Home | About | Write a Guest Post on This Blog

 

Archive for the 'Sleep' Category

Biphasic Sleep - Day 4

Monday, May 26th, 2008

This is a progress report for my Biphasic Sleep 30 day experiment.

Sleeping Times

First 3 Hour Nap: 5 AM - 8AM.  Was out a little late and didn’t get to bed until 5 AM.  I still took a 3 hour nap.
Second 3 Hour Nap: 7:30 PM - 9:00 PM.  Since I took my first nap late, I only slept for an hour and a half during my second nap.

Biphasic Sleep Variables

  • Mental Alertness. I was very mentally alert throughout the day.  I would say I’m certainly as alert as I was with a regular full night sleep.
  • Physical Energy. Feeling very energetic.  It seems that all the fatigue and muscle ache is gone.  I only slightly feel it during my weight lifting workouts.
  • Emotional State. Nothing interesting to report, felt great throughout the day.
  • Productivity. This was more of a relaxing day for me.  However I still got to do a lot.
  • Food & Water Consumption. I consumed a normal amount of food.  I was still a bit thirsty throughout the day and therefore consumed more water than I usually would.  I’m noticing if I’m not careful about consuming plenty of water, my mouth really dries up.
  • Eye Redness/Irritation. My eye redness/irritation is decreasing.
  • Social Life Impact. Not that big of an impact.  Since I can take a nap an hour or two later, or cut down a 3 hour nap to 1.5 hours, it seems like I have more than enough flexibility.

Other Biphasic Sleep Observations

  • Dry Skin. My skin is feeling more moisturized.  The skin dryness is 75% gone.
Don't miss any future posts: subscribe to my RSS feed or get free email updates for new posts.

Related posts

Biphasic Sleep - Day 3

Sunday, May 25th, 2008

This is a progress report for my Biphasic Sleep 30 day experiment

.

Sleeping Times

First 3 Hour Nap: 3 AM - 6 AM Second 3 Hour Nap: 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Biphasic Sleep Variables

  • Mental Alertness. I was very mentally alert throughout the day.
  • Physical Energy. Felt an even steady energy level most of the day.  I also put in a weight lifting workout in the morning.  I worked out my chest and biceps and was able to lift the normal amount of weight I’d usually lift.  I did the workout in 35 minutes instead of my usual 45 minutes.  I noticed that my body was starting to feel fatigued and my muscles were starting to ache towards the end.  So I guess I will need to probably keep my weight lifting workout a few minutes shorter for now.  Overall it was a pretty good workout :)
  • Emotional State. Nothing interesting to report, felt great throughout the day.
  • Productivity. Got the following done: 3-4 hours of reading, 2 hours of listening and sampling new music, 2 hours of writing, 1 hour of grocery shopping, 5 hours of hanging out with a friend at night.
  • Food & Water Consumption. I consumed a normal amount of food.  I was still a bit thirsty throughout the day and therefore consumed more water than I usually would.
  • Eye Redness/Irritation. My eye redness/irritation is decreasing.
  • Social Life Impact. Made plans to see my parents in a couple of days.  Had to let my mom know of my new sleeping schedule and we were able to arrange an appropriate time.  She told me to be careful with my new crazy sleeping times :)

Other Biphasic Sleep Observations

  • Dry Skin. My skin is starting to feel more moisturized.  The skin dryness is 50% gone.

Related posts

Biphasic Sleep - Day 2

Saturday, May 24th, 2008

This is a progress report for my Biphasic Sleep 30 day experiment

.

Sleeping Times

First 3 Hour Nap: 2:45 AM - 6 AM Second 3 Hour Nap: Skipped - I wasn’t able to fall asleep at 5:30 PM.  After laying in bed awake for a 20 minutes, I gave up and decided to skip it.  I think the lack of sleep is because my body is still getting used to my new nap times.

