Polyphasic Sleeping in Ann Arbor

So what happened you might ask?

2007-09-01T10:47:00.001-04:00

Yeah, I did it. I disappeared and never posted the results just like I hate other people doing. Sigh.

To be honest, I forgot my blogger account name and password pretty quickly and never bothered to figure them out until just now. Sorry for that.

Okay, so after my last post here's what happened:

I had decent success with a quadraphasic schedule for a while. Sometime in early July I purchased a BioPro "BioLife Pendant" and went through another huge change.

It cured my sleep apnea.

Well, not entirely, but I went from waking up every minute to waking up less than 5 times a night. My snoring went WAY down too. Suddenly the motivation I had for the polyphasic schedule in the first place (better quality REM sleep) was pretty much gone.

While I did have some great weeks on the polyphasic schedule, one thing that I always struggled with was night time. Rather than spending more time doing productive stuff I wound up spending more time watching TV. The combination of not being productive with my extra waking hours, the loss of my main motivation (sleep apnea) and the fact that it was never "easy" basically killed the experiment.

Switching back to a monophasic schedule was quick. I think it only took me a couple days to get reoriented. An interesting side-effect from the whole thing is that I no longer have problems waking up really early (something I've struggled with my whole life). That's probably from sleeping better when I do sleep though.

And now I'll send this out into the ether. Take care folks!

EDIT: Removed the salon info... We had to close :-(

Week 12 - Quadraphasic success!

2006-06-18T16:08:00.000-04:00

I've been doing this long enough now that keeping track of days is getting tough. Okay, it's day 86 for anyone still counting :)

Actually, part of me feels like I should really start the counter over from two weeks ago. Since my last post things have continued to change so dramatically it's hard to know where to begin...

First, I'm now officially on a quadraphasic schedule. My naps are 30-60 minutes long (depending on the time of day, shorter during daylight hours, longer at night) for an average of 3 hours of sleep per day. My wake periods range from 5 hours to 9 hours, though 9 is a stretch and I usually pay the price the next couple of naps. 8 hours is fine though, and I can do two 8 hour blocks a day if necessary.

Talk about a change! Previously I couldn't last more than 5 hours and that was VERY hard. Plus it would throw me off for 24 hours.

So what happened you ask? Well, as I mentioned in my last post, I started taking some new vitamins but that's not really the whole story. I guess I should just start with what happened 3 weeks ago.

On day 63, exactly 9 weeks in, I was introduced to a few products from a company called BioPro Technology. They specialize in products that deal with "electropollution" which is caused by things like computers, cell phones, cordless phones, wireless networking, televisions, high voltage power wires, etc. This is something many of us have heard about in passing but I not many people really pay much attention to. I certainly didn't.

I work with computers for a living and have 6 computers in my house (8 if you count my DVRs) with tons of televisions, computer monitors, and so forth. Not to mention my cell phone which is constantly glued to my hip. Needless to say, if electropollution is a real problem, I'm a prime candidate for suffering ill effects :-)

After doing a bit of research into the problem, it sounded like it was worthwhile to be cautious. I ordered some of their products, including the nutritional supplements (the Bio Produce and Bio Nutratonic) and a bunch of the BioPro Universal Chips. I started using the nutritionals on Day 69 and by the following day I was noticing huge changes in my sleep.

Now, I've been taking nutritional supplements for years and I've tried many brands/qualities. I've NEVER had a reaction like this before. The Nutratonic especially is quite an amazing thing. I don't drink caffeine anymore, but taking a shot of it is kind of like what caffeine used to feel like, except without the bad side effects :-) One 1-ounce shot also gives me an energy boost for 8-12 hours which is pretty cool. Since I'm up so much I use it twice a day now.

Since starting this new sleep schedule I've been napping in my office. Of the 6 computers in the house, 3 are in the office. I have two very large CRT computer monitors in there as well. All of it is turned on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That's not even counting the other smaller gadgets. It never occurred to me that all that stuff might be causing a problem! So, I applied the Universal Chips as directed and the quality of my sleep improved again. Rather than requiring 50 minutes every nap, I found 30 minutes did the trick most of the time. My less frequent over-sleeps are far less traumatic as well. I rarely wake up too groggy to think anymore. What can I say? I'm a convert. This whole electropollution thing is bad, and BioPro's products help!

There have been other benefits I've noticed as well, but since this blog is focused on my polyphasic sleeping I'll spare you the details :-) I still can't believe I'm finally sleeping consistently and only 4 times a day. After 10 weeks of constant struggle the last two weeks have been heaven. I can finally call my conversion a success!

DISCLAIMER: Since I was so sold on the company and its products I decided to start selling their products myself. The links above point to my BioPro store and I DO receive a commission on anything sold there. I mention this for two reasons:

I don't want someone to notice the name at the top of the BioPro page and think I'm saying all of this just to make money. I really do believe in this company and I think its products can help lots of people. I now use every product they make and they're all really amazing. Making money is nice, but secondary.

If anyone wants to talk about BioPro in more detail feel free to contact me through the email address on my BioPro Contact Page. I don't intend for this blog to become a BioPro soapbox (though I'm sure it'll come up again).

Day 72 - Been a while since I posted.. NEW DEVELOPMENT

2006-06-04T22:53:00.000-04:00

Since my last post I've been experiencing much the same inconsistent sleep I've documented for the entire project. On day 70 (Friday) that began to change.

I started taking a new vitamin supplement Thursday and found my energy level jump up. In fact it jumped so much that I had trouble getting to sleep after 4 hours. Also when I over-slept I would wake up alert rather than completely groggy and disoriented.

Due to some external factors my naps on Friday were off by quite a bit and I ended up skipping one 4 hour nap (which I think I've only done once or twice in the last 10 weeks). The amazing thing is I felt fine doing it. That led me to consider switching from a hexaphasic schedule (6 naps per day) to a quadraphasic schedule (4 naps per day). I figured that would give me more time per wake period to get tired. Instead of six 30 minute naps (3 hours of sleep a day) I'm sleeping 50 minutes every 6 hours (3.3 hours of sleep a day).

I started the quadraphasic schedule Saturday at 8:00am and I've been following it since without incident. It's still pretty early going I suppose but I don't have any of the symptoms of the hexaphasic transition so it's possible that I'll be able to avoid any problems completely. Well, at least that's what I hope :-) Can you believe I'm still optimistic about anything after 10 weeks of this? Heh.

Day 58 - Two more perfect days

2006-05-21T11:11:00.000-04:00

Friday and Saturday (days 56 and 57) both met the Perfect Day criteria. Today unfortunately I crashed again. I fell asleep for an hour watching a movie at 1am and took my 4:30am nap at 3:30am, but wound up sleeping until 5:30am.

I feel recovered from the night already, which is an improvement. Usually it takes 3 or 4 naps to recover from a bad night, it's only taken 2 today. I think I'm on my way to that perfect polyphasic week FINALLY.

Naps have been much more consistent since I started using the mouth guard/CPAP/chin strap combo. From the video evidence it looks like I'm adapting nicely to breathing through my nose. Rather than struggling to breathe through my mouth every few minutes, I'm breathing through my nose and my breathing is very regular. I also don't wake up feeling like I'm suffocating anymore (not a pleasant experience).

There are still occasional bad naps (usually where I roll on my back and manage to open my mouth) and they're still hell, but the frequency is decreasing. I think I had one bad nap during my two Perfect Days.

At this rate things will be great by day 100 ;-)

Day 55 - I had a perfect day!

2006-05-18T10:50:00.000-04:00

I had 10 good naps in a row before screwing up. Day 54 (yesterday) was the first "perfect day" since I defined a "perfect day". FINALLY! :-)

I managed to maintain the good naps even through my normally bad block with minimal problem. Not sure what happened this morning, but somehow I decided to lay down at 2:30am without an alarm or anything... Ah well, at least I finally have some significant progress I can point to.

I haven't changed anything about how I'm taking my naps, I'm just plugging away at this CPAP thing.

As I've started to be more successful with my schedule I've started to notice that my internal sense of day it is has started to get screwy. For example, today is Thursday but it feels like Tuesday. It's very interesting.

Day 53 - Close but no cigar

2006-05-16T19:31:00.000-04:00

So my current plan of sleeping with my CPAP/BIPAP machine and using a mouth guard along with my chin strap to prevent breathing through my mouth has its ups and downs (as with pretty much everything else I've tried so far).

It seems that 1-3 times a day I somehow manage to open my mouth regardless of all the precautions and it really throws a wrench in my schedule. Which means I STILL haven't managed to have a "perfect day" yet. To try to address the problem I've tried a few things ranging from even more draconian measures for keeping my mouth shut (tape doesn't work as well as you'd expect) to trying to "correct" a bad CPAP nap by taking a nap without it.

Nothing really works.

So once again I get CLOSER to the prize but it remains just out of reach.

The good news is my "bad time" of the day has reduced from the original 4am through 9am to a mere 4am through 7am. That's almost livable if I could sleep through that block. Of course I can't sleep longer than 1 hour (intentionally) without severe complications so that's still out of the question. I can sleep longer unintentionally but it sucks the big one.

Damn you sleep apnea, damn you to hell.

As always, I soldier on because it's still slightly better than the alternative (especially now that I know how badly I sleep when I sleep for more than an hour).

Anyone have any ideas how to keep my mouth closed? (Besides staples and/or crazy glue) I'm running out of ideas again :-)

Day 48 - Progress continues!

2006-05-11T10:18:00.000-04:00

After posting yesterday I had a fabulous day nap-wise. I didn't even get all my naps in at the right times and I still felt great all day. I think last night would have been great too except I opened my mouth again, then followed that up (in my exhaustion) with 4 hours of sleeping on my back without my dental device. In other words, NOT SLEEPING AT ALL (unless you count 40 seconds of sleep at a time as sleep... I don't).

I did a bit of searching on Google and haven't seen anywhere else mention my particular solution, so I thought I'd share some more details. Some of this is going to be repetitive but I want to get it all down in a single post.

