Dr Piotr Wozniak, April, 2010

Contents

Since the publishing of my original article on "polyphasic sleep", I received a lot of mail with requests to produce an update, esp. on conclusions coming from my contacts with young people attempting to implement a polyphasic sleep schedule. Quite a bit has changed in those five years, and those who would like to sleep polyphasically got far more opportunity and material to research the subject thoroughly and make right decisions. In this followup article, I would like to address the criticism of the original article, and write a few words about how the new tools made available in SuperMemo help study sleep and predicate on the possibility of sleeping polyphasically.

The present article is justified by a couple of changes that occurred in the last 5 years. Here are a few important contributors to my knowledge of the polyphasic world:

I received some 500 pieces of mail and got in personal touch with many polyphasic adepts. Of those attempts that I was given a chance to monitor, all were unsuccessful. Some of the critics of the original article claimed that they do sleep polyphasically, but I received no data that could serve as the basis for verification. The most interesting conclusion coming from the mass of mail received is that people drift towards polyphasic sleep less as a result of their hunger for achievement, and more for their prior problems with sleep. They often think of polyphasic sleep as a panacea for all their sleep problems. This perception is magnified by multiple blog claims.

I received a couple of SleepChart data submissions demonstrating how difficult the struggle with the polyphasic sleep is. Admittedly, I was quite impressed with the degree of determination some of those experimenters showed.

YouTube entered the scene and now anyone can see individual tribulations, black-ringed eyes, dishevelled hair, mumbling voices, and the plain torture of trying to stay awake. As always, there are always those who beam health, smiles and the declarations like "I now feel better than ever". Below I include a lovely example of a YouTube contribution; well done, cocky, honest, representative, funny, and iced with a positive ending: Also the famous Stampi experiment with Francesco Jost is now presented in this documentary:

Also the famous Stampi experiment with Francesco Jost is now presented in this documentary: The newest version of SleepChart makes it possible to model the changes in sleep propensity. Even though the model applies to free running sleep, its application to polyphasic sleep provides a good illustration of the roots of polyphasic suffering.

Some of polyphasic mythology seems to have died out. No longer do we hear much of Churchill or Jefferson sleeping polyphasically.

Overall, I consider the original article a success. When young men turned to me with a request to help supervise their experiments, I had to start from trying to dissuade them from the idea. I expected many refusals to be met with "No. I will still try. I need more time per day", but I got surprisingly many "I got sleep problems. If free running sleep might help, I will try it first. Sounds sensible". As I wrote previously, those are "rebellious men ready to seek new ways for maximum productivity". No scientific argument can be persuasive in such cases. After all, all reasoning can easily be quashed with "science does not have all the answers yet". None of the young rebels succeeded in entraining polyphasic sleep, yet some were persistent enough to provide some SleepChart data that sheds some more light on the implausibility of the polyphasic sleep schedule. This data can now be compared with sleep habits of young students who use SleepChart to better understand their own circadian cycle.

The mail that I have received was mostly critical, but it should not be used as a measure of success. It is not important what proportion of readers would agree with me. It is important how many gave up the idea of sleeping polyphasically as a result. Within the five hundred pieces of mail, I roughly estimate the distribution of their nature as follows:

50% - criticism of the article from the adepts of polyphasic sleep

40% - requests for help in implementing polyphasic sleep with the help of tools like SleepChart, etc.

10% - grateful mail of the sort "thank you for saving me lots of time and health. I wanted to try polyphasic sleep but, after reading the article, decided not to"

10% may seem like a very low conversion rate. However, this translates to hundreds of hours of someone's time. I am sure it also translates to some health benefit. For example, a great deal of polyphasic attempts end up with a cold or influenza, which must reflect the impact of this sleep schedule on the immune system.

