Hacking Sleep

I've become obsessed with perfecting my sleeping patterns. I've been searching and searching for information regarding optimal sleeping habits but there's so much conflicting information out there. Have any of you figured it out? I've read some soykaf about 90 minute sleep cycles so currently I'm doing 7.5 hours a night(1.5*5), plus 15 minutes to fall asleep. So currently I go to bed at 8:45pm and wake up at 4:30am. Before I tried just 6 hours but I don't think it was enough so I regretfully had to bump it up. Has anyone experimented with bi/polyphasic sleep patterns? I might try it out but I have doubts about it's efficacy

>>328 i have some experience pro actively managing sleep from my weightlifting days. i think that "figuring it out" depends on your objectives, lain. my interest was in optimizing recovery. what's driving you?

My most efficient method was doing the siesta last year. I would be in bed a 12:00 on the dot and wake at 6:30 then at a little after noon, don't remember when, I would take a 20 min nap after id eat. The number one thing I learned after researching it is that people can work on totally different methods, but usually the crazy uberman and Everyman methods don't work for people.

>>331 why did you stop? What method do you use now? Were you getting enough sleep do you think?

The best thing you can do is go to bed and wake up at the same times each day. That and improve the quality of your sleep. To improve the quality of your sleep, exercise during the day, don't eat close to when you're going to bed, take 300mcg of melatonin (never more than 500mcg), as well as supplement ZMA.

>>384 >>go to bed and wake up at the same times each day This. When I was younger I used to have a perfect routine with everything scheduled... and it was probably the best time of my life. >>take 300mcg of melatonin (never more than 500mcg) My pills have 1mg in it, and I barely feel them. Are you sure you aren't exaggerating their effect?

>>329 A fellow r/squarehomes viewer, I presume. >>384 I've found that regular exercise is the best way to set a schedule for when to sleep and when not to. Nothing else seems to get me to get away from what I'm doing than a need for sleep, so it's pretty important to me that I run regularly.

>>385 The point is kind of to not feel it. 300mcg is close to what the body naturally produces. So this amount is good for getting a deeper quality of sleep like what your body should. When you take more, it throws off your circadian. I find that if I take too much I'll wake up in the middle of the night, or too early. Taking ZMA is also really good. Most people are deficient in Magnesium anyways. That plus L-Theanine usually make me pretty tired. So I tend to fall asleep really easily and stay asleep. Then wake up super refreshed. I would also add to avoid caffeine/stimulants 4 hours before bedtime, not to use electronics close to bedtime (or if you must, use f.lux or a bluelight filter). Also reading fiction close to bedtime usually will set your mind free from daily worries, allowing you to drift into sleep easier.

>>328 I hate wasting time trying to get to sleep that I simply only go to bed when I'm on the verge of falling over. Definitely not the healthiest way. But I sleep on an average of 7 hours still yet.

>>328 I can talk about my experience with polyphasic sleep. But I'll preface by saying I've never tried to perfect my sleep or even maintain a correct sleep hygiene whatsoever. I suffered in my teenager years from chronical insomnia - which at time became so bad I suffered memory loss and couldn't remember my own name. I've speculated that having such drastic sleep disorders during puberty might have had some permanent damage or alterations for various reasons, and one of that is that I've slept with polyphasic patterns for years afterwards and some effects are still here today. The most noticeable one, which I can't tell comes from polyphasic sleeping or the chronical insomnia itself, is a change in the priority of sleep phases. I spent two weeks sleeping in a hospital with a bunch of soykaf attached to my head whilst taking surveys on my quality of sleep, and it seems I enter REM sleep nearly instantly which is abnormal but has been observed in some people with long time sleep disorders. This means that my brain has gotten used to prioritizing the most important parts of sleep first, so that short rests provide me with what I need. It also means that when I doze off or nap very strange things happen and I sometimes wake up after a 30 second daydream feeling like I dreamt a whole night's worth of dreams which fuarrrks my sense of time. I've read a lot on polyphasic and some of the most vocal people against it ; but overall there is no actual solid way to say it's nefast or plain bad. People need alarm clocks and unatural things even in monophasic to function. I overall slept less than 6 hours per 24h without a doubt, and I want to say I functioned well but it's impossible to know how "better" I could have functioned. And now that these days I'm back to monophasic I usualy sleep 4 to 6 hours and feel just as fine. I also handle all nighters very easily and sometimes casualy stay up 40+ when working on something. I recommend some of Piotr Wozniak's paper on it although he is quite vocal that he doesn't think it's healthy whatsoever, the only advocates for it are individual witnesses and I personnaly wouldn't advocate for or against it really. I also remember reading on a man who decided to live in a cave without sunlight or any markings of time for 30 days, and would sometimes not sleep for 50 hours and sometimes sleep for 30 hours in a row (which prompted the people checking brain activity and making sure the experience was going ok to freak out). Overall I think sleep is a pretty mysterious thing.

In reality your brain only needs REM stage to feel well rested, for other parts of body though you will feel tired and like chewed up gum, but you will be mindful and present even if you sleep less than 6 hours just by arranging your sleep

I don't think as many people need to sleep at night as some people think. I think the circadian rhythm is flexible and that a lot of people in our generation have been up all night so much throughout their lives that their body adjusted accordingly. But if you have a schedule where you sleep during a lot of the day it is very important to still get sunlight for vitamin D and to block out the sun while you are sleeping. I think that more people are now "night owls" due to them associating night time with fun or getting to do the hobbies they actually want to do in contrast to associating day time with work and school. I also think a lot of creative types of people prefer the night due to it being more novel and creatively free and stimulating. I definitely notice that my mood is better in between 8pm and 4am. But from what I can tell it is important to wake up and go to bed around the same time most of the time. I feel completely off if I don't, this and sleeping too long can leave me feeling borderline depressed the next day. But there have been exceptions where suddenly switching around when I go to bed or sleeping a bit longer has made my dreams very intense and left me waking up feeling really refreshed, especially if I wake up at night. I think the novelty of it is stimulating, but it only works if you do it at the right time once in a blue moon.

As long you keep a regular pattern and sleep as long as your brain desires, it doesn't really matter. I've (unintentionally) ended up in a 3 hour/5 hour biphasic sleep pattern and find it helps me not feel sleepy when I want to be awake and lets me make better use of my time, but I wouldn't consider it more 'efficient' as I stoll sleep just as much. One benefit I have found though is that it helps me remember more dreams as I usually only remember the dream I was having right before waking, which is now twice a day rather than only once.

The advised sleep for *most people* is to sleep around 8 hours during the night time, 10pm to 6am for example. And having some exercice during the day (which does not mean running or paying to lift chunks of metal, just not sitting in front of a computer all day long). Obviously doesn't apply to everyone, but certainly to many of those who claim they don't need regular sleep. As far as I'm concerned, I feel much better when I do it (about approximately twice a year, but that's another issue).

http://super-memory.com/articles/sleep.htm

Never experimented with poly-/biphasic sleep. From what I can loosely remember, patterns like uberman were originally meant for extreme situations (like astronauts or soldiers face) and even then not for longer periods of time. I work on my thesis in a STEM field and have to work early in the morning out of necessity (can't work on shared instruments during the day because they're fully booked). Usually go to bed at around 7:30-8:30 pm and get up at 4:30 am to catch the one-hour bus to the lab. It's something you can get used to (took two weeks for me) but if you can, do literally anything else. It absolutely kills your social life, just one night out is enough to ruin everything and have you go back to square one.