PROBLEM: With a CPAP/BIPAP machine you have to keep your mouth closed or wear a mask that covers both your mouth and nose in order for the CPAP to be effective. I have a beard which would cause quite a bit of leakage around the corners of all the mouth/nose masks I've seen so far. I wear a chin strap to keep my jaw shut, but I still open my lips and air escapes. Once I open my mouth the rest of the nap is pretty much shot since it never really closes again.

UNSUCCESSFUL THINGS I TRIED:

Using an ace bandage instead of my chin strap to secure my jaw in place. This really kept my jaw in place, but this is where I found out that I'm opening my lips. Game over.
Covering my mouth with various things to keep my lips closed (first I tried an ace bandage then a plastic bag and such). In all cases I'd eventually work it loose and open my lips. The beard didn't help here either since something like a plastic bag didn't end up forming any kind of seal, I could still easily breathe. Game over.
I also tried many combinations with and without my dental device.

SOLUTION!

Eventually I had the idea to try something inside the mouth. So I constructed mouth guard (like in boxing, football or hockey) but made it airtight so that even if I open my lips, no air comes out of my mouth. I combined that with my chin strap to prevent opening my jaw and spitting out the mouth guard (which is what I did last night, oops). The result is amazing. It's like night and day.

Interestingly, after about 25-30 minutes of sleep so far I feel kinda like I'm suffocating (which I'm not but I think my body is so conditioned to breathing through my mouth all these years I panic) and I have to get up and remove the mouth guard. Pretty convenient alarm actually :-)

My hope is that eventually I'll condition myself to stop breathing through my mouth and at that point many of these extra things will be unnecessary. For now I'm just happy to be getting consistently good sleep.

Day 47 - Making progress again?

2006-05-10T00:44:00.000-04:00

Call me superstitious, but I hate to say I'm making progress since the next thing that seems to happen is a new crisis. I'm going out on a limb here though because I think I've found a crucial problem AND I think I have a solution.

I was a little bored a few days ago so I thought I'd play around with eliminating background noise in my nap recordings (okay, so I was a little bored and overly obsessive...). I discovered something interesting during my occasional CPAP sleep: I had my mouth open for a while. It was hard to tell from the video and audio exactly how long, so I started playing around.

In case I haven't explained this before, most CPAP masks fit over or in your nose and do not cover your mouth. There are some that cover both your nose and mouth but I have a beard and I was told that they don't work very well with facial hair (hopefully that's no longer the case, but that's a different topic). So both of my masks only push air in through my nose.

To get an idea what that's like, imagine hooking up the exhaust of a vacuum cleaner (albeit a very small one) to something that you wear over your nose. Air is constantly being forced in your nose to keep your throat from closing and to keep you breathing properly. It's quite something to get used to sleeping with.

Anyway, now imagine that you have this thing on your nose and you open your mouth. Since everything in your throat is connected, the air that is being forced in your nose now starts coming out of your mouth rather than going down your throat to keep it open. This essentially negates the effect of the CPAP machine since the air goes down your nose and immediately out your mouth and doesn't help you keep breathing. Ack.

To make matters worse, the air escaping from your mouth creates a bit of a vacuum inside your mouth sucking the air out of your lungs and making it more difficult than usual to breathe. And that's when you're AWAKE.

So, that's why noticing my mouth open is a big deal. It's a bit of a double-whammy.

From the 6 months that I tried to make the CPAP work for me a couple years ago, I knew this mouth thing was a problem for me. I own a strap that goes around my head to hold my chin in place which in theory should keep my mouth closed. Unfortunately I was wearing said strap at the time, so it obviously wasn't terribly effective. This led me down the road of trying a few different things to keep my mouth closed while using the CPAP machine.

I just took a nap an hour ago where it looks like I successfully managed to breathe through my nose for the entire nap. It's evident in several spots that I'm TRYING to breathe through my mouth but eventually I give up and use my nose again. I even had about 15 minutes of REM sleep during that nap.

If I've licked the CPAP problem that means I'll get more consistently good naps and I may even be able to sleep a bit longer (an hour or 2) without so many problems.

One nap under my belt doesn't guarantee anything, but I'm very hopeful :-)

Day 44 - Difficulties continue

2006-05-07T11:12:00.000-04:00

I think I might need to get another sleep study using my BIPAP machine. From looking at the video it's hard to tell for sure, but it seems like I'm getting pretty awful sleep using the thing: No more than 2-5 minutes of REM at a time, REM at very random times, and occasional very violent spasms (one or two per nap).

In addition, it appears even using the machine if I accidentally roll onto my back I have apnea episodes. Even with all of that though, whatever kind of sleep I get using the machine it seems to fill some need I have. It's hard to explain how frustrating it is to need (on some level) to sleep with a machine that leaves you feeling worse when you wake up than if you hadn't used it at all. Actually, I usually feel worse than if I hadn't slept at all.

So, night-time continues to be very inconsistent. Some days I'm awake and alert, most days I'm tired and feel like I need extra naps. Most of those extra naps still end up going badly (apnea, over-sleeps, whatever).

I think at the moment I've almost got the worst of both worlds in terms of time. I'm sleeping 4-7 hours a day (and the days I sleep 4 hours I feel worse many times) so not much extra time, AND my day is constantly interrupted by naps.

So, if it weren't for the fact that during the DAY I feel better than I've felt in years I'd be tempted to quit. Luckily (or unfortunately?) for me, that's all the motivation I seem to need to keep up with this thing.

I'm going to continue this "use the CPAP for extra naps" thing until I can get another sleep study to figure out exactly what the heck is wrong with this infernal machine. If they tell me it's fine again there's either something wrong with their equipment or something really wrong with me :)

Day 41 - Interesting combination

2006-05-04T11:35:00.000-04:00

I haven't analyzed the video yet, but I slept for 3+ hours last night with my CPAP after a particularly bad (in terms of apnea) nap. I woke up groggy and hazy as usual. I took my normal 8:30 nap afterwards and I feel fairly decent.

I'm going to stick with this current plan of using my CPAP anytime I feel like I need more sleep (for whatever reason) for a while. I'm thinking I may settle into a routine of a core sleep of 1-3 hours per day using the CPAP, and the rest of my sleep will be non-CPAP naps.

Since this is pretty different from what I expected when I decided to try the CPAP again (in a positive way), I'm going to blog more frequently again for the next week or two with the results. At least using this strategy I'll avoid apnea during any longer sleep periods. It really really sucked looking at a 4-6 hour sleep and seeing that I only got 1-2 hours of REST.

The most annoying thing about sleeping too long...

2006-05-03T07:44:00.000-04:00

I think the most annoying thing about sleeping longer than I intended is that the quality of sleep sucks so badly. I lose the waking time and I don't have anything to show for it.

Here's a good example: I slept for 6 hours last night because I wasn't feeling well. It looks like I got maybe an hour to hour and a half of restful sleep out of that at most.

I'm going to try something new. If I, for whatever odd reason at the time, decide to lay back down immediately following a nap I'm going to use my CPAP machine. At least then I'll get SOME form of restful sleep, even though it might not be REM.

I also can't seem to shake the last bits of being sick. Now my sinuses are more clear but I have a sore throat. Argh. Hopefully sleeping with the CPAP will at least help me recover finally.

Day 39 - CPAP results

2006-05-02T10:30:00.000-04:00

For those waiting with baited breath for the results of my CPAP test yesterday, here goes:

Didn't work.

I did discover something interesting and, if it's true of a full night as well, very disturbing. During a "normal" nap without any apnea episodes and without the CPAP machine, I seem to get somewhere between 15 and 19 minutes of REM as near as I can tell (I don't actually analyze every nap for REM since it's kinda hard to spot). During my three naps last night with the CPAP machine I consistently got 5 minutes of REM sleep per nap.

My first nap with the CPAP machine was interrupted after 8 minutes by a big spasm. Not something that typically happens to me. I took a second CPAP nap (hey, that rhymes) right away because the first was so short. Between the two naps I got about 10 minutes of REM, which was fine.

The third nap, the 4:30am one, was STILL only 5 minutes of REM. That did me in. I crashed and woke up 90 minutes later. Unfortunately I didn't wear my CPAP or dental device for the 90 minute sleep so it was pretty much a waste.

So now what? I dunno. I'll probably take the occasional nap with the CPAP just to see if the 5 minute thing really is consistent. Beyond that I'm out of ideas of things to really try... Maybe I'll just schedule my life around what I've managed to accomplish so far. Scheduling core sleep didn't go well either, so the biggest annoyance with my current "schedule" is that it's not predictable (and hence not much of a schedule).

At this point I can definitely say I'm polyphasic since I can't function well without my naps anymore, but I'm far from being truly hexaphasic. The upside is that I definitely feel better for large sections of the day than I did before starting this schedule. I like that. I just wish it were more of the day and more consistent.

EDIT: Oh, and I don't plan to post much from here on unless something big happens. Except for my nap script, I still need to post that for sure :-)

Day 38 - Not a single successful day in the past 9 days

2006-05-01T13:35:00.000-04:00

In my last real post I mentioned I was aiming for a perfect hexaphasic week. I had planned to start with an easy goal of 3 consecutive days.

Well, 9 days later I haven't had a single successful day according to the guidelines I laid out. I've had a few close ones (days where I slept for an hour once for example) but none "perfect". Part of the problem is I'm defining "day" not in the sense of 24 hours but in the sense of midnight to midnight. I've had lots of perfect 24 hour periods but none have spanned midnight to midnight.

It seems like when I have a problem nap, the next 24 hours tends to go fairly well. After that however, things fall apart again.

Summary of news:

I gave up the vegetarian diet 11 days ago (forgot to mention that before). I haven't noticed any difference in nap quality or the number of problems. Not that I've been tracking that stuff scientifically :-) I can definitely say that the video evidence doesn't show any difference since starting to eat meat again.
I slept a solid 6.5 hour block one day intentionally. I had always intended to have one long block periodically and I felt a little ill so I went ahead and slept through a night. I had no problems resuming my (fitful) polyphasic schedule immediately following.
I've been stuffed up off and on for the past few weeks, ever since I got sick the first time. I can't seem to get my sinuses to drain and stay clear. Since blocked sinuses reduces air flow I'm betting this has something to do with why I can't seem to adapt fully.