What Aaron wrote is pretty representative of the 10% group: "The idea of sleeping in naps spread throughout the day intrigued me, as I have always suffered from what I was unable to properly quantify, but now know is DSPS. If I do not use an alarm clock, and go to sleep when I become tired, I see my sleep/wake times shift to significantly later times every day (hours later). This has been a constant source of frustration for me, and I considered a polyphasic schedule in order to help correct the problem. However, after reading "Polyphasic Sleep: Facts and Myths", I have decided this would be a sincere waste of my time".

More frequently, I was a bit less successful. For example, Joel wrote: "I am writing to ask for your guidance on my attempt at the "Uberman" sleeping schedule - whereby one sleeps 20 minutes at 6 evenly spaced times during a 24 hour period. I have read your arguments against polyphasic sleeping, but I'm set on attempting it. Your plea for people to contact you if they are considering it is what motivates me to email you now as I'm interested in my potential discomfort being beneficial to sleep research. I'd like to volunteer to log my attempt with your sleep chart software and answer any questions you have about my experience".

Criticism would usually skirt around the science argument and quote from blogs of people who claim they have succeeded with polyphasic sleep. For example Kop wrote: "There are MANY people who successfully adapted. [...] You simply neglected to cite them, and you cited only people who failed. I think this is very unfair and misleading to your readers. I may sound like a broken record, but even if you believe that everyone who claims to have been successful is lying you should let your readers make this choice and you should definitely not just completely leave out all the information you personally don't agree with".

At the extreme end of the range, there was mail from George who straightforwardly accused me of lying: "It is important to realize that most of the experimenters are Americans, because apparently you don't understand the dynamics of our culture. Briefly put, you paraded evidence that seemed to support your claims, while completely ignoring evidence that does not. For example, you flatly state that no polyphaser is ever a woman, while at the same time quoting from a blog written by one! (A search at YouTube.com will reveal other female polyphasic sleepers.) In another instance, you quoted a medical disclaimer from one polyphasic, while leaving out his comments on the experiment's great success. This practice on your part, Doctor, is seen by Americans as being dishonest. Dishonesty by a scientist completely ruins credibility. Since it's easy to believe that you were dishonest on polyphasic sleep, it's also easy to believe that you are lying about your product, SuperMemo. This is going to cost you money, Doctor. Who is going to buy a product by a lying scientist?

Most importantly, polyphasic sleep mania did not grow exponentially as I feared. It reached some plateau and its population includes fewer true experimenters and more zany characters that won't be persuaded by any means except their own perpetual failure. I am then proud that my voice is relatively loud among the few who spoke against the practise. Sleep researchers are too busy to study freak ideas. Doctors do not perceive it as a danger as they are pretty unlikely to meet an actual victim. You need the magnifying glass of the net to see the worldwide size of the phenomenon. Thus efforts of a goodwilled activists grow in relative importance.

My greatest mistake committed when writing the original article was to inadvertently use the word "invariably" instead of "predominantly". As a result, it seems like half of the critical mail accused me of distorting facts by claiming that there are no women who tried to sleep polyphasically. Some even went as fast as to claim I discredit or disparage women!? For starters, if this was to be a lie, it was a pretty lame one, I even quoted from polyphasic blogs written by ladies. There is nothing to stir people's aggression like a lame lie, and if I committed one, I would have to be tossed into the dumbest liars category. Secondly, should my claim not rather be interpreted as "Ladies are too smart for this. Only guys start wars and apply crazy sleep schedules". Retroactively, I corrected the unfortunate word at the risk of getting fewer inspiring pieces of mail from the less tolerant or the less inquisitive range in the reader spectrum. Ah yes, just in case, I did not spell it clearly enough: there are women who think sleeping polyphasically is a good idea!

