Polyphasic Sleep Experiment: Day 4

Yesterday I decided to try and make an attempt to wait until later in the day to post about the day, naps and all, in its entirety. This way, I could attempt to recap the entire day instead of posting several times about the same day in short blasts. I just wanted to try it as an alternative but, I went a visited a friend last night and ended up not getting around to posting until right now, so I’m thinking maybe short bursts are indeed the better way to go about it.

On to business, then. Today was certainly an interesting day when it comes to my polyphasic sleeping schedule. Let me start off by saying that recently, I have begun use of a polyphasic mp3 file that is up for download on the internet (I believe I downloaded the base version here: http://www.placebo.serv.co.za/?page_id=7). I ended up downloading the 23 minute version presented here and then I edited it, making the alarm a little quicker and to the point, and adding enough static to allow for 30 minute naps instead of only 23 minutes. I tried this out on one of my early naps (3am, maybe) and it seemed to work pretty good. Incidentally, when I was up at 3AM I still felt very tired, but it was better than yesterday. I think that I might be over the worse of the transition, then. I see the hours of 2-8am or so getting easier and easier each day until I’m just as awake and alert at those times as I am at all the other times. Sleeping with headphones was easier than I had guessed it would be, and they didn’t become that bothersome (weren’t really falling off, allowed me to sleep in pretty much any orientation without being uncomfortable, etc). I set a backup alarm just in case it didn’t work the first time, and didn’t end up needing it, considering it worked pretty good – waking me up just about when I wanted to be waken up, anyways.

Due to this success, I didn’t see any problem with using the mp3 player tactic for my next nap (without setting the backup alarm). If I remember correctly, I took this nap a little early to held fend against the fatigue (maybe around 5am). Little did I know, though, that my mp3 player batteries were running out of power. Then, of course, what do you know, but somewhere in the middle of playing the 30 minute mp3 file, my mp3 player ran out of batteries and simply turned off. I know, awesome, right? This, of course, resulted in me oversleeping….again. I must have slept for at least an hour and a half….maybe even a little bit longer (although I don’t think I got to the two hour mark). I’m pretty disappointed about this. It’s probably going to cause me nothing but trouble…..I think that every time I vary from the schedule grossly, like this, it sets me back and makes it harder to complete the transition in its entirety.

But, this isn’t where the schedule varying stops. I was surprised to find that my next two naps were pretty refreshing – I always feel good when I’m tired before a nap, and refreshed afterwards – because I know that the schedule is working. And that was the case for those next two naps…I think that I skipped the 7am (because oversleeping during the 5am led me to wake up too close to 7am) and napped at 11am and 3pm – and then when it came time to get ready for my 7pm nap, a friend had called and mentioned that he wanted to go to a movie with some other friends. I thought that this would be perfect, I would leave for his house early, take my nap there before I left for the movie, and then met everyone there. However, I wasn’t really that tired for this nap…the ride there I remember thinking several times “I wonder if I should even take this nap” or “I don’t feel like I need a nap right now”. Anyways, turns out that traffic was horrible, so I didn’t even have to worry about making the decision of whether or not to nap – it was made for me. I didn’t get to my friends place until 8:15pm or so to catch an 8:45pm movie at a nearby theater, so we had to leave straight away to catch it. The movie ended up lasting pretty late, later than I thought, and we ended up not getting back until after 11 (skipping my 11pm nap in addition to the 7pm). Now, what really worried me about this was: I wasn’t that tired. This might not sound in particular like a bad thing at first but, it was too me. Not being tired after skipping two scheduled naps in a row means that I haven’t acclimated correctly to the schedule. I was considering that, because of the extra sleep I got during the nap that I overslept on, my body wasn’t in need of the REM sleep from those two other naps….but this seems too farfetched. I don’t know why my body would be optimized to get REM sleep for all 1.5 hours of a 1.5 hour nap – this sounds like something that would take time to develop, if it’s even possible. I don’t know, all I know is that I wasn’t tired at all until around midnight, where I took my first nap in something like 7 hours.

I felt a little groggy waking up from this nap, and had to drive home late at night. I didn’t expect there to be any problems, but I was feeling more sleepy than usual on the drive home, and it kind of worried me. I’ll have to crack down these next few days to see if I can easily repair the damage that’s been done. The naps that I have taken this morning (the 19’th, even though majority of this post is describing events on the 18’th) have gone alright….but I seem to be kind of groggy still waking up. I haven’t gotten any more than 2 hours of consecutive sleep within the last 3-4 days or so, though, so I don’t think that these little mistakes would be enough to revert the schedule completely back to monophasic and make me start over, or anything. The experience has confused me a little, and right now, in all truthfulness, I’m not sure when I should take my next nap according to my current schedule. I’ve decided that it would be best to get ready, and if I’m tired enough, take a nap before my dentist appointment this morning (yes, another one….*sigh*). I have more to post about, but for now I need to leave so that I have time to take a nap if I want to. I’ll stay much more diligent with my naps now that I have full battery power :). Stay tuned, I'll post again later today.