Except for the rare nap I still don't remember my dreams. I've never remembered my dreams so I guess I don't find that too surprising, but I'm a bit disappointed. I was definitely looking forward to the whole "lucid dream" thing, but the closest I've gotten was a really bizarre nap where I was half-conscious and observing my dreams, but had no control over them. Fortunately I wasn't actually a part of any of the dreams that time.

I've continued using the catnapper CD, but I made a few modifications to it. The original has 2-3 minutes of instruction at the beginning and 1-2 minutes of just noise at the end. I removed those and at the end I substituted my effective but annoying alarm (about 25 minutes worth of my alarm actually... Just in case :) ). Saving 5-10 minutes per nap nets me an extra 30-60 minutes per day of waking time.

I haven't actually slept through an alarm in a long time, but I still reset the alarm once or sometimes even twice after a nap without really waking up fully. Not good. I developed the habit of these "back-to-back" naps while I was still struggling with my apnea every nap. I now consider these instances to be severe lapses in discipline, but I haven't succeeded in wiping them out entirely. They are definitely the biggest remaining challenge to fully adapting to this schedule.

Which brings me to my apnea. Video evidence suggests that I'm down to 3-5 apnea episodes per DAY at this point during my regular naps (when I was first diagnosed with apnea I was experiencing 70+ episodes per HOUR, or close to 500 per DAY). Unfortunately when I sleep longer (either turning off the alarm and rolling over, or resetting the alarm) I still have lots of apnea problems. The MOST unfortunate thing is that the naps that have even a single apnea episode are the ones that turn into problems nearly every time.

As for ways to combat the apnea episodes I'm finally down to my last idea: The dreaded CPAP machine (actually in my case it's a BIPAP, but it's the same principal just a more expensive machine). I had such an incredibly negative experience with this infernal device that I actually started this whole hexaphasic plan just to avoid ever having to use it again. At this point I can only hope (hope hope) that using it for short <30 minute segments will be a completely different experience to using it for an entire night.

I'm not sure if I ever described my CPAP problems, but the short story is I would wake up feeling like a truck hit me, backed up, ran over me again, and then the driver got out and kicked me a couple times for good measure. I was told I was getting much better quality sleep when I used it, but subjectively I felt like a complete zombie. To be fair, I never had a sleep study done while using my exact machine and mask. It's quite possible that there's something very wrong with the settings and/or mask I'm using. Unfortunately, I tried in vain to make it work for about 6 months before giving up. At this point my reaction to it is kind of like what happens when you get food poisoning... I just don't even want to look at the MENU for that restaurant anymore.

So here I am, in desperation, trying it again. If I can find all the parts, my first BIPAP nap will be Tuesday at 12:30am. Fingers crossed....

Odd blogger.com problem

2006-04-26T08:09:00.000-04:00

So the entry I created a couple days ago seems to have gotten in some strange state. Blogger THOUGHT it was published but it never actually got published so publishing kept failing over and over.

I finally deleted that post and now I'll bet this is going to work.

Anyway, if this does post I'll post an update soon.

The Quest for the Perfect Hexaphasic Week

2006-04-22T08:38:00.000-04:00

I've had plenty of really good nights and plenty of bad ones. I think it's time I start focusing on a new goal. Eventually the goal is the Perfect Hexaphasic Week. Obviously I'll need a few milestones in-between, so I'm going to start with something very achievable: Three Perfect Days.

So what's a Perfect Day anyway? Here's my list:

There must be no less than 6 and no more than 7 naps in a day (okay, you caught me, that's not EXACTLY hexaphasic, but it's close :-) )
The max nap length is 35 minutes (the catnapper CD is 32 minutes long)
Each hexaphasic nap must be taken within 1 hour of the scheduled times (that's 6 out of the 7 naps). This gives me a little bit of flexibility but hopefully not too much to get into trouble.
Two consecutive naps must be at least an hour apart (that's an hour of waking time)

Since each "day" starts at midnight, today is unfortunately shot already. This morning I took an extra nap that turned into a bit of a mess. Plus I'm letting my wife sleep in (she had a rough night as well and is still recovering from her surgery) so I'm delaying my 8:30am nap.

I think the biggest key to success is going to be strengthening my discipline muscle. At this point I'm starting to revert to old bad habits with alarms and there's no way I'll succeed like that. For instance, my wife woke me up from 3 naps yesterday despite my "precautions". The only way I'm going to make this work is by not allowing myself to change the rules when I'm tired. It's amazing what you can rationalize when you just wake up :-)

I'll be numbering my attempts just to provide some extra incentive for success. Tomorrow is Perfect Day 1 of 3, Attempt 1

Okay, that's about it for now. I'm starting to fade fast without the 8:30am nap.

Day 28 - Dental device adjustment

2006-04-22T01:45:00.000-04:00

I finally got in to see the dentist today and got my dental device adjusted. What the device does is pull my lower jaw forward. Pulling the jaw forward pulls all the tissue attached to it in my throat forward as well, creating more room for air to pass. There is actually a surgical procedure that does much the same thing except permanently. My wife wrote a bit about the surgical options available a couple weeks back.

Anyway, the device was moderately effective originally, but not terribly comfortable for an entire night of sleep. The amount it pulls the jaw forward is adjustable but only by the dentist. Now that I'm not sleeping through the night anymore I decided to have it adjusted to pull my jaw forward as far as possible. The difference is about a centimeter I think.

I've had 3 naps with the adjusted device and it appears to be much more effective now. I don't have to tilt my head back nearly as severely to sleep well now. I was even able to lay on my back with only moderate snoring and a couple of apnea events in a 15 minute period (previously I would experience very bad snoring and an apnea event every minute when laying on my back). It's not the solution to all my problems, but it's definitely a big help.

I've also completed a full day of catnapper naps now. I'm no longer waking up during the catnapper wake up section and I've slept over 2 minutes into the alarm track a few times now.
On the bright side I'm falling asleep very quickly even when I can't shut off my mind. Hopefully now with the dental device adjustment combined with the catnapper CD I'm close to a breakthrough :-)

Days 26 and 27 - More over-sleeping

2006-04-20T12:21:00.000-04:00

In my last post I mentioned the catnapper CD and how the nap was different from a regular polyphasic nap for me. I used it twice in a row that day (day 25) at 4:30pm and 8:30pm then took a regular nap at 12:30am. The "regular" nap did no go so well. I wound up in a daze for the rest of the night until about 8am. So that's how day 26 (yesterday for those who have lost count) started.

I tried both methods of napping (from here on out a "normal" nap is without the catnapper CD and a "catnapper" nap is with the CD) throughout the day yesterday and decided that the catnapper naps were far more reliable. While it was POSSIBLE that I would feel more alert mentally after a normal nap, there was an equal chance I'd feel worse. My experience with the catnapper naps has been very consistent.

At 10pm last night I decided I would take catnapper naps exclusively for the next few days. If things go well I'll probably keep it up for a week or more (until I feel confident in the schedule) before making any changes.

The next question I've gotten is what kind of sleep do I get with the catnapper CD. From the video evidence it looks like I'm getting about 15-18 minutes of REM which starts as soon as I fall asleep. I'm falling asleep between 5 and 10 minutes into the CD (during the relaxation section) so as far as I can tell the CD isn't putting me in and out of REM.

I generally wake up during count down at the end of the CD, but occasionally I sleep through that part. To remedy this I've created my own version of the CD with a 25 minute obnoxious alarm track after the catnapper track. So far I haven't gone more than about 1 minute in to the alarm track before waking up, but it's still early yet.

I think what I like best about the catnapper naps is the guided relaxation section. It really helps you feel physically better rested when you relax well before falling asleep. I tend to be pretty tense during my normal naps.

Anyway, on to day 27. Today I thought I had somehow slept through that 25 minute alarm because I woke up after a 3 hour over-sleep this morning. Going back to the video however it looks like I actually woke up, restarted the catnapper track, woke a second time, stopped the CD entirely, and fell sound asleep. I don't recall any of that. Sigh. At least the alarm is WORKING :-)

For the 12:30am and 4:30am naps (the sole naps I have any problems with at this point) I'm going to set several redundant alarms on day 28.

Incidentally, tomorrow is 4 weeks since I started the transition and I haven't had a full week of success yet. Wow I'm stubborn ;-)

Days 21 to 25

2006-04-18T18:24:00.000-04:00

Long time no post. Sorry about that.

Work continues on my Perl sleep timer. It's nearly ready for public consumption (I was really hoping to add a configuration interface first, but I'm starting to realize I'll probably never get around to that). It has been a help, but it's far from a perfect solution to my problems.

The last 5 days have really been quite a blur. My mother in law came into town to help out with Jackie's recovery and it really threw me off balance. Unfortunately due to the continuing apnea episodes I find myself very restricted in where I can sleep effectively. Unfortunately our guest room is where I've been napping. I have an appointment with my dentist on Friday to adjust my dental appliance and I have hopes that that will make it easier to sleep in more places.

The good news is I had a few really good nights over the weekend (where I didn't crash between 4am and 9am). The bad news is I missed several naps, over-slept by hours each day, and I'm a little sick again.

Of course as you all know by now, I'm the energizer polynapper. I'm still sticking with it. As I've said many times, when it's good, it's GREAT. I'm willing to put up with quite a bit (obviously) to make that feeling more permanent.

My mother in law went back home yesterday and last night sucked, so with a bit of luck and lots of determination I'll be back on track tonight.

I have a new weapon in my nap arsenal to help. I borrowed a copy of the Monroe Institute's Catnapper CD mentioned by Jeremy Zink and I'll be using that once or twice a day to start. I just had my first nap with the CD and it was a very different experience. Unlike a polyphasic nap I felt physically very well rested afterwards (not just mentally rejuvenated). I need to get some more comfy headphones for sleeping on my side though. I'll probably go pick up some cheapish ear buds tonight. If the CD continues to be this effective I'll buy my own copy in a couple days. (Thanks again Jeremy!)

Oh, and doing your taxes in the middle of the night is a nice use of the extra polyphasic hours... But taxes still suck :-)

Days 15 to 20

2006-04-13T12:48:00.000-04:00

Crazy week. The daily details are foggy at this point so I'm just going to go over the highlights.

