[extropy-chat] Healthy, wealthy and wise

[Martin Striz]

On 4/10/06, "Hal Finney" <hal at finney.org> wrote:

> Steve is actually now using an even more extreme sleeping style:
> "polyphasic sleep", basically taking short naps several times a day
> instead of sleeping at night.  He switched to this method last fall
> and has had good results from it.  He sleeps about 20-30 minutes every 4
> hours, for a total of only 2-3 hours of sleep a day.  Few people have been
> successful with this system but it works great for him.  He blogged his
> whole history of switching to this method, what he went through and what
> he felt like: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/
> It's an amazing case history even if not many of us would be willing or
> able to make such drastic changes.

Let me add that polyphasic sleep is bogus.  NO drug or method has been
demonstrated to replace any amount of sleep under controlled
conditions for more than two or three days.  If Steve claims that he
ONLY sleeps 2-3 hrs per day, then I know some investigators who will
pay good money to study him for a week.  Most of the time, people who
claim to be low sleepers get small naps or microsleeps that they don't
even realize they are getting (which you wouldn't notice if you were
constantly sleep deprived, say, through polyphasic sleep).  The vast
majority of people who have come to sleep researchers claiming not to
sleep at all have been shown to sleep 4, 5, 6 hrs a day.

Also, polyphasic sleep is doubly bad because studies have shown that
you need your sleep to be consolidated.  In an infamous study at
Stanford, people were allowed to get a normal 8 hrs of sleep over the
course of a day, but it was broken up into 30, 60 or 90 minute
intervals, and all of them showed severe decreases in vigilance and
performance after a few days.  One woman had problems for months
afterwards, so the study was never repeated.

A great example of the failure of polyphaseic sleep is this
experiment, done over an impressive 51 days, catalogued on a
LiveJournal blog:

http://ubermannequin.livejournal.com/

As expected, the author felt fine for a day or two and then started
crashing out, sometimes for 12 hrs at time.  Pure sleep deprivation.

As much as everybody wants there to be one, there just isn't a holy
grail to replace sleep.  The best thing to do is get a good night's
sleep.

Martin