Archive for the ‘Sleep’ Category

Napping at Home

It’s so much easier to nap at home, in bed, with a cat (who always sleeps). It’s still tough to fall asleep on command. I hopped into bed at about 10:10am and got up at 10:50am. I definately slept but I don’t know how deep. I remember several dreams–especially since I kept going in and out of sleep. I suspect that I was hovering between stages 1-4 (NREM1, NREM2, NREM3, NREM4, NREM3, NREM2, wake up) and didn’t make it to REM. I’ve read that this is the natural method of obtaining REM sleep, climbing up the 4 levels of NREM then climbing back down 3, 2, REM. Supposedly this will change once my body realizes it’s going to have to take REM when it can get it.

Many resources claim that dreams only happen in REM while some claim that the most vivid dreams happen in REM. I’m pretty sure that the first claim is false, since I always fall asleep by first dreaming. Letting my mind wander into dreams is key to falling asleep for me. Otherwise, I would just sit and think about things and never sleep, which is what I did throughout high school and I didn’t sleep very well at all back then.

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Day 3: Seeing Side Effects

I’m drinking a cup of licorice tea to subside a slight bit of nausea.
So, this is day 3 and I just got up at 5am. My plan to sleep from midnight to 3am has been shifted a little, in part by my lack of ability to manage daytime napping. I was too busy at work yesterday and skipped 2 of my vital daytime naps, which meant I was awake from 8:45am-5:30pm (8.75 hours). I sort of justified this because I slept from 12am-4:30am yesterday morning (1.5 hours over my original schedule). It was much easier to nap on the bus yesterday. For my morning bus to work (8am-8:45am), I crashed hard and got a good 30 minutes of deep sleep. Then, heading to school from work (5:30-5:45), I again slept hard. Luckily, both times, I slept all the way up to the point of my stop, naturally waking up when my body felt it was time. I’ve had little trouble with sleeping on the bus over the years. I’m glad I haven’t offset my bodies clock too much yet. We’ll see how the next couple of weeks fare.

Last night I got 4.5 hours of core sleep as well. I expect because I missed so much sleep during the day. There is no school or work for me for the next 3 days, so there is no reason I should miss my naps today through Sunday.

I did find it easy to focus on work and research yesterday but I don’t know if it was just adrenaline and excitement rather than a benefit of napping. It’s too early to tell.

I did some interesting reading yesterday. Found a book called the “Encyclopedia of Sleeping” at my school library.

Here is the research info I gathered from this book:

REM:
REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep is largely still not understood. We know little about it from human testing and have found that deprived of REM for 3-8 weeks, rats suffer death. This does not seem to happen in animals when deprived of other stages of sleep. However, some non-predatory animals such as the Bottle-nosed Dolphin, experience no REM during sleep.
During REM, which lasts usually lasts 90-120 minutes in adult humans, neurons in the brain continuously release the same neurotransmitters that are constantly released during waking time (seratonin, histamine, and neropinephrine). the human brain. The release of this neurotransmitters is decreased during NREM.
Because REM sleep is so similar to being awake, it is much easier to wake from REM. People who are woken up during NREM feel groggy and sometimes nauseous (as I felt this morning–I think I was in the wrong stage).
popular theory of the need for REM:
Nervous system development and maintenance.
Here’s an interesting research paper on REM dealing with memory:
THE CASE AGAINST MEMORY CONSOLIDATION IN REM SLEEP

NREM:
There are 4 NREM stages before REM sets in. NREM stands simply for Non-REM sleep. Stage one is the most lucid stage, where people feel awake. In the second stage, muscles are spontaneously stressed and relaxed, heart rate slows and the body cools. the 3rd and 4th stages of NREM are deep sleep called “slow-wave” or delta sleep.
popular theory of the need for NREM:
Since neurotransmitter release activity almost vanishes in NREM, some people hypothosize that the purpose of NREM is to keep the human brain from becoming desensitized to those vital chemicals.

Norepinephrine:
Also known as noradrenaline, this is a neurotransmitter, which increases efficiency of signal processing throughout the nervous system (by increasing neural response while reducing the level of background noise. Uninterrupted release would cause a gradual degradation (reduced sensitivity) of the system. Easing up on the production of norepinephrine the only factual benefit I’ve found for NREM on the human mind.

REM Latency:
This is the duration of the 4 stages of NREM sleep before REM sets in. Normal REM latency for adult humans is 100 minutes or longer (in a standard monophasic sleep night).
Baby humans have almost no REM Latency (NREM) sleep. Elderly humans also naturally decrease there NREM sleep time to approximately 60 minutes. I have not found a reason for this.
REM latency increasing is one of the main effects of anti-depressive and narcolepsy drugs.