NOTE: In case it hasn't been obvious, I define each new day as starting at midnight, so Friday was day 0 and 12:00am on Saturday was day 1.

On my polyphasic days I've continued a 1.5 - 3 hour over-sleep per day. I haven't set a core sleep time yet, mainly because of everything else going on.

Day 18 (Tue) I semi-accidentally got 6.5 hours of sleep. My wife was in the hospital on Monday until Tuesday morning (she's recovering nicely, thanks for asking) . I had been debating whether I should just do a monophasic night to get through the inevitably hectic day on Tuesday, so I guess my subconscious decided for me. The cool thing is I got the entire thing on tape, which is a treasure trove of useful info about my sleep cycles and habits.

Day 20 (Thu, today) I did another monophasic night. This time it was entirely intentional, since I'm sick. Here's an interesting tidbit: Since I started this schedule every member of the family, all 3 kids and my wife, have been sick repeatedly. At least one kid has thrown up each day of the last 3 weeks with few exceptions. Often all 3 of them repeatedly. Not fun, but that's not the interesting part. While I've occasionally felt a twinge of being sick it never lasted more than a few hours. That is until I had that monophasic night on Tuesday. THEN I got sick.

Once I actually got sick the polyphasic schedule didn't seem very good when trying to get BETTER. I managed to make it through yesterday, but by the end of the day I just felt too ill to continue. So today I slept from 1:30am to 7am, and I took a 2 hour nap as well.

As far as sickness goes I feel better. I don't know if I'll be able to jump back to polyphasic tonight yet though. I'm tempted to do one more monophasic night just to get this out of my system entirely. As for my mental state I'm fuzzy and slow. Polyphasic sleeping has had such a profound impact on my mental state that I can't even imagine going back to monophasic long-term.

That brings me to my fun project of the last week. I noticed from all the video footage that my REM cycle seems to last something between 10 and 18 minutes. It's been hard to tell any closer what the ideal length might be since it takes me between 2 and 11 minutes to fall asleep each nap. At first I thought I'd simply increase my nap time to 30 minutes to provide enough time for 11 minutes to fall asleep and 18 minutes of REM. That didn't work very well since if it took me 2 minutes to fall asleep I would wake up after REM was over and feel like crap.

The second idea was to do ultra-short naps of under 20 minutes. I felt amazingly good with 2 to 10 minutes of REM but at the end of each wake period I was a wreck, and after a few in a row I felt a bit manic.

That led me to my current toy. I wrote a little program to wake me up after I've been asleep for X minutes. I've experimented with X between 15 and 18 so far, with 17 seeming like a decent compromise. The cool thing is this is based on how long I've been ASLEEP, not how long I've been laying down.

The program uses a deadman switch to determine when I fall asleep. I use a mouse button, which I press and hold when I lay down. At the point that I let go of the switch the timer starts counting down for the designated number of minutes. There are also a few safeguards built-in:

A max timer in case you don't let go of the button for whatever reason (roll on top of it, etc)
The timer resets when you re-press the button in case you accidentally let go when getting comfortable
It also DOESN'T reset if you let go for more than a few seconds (in case you actually fell asleep but didn't realize it)

When the timer runs out, the program runs any number of "wake" commands you specify. In my case I'm just running winamp with a particularly annoying sound file I created. Winamp starts playing automatically when started with a file parameter.

Anyway, it's still highly experimental, but it's working pretty well so far. When I've polished it a bit I'll post the source (it's just a short Perl-Tk script so very very easy to modify). Maybe I should start a sourceforge project for it? :-)

Anyway, that's it for now. As things get back to some semblance of "normal" over the next few days I plan to increase the frequency of my posts again (and re-start my tests, and post my test data, and.... Wow I have a lot of plans... Heh). Oh, and if I do fall off the face of the planet I promise to post the source for my little script before I do (hate it when people talk about something like that and then disappear!)

Day 14 - Crash and burn

2006-04-07T11:50:00.000-04:00

I think the most surprising thing so far on this new sleep schedule is that I STILL don't have enough free time. I've wanted to update this blog a few times the last 2 days but haven't had the chance.

So I guess the moral is, if you're in it just for the additional time it might not be enough to keep you motivated :-)

Now for the update.

Day 12 - Day 12 went pretty well. I was awake during all the right times and my daily over-sleep (more on that later) was 90 minutes as usual. I felt quite good except from 4am to 7am.

Day 13 - I was convinced I had everything solved. My "nap quality" was the highest ever. I don't think I had an apnea episode all day. Except for 8:30pm I didn't even take any back-to-back naps, no over-sleeps, nothing. Even for the back-to-back nap I set the time to 10 minutes for the second nap instead of 20. Worked great. I didn't actually FEEL the best I've felt on the schedule so far, but I definitely felt better than my monophasic-self. Even my test scores (which I'd been neglecting along with the blogging) were record setting.

Then today happened. Holy smokes. I don't think I've come closer to quitting than I did today. And that's knowing that my wife will kill me if I just quit.

What happened? Okay, since you asked...

12:30am - Took my nap, woke up feeling great
1am - Went to work as per my schedule, felt great, got a bunch accomplished. From here on out the times are approximate as best I can reconstruct.
2:45am - Started feeling tired early. I should have had another hour before any tiredness crept in.
3:10am - Feeling really tired now, I decided it would be "safer" to take a quick extra nap in the car before heading home for my 4:30 nap.
3:30am - Woke from the nap feeling not much better, which honestly should have been my clue to get home and take a more restful nap. I didn't though, and decided to push through until 4am when it was time to leave to go home for the 4:30 nap.
5:50am - Woke up with a start. I had passed out completely, at my desk, head crashed into the keyboard (and I had the indentations in my forehead to prove it). I have no idea how close to 4am I got, but honestly I'm glad I DIDN'T get halfway home or something... Yikes!
5:55am - Feeling like almost total crap, I decided (bad idea) to head home to sleep better. Sleeping better wasn't the bad idea. DRIVING was the bad idea. I made it home safely and didn't even come close to an accident or anything, but I shudder to think what might have happened.
6:10am - Got home, went straight to bed for a 20 min nap. I know I woke up and turned off the alarm but that's all I know.
7:30am - My wife woke me up (and boy was she not happy about it... Neither was I)
8:50am - Laid down for my 8:30 nap to try to get back on track, and ended up taking 3 back-to-back naps instead of just 1 nap.
9:55am - My wife woke me up again (even less happy) and I went back to work.

So that's what I call HELL.

I can't remember at what point I considered quitting exactly, but I assure you, I really thought "to heck with this" and nearly went down without an alarm ON PURPOSE. I didn't though, and I'm grateful I didn't give up. I'm also grateful my wife had my back or I'd be in even worse shape than I am right now.

Lessons learned:

Sleeping in the car is still a problem and HAS TO BE RESOLVED ASAP.
Don't drive sleepy (I'm extremely grateful I don't have narcolepsy... This single incident of passing out was very very scary)
Maybe those 90 minute "over-sleeps" weren't such a bad thing!

That last point is really what I'm thinking a lot about. Scheduling a longer "nap" is also known as "core sleep" where you get a longer block of sleep in addition to or instead of one of your naps.

Since I've started this schedule I think I've had a 90 minute over-sleep almost daily. Contrary to my expectations, these have NOT had a negative effect on the schedule that I can tell. Yesterday however was one of the first days I hadn't over-slept hardly at all and I Crashed and Burned. Big time. With a capital C and B.

I don't really have a plan for this set in stone yet, but I'm tossing around a few ideas:

A scheduled 90 minute core-sleep daily (probably from 11:30pm to 1am or something like that) which is better than a random over-sleep each day.
A WEEKLY core-sleep (also known as a "reboot") of a few hours, maybe as many as 5. I'm pretty hesitant about this one though.
Outfitting my mini-van with an actual mattress in the back so I can sleep in the frickin car in an emergency. This adds a bit of inconvenience though since I won't be able to chauffeur the kids around, I'll have to trade cars with my wife to do that.

Of maybe more than one of the above.

I was also toying with the idea of resetting my day counter to 0 since last night was so bad, but I'm not going to do that. Although it was pure hell and extremely inconsistent, I didn't actually give up and go back to monophasic sleeping. So, I'm going to count it as yet another learning experience (in a LONG line now) and keep incrementing the counter.

Onwards and upwards.

Day 11 - New plan

2006-04-04T13:34:00.000-04:00

In an effort to avoid car naps, I'm going to limit myself to one nap in the car each day. This will be a 7th nap just to make sure I'm functional for the rest of the day until I can find a way to sleep in the car effectively.

To make this work it means I need to cut up my work schedule into 3 separate 3 hour chunks. This gives me enough time to get back and forth to home to sleep/eat.

I've already got approval to work from 5am to 1:30pm. The 1:30pm time is less flexible since I want to be home to help out my wife in the afternoons. So I'm going to slide the 5am time earlier and work instead from 1am to 1:30pm. I live about 10 minutes from work without traffic.

Here's my thinking:

12am - 12:50am: Nap/eat
1am - 4am: Work (3 hours)
4:10am - 4:50am: Nap/eat
5am - 7am: Work (2 hours)
7:10am - 8:50am: Get kids ready for school/nap/eat
9am - 12:30pm: Work (3.5 hours)
12:30pm - 1pm: CAR NAP AT WORK
1pm - 1:30pm: Work (1/2 hour)
1:40pm - 4:30pm: Watching kids so my wife can work, run errands, etc.

To make up for the car nap at work I'll be taking an extra nap at home sometime. I'm currently thinking 10:30pm but we'll see how that goes.

For those that added, yes, that's 9 hours of scheduled work not 8. The extra hour is for when things slip a little.

The downside to this plan is I'm essentially going to be "at work" for 12 hours of the day for a while. Between that and watching the kids, most of my "extra" time will be taken up (i.e. no extra time for video games, house work, or side projects..). On the other hand I get to feel fabulous and spend an extra 3 hours with my kids each day ;-)

So that's where I'm at. I'm going to start it tonight unless my wife has some concerns.