Very often I am being asked how I can claim any authority on polyphasic sleep without ever trying it myself. For starters, I do not claim to be a polyphasic sleep expert. As a humble biologist, I simply need to recall the ABC of chronobiology to figure out that polyphasic sleep is not feasible. You do not need to be a junkie to study drug addiction, even though a glass of vodka might be a recommended one-time treatment to an abstinent investigator of alcoholism. I understand the pain of the alarm clock because I used it sparingly during my university years as well. I understand the pain of jet lag and sleep deprivation from my early turbulent years of involvement in the SuperMemo business. However, I need a fresh brain for my work. Even one day of a hazy mind is a loss. I cannot possibly hope to struggle through a polyphasic routine in hope of proving that the elusive and ever remote "adaptation" is just an urban myth. If someone told you to lie on the railway tracks with a promise of being struck by nirvana, you would refuse. For you know with sufficient probability that the outcome would more likely be pretty gory.

Sleep researchers love to compare sleep deprivation to intoxication: both disrupt one's self-assessment abilities. Like an alcoholic who always claims "I am not drunk. I am just inebriated", a sleep deprived person will often say "I am fine. I am crisp and alert", while his or her ability to perform mental tasks may be seriously impaired. Driving when sleep deprived may be as dangerous as driving while intoxicated. This loss of self-assessment capacity may in part explain why so many polyphasic bloggers tend to claim they have adapted. They tend to write about their success at the moment of lucidity or euphoria (see the chronobiology insert on how this can be explained with the two-process model of sleep), while ignoring those brain dead moments as "temporary setbacks", transitory adaptation state, etc. In those hazy moments, a blogger may be unwilling to update the blog, magnifying the bias as perceived from the outside. Adaptation to polyphasic schedule is not possible, but this self-assessment handicap is just one of many reasons that boastful bloggers need not be branded as liars on the sole basis of their claims. Perhaps it is even possible to flatten or desynchronize the circadian function bad enough to lessen the average pain. Needless to say, with all genetic cascades resting on the circadian cycle, such an outcome can only lead to a health disaster. It could be likened to applying contradictory stimuli to the gut in order to prevent the natural progression of peristalsis. What a polyphasic sleep adept is risking at such point is an outcome comparable with the fate of Mr Creasote in the "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life" (see on YouTube - very drastic!)

One of the most persistent myths about sleep is that our body is programmed to get as much sleep as possible. Even some reputable researchers subscribed to this idea! They compare sleep to overeating. Some note how long Inuit sleep in winter. Others note that people allowed to sleep freely often binge heavily clocking up an indecent number of sleep hours. As if conservation of energy was the main function of sleep. As if all animals were made as lazy as they are perpetually hungry. However, few can demonstrate any evolutionary or biological advantage to getting more sleep than neurally necessary. This harmful myth might make you think that free-running sleep will make you sleep longer in the same way as free access to the kitchen will make you overeat. Considering the known functions of sleep, there is no specific benefit to sleeping beyond the standard 6-8 hours. Sleep is a physiological consumer of benefits accumulated in waking (such as learning, exercise, etc.). Its healthy homeostatic regulation roughly ensures the optimum proportion of sleep to waking. People who binge on sleep in free-running conditions, usually come from a period of long-lasting sleep deprivation. Their sleeping time quickly drops to their natural average after a couple of days of the free schedule. If your main concern is time, you can survive on less sleep and get more time at the cost of your mental acuity. If your main concern is the brain power, you should live by the motto: Maximum efficiency of sleep is accomplished when sleeping without artificial sleep regulation (i.e. without alarm clocks, pills, designer schedules, etc.). Free-running sleep schedule will make you sleep less on average. It will make you sleep much less than on those days of any artificial sleep schedule that forces you to catch up with the accumulated sleep debt. Irregular schedule is bound to produce deficits because you can accomplish irregular sleep only by interfering with it.

