Life Experiment #34 – One Month of Biphasic Sleep
Do you get enough sleep? Do you feel tired all the time? What if I told you there was a way to sleep less and have more energy. It’s call Biphasic Sleep. Biphasic sleep consists of two period of sleep, typically a nap of 30 minutes or longer and a period of core sleep. Most people typically view their sleep in terms of monophasic with the occasional nap here and there, but the concept of a nap can actually reduce the amount of core sleep needed. For the next 30 days I’ll be testing a biphasic sleep phase of a 1.5 hour nap with 4.5 hours of core sleep.
Hypothesis: I believe that splitting my sleep into two separate periods is going to increase my energy levels upon waking up and throughout the day and reduce the total amount of sleep I need. I currently get about 7-8 hours of sleep at one time, but I’ll be testing two periods of sleep totally 6 hours. I noticed that my energy levels were higher when I ate less in the Intermittent Fasting trial, so I think same concept will apply to this trial. As I shorten my sleep periods, I think I’ll become more efficient at falling asleep faster thereby reducing my total amount of sleep needed. The reduced sleep time will also give me more free time.
8 Hours of Sleep – How We Got Here
It seems like all the experts out there are telling us that eight hours of solid sleep is what we need to remain healthy. But how did we get here? Who says that humans are healthiest on eight hours? It turns out that artificial lighting has changed the way we sleep. As I write this, it’s 3AM in the morning. I work the night shift on my ship and modern technology has made it possible for my shipmates and I to work 24/7. I haven’t seen sunlight in about 2 weeks, but I plenty of light to read this computer screen and work my shift. Modern lighting has made it possible to stay up any hour of the day and work.
Prior to the industrial revolution people went to bed went it got dark. Unless you were rich enough to burn candles all night you went to sleep when the sun went down. Prior to electrical lighting, Europeans used to sleep for an hour or more during the night, before returning to their “second” sleep. It’s my theory that artificial lighting has made us less efficient at sleeping.
How To Stay Up Late and Wake Up Early
I originally got the idea for this trial from Steve Pavlina’s blog. He made a pretty good case for this type of sleep pointing out how flexible it makes your schedule. A few years ago I tried a waking up early trial, but had difficulty sticking to the trial when I stayed out late on the weekends. The biphasic sleep phase allows for a person to both stay up late and wake up early. I plan on sleeping after my night shift from 8:30-10:00AM, then waking up and being active till I go back to sleep from 12:30-5:00PM. Most people who have day jobs could do the same schedule but take a nap say from 6-7:30PM after work, then go to bed at 12AM or 1AM and wake-up around 4AM or 5AM. Compared to polyphasic sleep which requires you to sleep 20 minutes every 4 hours, this schedule provides the flexibility to stay out late, then get up early the next day.
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