Day 11 - Frustrating night

2006-04-04T12:12:00.000-04:00

After my successful midnight nap I was really looking forward to the rest of last night, but it ended up being a mess. To make matters worse, the audio I recorded (the most important part for seeing if the apnea played any role) was useless. All background noise.

That's the last time I change things without a "test nap" to make sure it's working. I had attached an external microphone to my video camera to get more detailed breath sounds and ended up with this hum that I can't make out anything over.

So, I laid down at 3:30 for an extra nap leading in to the 5am hell block and woke up at 5am. Doh. Fortunately, over-sleeping in the back seat of the car isn't as painful as when sitting up, but it still hurt.

Okay, I thought, I just got my 4:30 nap too is all. No biggie. An hour later I couldn't think anymore so I went to lay down at 6am. I woke at 7:30. Two 90-minute over-sleeps in the car. Ouch. Literally.

So I came home for the 8:30 nap not wanting to risk another car nap and that went fine (as far as I can tell without audio) but I took another nap at 9:30 just to make up for the car naps. That one must have gone very badly (didn't tape it) since I woke up and could barely think straight.

To top it all off, I went to get my license plate renewed and stood in line for 2 hours. Just what I wanted to do when I could barely keep awake anyway.

As I was saying in my wrap-up post from yesterday, having the video footage to look back on and use to improve things has really helped my attitude when I over-sleep. Losing the footage today with TWO PAINFUL over-sleeps just kills me. Argh.

It's days like today where I can understand how some people give up on this schedule. Of course this isn't much worse than a monophasic day for me (and it's bound to improve with my next set of naps) so I have no intention of giving up. But if I slept well monophasically I'd be sorely tempted to just say to heck with it.

Day 11 - First nap without an alarm!

2006-04-04T03:35:00.000-04:00

I actually woke up about 30 seconds before the alarm went off for my 12:30 nap. I even remembered a dream. Very cool.

Day 10 - Daily wrap-up

2006-04-03T22:55:00.000-04:00

Today wasn't a perfect day by any means, but considering it was my first day back and work, I had an extra-long waking period, and I over-slept for 90 minutes in a CAR SITTING UP, I think things are going remarkably well.

Personally I find this sleeping schedule a lot more adaptable than my monophasic sleep. While there are more sleep periods per day, there's room for sliding. I can nap early or a little late (and hour and a half late proved too much, but an hour would probably be fine) and I can add naps if things go badly. It doesn't take a day to recover if you add 2 or 3 extra naps to make up for one you missed.

Not to mention how much I can get done in the middle of the night while still being alert during the day.

Thinking back, I'd say most days I've added 1-2 hours of extra naps/over-sleeps each day so far. Some might consider that a failure, but I'm learning something from every "failure". Not to mention the fact that with an average of 4 hours of sleep a day I feel fantastic for all but maybe an hour or two a day now. I felt worse for longer when I woke up from a monophasic night.

More and more my naps are "good" naps. I had 4 good naps today out of 8 and that's a HUGE improvement. I can definitely tell the difference.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that my wife is the one who first suggested videotaping a nap. If you have the means, I'd say anyone switching to this schedule should try it at least once or twice. In my case, instead of frustration when I fail, now I'm actually excited to see what went wrong. Every time something goes wrong I get to see EXACTLY what happened, which allows me to devise a plan to change it in the future.

For those analyzing the quality of a nap, here are a few things I've found:

To see if you're in REM don't bother watching the eyes. They're not the best indicator (for me anyway). A better indicator is whether you move or not. During REM sleep your muscles are paralyzed but your brain is active. This prevents you from acting out your dreams (and of course for some people this doesn't happen, leading to things like sleep-walking). During other sleep stages your brain is shut down and your body is just relaxed. This means you twitch, roll over, etc.
Get an external microphone and put it somewhere close to your face (but not where you'll blow on it). This allows you to hear your breathing. It should be steady and fairly shallow. Most people don't snore during REM so if you're snoring that's a bad sign.
See how you react to the alarm. If it's a good quality nap you should start stirring fairly quickly and when you open your eyes you should look somewhat alert and refreshed.
Download the movie to your computer if possible. This saves time with the analysis and lets you do some more thorough analysis. Definitely try to get a movie or sound editor that lets you see the wave form of the audio track. This lets you quickly scan the wave form for regular breathing patterns and any abnormalities

There's probably more stuff. I think I'll add something to the wiki (see the links on the left) about it.

Okay, best get some stuff done before work. Good night to all you mono/bi-phasic sleepers out there. Good morning to you polyphasic folks.

Day 10 - Long waking period

2006-04-03T17:07:00.000-04:00

I'm coming up on hour 5 for this waking period. My wife had to go out so I've got the kids and it's their "running around being crazy" time of the day (as opposed to the "really sleepy so I can cheat and put them all down for naps" time of the day).

I haven't passed out, but I'm definitely slowing down majorly. I only have another 30-60 minutes to go so I think I'll make it. I wonder if this will have any impact on tonight's naps though. Hope not.

Okay, guess that's all I've got to say then. Yep, must be slowing down.

Day 10 - 5am block is still rough, but getting better

2006-04-03T10:33:00.000-04:00

I've found a few useful things in the last day:

Using my dental appliance and sleeping with my head arched back to open up the airway results in a perfect nap (well, 4 for 4 so far anyway)
Naps in the car are not as restorative, and the dental appliance doesn't seem to help (which really throws a wrench in my plans... I was hoping to take 2-3 naps a day in the car and that won't work unless I can find a way to sleep better in the car)
Never over-sleep in a car. Ouch.

I had a 90 minute over-sleep this morning at 6am in the car. Talk about feeling like sh*t after waking up...

Even with all the minor and not-so-minor problems I've had I have to say I'm just as determined to make this work. If not more-so. Many of the things I'm finding that work are simply impossible with longer sleep block. I'm definitely a bit bummed today about where I'm at versus where I wanted to be by now, but every nap is a learning experience at this point and I'm getting better and better at this.

If anyone has any ideas about how I might sleep in the car more effectively leave a comment. I'm currently reclining in one of the bucket seats for the nap, which is probably resulting in my tongue relaxing too much and closing off the airway. I can't sleep on my back in bed either, so I guess I shouldn't be so surprised. I was hoping that being mostly upright would help (and it does a little) but it doesn't help enough.

Oh, and I'm 6' 2" so curling up in the back seat MAY be an option, but it may also just hurt :-) I figure I'll try that out next.

Eating

2006-04-02T13:13:00.000-04:00

I've had a few comments about this and I forgot to mention this back around day 2. I realized quickly that eating BEFORE a nap was counter-productive. I've been eating mainly after waking up, occasionally an hour before a nap. If I eat much closer to a nap than that I don't feel as good when I wake up.

I've been sticking to my lacto-ovo (milk/cheese and eggs) vegetarian diet about 99% of the time (my wife made some sausages one day, I was weak and had a couple bites :-) ) . I'm still planning to gradually start reintroducing meat into my diet after about a month. I went to an all-you-can-eat place last night (hmmm, another potential reason for that over-sleep?) and had just vegetarian fare. That was a very strange feeling...

Anyway, lacto-ovo vegetarian is pretty easy since really the only thing off-limits is stuff with meat in it. As opposed to a vegan diet where anything with animal products in it is forbidden. I don't think I'd have the willpower for that one. The hardest thing is when my wife makes steaks or something for herself and the kids and I'm eating a salad... Ah well, even if I end up not being able to manage meat on this sleep schedule it's worth it!

Day 9 - Over-sleep analysis

2006-04-02T11:06:00.000-04:00

Wow, okay. No memory of that. Not good. Apparently I set the alarm, woke to it, and I must have on some level intended to reset it for another nap right away. Except I didn't actually set it the second time.

I was obviously out of it in the video, but I did all the "ritual" things after a nap. I got up, turned off the alarm, thought I turned off the camera (must have missed the button) and got ready for a second nap right away. Except I never actually set the alarm for the second nap. Odd.

The good news is that except for this waking up and not remembering it bit, the 2:30 nap was a "good" nap in the sense that I didn't show any obvious signs of apnea episodes. I used my dental appliance that holds my jaw forward (which happens to also be very portable, which is nice). I'm going to take the rest of my naps today with it and see how they go.

As far as why I over-slept, last night I went out with some friends for the first time since I started the transition. We went to dinner then a movie. I took 2 naps in the car during the festivities. Maybe somehow I wound up pushing myself too hard? Maybe the naps in the car weren't good enough quality? Hard to say.

Anyway, I guess what this really means is I need to NOT take back-to-back naps. Too much room for missing something when I'm just waking up.

Day 9 - Major over-sleep

2006-04-02T09:33:00.000-04:00

I had almost forgotten what it was like to wake up monophasically. With my past week of experience under my belt I can say it definitely sucks. It's an odd mixture of being "rested" but "foggy" that I really don't care for.

It's really hard to describe, but I'll try:

PHYSICALLY: I'm rested, alert, and feel good. I feel like I could stay awake all day.
MENTALLY: I feel like I've missed 2 naps. I'm processing things more slowly, everything feels sluggish, I'm out of it, and I feel like I need a nap.

What happened? I laid down at 2:30am for an extra nap in preparation for the 5am block and my sons came in to get me at 8:30am (or 7:30am pre-DST time). So a 5 hour over-sleep, essentially when I slept monophasically.

I'm not 100% sure what happened yet, but I recorded the "nap" so I do have video evidence of what I did. I suspect I messed up starting the nap MP3. The video is transferring to the computer now so I'll know for sure in an hour or so.

Two things:

This just strengthens my resolve to stick with a polyphasic schedule. I really don't care for this feeling at all. Yuck.
When I started the polyphasic schedule I had planned to do a large block of 5+ hours either every other week or once a month (hadn't decided which, figured I'd play it by ear). I still think it's probably a good idea for health, but I'm going to dread those nights now.

With any luck I'll recover my senses after a nap or two. I suppose on the bright side I can use this to transition to daylight savings time :-)

Since I'm writing anyway I should note that so far I haven't had much luck with my experiments trying to avoid apnea during my naps. I had a number of bad naps yesterday (maybe that contributed to the over-sleep, who knows). I'm not out of ideas yet though.