With all the mail criticising my polyphasic sleep article, not a single one!, came against the basic scientific premise, which was supposed to make the core of my argument. I received some mail that quoted from scientific literature or from Dr Stampi's book. However, again, not a single one! came against the basic scientific premise (see the yellow inset below). To make the article readable, I mixed science with humor and a degree of provocation. My experience says that the importance of the message does not correlate with the degree of article's popularity. I never get any comments on "Two component model of memory". It does not affect anyone's emotion. It reads like dry science. We got very few reprint requests back at the day of publication (before placing the article on the web). And yet it might be one of the most important contributions of SuperMemo to understanding memory. This is why when writing the polyphasic sleep article, I chose a more provocative style to address the younger audience. Understandably, most of the criticism focused then on the "readable" portion (despite a large disclaimer that it should be taken with a grain of salt). As such, all criticism missed the main point of the article (!) and did not contribute much to the discourse. Here is a chance for the critics again to address the central point:

Human sleep patterns reflect the underlying circadian rhythm whose period is roughly equal to 24 hours. This circadian cycle calls for a major sleep block every 24 hours. The body clock can be entrained with phase shifts of up to 3 hours. However, the circadian lows cannot be partitioned. The timing of the main low cannot be positioned in any other way than by a phase shift. Periodicity cannot be eliminated without a detriment to health. Circadian components underlie the structure of sleep that is essential for its function. Therefore, in individuals with healthy regulatory sleep system, no sleep schedule can skip the main period of the consolidated subjective night sleep.

In practise this means that only mono- and bi-phasic sleep patterns are healthy and recommended. Note that the mono- vs. bi-phasic choice will depend on the circadian wave function, which has two minima in a 24 hour period, only one of which has been proven essential for the correct function of sleep (until now). Polyphasic entrainment is just a pipe dream. So is the even more extreme hope of sleep on demand. Please do not send me mail with Eureka exclamations that there are polyphasic women in this world, or that my blog selection is biased (because it is!). Unless you can provide evidence against the core argument in yellow above, our exchange is likely to be pointless.

Lots of critical mail mentioned my "hidden agenda". Ever since I wondered what my hidden agenda might be. Standard ulterior "agendas" revolve around money, feeling important, or a ticket to fame. The article is free, and earns me no money. It hardly mentions SuperMemo, so it does not serve as a promotion article. It earns me no fame. How about feeling important then? The article had some success in preventing some people from plunging into a polyphasic waste of time. Therefore I do consider the article important. Yet at 50% criticism rate, I would rather need to don a mantle of thick skin even though I am rather of fabric that loves loony criticism. The more awkward and preposterous the accusation, the more fun it is to combat it. Perhaps this mechanism breeds people who like to rub others the wrong way. Yet, if all I wanted to do is to be contrary, I could employ more aggressive and unkind tools of derision. I opted for the opposite: due respect to those young people who experiment with their health. I combined that respect with a bit of harmless fun poking for the sake of just making the article a bit more effective in addressing the emotion of the reader.

In addition to the original agenda behind the article, you may think that after 5 years, a new agenda might be emerging: it would not be nice to eat crow! Most of people hate to admit their mistake. However, this is less of a problem in science, where each opportunity to change one's mind is always associated with learning something new. True hard-core scientists love to find out they were wrong because they equate it with a major step to getting closer to revealing the truth. I am not too emotional about personal accomplishments or being always right. I would also rather welcome the need to admit being wrong because it could only be a result of some major scientific discovery. It would certainly require an update to our models of sleep. This would mean that we would better understand the mechanisms of sleep, and new knowledge always opens new vistas, esp. for my true core agenda: striving at faster and better learning! Unfortunately, the probability of such earth-shattering discoveries is not much greater than a chance that humans will soon find a way to squeeze through a wormhole.

Someone suggested that my agenda is "free running sleep". This is hard to understand. I do adhere to free running sleep religiously. I do tell people of its blessings (and inconveniences). However, other's people polyphasic sleep does not interfere with my free running sleep lifestyle. It does not detract from its value. It does not hurt me or shame me. Why would this be my agenda?



My true and only agenda behind writing the article was to stop young men from doing stupid things to their health. In the belief that polyphasic sleep is not feasible, I have no agenda: it is just a fact that needs to be told to some people.

