so, you will automatically begin waking after about thirty minutes. Quite often, I find that when a dream ends, I just awaken automatically. Although I still use an alarm clock, I now do my 10 AM, 2 PM, and sometimes 6 PM naps at work on my breaks without an alarm and have no problem waking up from them, feeling utterly refreshed.


Benefits

The obvious first benefit is more free time. I currently clock in between two hours and fifty minutes and three hours and ten minutes of sleep per twenty four hour period. Compared to my previous sleep cycles (roughly nine hours a night), I have an incredible amount of time to do things that I wished I had time to do before I switched.
Although the first benefit is pretty much the only reason you need, I also found that switching to this cycle makes me feel generally healthier. As I noted, I started off this "experiment" by switching to a more healthy diet rich in fruits and vegetables. After my body finally adjusted to the quick batches of REM (about day eight or nine), I began to feel truly GREAT! I actually feel more energetic at this point than I did before this started.


Drawbacks

One drawback is that I hit a wall if I stay up for more than about five hours without a twenty to thirty minute nap. My concentration and energy seem to vanish in a matter of minutes and I absolutely have to go take a nap. This can create some problems in social situations, but one can somewhat shuffle the naps around to adjust for this.
Another drawback is that my appetite is substantially larger and I will often crave strange things that I don't recall craving in the past. One great example of this is grape juice; I now drink this regularly, but before I switched I don't recall ever wanting it. My speculation is that my body isn't producing enough of some chemical that it would normally produce in stages 3 and 4 deep sleep.


Other Effects

One particularly noteworthy effect (I consider it a benefit, but others might consider it a drawback) is that all of my dreams are very intense and I find myself remembering them as well, down to minute details. Personally, I don't have any difficulties handling the imagery that my dreams produce, but many people have difficulties with their dreams in a normal sleep schedule - if that is the case, Uberman is simply not for you.


Conclusion

Uberman's sleep schedule is a potentially dangerous way to increase your waking hours. Although I found success with it to this point, there still may be physical and psychological dangers that I have not yet met, and there may be grave difficulties for others attempting the cycle.


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[cunctanter]

As someone who has been using alternative sleeping styles since the mid 90s, including polyphasic sleep (esp. Uberman), I can attest that it not only works but it adds quite a lot of time and potential for experience to your life.

Consider that the average person sleeps roughly a third of each day, and thus sleeps a third of their life away. At a 78 year life expectancy, that means 26 years are lost to sleep in the course of a normal lifetime.

But say you reduce that via one of these alternatives to only two hours a day, only one twelfth of your day? If it was for the whole lifetime, you'd gain 19 and a half years. If you went with the 30 minute intervals for three hours a day, an eighth, you'd still gain 16.25 years.

As those years are in terms of waking, conscious, useful time, that's the same as extending your functional/effective life span by that amount of time.

With regards to the articles: unlike that author, I have found no particular difference in any of the alternative sleep cycles related to food, so your mileage may vary on that. But that "wall" mentioned seems a definite issue, and particularly so if you go the two hour a day route. At that point it seems we're pushing the body to the limit of the amount of sleep it can give up on and remain functional. The consequence is that whereas in more normal sleep cycles, where you have an excess of rest, if something comes up or what-have-you you can skip sleep, go to sleep later, or whatever. You may be tired but you won't suddenly just pass out or become too groggy to remain functional. Not so if you're on the two hour a day schedule: you'll discover you need those nap periods, and if you miss one by very much or try to skip it entirely... you may simply fall asleep wherever you are, like a narcoleptic.

Still, the benefits do seem to outweigh the negatives if you have enough freedom in your life/work/social schedule to be able to slot in those six or so naps in your day and have been looking for more free time.

Though that "breaking in" phase should not be underestimated - the prolonged sleep deprivation at the start is hellish and seems the primary reason most don't push through to the useful part of the practice.

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Nice. Thanks for posting your firsthand experience. This stuff is interesting to me.

[TheSNakE]

on the other hand some turtles can live 100 years because they brumate (hibernate). The theory is that since they spend so much time in a kind of suspended animation, their bodies last longer.

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You obviously have no idea what you're talking about

Kidding fucker!

[TheSNakE]

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I just know I need more sleep. But I hear ya, it's a waste of time. If my girl isn't here, I see no reason to get in bed. I have to be exhausted. Animals like hummingbirds only live 2 or 3 years because they have such fast heart beats. So in theory, if you sleep more, you are wasting a bunch of your life, but if you don't get enough sleep, you probably won't live as long. hmmm???