Day 100, thoughts, insights, and overviews.

One Hundred days into the experiment. Something that started out as being a wild experiment has become a normal, routine part of my life. Over the past 100 days, the schedule has become less rigid than the original, both in terms of when I have to sleep, and the amount of time that I sleep for each nap. I can start my afternoon nap anytime between 11:30 and 2:30, although around 1:00 is still optimal. My sleep length varies the most for my afternoon nap as well. Between 40min and 2hrs. I set my alarm for an hour and 30, but since I set it for "vibrate-dot", it will not wake me if I am not ready to get up.

However, I still can not miss my afternoon nap. If I skip my nap, I will sleep through the first wake period (12:30 am to 4:30 am). I CAN force myself to get up during that period, but depending on what I have planned, it is often not worth it. I measure the success of this sleep schedule by how productive I am, rather than just by how many hours I spend awake.

Stuff happens at night.

Things I have learned:

- I don't like to sleep 8 hours anymore. When I wake up from a long night, I hurt. My muscles are stiff, and my back is sore. I can not remember if that was typical, but I think that it might have been. I used to have a stretching routine that I did before I got out of bed. I do not need to do that anymore.

-My morning nap is the most rigid. I go to sleep at 4:30. I enjoy starting the day at 6:00. I do not know if this will slip a bit later as the year moves forward. I live pretty far north, so the daylength varies from 15 1/2 hrs to just under 9 hrs. In the winter, the sun does not rise until 8:30 am. I think that getting up after sunrise is important to resetting the circadian rhythm, but that is pretty late. It will be interesting to see how that works out.

- Injuries and illness require more sleep. I have had an injury to my shoulder, and I have had gotten sick twice since I started this experiment. Each time, I have extended my sleep time substantially. Technically, I have stayed polyphasic, but I have not stayed a short sleeper. On the other hand, this was true even when I was sleeping monophasically - I would sleep more when I was sick. There is interesting research that shows a strong correlation between sleeping less and getting sick more. For myself, getting sick twice in 100 days is more, but my core group of friends who, unbeknownst to them, I am using for a control, have also gotten sick with unusual frequency during the past 100 days. So, it is hard to make any definite conclusions, but it is something to keep my eye on. If there are any other extended short sleepers out there, I would be interested in hearing about your thoughts and experience. 

Because circadian triphasic does not require an "adaptation" phase, I have no problem shifting immediately back to my triphasic short sleep schedule. 

- Over time, I have shifted from a 90 minute cycle to an 80 minute cycle. Perhaps it is a slight adaptation to the routine, or a better ability to fall asleep.

In summary, I still find that I am more productive on this schedule than when I was on a monophasic schedule. I enjoy having every third wake-cycle entirely to myself. While I am not always as productive as I imagine that I could be during that night period, I get a lot of benefit out of spending some time reviewing the previous day and planning the next two wake-cycles. 

Short sleepers

Apparently there are some individuals who only need 3-4 hours a sleep a night naturally and do not suffer from sleep deprivation. They are called "short sleepers", and an oft-quoted statistic says that they are 1%-3% of the population. That percentage seems high to me, since a scientist who studies short sleepers has only found 20 individuals so far. I have been deeply enjoying my extra time that I have acquired by changing my sleeping schedule and gaining an extra 3-4 hours of awake time a day. However, it is not without some penalties. I do have to be fairly careful to keep my schedule consistent, and it sometimes meshes poorly with other activities. It would be pretty nice to sleep as little as 3 hours mono-phasically. These "short sleepers" have a mutation on a gene known as hDEC2. Well, there is another gene lottery that I lost; I have to compensate for it with creativity and hacks. More information on short sleeper can be found in this Wall Street Journal article. 

Not a short sleeper.

Perhaps, not surprisingly, many people that claim to be short sleepers, are in fact, simply depriving themselves of sleep. Symptoms of severe sleep deprivation include: confusion, memory lapses, hallucinations, headaches, eye bags, increased blood pressure, irritability, ADHD-like symptoms, and increased risk of diabetes. That last one is a little odd since coffee consumption has been shown to decrease the risk of diabetes. I know from previous experience that one of my early symptoms of sleep deprivation is that I lose precision in tracking objects with my eyes, and I will get multiple after-images when there is a bright light, or I will be unable to focus on text. My eyes seem to drift across the page, without reading the material. So glad that I am not in college anymore. 

What about the symptoms of non-severe sleep deprivation? Turns out that there is a very easy way to diagnose that. You feel tired or sleepy. That is all there is to it. One of the disqualifications of people that claim to be short sleepers, but in reality are sleep deprived, is that when they have a break in their schedule - a vacation or a weekend, they will tend to sleep in. It is one of the reasons that I try not to use an alarm during this polyphasic sleep experiment - because the point is not to try to get by while sleeping less per se, it is to try to get all the sleep I need more efficiently.