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)