Alright, this is the start of the 7th day, one week, 168th hour (hey, I did that in my head and it’s 5am :))

So, since I took a longer nap than usual last night, I wasn’t able to sleep until a little past 12:30am. Before I fell asleep, I realized it would not be prudent to wake up at 3am, since I needed some extra neurotransmittal help to heal my muscles. I’ve read that REM is especially good for the nervous system and mine was fealing a little abused yesterday.
The steaming hot bath, last night, before my nap, was probably a nice touch too. My body felt a little stronger after that nap–although it was too long so I didn’t wake from REM as I should have.
I only have one class today, so I’m hoping to take a break at work and nap before class. There just isn’t a decent place to sleep at school. Go figure. The University of Washington is so much better equiped for napping than Seattle Central Community College. Oh, well.

I’m starting today off right, with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a handful of vitamins. I need a high power breakfast since dinner is so difficult for my schedule. Usually, I just end up bringing a cliff bar and a bunch of mixed nuts, dried fruit, seawead (nori), and whatever else I can find to snack on.

Well, today is going to be much better than yesterday. That I’m already sure of. My shoulders are still really sore, but it’s several orders of magnitude improved.

I suppose it has something to do with sleep deprivation. My muscles are very sore as they have been all day. I suppose it also has to do with yoga and exercising way too much on Saturday.
I had to leave my first class early today (Information Security) and ditch out on my second class (Typography). I was too tired. By 4:30pm, I had been up for 8.5 hours since my first nap. I’ve gotta figure out a way to manage my daytime naps when I’m working and going to school.

I took a nap from 7:30pm – 10pm. A bit longer than I intended. So, all told, I slept 6 hours today. Not terrible. I’m still maintaining a low average. However, I’d feel a lot better about it if I weren’t so exhausted that I had to ditch class today. I can’t tell how much of it is just being overworked from Saturday and how much is not getting enough neurotransmitters of some kind. I’d really like a personal USB EEG machine for yule/x-mas. Any wealthy scientifically minded supporters out there can make a donation if they like–as can anyone else :)

Never hurts to try.

So, for the record, today, I slept from:
00:00-03:00
07:20-07:50
19:30-22:00
(I’m going to make a pretty graph in about a week)

Well, I woke up at 3am. Now I’m all dressed up as a pirate and nobody else is awake. Yaar!

I’m still incredibly sore from working out on Saturday. It hurt to put my shirt on.
Well, it’s back to work and school today. Gotta figure out a decent schedue. I’m going to take a nap from 7:20-8am right before I head out. That should give me a jump on the day. By that time, I will have been awake for over 4 hours anyway. Maybe I’ll be a little late for my first class today and take a nap at about 2pm (six hours later might be pushing it though). I’ll see how busy work is.

Yesterday, I ended up taking a nap from 7:20pm – 8pm. I was really tired all day but I didn’t have the opportunity to nap until then. After watching a movie with Lena, we went straight to bed at 11pm. I fell asleep at about 11:30pm, so I have 3.5 hours of sleep to start today off with.
If I take a 40 minute before I leave, another at work and crash [edit: no pun intended] on the 45 minute bus ride on the way home from school, that will make it 5.5 hours all together. That’s my goal today.

Fie on’t!
I screwed up last night. I was very good yesterday. I slept from midnight to 3am. Then I took a 40 minute nap as planned. However, I did a 1 hour yoga class and started my first of 3 free sessions with a physical trainer at the gym. I got worn out. All my muscles are so exhausted. I can barely move my upper body.

Last night, I skipped my 19:20-20:00 nap. That was a mistake.
I ate a bunch of ginger snaps instead while watching two movies. Another mistake.
Then, I went to bed at midnight. I fell right to sleep since I was so tired from the day of early exercise.
At 3am, my phone went off in my pillow (my new personal alarm clock–the vibrate mode doesn’t wake Lena). I turned off the alarm and while part of me was thinking, “I’ll just lay here and remember my dream for a minute”, I know another part of me was thinking, “hey, daylight savings… I get an extra hour. I may as well sleep.”

So I did and I didn’t wake up until 8am (7am after daylight savings).
The worst part is that I don’t even feel like I got a full night of sleep.
My body feels so sore and tired.
But I’m not giving up. I can reason this lapse, which means I can prepare for it again in the future.

There was a time, when I was working the graveyard shift at a restaurant and I would get 12 hours of sleep a day. It was great. I remembered all of my dreams, which were usually lucid. I suspect that part of my lapse was my body saying that I have so much sleep potential. I may as well use it when I need it. I don’t think sleeping 8 hours last night is going to prevent me from taking 1-1.5 hours worth of naps today.
I’m still waking up at 3am tomorrow morning!

I just got out of a steaming hot shower after waking up at 3am. That’s right. It’s Saturday morning and I chose to get up way before the sun. That was tough. I most certainly was not in REM sleep when I awoke. I feel quite groggy. It really makes a whole lot of sense that people would feel groggy waking from NREM. Since the brain almost totally halts neurotransmitter production during NREM but has to start up the factory works as soon as we become conscious, it must be a real mental strain to jar awake during NREM. I can’t wait for my body to readjust.

Yesterday, I was looking up Electroencephalograph machines on ebay. I was surprised to find so many. Then I found a nice new USB model. It’s a little pricey. I’d love to be able to document and view my brainwave activity during my naps.

I’m watching Mad Max Beyond Thunderdom while writing this. Let’s see if sleep deprivation affects my ability to multitask.

I’m going to yoga at 9am and working out at the gym right afterward. I hope I make it.
Here’s today’s schedule:

I’m hoping for 5 total sleep hours today. Meanwhile, I’m drinking lots of grape juice. (flavonoids, which are normally produced by the brain in deep sleep, help recycle antioxidants)

Since I didn’t go to work or school today, I didn’t really leave the house much, which gave me the opportunity to plan the perfect schedule.

This is the 4.5 hour core sleep schedule:

It consists of 4.5 hours of core sleep, then 5 hours awake, 20 minutes napping, 5 hours awake, 20 minute nap, 4 hours awake, final 20 minute nap, 4.5 hours awake.

Total Daily Sleep = 5.5 hours = 23% of daily activity
Total Daily Wake= 18.5 hours = 77% of daily activity
Sleep required for each waking hour = 29.73%

These are incredible stats considering I was able to focus all day and (aside from the short bit of nausea when I woke up at 5am, which quickly passed) I felt well rested all day. I experienced 4 seperate dream sessions, in which I was able to remember much more than usual. Having more entrances and exits to the sleep phases does have the advantage of adding up more lucid dream opportunities.

It’s certainly better than what I was getting before. I got 2.5 extra hours today. I’m actually going to try to sleep by midnight tonight so I can wake up at 3am and get back on track. I hope daylight savings doesn’t screw up my schedule. It’s so precise :)

On another note, I just watched “Crash”. That is a seriously intense film. If you’re having trouble staying awake during a long session between naps, watch this movie. You will be wide awake.

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.

CX717 has been in the news since August. I keep getting hits for it with my research queries.
Anyway, it’s a new ampakine drug, which targets specific areas of the brain. It’s been tested on monkeys, giving them better than ever mental test results even after 30-36 hours (equivalent of 3 days to a human) of sleep deprivation.

I wonder how long it will take to get on the market. I’m taking Ginkgo Biloba, but that’s just not the same :)

here’s a link:

BBC: Drug ‘reverses sleep lack effect’

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)

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 :)

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]