Biphasic Sleep Variables

  • Mental Alertness. I was very alert after waking up at 6 AM.  I actually felt very refreshed as if I’ve had a full night sleep.  This might be due to the fact that I relaxed and hung out with a friend of mine the night before instead of going out.  However I noticed my mental alertness decreasing at night around 10 PM especially since I wasn’t able to take my regular afternoon nap.
  • Physical Energy. Felt very energized from 6 AM to 4 PM.  Around 4:30 PM I started feeling tired and was ready for my afternoon nap.  I went to bed at 5:30 PM but couldn’t fall asleep.  So I got up and decided to skip the nap.  As a result around 10 PM I started feeling a lot of fatigue and a bit of muscle ache.  I was planning on going out that night with a friend, which was what I needed to stay awake.  Overall it wasn’t too bad.  I was a bit tired but was able to push through it.
  • Emotional State. Nothing special to report, felt fine throughout the day.
  • Productivity. Was able to get a lot done.  This is also due to the fact that I skipped my afternoon nap.  It seems that I always have to be doing something, otherwise I start feeling sleepy.  This biphasic sleep experiment has been keeping me very productive.
  • Food & Water Consumption.  I consumed a normal amount of food.  Didn’t really feel a major increase in appetite.  I was very thirsty throughout the day and drank a lot more water than I usually would.
  • Eye Redness/Irritation. My eyes have been a bit red and irritated.  Hopefully this will go away as my body gets used to my new sleeping hours.
  • Social Life Impact. No major social life impact for the day.

Other Biphasic Sleep Observations

  • Dry Skin. My skin was a bit dry and itchy.  I had to use some skin moisturizing lotion.  So I poured some out of my 3 year-old big bottle of skin moisturizer :) As you can tell I probably don’t moisturize my skin as often as I should be.  There goes my modeling career down the toilet ;)

Related posts

Biphasic Sleep - Day 1

Friday, May 23rd, 2008

This is a progress report for my Biphasic Sleep 30 day experiment

.

Sleeping Times

First 3 Hour Nap: 2:45 AM - 6 AM Second 3 Hour Nap: 6 PM - 9 PM

Biphasic Sleep Variables

  • Mental Alertness.  Noticed I was a bit slower in the morning.  This is probably because I was up for almost 21 hours.  I woke up at 6 AM the day before and I went to bed at 2:45 AM the following day to start my first biphasic sleeping nap.
  • Physical Energy. Felt a bit of fatigue throughout the day.  The fatigue should decrease as my body gets used to this new sleeping schedule.  I was able to get my 30 minute jog done at a 4.5 miles per hour speed.  This is a bit slower than I usually jog.  I noticed I ran out of breath very quickly.
  • Emotional State. Was a bit cranky and easily irritable. Additionally my home computer crashed.  Had to reinstall windows and everything else.  I did not lose any documents of media files since I had backups.
  • Productivity. Had no Problem going through the day and getting everything done.  I noticed I was slower with certain tasks.  I also tried to always keep busy, otherwise I’d start feeling sleepy.
  • Hunger. I did not have any major changes in my appetite.  I was a bit more hungry in the morning and craved donuts which is something I usually would not eat.  I did fall for the craving and had one glazed donut.  Yummy - I can still taste that processed food goodness, and all that extra sugar ;)
  • Eye Redness/Irritation. My eyes were a bit red and irritable.  I couldn’t put on my contacts in the morning since I had them on the night before until 2 AM.  The contacts didn’t have enough time to disinfect.  Also my eyes were very sensitive, and a bit dry.  So I put on my 3 year old super duper cool x-ray vision glasses.  I wish :) they are just a good old pair of eye glasses that I never really wore much.  Luckily the prescription isn’t too out of date.  I have to admit it felt a bit weird going out with my eye glasses on.  I’m not sure if I look better or worse, I think I just have to get used to seeing myself in the mirror with eye glasses.
  • Social Life Impact.  I was supposed to hang out with a friend after work that night.  However I couldn’t meet my friend right away since I had to take my 6 PM TO 9 PM nap.  My friend was very understanding (and she was already used to my craziness) so we met at 9:30 PM and stayed up late.

Other Biphasic Sleep Observations

  • Dry Skin. I noticed my skin was a bit drier throughout the day.  I’m not sure if this is due to my new sleeping times or whether I just didn’t drink enough water the day before.
  • Energetic Night. After my 6 PM -9 PM nap I felt very energized.  Most of my fatigue was gone, and I even felt my mind was a bit more focused.  I was also able to fix my computer :)

Related posts

Biphasic Sleep

Friday, May 23rd, 2008

I have started my biphasic sleep experiment on May 22, 2008. I plan on trying out biphasic sleep for 30 days.

Introducing Biphasic Sleep

Biphasic Sleep is sleeping twice in a 24-hour period. There are different variations of it. A very common biphasic sleep schedule is sleeping 4.5 hours at night and then taking another 1.5 hour nap sometime during the day. While biphasic sleep isn’t very common in America, it is practiced in many countries around the world.

