Sleep Experiment - Day 1

June 21, 2011 – Day 1 (Sorry about the length, the next few days will be shorter I promise)

In undertaking a new task one thing always strikes me: the way a good idea seems great the farther from it you actually are. I’ve rediscovered this fact as I plan to start sleeping polyphasically. It seems great from a distance. Four or more extra hours in my day. No more restless nights and sluggish mornings. What could go wrong?

Well, as I sit here on the first night of my experiment, the ‘wrongs’ seem to become all the more apparent.

One, I love sleeping. When the crush of a day finally overtakes me and I can disappear for a while into sleep. I find something entirely satisfying about sleep. However, I am in constant conflict with it. Like a star-crossed lover I want sleep but damn she treats me badly.

Two…well, there isn’t really a two. Voluntarily giving up sleep is something I never thought I would do. And so I stick with my first point: I love sleep. Having to stay up like this (its 1:03am now and I can’t sleep until 3am) is like the proverbial carrot driving the donkey. God dammit! I want to sleep!

I guess I should explain a little bit about what exactly I’m doing.

Any internet fanatic has probably stumbled across the mythical tomes of information promising 4 or more extra hours in your day. More effective sleep. The term for these types of promises is sleeping polyphasically. Most people (8 hour sleepers) sleep monophasically: one long core sleep. During this core sleep the body cycles between four (or so) stages of sleep. This cycle occurs more than once (each cycle lasting approximately 90 minutes) and, frankly, scientists don’t really know which are the important parts. Enter polyphasic sleep. The program I am undertaking involves 4 hours of sleep. One core sleep of three hours and three 20 minute naps equally spaced at 5 hour intervals. The idea behind this type of a sleep pattern is to cut out the unneeded parts of the sleep cycle. By forcing my body to adapt to this sleep cycle I will (hopefully) force it to only enter the needed stages of sleep.

Being a burgeoning scientist I like to proclaim that, “I’m doing this for science”. In fact, there is very little scientific literature surrounding the subject of sleeping polyphasically or on chronic sleep restriction. The general consensus is that this type of sleep cycle has no immediately noticeable negative effects, but surely it can’t be good for you.

I could point you to two sources that say otherwise and show improved performance (or equal health). But I would rather do my own scientific investigation.

In reading the literature on sleep deprivation, one test seemed to provide the most illuminating information regarding immediate performance of the test subject. It is called a Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT). Basically, it tests the subject’s wakefulness and response time. Being a bit of a geek, I decided to program my own PVT to use during this experiment. I have already taken data for nearly a week (to get a baseline for my performance) and will include the results when I conclude the study so as to do as much of a blind analysis as possible.

It has been suggested to me to study both my short term and long-term memory in addition to wakefulness. While I would love to explore as many facets as possible during this experiment, I couldn’t find any concise answers on how to measure these abilities and so will have to rely on self-reporting. But I will be working on (am currently working on) projects that make me think (read: physics) so I will notice a dip in my ability if it occurs.

Further, I would like to have an assessment of my health during various parts of this experiment. I have been unsuccessfully playing around with a heart rate monitor (a reading would be taken after waking from my midday nap) and I have toyed with the notion of checking my blood pressure. Obviously, I didn’t follow through on either of these and so have no baseline to compare to. But I figure I’m healthy enough to run a triathlon so I probably wont wreck myself completely (and if this turns out to be anything like smoking, my body should revert back to normal quickly after stopping the experiment).

Having gotten the science-y stuff out of the way I guess I should talk about the personal reasons for why I want to do this.

Ever since my parents rescinded their commanded bedtime I haven’t slept consistently. I manage to deprive myself of sleep during the week and become a glutton for it on the weekend. This type of sleep pattern has led me to be consistently tired. I regiment definite routines in my waking hours and yet my sleep has never conformed to fit with the rest of my anal-retentive life.

Furthermore, in my years at university, I have found myself becoming neither a night owl or early-bird. I don’t function particularly well in the early hours or late at night and so I’ve always felt my life had become compressed into about 14 hours: from 10am to 12am. That would be 10 hours of sleep! Gluttony!

So I sit at the precipice between a 14-hour day and a 20 hour day. Six extra hours to read, to work , to play. To do things I’ve always wanted to but haven’t had the time. I’m sure 3 of these hours will be spent procrastinating with extra TV shows but the remaining 3 hours will provide me an opportunity to program a computer game, to learn a new language, or to try yoga.

The possibilities seem endless. But again, things look better from far away. But right now I can see the blemishes of polyphasic sleep quite clearly. I will be a zombie. At least for the next few days. Online blogs remark upon a 1-2 week period of just barely making it followed by another 2-4 weeks before a full adjustment is made. Hopefully I can struggle through the awkward beginning and reap some of the benefits of polyphasic sleep. And if not, well, I’ll add a bit of data to the hunt for a way to live more efficiently.