Day 8 - Extra naps worked, but were quite hard to manage

2006-04-01T10:14:00.000-05:00

The extra nap plan ended up doing the trick. I wasn't as awake during my hell block as I am during the rest of the day, but I was functional. Of course, under the plan I was essentially sleeping 20 minutes out of every hour from 3am to 7am, so I wasn't terribly productive either :-) Falling asleep every 40 minutes is tough, even for someone who can normally sleep at the drop of a hat.

It's not a practical long-term solution, but I'll take it as a first step. Far better than being a zombie and risking over-sleeping.

Out of curiosity, I decided to video-tape my naps during the day yesterday and at night last night (which I of course transferred to the computer so I could do some analysis of the results... Am I a geek or what?). I was curious to see if there were any differences in the way I slept during different parts of the day. Sure enough, there are. At night, I snore and stop breathing regularly, even during my short naps. During the day I don't. I'm not sure why I sleep differently at night, but there are a few potential solutions to the problem now that I have something to attack.

First, I can use all my apnea tools (a BIPAP machine, a jaw positioning device, etc) and see how I sleep using those. Since this is just during the night naps it shouldn't be terribly inconvenient (I won't have to lug the stuff to parties for example). I wasn't able to tolerate the CPAP/BIPAP machine for a full night, but I might be able to for a 20 minute nap 2-3 times a night.

Secondly I can add naps during the night (not as many, hopefully) which should make up for the poor nap quality with quantity.

Thirdly I can try napping in other places/positions. Sitting up in a chair for example. That kind of thing can be painful for a longer sleep, but it should be tolerable for 20 minutes.

This is probably going to take a week or more to sort out, so I don't plan to keep a daily record of what I'm currently trying unless I hit upon something new or interesting. I'll definitely update with things that work and things that don't though. Maybe it'll be of help to another polyphasic apnea sufferer someday.

Day 8 - Testing my hypothesis

2006-04-01T05:12:00.000-05:00

So if I'm right, taking some preemptive naps should help me with my 5am to 9am "dead" block. I've had 6 naps since 8:30pm and felt just fine before my 4:30 nap. It's 5:20 now and I'm more awake than I was the last the last couple of days but I'm far from on top of my game. So, there's definitely something more to this tiredness than naps and nap quality.

Day 7 - Hypothesis

2006-03-31T14:51:00.000-05:00

I know there was a study done somewhat recently that said we have a "sleep bank" of sorts. I'm too lazy to dig up a link :-) Anyway, the basic idea is that if you sleep more you can stay awake longer. If you sleep less you have to pay back the bank for that lost sleep eventually.

Hypothesis: Assuming the sleep bank idea is true, if I'm about 5 years in the hole as far as sleep debt goes. (I actually don't know how long I've had sleep apnea for, it could be more, it could be less). This is the reason why I "crash" once per day from 5am to 9am. If I "pay back" some of the debt I won't crash as hard for as long (if at all).

Assuming my hypothesis is true, the more good quality REM sleep I get, the longer I'll be productive each day (not to mention each waking period improving in quality). Since starting this new schedule it FEELS like this has been the case. I don't have proof though since I haven't kept detailed logs of each nap and how I felt during each waking period. I've been doing my tests at fairly random intervals each day to get a sense of how I'm doing at different times of the day rather than track every waking period.

Here's my idea to test my hypothesis: Take 5 extra naps per day at 10:30pm, 2:30am, 5:30am, 6:30am, 7:30am. If I keep this up for long enough I'll pay back the bank and feel that much better. At that point I can cut it back to 6-7 naps per day again with no ill effects.

I haven't decided to do this for sure, I need to confer with my wife first, but I'm thinking about it.

Of course I'm going to keep up with the exercise and diet changes as well since only good can come of those as well :-)

Day 7 - Another over-sleep

2006-03-31T08:34:00.000-05:00

Somehow I managed to go back to bed for a "nap" between 5am and 6am and wound up not setting the alarm. My wife woke me at 6:45. It's all very fuzzy, but that's what I can piece together from the evidence. I'm going to assume the worst and say I slept for 2 whole hours.

Fortunately, I don't really feel much different from this time of day previously in the week. Maybe a tad bit more awake for 8:30 is all.

I'm going to count this as a learning experience ("always set an alarm") and move forward.

Day 6 - Daily wrap-up

2006-03-30T23:01:00.000-05:00

Today was definitely the best since I started the transition. I've felt pretty decent all day long. I did end up taking 2 naps at 12:30 and 4:30 instead of one though. The second 12:30 nap was because I tried sleeping on the couch with the kids up and that just wasn't a great idea :-)

I'm not entirely sure what happened at 4:30. I just didn't feel well after my first nap so I rationalized that a second nap was necessary... After the second nap I was quite groggy for about 20 minutes but then I felt awesome.

So, except for my Achilles heel (5am to 9:30am) I'm in good shape at the moment. Since it started out as 3:30 to 9:30 it's getting shorter as time goes on.

Day 6 - Now this just isn't fair

2006-03-30T12:13:00.000-05:00

Alright, so as I've mentioned before, I'm a basket case between 5am and 8:30am. Actually it really lasts until 9:30am. So, in the MIDDLE of a waking period I go from feeling useless, falling asleep at the keyboard, etc, to feeling fine.

Maybe this has less to do with hexaphasic sleep and more to do with my body's natural rhythm? I find the thought encouraging long-term. Mainly because it means I might be doing everything right and this is just a physiological hurdle I need to overcome. It does make sense given my historical sleep patterns and productive times.

On the other hand it does throw a bit of a wrench into my short-term plans of starting work at 5am. I guess it's too early to tell whether this will still be an issue by Monday, but if it is I'll have to do a bit of juggling.

Day 6 - Betrayed by produce

2006-03-30T08:46:00.000-05:00

I think it's obvious. The vegetables are plotting against me, trying to get me to fail. I can't be sure exactly what their motivation is, but it's well documented that they're not trustworthy. I mean how can you trust something that "eats" sunlight?

So, once again, the 4:30 to 8:30 window has proved to be my undoing. I think I did a little better to start with (I took extra naps at 6am and 7am) but I was essentially useless the entire time. Exercising helped keep me awake from 5 to 6, but nothing I tried (games, reading, listening to music, I even tried watching a little TV) really grabbed my attention and kept me up.

I'm honestly not sure if these extra naps are helping my transition or hurting it. At the time they sure seem like a good idea though :-) They also have the nice side-effect of chewing up 20-30 minutes of the clock at a difficult time of the day.

The bright side is that I seem to have conquered my over-sleeping problem. My adaptation of Placebo's MP3 is proving quite effective at motivating me to get out of bed to shut off the infernal racket. I've learned a few tricks to adjusting the "alarm" part just enough that I don't get used to it either. All in all I'd say I'm probably a good 70-80% of the way along the path to polyphasic sleeping.

Day 6 - Did I say 20 minutes of cardio? I meant 2 minutes...

2006-03-30T05:18:00.000-05:00

Holy smokes am I out of shape! Yikes! 2 minutes in to my cardio I felt like I was gonna die. I pushed through to 4 minutes but I think that's it for me tonight. Sheesh, what a whimp!

The good news is the cardio did wake me up like I planned. The bad news is I still feel like I should go down for another nap before 8:30, and 8:30 is still 3 hours away.

I'm gonna fight it as long as I can. Time for some video games :-)

Day 6 - Woke up on time (yay)

2006-03-30T04:55:00.000-05:00

I woke up on time and without incident for my 4:30am nap, which is cool. I'm still more tired now than during my other waking periods though. I haven't exercised yet, so hopefully that will help.

Day 6 - Feeling a bit sleepy

2006-03-30T02:54:00.000-05:00

I'm feeling a bit sleepy at this point. I could just be paying the price for my under-10-minute-nap earlier though. I feel like I've been awake too long working on a project.

My 4:30am nap is coming up in about an hour and a half and I'm a bit nervous. Of all my naps this has been the hardest to do correctly, probably because when I was a monophasic sleeper this was the only time of the night I was almost certain to be asleep. Most days I didn't get up until after 7am.

The 4:30am nap also has the distinction of being one of the most important post-adaptation naps, since I plan to start work at 5am. This will allow me to get home in time to give my wife a break in the afternoon and also allow her to do stuff without the kids.

Maybe I've built up too much around this one nap in my head, but I'm determined to conquer it tonight. I've even modified Placebo's excellent MP3 to add a very Very VERY obnoxious alarm about 1 minute after the gentle rooster crow. It's something I don't think anyone is capable of sleeping through (though I've managed to sleep through quite a bit in the past).

Immediately after I wake up I'll be hopping on the elliptical machine (now conveniently located right next to the bed) for 20 minutes to get the blood pumping. Finally, I plan to go for a walk if needed to get me through to the 8:30 nap.

Of course it'd be great if I wake up before the alarm and don't need to do any of this... Oops, now I'm dreaming while I'm awake again :-)

Interesting change

2006-03-30T02:51:00.000-05:00

My 3 year-old (the one who has been sickest this week) seems to have adapted to my polyphasic schedule the fastest. I was once the heaviest sleeper in the house, now I'm the first person he calls out for in the middle of the night. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing yet, but it's definitely different :-)

Day 5 - Shorter than 20 minute naps?

2006-03-29T23:08:00.000-05:00

I think my 8:30 nap this evening was the first sub-20 minute nap I've had since I started the adaptation period and I feel great. The entire day I was fairly foggy but most of that fog seems to be gone now, and my test scores are up. On the other hand, I don't feel as good in other ways (I'm yawning periodically, and really looking forward to my next nap).

Of course this was a bit of an extreme. I think I was asleep for at most 7 minutes. But it still has me wondering if I shouldn't set the alarm back a few minutes to 18, or maybe even 17 minutes. I'm not going to tempt fate this evening, but I'll experiment with it a bit tomorrow and see what happens.

I didn't follow my night plan last yesterday because my first waking period was so good and my second was so bad. Tonight I'm determined to follow through. I have a 40 minute walk planned between 1am and 4am, and I'm going to do some cardio on our elliptical machine at 5am.