Well, I’ve got to eat. I’m going to cycle off to the store and get some broccoli. Steamed, salted broccoli sounds like the only thing I could eat right now. My stomach always feels a little quesy when I’m sleep deprived. Hopefully, with a lack of complete REM cycles, I won’t lose my motor skills and go crashing off into something 8^\/

Today’s Schedule Goal:
(after waking at 5am from 12:30am bedtime)

05:00-10:00 = 5 hours awake
10:00-10:20 = 20 min nap
10:20-15:20 = 5 hours awake
15:20-15:40 = 20 min nap
15:40-19:40 = 4 hours awake
19:40-20:00 = 20 min nap
20:00-24:00 = 4 hours awake

core sleep 00:00-03:00 (to get back on track)

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Day 2: Easing in, not so easy

Advantages of waking up before the sun:

  • All the stars are out
  • Nobody else is awake
  • It’s quiet

Disadvantages:

  • It’s friggin cold outside

I just unicycled down to the 24-hour grocery store to get some grape juice.
I read that the human body produces some chemical during REM that is found in grapes. Hopefully, the chemicals will go the right places while I’m in my adjustment phase.
On my way back, I did manage to fly off my unicycle, but I believe it was more a matter of it being dark and not seeing the sudden steep incline as I came up onto a sidewalk than a matter of sleep deprivation taking hold.

Here’s the deal:
This all started with Polyphasic Sleep, popping up on almost a daily basis for the past few weeks on digg.com. Needing a research paper topic for my English class, I decided to try out a new sleeping cycle. I’ve always wanted to figure out a more natural sleep rhythm than the monophasic blocks, which have never been my forte to begin with. Having a very busy schedule, I need more hours in the day. Normally, I wake up at 7am. I spend an hour taking a shower and eating, checking my email and packing up food for the day. Then I catch a 45 minute bus downtown to work from 9am-5pm (approximately–my schedule is a bit more complex than this but it will suffice). After work, I go immediately to school (20 minute bus ride) where I stay until 8pm-9pm. I then take another 40 minute bus ride back home. Normally, I would get about 6-7 hours of sleep at home and then I’d nap on the bus. If I can manage to cut my daily sleep down to 3-4 hours a day, I would have an extra 3-4 hours each day (or 21-28 hours per week). I’m going to use this time to document my experiment in this blog, do my homework and start writing a book–not on this subject :)

Summary:
Polyphasic Sleep is a system of limiting daily sleep time to 2-5 hours by taking a 20-45 minute nap every four hours. People who practice this technique claim to be more alert and healthier than ever before. Little scientific experimentation has been done on polyphasic sleeping. However, throughout history, many brilliant minds have practiced and enjoyed its benefits. Leonardo da Vinci and Buckminster Fuller used this exact method and, while continually astonishing the world with brilliance, both lived double the expected life spans of their times. Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison experimented with similar sleep patterns throughout their most inventive phases.
Some people are still skeptical of splitting daily sleep into several sections as it goes against the social norm and, with lack of scientific proof, they cannot be certain of its effects. Doctors warn that lack of sleep can be fatally harmful, which is one reason people are reluctant to experiment with it. Polyphasic sleeping can also be difficult to practice for people running regular daytime schedules or working full 8-9 hour shifts. The question then is this: What are the real benefits or detriments of polyphasic sleeping? I expect to find that although difficult to manage and maintain, polyphasic sleeping allows a person to be more cognitively alert during waking hours while having many more waking hours to spend.

So yesterday evening (or the day before yesterday), I made a schedule for myself. I figured I should ease into this program by taking a big nap (3 hours) from midnight to 3am, then stay awake until my bus ride to work where I could sleep for 40 minutes. After that, I could take a nap break at work and sleep again on the bus coming home at night.

Schedule
2005.10.24
23:15 -> (awake since 07:15 = 16 hours = 960 minutes)
This is when I decided to start my new cycle — too late to take an extra nap :)

2005.10.25

Time (24 hour) Minutes State Activity
00:00-03:00 180 Sleeping home-bed
03:00-07:00 240 Awake homework
07:00-07:40 40 Sleeping bus to work
07:40-10:40 180 Awake work
10:40-11:00 20 Sleeping nap at work
11:00-14:30 195 Awake work
14:45-15:15 30 Sleeping chair at school
15:15-21:00 345 Awake classes
21:00-21:40 40 Sleeping bus to home
21:40-24:00 140 Awake homework


Overall, I think it went well for the first day (yesterday). It wasn’t easy to sleep on the buses, which is odd because I usually konk right out on the bus. I figured it was an adrenaline issue.

Unfortunately, this morning, I woke up a bit late. It was 4am when I woke up, so I figured I should sleep another 30 minutes to get the rest of my full 90 minute cycle.

Right now, I’m eating while writing this entry. Now that I have formulated a fairly rigid schedule, I’m going to try to eat more regularly.
I’ve been surviving mostly on dried fruit and nuts, Cliff bars and juice–with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for breakfast.

Meal:
Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich (Adam’s Peanut Butter + Trader Joes – reduced sugar – blueberry preserves + Franz “Redwood Forest” Flax & Grains bread
100% pure grape juice
Vitamins:
Flaxseed oil [1000 mg]
Acidophilus [10 mg]
Ginko Biloba [500 mg]
Glucosamine Sulfate [500mg]
Calcium [300 mg]
Magnesium [130 mg]
Zinc [10 mg]

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