Someone warned me that a foray into a pseudoscientific field, as well as battling superstitions with sarcasm or derision may undermine the stricter and more scientific feel of supermemo.com. This prediction seems to be wrong. Polyphasic sleep and SuperMemo audiences are largely separate. Most of people get to SuperMemo when they discover it when searching for efficient ways of learning. They already have a strong intuition that they need something like SuperMemo, and only need to find the right tool for their goals. They hardly ever decide upon it having read lengthy articles. And in those rare cases, they are predominantly encouraged. This probably comes from the fact that only one kind of people read supermemo.com: those who like science. No one with a true love for science can go pass by SuperMemo indifferent. The polyphasic article clearly warns when it moves from fact to humor (and intentional bias). I see no evidence it has hurt SuperMemo in any way. At the same time, I got some mail indicating that people who originally searched for polyphasic sleep articles became interested in SuperMemo. All in all, the article does not seem to have much impact on SuperMemo, and whatever impact it has, it is probably positive. Most of angry mail came from worshipers of polyphasic sleep, none of who, admitted ever using SuperMemo. No wonder. They are rarely of the science-loving type.

Some readers concluded that I might be a researcher who studies polyphasic sleep for a living. No! I took on the subject only as a short-term assignment. I study the impact of sleep on memory and learning. Even though all extreme angles taken to any subject in science are always a provocative source of inspiration, in the light of my interest in learning, polyphasic sleep emerges as an extremely dangerous lifestyle formula. Luckily, it is not sustainable enough to do much damage, however, it also helps perpetuate lots of catchy myths that may affect how young people approach sleep and health in general. Polyphasic sleep is not a neat study subject. Scientists like simplicity. They construct simple research models to make it easier to arrive at valid conclusions. I love free running sleep concept as a research model. It speaks of unadulterated natural healthy sleep. Polyphasic sleep was invented for unnatural survival situations, and its Uberman variant is a widely mutated invention of teenagers who hope to save time on sleep or solve their sleep problems. Choosing a polyphasic sleep as a model, would be like choosing a multiplanet system to test Newton/Keppler's laws, while a two-planet system would do as well and produce results eons earlier. Instead of complex Fourier analysis, we have simple and clear formulas that tell the entire story.

Someone accused me of using derision and painting polyphasic sleepers as dumb individuals who cannot figure out that polyphasic sleep is impossible and comparisons with da Vinci and Edison are simple myths and Internet rumors. This accusation can only come from inattentive or selective reading. Let me requote: Even though it is not nice to poke fun at anyone, I hope I do it for the right cause. After all, ignorance and mental flops happen to everyone, incl. the greatest geniuses of history. Those young men show many characteristics that will make them successful in life: perseverance, curiosity, willingness to experiment through pain, voracious attitude, zeal for action and change, etc. Many of those quoted bloggers will go on to do great things in life. Naturally, I do not believe that will happen on a polyphasic sleep schedule.

Nevertheless, with all the extra information available on the net today, it is true that it is less justifiable for a reasonable person to take on polyphasic sleep today than it was 5 years go. Polyphasic sleepers today are not dumb. However, they are at least very unscientific. They may also often be pretty narcissistic or downright arrogant. Those characteristics do not help clear reasoning either.

Is it possible that there are individual who can actually adapt to the polyphasic sleep despite its infeasibility for the majority of the population? This is possible, but highly unlikely.

I raised that possibility less for its probability, and more for the sake of softening the accusation that those who claim polyphasic sleep feats are liars. To make "mutant theory" workable, we would need a series of mutations that would produce sleep without a circadian component. Or a mutation that would allow of homeostatic generation of circadian states that periodically occur in the brains of all vertebrates. It is as hard as to imagine a mutation that would allow of defecating in 25g portions. Or a mutation allowing of asynchronous voluntary peristalsis. Or a mutation that would replace a blinking reflex with two separate independent regulatory blinking mechanisms for both eyes. Or a perpetual syncopated heart rhythm with alternating 3:6:3:9:3:6 interval ratios. Or a separate contraction of atria, or separate repolarization of ventricles, etc. Or a menstrual cycle that can be entrained to shift-work with bleeding every 9 days. Why do not people try those "physiological manipulations"? Actually they do. But it takes a hard-core looney to try to prove that "sleep is not necessary" or even "food is not necessary and can be substituted with meditation". The closest disorder that can match the hypothesis that polyphasic sleep might be enabled by a mutation is narcolepsy, in which individuals node off many times during the day indeed. However, this is a homeostatic disorder that does not flatten the circadian function. As such, narcoleptics sleep more than healthy people, not less.

