Ah summer, the time of the year everything goes berserk. I am transitioning back to monophasic sleep for about a month or two to manage a hectic period of time.

Up and coming I have a week of jury duty, during which I have no clue when I would be able to take naps, followed by a week vacation volunteering at a camp, which definitely would conflict with naps, plus I don't think they would appreciate someone being up all night. Add to that a handful of other busy things spread over this next month and you have a recipe for disaster - so I am choosing to retreat for the moment. At the moment I am basically on a biphasic schedule, I have been sleeping anywhere between 6 and 7.5ish hours per night, and whenever possible I still get a lunch nap in, and probably will continue as much as I am able this next month.

I will still be around, although if I write anything here it probably won't have much to do with polyphasic sleep, so just keep your eyes peeled and wait for me to get back on the schedule. At latest I expect to be re-transitioning back to the Everyman schedule by September 1st. If I see anything notable during the transition I will make sure to let everyone know, enjoy, until next time!

This weekend I picked up a bug. When I say a bug, I mean really icky sickness. I am the person that will get a runny nose when everyone else is laid up in bed, an upset stomach when others are bowing to their porcelain god.

Sunday night I missed my evening nap, so I went to bed at 12:30 so I could get 4.5 hours of sleep. I had been feeling sort of funny that afternoon, but I believed it to be just allergies, very runny nose, lots of sneezing, some congestion, things like that. I got my 4.5 hours and got up at 5, barely dragging myself out of bed. I thought it was just difficult due to sleep inertia, (the reason I prefer 3 hr to 4.5) so I went about my day as normal. At work I wasn't feeling much better, I started to feel chilled which is very unnatural for me, it takes a lot more to make me feel cold than most of my friends. In addition to that, I noticed that I was getting sore muscles/cramps in my legs. I went to take my morning nap around 11 and got little or no rest due to congestion, soreness, and being cold. It was about the same for my 4:00 nap, although I believe I got a bit more rest, but not a full nap.

That evening I felt like a zombie so I went home, laid down to rest at 7:30 and was asleep by 8. I woke up at around 3:45, very groggily drug myself into the bathroom to clean out my nose, (ugh, brown) get water, etc, and went back to bed. At some point my body had enough sleep, so I kept waking up and just sitting there, drifting in and out of sleep letting my body get the rest it needed to fight the sickness. I finally got up and about around 10:00 for a bath/shower, then laid on my bed for another hour or so, not sleeping, but resting more. I finally got up feeling a lot better and headed to work for a half day with an abundance of rest, but still somewhat groggy from all the melatonin in my bloodstream. (sleep inertia, yay)

I tried to take a nap that evening, (last night) but I wasn't able to really fall asleep, it was nice to lay down for a while, if only to keep on schedule. Today I feel much better, naps should not be any trouble, and the drippy nose is down to a minimum. Everything seems to be on its way out, I'm happy to have beat the crud.

All in all polyphasic sleep has always seemed healthy, there have been people who attack polyphasic sleep as unhealthy because you are not getting enough sleep/sleep deprivation is unhealthy. To a point they are right. Polyphasic sleep is not sleep deprivation, however you do not get as much rest as you would on a monophasic schedule. Normally your body will not need as much rest as you give it unless you work your body extra hard. However, if you begin working out, do some hard labor, experience a lot of stress or get sick, your body may need more downtime, physically, in which case a polyphasic schedule may not be sufficient. Does that mean it's not good enough? Hardly. I have experienced similar sicknesses in my past and know enough that I probably would have spent a similar 12-16 hours attempting to recover even if I was getting 8 hours of sleep a night.

I suppose this serves as a reminder that while you might feel amazing being up at all times of the night/morning, you are not superman, there are weaknesses in your armor. Polyphasic sleep is not perfect, however neither is monophasic sleep, so pick your battles and know the weaknesses, if dropping off my schedule is the price to pay for getting really sick for the first time in...nearly a year I believe, it's worth it to me.

Polyphasic sleep has seen its fair share attacks in the online community due to the fact that it can be very difficult at first and that there has been a good number of would-be polyphasers who write about their failures. (often due to incompatibilities with their lifestyle/lack of resolve)

Earlier this month I posted a short article titled, "Does Polyphasic Sleep Work?" in response to an article titled, "Why You Can't Hack Sleep". This article I posted received a good deal of attention from people wanting to know the feasibility of polyphasic sleep. As a follow up, I thought I would give you more information on the same topic.

While browsing Twitter as @PolyphasicLife I ran into a link to an old article from 2005 titled, "Polyphasic Sleep: Facts and Myths"
While well written and very persuasive, there are a lot of issues with the "facts" stated in the writeup. I in turn posted the rebuttal written by Puredoxyk which debunks many of the suppositions in said article.

Both articles are well worth reading and should serve as good educational material for anyone weighing the options for and against polyphasic sleep.

Without further ado:

Polyphasic Sleep: Facts and Myths

An Attack on Polyphasic Sleep

If you have seen any more discussion for or against polyphasic sleep, please let me know through the contact form or in comments and I would gladly provide a link from this article.

One of the largest obstacles I have ever had with polyphasic sleep is scheduling naps around my life. I have everything planned out fairly well for my regular schedule now, but it is the unplanned events that cause the true upset to my schedule.

Before I go on, let me remind you that deviating from a regular schedule can be very detrimental if you are anywhere remotely near your adaptation phase. If you have decided to start a polyphasic lifestyle within the last month, I would highly recommend against any deviation unless absolutely required. Ideally, if needed, I would say that it would be safe to alter your schedule after you are confident of your schedule and have been on it for at least two months.

I am on the Everyman schedule (3hr + 3 naps) which leaves my daylight naps to be around 11 am, 4pm, and 8-9pm. The first two are done at work during lunch and right after work, but my third nap has the most potential to run into conflict.

Many times I have been with friends in the evening, and if I do not have space between a social event and my nap, it can get pushed later. If possible I try to excuse myself for 20 minutes, but many times I am responsible for transportation which makes it very difficult. If I am to maintain my schedule, I have run into two solutions:

1. Later nap
I have found that if needed, I can push my nap from around 9 to toward 11. I have not tried any later than that because it would probably conflict too much with my core at 2, but while not optimal, it seems to maintain my sanity.

2. Skipped nap, longer core
Somewhere around I wrote or am writing about core sleep vs. naps. In short, one nap is roughly equivalent to 1.5 hours of core sleep. I have found it possible to simply skip my evening nap if I really need to and replace it with a core of 4.5 hours, starting at 12:30. This does give a longer downtime, and is thus more difficult to get up from, but has shown itself to be sufficient for my needs.

While missing naps is not recommended, it is possible to work around a missed nap and still not end up like a zombie. Just remember that if you have started a polyphasic lifestyle within the last two months, it is strongly recommended that you stick with your schedule if at all possible.

It's been a while, but my car is fixed. For those of you who haven't seen, I was involved in a minor accident about a month and a half ago, I talked about it in this post.

Thanks to friends, craigslist, and a bit of ebay, everything is put back together, roughly as it should be, I still need to line things up all the way and paint my new parts, but since my replacement parts are a flat black, they generally match ...

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