I've also decided to stop trying to be ultra-productive while I'm completing the transition. When I'm done with the transition period I'll have plenty of time to be productive. Until then my focus needs to be sticking to the schedule and doing things that keep my mind/body entertained.

Last post of day 5. I'm hoping day 6 will be the start of a more even feeling throughout the entire day.

Day 5 - So much for feeling great...

2006-03-29T10:00:00.000-05:00

My 4:30 and 8:30 naps haven't been as restful as I'd hoped, so I'm dragging a bit. It feels kinda like I haven't slept all night. I think the problem both times may have been sleeping a bit too long. 20 minutes seems like an ideal amount of time, 30 minutes not so much...

Back to the drawing board with the alarms I guess.

Day 5 - The crash

2006-03-29T08:25:00.000-05:00

Well, as I said, the night wasn't over. I was feeling great going into my 4:30am nap but I woke up unable to think clearly. I waited about 15 minutes and decided to take a second nap in the hopes that I would shake the grogginess. I woke from the second nap in worse shape than the first. Sigh.

The 3rd nap was almost instinct. I don't remember even trying to fight it.

About the only real good news about that block of naps was I set my new MP3 alarm and a backup alarm before each nap so I didn't over-sleep. It does seem like things are getting better each day now, so I'm rather hopeful about tonight. It was definitely cool having 5 hours of extra productivity yesterday :-)

Day 5 - 4am and still going strong

2006-03-29T04:07:00.000-05:00

It's an amazing feeling given the last 2 days, but I'm actually still awake and alert. I had a brief period of tiredness about 30 minutes ago (near the time I've been forced to take an extra nap the last few days) but I simply got up and walked around, grabbed a healthy snack of some veggies and I'm wide awake again.

Incidentally, to ward off any future over-sleeps I've created a playlist that starts with one of Placebo's MP3s and ends with about an hour of loud rock music. Since creating the playlist I haven't even slept through the end of Placebo's MP3, but it's a little relieving to know that it's there just in case.

The night is far from over, but right now it feels like I'm past the hump. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high though.

Oh, one last thought before my 4:30 nap. Vitamins are good. I take 2 or 3 different vitamins per day and I had been taking them all at once like I used to on monophasic sleep. Today is the first day I realized that splitting them up into multiple doses makes more sense since I'm awake all night. I don't know how much of an impact this had on how I'm feeling tonight, but it definitely seems like a good idea...

Day 5 - Doing oddly well

2006-03-29T01:59:00.000-05:00

I've been feeling pretty darn good for the past 14 hours or so. In fact it's kind of eerie how good I feel after feeling so terrible just before. I expected to feel better very slowly and adapt gradually. I made a ton of preparations for tonight so I wouldn't get bored and fall asleep.

Quite the opposite seems to have happened though. I felt better near noon on day 4, as before, but then I just kept feeling good. I didn't crash right before nap time, I even extended one waking period by 35 minutes with no ill effects. It's just odd.

I guess I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop here. This can't be it can it? The night is still early so things might still get harder, if so I'll be sure to mention it. Until then, I'm just going to enjoy feeling as awake as I did at noon :-)

The BEST Wife EVER!

2006-03-28T15:09:00.000-05:00

So, I'm sure people wonder what it's like to be married to someone crazy enough to attempt something like this. If so, head on over to my wife's blog.

For those of you in a serious relationship, there's basically little chance of success with something like this unless you have a supportive partner. My wife has been tremendously supportive of me since the very beginning. She has put up with my ranting about plans, obsessing over strategies, and the significant interruption this has all been to her daily routine.

Throughout all of this, her only request has been that if I'm going to do this, I have to commit whole-heartedly to succeeding. She even took the whole "I want to do this as a vegetarian" thing in stride :-)

Not wanting to let her down has kept me on track during some of the harder points.

I'd also like to take this time to point out that while most people would have said "ok fine, eat what you want but you're on your own" my wife decided to start cooking a vegetarian dish for me at dinner every day. Did I mention she's a fabulous cook? What more can I guy ask for?

Love you hon, I couldn't do this without you! Thanks!

Day 4 - Mid-day still feels like the best

2006-03-28T11:45:00.000-05:00

I'm mostly awake again. I can at least concentrate on the same thing for more than 30 seconds, and I can type a bit :-)

Back when I started this thing I decided that I was going to take a page from Steve Pavlina's book and take extra 20 minute naps as needed throughout the day if necessary. The past 3 days I think I've taken 2 or 3 extra naps per day. Today I've already taken 3 extra naps, and that doesn't count when I fell asleep sitting up (for how long I don't know).

Except for the one time I know that I fell asleep sitting up, I think I've stuck to 20 minute naps all day so far, which is good. I've felt like hell most of the day though.

I'm still not remembering any dreams when I wake up, and since I started using the MP3 to fall asleep I haven't noticed any incidents of dreaming while being awake. I just hope I'm getting SOME REM sleep in there somewhere.

If the transition plays out like other people have blogged, today and tomorrow should be the hardest days and in 2 or 3 more days I should feel at least 80% most of the day. In another week I should be at 100% most of the day. I sure hope that's the case because honestly, when it gets bad, it's getting harder and harder to see the "benefit" of this plan. I'm afraid that in my exhaustion I'll decide to throw away all the work so far and just sleep. That would suck. Kinda :-)

Tonight I'm going to do 3 new things to try to get through:

I'm going to exercise (yeah, I know, I should have started with this, but due to having company I didn't have access to the exercise equipment for the first 3 nights)
NO TELEVISION AT ALL! I resolved to do this last night, but when my son started throwing up again, I thought "well, there's not much else I can do with a sick kid on my lap". I'm more and more convinced that TV is sucking all the energy out of me at night though. If I get the urge to do something mindless I'm going to play some video games. Which reminds me, I need to make sure I have some games ready to play in case of emergencies :-)
I'm going to go outside for at least 20 minutes per waking period. I've been avoiding the outside like the plague at night, mostly because I'm so cold during the adaptation period. I think I need to force myself to go outside and take a walk though just so I don't fall into the trap of sitting down and talking myself into watching TV.

Okay, I've got to figure out how to take my 12:30 nap now (the wife isn't back and I have the kids, hopefully she'll show in the next 15 minutes).

Day 4 - And the hell begins

2006-03-28T09:50:00.000-05:00

After my blog entry from last night, things just got progressively worse and worse. Today even my daytime naps haven't been terribly refressing. I'm actually falling asleep at the keyboard here as I type (boy does that make it hard to compose a sentence).

From looking around, right around now I SHOULD be hitting rock bottom. I sure hope so since this is pretty annoying.

Okay, can't focus. If I can more later I'll post again.

Day 4 - Feeling pretty good

2006-03-28T02:17:00.000-05:00

I just woke from my 12:30 nap a little while ago and I'm feeling quite good. The MP3 plan is working very well. I find myself going to sleep faster to the static, and waking up in a pretty good mood. Thanks Placebo!

Okay, I wrote the above about 60 minutes ago and about 10 minutes later I had started to fade already. Still an improvement over previous days, but I'm not staying awake easily at night yet. At this point I'm planning to go back for a second nap at 2:30 so that I can hopefully avoid another over-sleep.

One of the interesting things about this schedule is how quickly you can get overwhelmed by tiredness. People have described it as "hitting a wall" and it's a very good analogy... You can be going along nicely and then all the sudden you just cease to function properly. I can tell that I'll have to be very careful when I start driving again to avoid the 30 minutes before a nap whenever possible.

Day 3 - Day time is getting easier

2006-03-27T16:15:00.000-05:00

I've found the naps during the day to be very refreshing, much more so than during the night. Last night I actually over-slept for 3 naps. One was 50 minutes instead of 20, one was 90 minutes and the last was 60 minutes.

Of course it was a very rough night. Our son got sick something like 7 times over the course of the night. Good thing I was already planning to stay up, because I wouldn't have gotten any monophasic sleep anyway :-)

To remedy the over-sleep problems, I've decided to start using the MP3 nap files created by Placebo. These have a nice white noise for X number of minutes follwed by various sounds to help wake you up (rooster, cow bells, etc). As a backup I'll be setting my alarm. At night I might add an additional alarm to ward off the inevitable "5 more minutes couldn't hurt" feeling :)

Day 3 - Night time is hard (again)

2006-03-27T03:16:00.000-05:00

Tonight is going far better than last night, but this is still by far the hardest part of the day. Of course it doesn't help that my middle child threw up 30 minutes before my 12:30 nap. I got him cleaned up, back in bed, and had started my nap just in time for him to throw up again. I lost count at 5 times, but he's still throwing up. Poor little guy.

I didn't exactly miss my 12:30 nap, it was just cut about 10 minutes short. I did manage to get in a longer nap at 1:30 but I've been dragging since then.

Ah well, I knew what I was signing up for when I started this. I had hoped that 20 minute naps would be short enough that I wouldn't have to worry about conflicting with things like late night kid problems. I guess I just didn't get lucky on that front.

On the bright side, only an hour before my next nap. I'm really looking forward to that one, assuming I can get the kid down and solve the throw up problem before then... Fingers crossed.

Day 2 - Recovered and doing okay

2006-03-26T21:12:00.000-05:00

Busy day so I haven't posted, but I did manage to recover from my night time oversleep fairly well. A combination of the extra 2 naps plus some activity to get the blood pumping (dancing to music for example) got me back on track.

I did have a minor oversleep of about 15 minutes at noon, but it didn't seem to be long enough to affect me negatively.

One interesting thing I've noticed today: I'm starting to "dream" before I actually fall asleep. I don't know how else to describe it. I'm aware of my surroundings still (kids crying, people talking) and yet I'm visualizing strange things (like in a dream) at the same time. Maybe this happens to other people but I've never experienced anything like it. It was pretty disturbing the first time, but now I've started to realize it's a cue that I'm almost asleep.