I was delighted when the BBC turned to me to assist in designing an experiment in which a BBC presenter would attempt polyphasic sleep. However, program's limitations made it impossible to run the experiment on the proposed scientific basis with a supervision of a sleep lab. Nevertheless, the final outcome turned out pretty hilarious. The guinea pig volunteer turned out to be no one else than Bill Turnbull! The program ultimately aired in 2006 on BBC One's The One Show. Bill would present the Breakfast during the experiment, and the audience had an opportunity to see the impact of the experiment on his sleep-deprived performance. Unfortunately, the show did not make it to YouTube for your enjoyment.

Some of the criticism came from people who read Claudio Stampi's book Why We Nap. My article was accused of trying to contradict or undermine the contribution of a reputable sleep researcher. It is true that with the advantage of two extra decades of research, I disagree with some of Stampi's original hypotheses. Largely so does Stampi. Let me then unequivocally express my admiration for Stampi's passionate research and meticulous analysis of human reaction to drastic changes in the sleep schedule. His research can definitely be considered as pioneering work in the study of the extremes of chronobiology. For those who still believe that Stampi advocates polyphasic sleep as a lifestyle, an ancient quote from his book should clear things up: "the author would like to caution against misleading interpretations of these conclusions. What is being proposed here is not that polyphasic sleep is preferable to monophasic sleep, nor that everyone should now switch to a multiple napping behavior "panacea." It appears obvious that quasi-monophasic sleep — monophasic sleep plus occasional naps — is what comes most naturally to the majority of adult humans and a few other species. If somewhere in evolution such species have developed the ability to sustain wakefulness for relatively prolonged periods, most likely this ability occurred in response to some sort of important and advantageous adaptive pressure".

It is important to note here that Dr Stampi could identify only a modest decline in cognitive function during his polyphasic sleep experiments. This may stand in seeming contradiction with other research or with simple circadian measurements of memory performance (as in the circadian graph picture). Including a circadian component in measurements yields siginificant cognitive differences in the course of a normal undeprived waking day. The tests Stampi chose to measure cognitive performance skirt around the essential question as to the primary long-term neurophysiological function of optimally timed REM-NREM interplay in sleep (in Stampi experiement with Francesco Jost, REM and NREM rarely occurred together). If the hypothesized memory storage optimization function is considered, it is impossible to verify the status of memory with short-term tests as, in theory, the network function of the brain taken as a black box should remain unchanged. The neglect of sleep structure would show only as a cumulative long-term inability of the brain to build up new skills and reasoning powers. Secondly, the creative potential of an optimized storage is also difficult to measure, and will definitely show a cumulative effect requiring a long-term study. Last but not least, lack of the circadian effect can only testify to an insufficient sensitivity and/or timing of the tests chosen. Even if the homeostatic component of alertness ensures that we can seemingly focus on simple mental tasks and perform them pretty well (e.g. memory tasks, driving, simple calculations, etc.), the circadian low will affect the ability to sustain a mental effort or undermine its creative aspect. Tests that are sufficient for Dr Stampi's goals (e.g. maximizing alertness in a solo yachting race) cannot be used to make claims about the long-term impact of polyphasic sleep as a lifestyle. One polyphasic adept asked me: "I want my doctor to supervise my experiment. What parameters, do you think, he should track?". It is not much different than asking: "What tests I could do to check if smoking is safe? What tests can help me see the impact of smoking on health?". We all know that smoking or shift-work do not cause a significant impairment in a short term. In the long run though they both can kill.

