This will be a long form compilation of my research into the science of sleep reduction - or how to sleep less at as low of a health cost as possible
Everyone talks about longevity, but a 25% decrease in your sleep need past age 20 is roughly equivalent to an extra five years of life - before age-related degradation even occurs!
Update: as of October 2024 I have stopped all experiments with polyphasic sleep. I'm someone who tends towards hypomanic episodes followed by crashes - not sure if this is a quirk of my bipolar-susceptible genes that never fully emerged or if it's just my aptitude. Recently however I experienced a very severe episode that led to me 'crashing out' and going through a totally-unmanaged (I didn't even realize I was manic, which is very rare) episode that lasted for ten days and resulted in an emotionally debilitating crash that had me struggling a lot, to put a long story short. As such, I've stopped dabbling in polyphasic sleep, noopept, drug use, and some other bad habits until I feel like I have a handle on what went wrong. I don't think it was the sleep cycling, to be clear, but I am at such a high-stress point in my life rn that I cannot responsibly continue to dabble in this material. I will resume experiments next summer, most likely!
Table of Contents
Sleep Cycle SummarySection 1: A Basic Summary of the Sleep Cycle
Note: cycle length tends to vary a lot based on number of cycles. The longer one sleeps, the longer N2 and REM seem to last and the shorter N3 seems to last.
Stage: N1/NREM 1
Type: Light Sleep
Length: 5-10 Minutes
Functional stage or transitory stage: Transitory stage, lasts about 5-10 minutes as the body transitions from state of wakefulness to state of sleep. Probably unnecessary in replacement of sleep.
Stage: N2/NREM 2
Type: Light Sleep
Length: 20 minutes
Functional stage or transitory stage: Semi-functional. Largely a transitory stage but some sort of functional aspect involving sleep spindles and K-complexes. Sleep spindles are short bursts of brain activity that last roughly half a second to 3 seconds that seem to be correlated with learning and memory. K-Complexes consist of a sharp peak of electrical brain activity followed immediately by a dip; they are thought to contribute to memory consolidation and neural maintenance.
Key concepts: Sleep Spindles and K-Complex.
Sleep SpindlesStage: N3/NREM 3
Type: Deep Sleep
Length: 20-40 minutes
Functional stage or transitory stage: Functional stage. One is sleeping at one's deepest when one is in NREM 3 sleep. Body releases growth hormone during this stage and carries out muscle, tissue, and bone repair. Also suspected to help regulate metabolism, immune function, hormone release, and memory.
Key concepts: delta wave of sleep, sleep spindles and slow oscillations, growth hormone, prolactin, and melatonin, clearing of metabolites in the cerebrospinal fluid.
Slow-Wave Sleep SummaryStage: REM
Length: 10-60 Minutes
Functional stage or transitory stage: Functional
REM sleep is the stage of sleep where vivid dreams occur and plays a crucial role in emotional processing, memory consolidation, and brain development, particularly in babies and young animals. It also prepares the brain for wakefulness, as the brain's activity and heart rate during REM resemble those of an awake state, with REM becoming more frequent as the night progresses.
Section 2: Polyphasic Sleep: An Intro and Resources
Anecdotal Reddit Reports with Extended DymaxionPolyphasic sleep is a sleep pattern that involves dividing sleep into multiple short naps or sleep sessions throughout a 24-hour period, rather than having one long, continuous sleep. This contrasts with the more common monophasic sleep, where an individual sleeps for one extended period at night. Polyphasic sleep is often adopted to increase waking hours and is practiced in various forms, such as the Uberman schedule (multiple naps) or biphasic sleep (one main sleep and a nap).
I am most interested in the Siesta I, Dual Core I, and Extended Dymaxion Schedules. Siesta I is 6 1/2 hours of total sleep time - with 5 hours of sleep at night and a 1 1/2 hour nap during the afternoon. Dual Core I is 5 1/2 hours of total sleep time - with 3 hours and 30 minutes at night, a 1 hour 40 minute nap during the day, and another 20 minute 'rapid nap' in the evening. Extended Dymaxion, the one I'm most interested in, is 4 hours of total sleep time a day concentrated in four 1 hour naps. This is obviously not sustainable but I am very curious about the idea of cutting me sleep time literally in half. Overall, it seems like 5 1/2 hours of sleep a day is the lowest SUSTAINABLE threshhold for polyphasic sleep.
Section 3: My Experimental Process
Currently experimenting with an adapted siesta involving 5-6 hours of total sleep a night and a 1-2 hour nap during the day, for around 6 1/2 hours of total sleep time. One thing I notice however is that my sleep need increases as I become more concentrated on learning mandarin and school materials, so this has somewhat grown during my fall semester this year.