So what happened you might ask?

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!

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:

1. 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.


2. 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

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

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!

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

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!

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.