It should also be noted here that even in serious sleep medicine literature there is a confusion between the homeostatic and circadian sleep components. Very often, researchers fail to differentiate between the two when investigating impact of environmental factors on sleep. We all know that coffee can help one survive a sleepy moment. It is important to ask though if its effects are homeostatic or circadian. Can coffee dispel sleep inertia? Can it help overcome circadian lows? It is not enough to say that coffee helps overcome sleepiness if its impact on the circadian sleepiness is negligible. Everyone who is familiar with the jet lag can testify that the foggy brain state does not evidently deprive one of one's basic mental skills, and yet it can entirely ruin one's productivity by affecting self control, creativity, motivation, and more. This is why globe-trotting politicians are a poor material for groundbreaking peace or trade deals, even if they believe they can function well on 3 hours of sleep or in a jetlagged condition. Dr Stampi's findings, highly applicable to emergency situations, should not be used to diminish the importance of well-timed natural sleep for the function of the brain, and the fact that artificial designer sleep schedules are very harmful.

In my article I wrote: Whoever claims to be on a perpetual polyphasic schedule must be either suffering from a sleep disorder, or be a liar, a mutant, or a person with a mulishly stubborn iron-will. Lots of critical mail pointed to the blog of Steve Pavlina who claims to have adapted well to polyphasic sleep. Pavlina might be the only notable case to make such a claim, and is used as an example to contradict the claims from my article again and again. Even though, in recent months, more claims of success surfaced on YouTube, Pavlina's loneliness in the success club resulted in more and more bloggers using his reports as a guideline to polyphasic adaptation. Without a detailed study of this single case or at least some communication with Pavlina himself, I cannot provide a definite reply, and can only voice my skepticism. The most likely interpretation might be that Pavlina survived his experiment through sheer will power (he is a motivational speaker that is unlikely to be short on this quality), however, in his blog he writes "My energy and alertness were excellent once I made it through the adaptation period". Someone suggested that he might be "blessed" with an adaptation mutation. This is the least likely interpretation. Any mutation to a healthy sleep control system is likely to put it out of kilter. Conceivably, polyphasic sleep might be a relief if the system lost some of its circadian periodicity, however, such a mutation would primarily manifest itself with a difficulty in obtaining a healthy sleep rhythm with a typical refreshing night sleep, which clearly is not the case with Pavlina. I can only suggest the reader gets in touch with Pavlina or skeptically read his blogs to draw his or her own conclusion. A word of caution though, Pavlina's blog is peppered with misleading inaccuracies. For example, he writes: "Adapting to polyphasic sleep is like changing any habit, such as quitting coffee. It may involve some force and struggle for a few days to break the old pattern, but afterwards your new direction feels perfectly normal, and no ongoing force is required. Day 2 was the struggle. After that it was all downhill". That "withdrawal" premise underlies the hopes of many polyphasic sleepers. However, coffee is an addictive substance and withdrawal is governed by the rules of addiction. Recovering from a jet lag is based on an entirely different mechanism of sleep phase shift. Finally, "adaptation" to polyphasic sleep is neither a case of "night sleep withdrawal" nor "night sleep phase adjustment". It is just an attempt to partition the circadian rhythm, which is biologically not possible. A degree of adaptation is achieved by the compression of sleep stages that make the schedule more bearable, however, true adaptation manifested by natural waking before the alarm is not possible!

Another case often asked about is that of Puredoxyk - the "inventor" of the "Uberman sleep schedule". Not the least for her being a woman, which immediately gets the dander up of the "polyphasic women lie" conspiracy theory circle. Again, without a detailed analysis of blogs and multiple new articles on the subject by Puredoxyk herself, I should not make speculative statements on her particular sleeping regime. However, what strikes me in Puredoxyk writings is that she instantly rings credible. Let's have a peek at what I will call the Puredoxyk Law:

Six naps no sleep; 4 naps one-point-five hours sleep; 3 naps three hours sleep; 2 naps four-point-five hours sleep; one nap six hours sleep*.