My Biphasic Sleep Schedule

I will be taking two 3 hour naps each day. I will be going to sleep from 3 AM - 6 AM and from 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM. This schedule works great with my current day job and my other daily activities. I will be trying my best to follow the sleeping schedule. One of the advantages of biphasic sleep is flexibility. Biphasic sleep is much more flexible than polyphasic sleep. Going to bed half an hour, or an hour late shouldn’t be a big deal.  Occasionally skipping a nap is also fine.  I will focus on waking up the same time everyday. If I’m late taking one of my naps, I will still wake up at the same time, and take the following nap a bit earlier. I will also make sure that the length of each nap is an increment of 90 minutes

.

Advantages of Biphasic Sleep

From reading about biphasic sleep I have discovered the following potential advantages. I will certainly report on the accurateness of these advantages throughout my experiment.

  • A More Stable Energy Level Throughout the Day.  On a regular sleeping schedule you usually get tired towards the end of the day, and aren’t very productive.  Biphasic sleep eliminates that since your sleeping twice a day.  As a result you should experience a more stable energy level throughout the day.
  • More Free Time. Many who have tried biphasic sleeping have reported that they feel as much energy sleeping 6 hours per day (or less) as they did when they slept 7-8 hours a night. This creates a potential 7-14 hours of free time every week, or 30-60 hours of free time per month. What will I do with all the free time ;)
  • Schedule Flexibility. With biphasic sleep, you get a lot of flexibility on the kinds of activities you can do during the day. For example I have a day job, however my biphasic sleep schedule will allow me to be out late on weeknights (since I don’t have to sleep until 3 AM) and still make it to work energized the next morning (waking up at 6 AM).

Maybe their will be other potential advantages that I will discover.  Subscribe to to receive updates through my RSS Feed or you can receive updates through email

.

Disadvantages of Biphasic Sleep

The following are potential disadvantages of biphasic sleep reported by others. I will asses the accuracy of these disadvantages as I provide status updates on this site.

  • First 7-10 Days are tough on your body. Whenever you are switching your sleeping patters, you will usually be a bit tired and experience some fatigue the first 7-10 days. You also might have to juggle some things around in your schedule to accommodate the new sleeping times.
  • Social Life Impact. In order to maintain a somewhat steady sleep schedule, you might have to skip certain events, show up late, leave early etc. Biphasic sleep is flexible and allows for such small changes, however some who have tried it have reported a negative impact on their social life. This is one of those factors that might vary greatly from one person to the next depending on an individual’s responsibilities and commitments.

Variables I Will Monitor

I will be monitoring and reporting on the following variables during my 30 day experiment:

  • Mental Alertness. Hopefully biphasic sleeping wont decrease my IQ smarts ;)
  • Physical Energy. Overall physical energy and abilities. It will be interesting to see how biphasic sleep impacts to my cardiovascular exercise or weightlifting workouts.
  • Emotional State. It will be interesting to see if the change in my sleeping habits will increase my anxiousness, or impact my temper or mood in general. Be on the watch out for some cranky posts in the next 30 days :)
  • Productivity. Will I be able to get more done with the extra 1-2 hours per day? or will the change in my sleeping habits get the best of me?
  • Hunger. How is biphasic sleep going to affect my appetite?
  • Water Intake. How is biphasic sleep going to affect my water intake level?
  • Eye Redness/Irritation. In the past when I don’t get my usual 7 hours of sleep I’ve often had some eye redness and irritation in the morning. If there was a night where I got only 4 hours of sleep, I had a hard time putting on my contact lenses the following morning. This is usually because of two reasons: contacts weren’t in their cleaning solution long enough to disinfect, and my eyes were red and a bit irritated because of the lack of sleep. This is why I got my eye glasses ready on hand.  I’m also working on my smart cool nerdy look :)
  • Social Life Impact. I’m Curious to see how biphasic sleep will impact my social life.  Will I have to skip certain events that occur during my sleeping times?  Or will it be okay to skip a nap once in a while?  How will my friends and family take it?

Possible Future Biphasic Sleep Plans

If I have success with the two 3 hour naps per day schedule, I might attempt a more extreme biphasic sleep schedule. A schedule where I’m taking a 3 hour nap at night and a 1.5 hour nap sometime during the day.

Others who Have Tried It

Other Biphasic Sleep Resources

Interested in Trying Biphasic Sleep?

Contact me so I can link to your biphasic sleep experiment or progress to share with everyone else :)

Related posts