Unfortunately I'm not remembering any dreams when I wake up yet. That does seem to be an indication that your body has started to adapt. Of course I can't say that I remember dreams very often anyway so I'm kinda curious what that will be like :-)

Day 2 - More recovery

2006-03-26T06:59:00.000-05:00

I wound up taking naps at 3:30, 4:30 and 5:30 to recover from my oversleep incident. I feel somewat normal again. I only hope it lasts until my next regularly scheduled nap. After the success late yesterday I'm even more determined to se this through to the end.

Day 2 - Recovering from the oversleep

2006-03-26T04:14:00.000-05:00

So basically instead of sleeping for 20 minutes at 11:30 I wound up sleeping for about 2 hours and 20 minutes. I'm not entirely sure why I woke up since I had long ago turned off the alarms, but I'm grateful that I didn't sleep longer.

Recovery from the oversleep is still ongoing, and it's been really really hard. So far I had to take another extra nap at 3:30 and I'm about to do my 4:30 nap. I'm starting to feel like I can at least form a coherent sentence again. Of course I might be imagining that...

On a scale of 1-10, 10 being the most alert, I think I was somewhere around a 2 after the oversleep. With one nap since then under my belt I think i'm at a 4 now and climbing. With luck the next nap will restore some semblance of balance.

Fingers crossed.

Day 2 - Oversleep

2006-03-26T02:22:00.000-05:00

Argh. Exactly what I feared. I tried taking an extra nap at 11 PM and woke up at 2 AM. And if that weren't bad enough, I feel worse now than I did before I slept.

Ah well, moving on. Next nap is at 4:30, I'm going to do something active between now and then to make sure I stay awake.

Day 1 - Reflection

2006-03-25T23:29:00.000-05:00

It has definitely been an up and down day. I started off feeling great, but long about 10 AM I crashed. I barely felt able to carry on a conversation. Then I had two really difficult naps at 12:30 and 4:30. At about 6 PM something interesting happened: I started feeling better.

My 8:30 nap went great, and I've been feeling very good again up until about 15 minutes ago when I was suddenly overcome with exhaustion again. With every passing minute I feel like I'm losing the ability to communicate.

Part of me is tempted to take an extra nap right now, and the other part is telling me to wait until 12:30. I'm not sure which way I'll go just yet.

Oh, and the best news today was that when I started feeling better, it really showed up in my test scores. I had my best results on almost every test since I started logging the results earlier in the week. This gives me hope that in the end, if I stick this out, the rewards will be well worth it.

Day 1

2006-03-25T13:18:00.000-05:00

So the first thing I've discovered is my discipline is still pretty weak. I've already started sleeping through the alarm chirp. Twice already I've actually taken the time, in my groggy semi-conscious state, to reset the alarm and fall back asleep. Fortunately I wound up getting up before it fully counted down the second time, but this is only day one so I'm a bit concerned.

I'm going to double my resolve for the next 24 hours and resist any urge to reset the alarm. Easier said than done though.

The good news is that when I'm awake I'm fairly functional. Just a general feeling that I've been awake a bit too long. I'm going to go back and read these posts after this is over and see if I'm still making sense :-)

Interestingly, my test scores continue to be about the same. Even when I FEEL like I'm a complete zombie I'm still scoring about the same. I'm not sure what to make of that yet.

Day 0 Nap 4

2006-03-25T00:23:00.000-05:00

These next two naps are the first real test since they're during the time I slept monophasically. I'm starting to feel the normal "tired before bed" feeling, so I'm curious to see if the naps help with that. I don't expect much though because this is still the first day.

I have a few physical activities planned during the night, so I don't think staying awake will be a problem.

Day 0 Nap 1

2006-03-24T14:13:00.000-05:00

Very odd nap. It felt like I was half awake and half asleep. I must have fallen asleep at some point because I woke up to the alarm. I feel fine though, no real change from normal. Not that I expected anything. Tomorrow is when things should get more interesting.

Nearly Forgot: Diet Changes

2006-03-24T12:14:00.000-05:00

Another popular idea at the moment is that vegans might have an easier time adapting to this schedule. Since I'm weak I don't think I can manage a vegan diet but I've cut out pretty much all meat except fish (occasionally). I'm still eating dairy as well (mainly in the form of cheese. I love cheese).

In addition to a mostly vegetarian diet, I'm also trying to drink more water. Keeping well hydrated is always a good idea and since I'm going to be awake more hours of the day it's even more important.

I haven't completely decided yet, but for the first day or two I think I'm going to try eating most of my meals shortly before each nap. This is for two reasons:

I get sleepy after eating (even on this more vegetarian diet, though not quite as badly as I used to)
Although you're not supposed to eat before a long sleep I figure 20 minute naps won't hurt

Lastly I'm going to try eating something during each of my 4 hour waking blocks (in other words, eating shortly before each nap). This should spread out my energy throughout the day. Plus eating smaller meals more frequently is supposedly healthier anyway. This seems like a good balance.

But as with everything... We'll see.

Day 0

2006-03-24T09:32:00.000-05:00

The big day is here. I've been "test napping" for about a week now and the last few days I've tried to take as many naps at my scheduled times as possible to get my body on schedule. I already feel tired at the appropriate times now, so tonight will be my first night of just naps.

My times are as follows:
12:30 am/pm
4:30 am/pm
8:30 am/pm

I'm napping for 21 minutes, with a backup alarm at 26 minutes. I found a nice kitchen timer that has a warning chirp 5 minutes before the timer runs out, and a continuous beep when time runs out (plus it starts counting up at that point). I've conditioned myself to get up after the chirp but it's nice to have a backup alarm just in case. Using the count-up function I'll be able to track any oversleeps.

Speaking of conditioning. I've always had a problem with alarm clocks. I hate them. But after reading Steve Pavlina's polyphasic blog entries (and the two about how to become an early riser) I decided it was time to work on my discipline muscle :-) After about 2 weeks of practice I now wake up (even after a full night sleep) to the single chirp of the kitchen timer. Quite amazing really.

Why 21 minutes? Most of the records I've found of people who have started this crazy schedule have started with 30 minutes (some even longer) and end up going shorter and shorter. I figure why not just start out at 21 minutes, which seems to be a pretty common end point for those who are successful at the adaptation. Heck, it might actually make the transition EASIER since I won't be slipping past REM sleep into something deeper.

Unfortunately, the last 2 naps I've tried to take have not gone terribly well. I can usually fall asleep in a matter of minutes. For the last 2 naps, I ended up getting up after 10-15 minutes when I couldn't fall asleep. I'm guessing it's the excitement about switching to the schedule today. Kind of ironic actually :-)

Anyway, my next nap is 12:30 so we'll see how that one goes. I typically get quite tired at this time of day anyway so hopefully I'll slip right into the schedule without incident. Even if I don't fall asleep I'm not going to get up early.

That's about it for now. I'm planning to log something here each day at least, if not more often. We have company this weekend though so I might end up writing mostly at night after everyone is asleep.

Transition date moved up to Friday

2006-03-20T15:28:00.000-05:00

I've decided to start the adaptation period on Friday instead of Sunday. There are a few reasons, but one of them is I'm impatient.

I'm continuing my baseline testing and I still don't have a database ready yet. I'm definitely slow and inaccurate. I wonder how much that will change on the new sleep schedule? Should be interesting at least.

Now that was a little rude...

2006-03-18T17:04:00.000-05:00

Oops, I forgot to mention where I found the links to the tests I'm planning to use. I found 3 of them on polyphasicsleeping.com in one of the blog posts there about testing. The other two (Simon and the sheep test) I found through google.

I've just done my first round of tests and man am I a mess. Not very accurate nor fast. As soon as I get my database up and running I'll link to the test results (I'm hoping to get it all set before I start the transition. If not, I should have lots of time afterwards to do it... Heh). On the plus side, I don't really have anywhere to go but up from these numbers :-)

I've found quite a few new useful polyphasic sleep sites. One points out that what I'm attempting is actually hexaphasic sleep (6 sleep periods per day). Hopefully I'll get around to adding some links on the site to all the more useful places I've found.

7 days till I start the transition! Should be interesting :-)

Polyphasic Sleep Schedule

2006-03-16T16:52:00.000-05:00

It's been travelling around the internet for years, so here are the obligatory links to the first places I heard about it nearly 5 years ago:

Everything2
Kuro5hin

Polyphasic sleep simply means sleeping more than once per day. There are many variations but the one most often cited is the "Uberman" sleep schedule. This is one of the most hard-core versions available, resulting in a mere 2-3 hours of sleep per day. So naturally that's what I'm going to attempt.

The current Wikipedia page on polyphasic sleeping is pretty decent as far as history goes. There are also some links to success/failure stories as well as proponents and detractors.

Just a warning... This is not to be undertaken lightly. While little formal research has been done, there is lots of anecdotal evidence that very few people can manage this schedule successfully. Even less is known about the long-term effects.

That having been said, there is a growing fan base for the idea. I suspect the idea will gain momentum for a while and eventually fade away again. Kinda like the low-carb diet (yeah, I did that one too).

So, here's my plan:

On Sunday March 26th I'm going to be giving up my normal nightly sleep and switching to 20 minute naps every 4 hours. My times are currently 12:30, 4:30, and 8:30 (interestingly, the times are the same whether in the morning or night).

Between now and then I plan to run through several tests/games to get a baseline of my reaction times and such on a monophasic schedule (so I'll have something more objective to compare to after the adaptation period).

Why am I doing it? Darn good question. My main motivation is a potential solve for my obstructive sleep apnea. Basically when I fall into a deep sleep, the muscles in my throat relax and I stop breathing. So then I wake up enough to start breathing again and the cycle repeats. This makes it very difficult to get enough quality REM sleep each night. So I started thinking to myself "what if on this schedule I didn't fall into such a deep sleep, since these are only naps, and I could enter REM sleep immediately?" Well, it sounded plausible in my sleep deprived mind anyway ;-)

So, whether it's completely logical or not, I've decided to take the plunge and try this out.

The games/tests I've decided to use are as follows:

Typing Test (3 minute)
Physical Reaction Time Test from either here or here
The "Simon" Game (still looking for where to do this from, might just find a copy and host it myself)
Visual Threshhold Acuity

If all goes well I'll get all the data into a database so I can do some analysis (plus I'm just plain lazy so the easier it is to track, the more likely it is I'll log/blog it).