* I removed two tiny mathematical kinks from the law which was originally formulated as: Six naps no sleep; 4-5 naps one-point-five hours sleep; 3 naps three hours sleep; 1-2 naps four-point-five hours sleep; one nap six hours sleep

Obviously, this law would need to be parametrized to fit a general healthy population. In particular, most monophasic sleepers will find it hard to nap more than once per day unless all sleep blocks in question are terminated with an alarm clock perpetuating the cycle of sleep deprivation.

We can instantly see a nearly perfect linear nature of the relationship between the duration of the night sleep and the number of naps taken.

Naps = 5.6 - 0.8*CoreSleep

With this formula, the duration of naps will determine the break even point for the total time gain on polyphasic sleep. Obviously, that break even point will coincide with the situation in which the total amount of sleep is constant. After summing up nap time with sleep using the above formula, we can see that the total sleep time will depend on two variables: the number of naps and their duration. After differentiating for the number of naps, and comparing to zero, we arrive at the conclusion that the break even point stands at naps lasting 70 min. This corresponds with the total sleep time of 7 hours. This means that naps that last less than 70 min. will produce a net gain on the total amount of sleep in a polyphasic sleeper. It would be interesting to analyze irregular sleep logs that comply with the above law as they could answer some questions on the winner in the tug of war for sleep efficiency between the regulatory powers of the free running sleep and the adaptive powers of the sleep compression induced by alarm clock use in polyphasic sleep.

The net time gain in a short-nap regime, obviously does not translate to a brain gain, and this should not be understood as a recommendation to seek minimum total sleep time. I posed the above problem only as an interesting mathematical relationship, which provides a neat formula for the total sleep debt that might be of use in modeling sleep in conditions where sleep is terminated prematurely (e.g. with an alarm clock). Neither SleepChart nor SuperMemo account for sleep debt as both have been designed for the ideal free running sleep condition. Obviously, any form of sleep debt is unwelcome as it implies unfulfilled neural function of sleep. In short: Instead of aiming at minimizing the sleep time, we should aim at maximizing the brain effect of sleep.

That Puredoxyk got sufficient experience in sleeping polyphasically to formulate the above law without any specific logging tools indicates that she needed a pretty vast array of napping permutations to see the bigger picture, which in this case seems highly plausible. The Puredoxyk Law can be interpreted as a demonstration of how a healthy mono- or biphasic sleep can be stretched into a polyphasic phase space with an increasing degree of sleep debt. Puredoxyk herself calls her new sleeping regime that includes a "core nap" the 3-hour Everyman schedule. This schedule sounds pretty sustainable if it is not too heavy on the use of the alarm clock. After all, a third of Americans can function reasonably ok despite committing the neural crime of using the snooze button on a daily basis with the average use said to be around 3 times. Needless to say, this Everyman schedule stands as a pretty wide departure from the original Uberman formulation that I found particularly harmful.

In the past, I have received a number of sleep logs with pretty irregular sleep patterns (including multiple naps). Those logs were accompanied by some anecdotal evidence that seems to indicate that those irregular patterns are strongly correlated with some personality characteristics. I can be widely speculative here and say that those are pretty neurotic and yet quite creative types (excluding cases that could be attributed to the use of prescription drugs). If that was to be the case, those sleep patterns might not be too good for longevity, but even free-running sleep will fail to straighten them out. This indicates that there could be genetic factors involved here, and the "mutation hypothesis" is far more likely to explain a perpetual irregular pattern than a regular fresh&alert Uberman pattern (see Pavlina interpretation). I would even avoid the use of the word "mutation" here as those "personality genes" must be pretty widespread in the modern population. How can Puredoxyk's case be interpreted, I have no idea, but it does not seem to be too extreme in its uniqueness, and, as such it can be, probabilistically speaking, deemed credible.

If you are interested in chronobiology and how it affects the feasibility of the polyphasic sleep, read the following physiology insert.