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Mens Health UK

August 2006

Mens Health Germany


October 2007

Live the Dream


By Dylan Young Naturally, everyone thought I was mad. Who could blame them? Give up sleep? Every second news item trumpeting more evidence of a pan-global sleep epidemic and this mad bugger wants to leave off what few nods he has left? Cracked or not, on 7 January 2006, I gave up sleep. Fourteen weeks later, two hours rest a day, and Im almost convinced I made the right choice. Surprisingly, as mad as they thought I was, very few questioned my desire to adopt the so-called Da Vinci Sleep pattern, to forgo the traditional eight-hour monophasic model in favour of a 20-minute-every-four-hours polyphasic system. It was an extreme proposition, inconceivable, but the implications were understood immediately. People are forever complaining about the lack of time. Of course they dont really mean time. They mean free time, those rare periods that can be spent guiltlessly on any endeavour, from the lowly pursuit of completing that last mission on Brothers in Arms to the grandiose goal of writing that blockbuster screenplay. Chronic lateness (not a problem of mine) also seems high on the list of time-related ills. Lewis Carrolls rabbit would have been a much happier fellow with a few extra hours dangling at the end of his watch chain. The thing is, whoever you are, whatever you do, having too much time on your hands is likely an unknown luxury. All too often, what you want to do comes at the expense of what you have to do, and the only solution to that equation is more time.

The primary benefits of my plan were obvious. The sheer amount of time Id recover would be astounding, clocking in at six hours a day, 42 hours a week, one week a month, and three months a year. Foolhardy or not, it could not be denied. It was a heroic pursuit and everyone appreciated that. My relationship to sleep probably isnt very different from that of most people. I like sleeping. At times, I might say, I even love it. But frequently I view it as a lengthy and unfortunate interruption of my pursuits. Its a typically polar attitude to sleep. When Im awake, the last thing I want to do is sleep and when Im in bed, the last thing I want to do is get up. The possibility that I could both improve the quality of my sleep and reduce the amount was extremely appealing. Still, re-routing the way you sleep, essentially the way you live, is not something to do lightly. Its hard to say what the eureka point was. Id read about a failed polyphasic attempt in Neil Strauss The Game, a screed on the strangely nerdy subculture of international pickup artists. That had led me to the Internet, the lazy researchers first resort. There, I tripped into a bonafide microculture. Polyphasic sleep was everywhere, in Wikipedia entries, in Myspace profiles, on bulletin boards, among the Yahoo groups, in the chatrooms ... And the bloggers? Here was an ever-expanding roster of dedicated polynappers, faithfully logging every detail. Nearly all of them had begun in the few months preceding my own interest and new ones seemed to pop up daily. More alarming, several of them were actually pulling it off. But polyphasic sleep is not something you can be convinced to do. If the seed isnt there, no amount of cajoling or anecdotal evidence is going lure you in. The benefits of polynapping, particularly in the beginning, have to be taken as articles of faith. Even clinical research wont tip the balance. And there is compelling medical proof. Polyphasic sleep, like most sleep-related studies, is frontier science. Theres still a great deal we dont know and there are relatively few people trying to open our eyes to what happens when theyre closed. Dr. Claudio Stampi, author of Why We Nap: Evolution, Chronobiology, and Functions of Polyphasic and Ultrashort Sleep and Director of The Chronobiological Research Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, is the worlds foremost authority on polyphasic sleep strategies. For the Internet enthusiasts, Stampi is something of a patron saint, though precious few seem to have studied his findings. Stampi discovered polyphasic sleep as a codicil to his passion for solo round-the-world sailing. For the upstart neurological specialist, the unusual demands for wakefulness and

alertness required by solo sailors touched on some of sleep sciences most persistent questions. Why do we sleep? What are the benefits of sleep? How little sleep do we need to achieve these benefits? And what is the most efficient way to reduce it? Using the available community of solo sailors as subjects and his sea-racing laboratory, La Barca Laboratorio, as a base of operations, Stampi steered into these unexplored waters. Nearly two decades later, Stampi is still fathoming the limits of our sleep-defying abilities. Hes competed in two round-the-world races, done studies for NASA and various military organizations, used his polyphasic strategies to train astronauts, elite fighting men and emergency response personnel, and generally proven to the scientific community that high levels of functionality are attainable with a minimum amount of sleep. Stampi spent eight months working with Britains Ellen MacArthur, one of competitive sailings shining stars. The polyphasic strategies that Stampi devised for MacArthur helped her place 2nd in the 2000 Vende Globe solo race, canonizing her as the fastest female and youngest sailor to solo race around the world non-stop. Since then, MacArthur, sleeping only two to three hours a day during competitions, has won numerous races, is consistently in the top ten, and has broken an impressive list of world records. In February 2005, she set the new solo non-stop round-the-world record of 71 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes, 33 seconds. This wasnt my first introduction to polyphasic sleep, mind you. There had been a Ladybird Easy Reading book when I was five, in it a passage about Leonardo Da Vincis habit of sleeping in 20-minutes stabs. That detail had stayed with me as a mark of genius, inspired eccentricity and (what Im able to articulate now as) straight-up punk rock stardom. Through my teens and into my twenties, Id fallen on attributions of so-called genius sleep to the likes of Winston Churchill, Buckminster Fuller, Napoleon, Thomas Jefferson, George Bernard Shaw, Edison, Einstein, Salvador Dali, Huxley and Nicola Tesla. Polyphasic sleep had a daunting fellowship. Until now, Id never seriously considered testing the theory. But as a freelance writer faced with a January of nothing but snowstorms and downloaded episodes of Shameless to look forward to, a little Da Vinci Sleep seemed like just the thing to liven things up. Maybe it was boredom, or carpe diem, maybe some of that punk vim Id always aspired to, mostly it was just curiosity and a little hope. Was it even possible? Would it change me? Could celebrated genius be just a nap away?

Armed with stacks of anecdotal evidence, I found two friends willing to join in the madness. John and Vanessa are a couple, both artists, who work little cottage industries to buttress their creative workJohn as cabinet maker/furniture designer and Vanessa, a glass blower and jewellery maker. Both had no difficulty seeing the advantages of going polyphasic and both their January calendars were open. We stocked supplies to last the three of us several weeks, forewarned that the extra hours of wakefulness would take their toll in amplified food cravings. Schedules were cleared and arrangements made to ensure that the first transitional weeks (notoriously torturous) would be unencumbered by the usual responsibilities and demands of life, mindful of how vulnerable wed be during this time. I moved into a spare room in their loft and, finally, six days into the New Year, we kipped down to our last full night of sleep.

Through the Looking Glass


Good night, and good luck. ~ Edward R. Murrow

The first two days were deceptively easy. It was hard not to be cocky. At one time or another, wed all gone 48 hours without sleep. With the added excitement of starting the experiment, we blazed through the naps, rising energized and in good spirits. Not all the naps worked. Sometimes, Id just lie awake for 20 minutes but it didnt seem to make a difference. On the whole, the only marked difference in our change in lifestyle was the amount of time at our disposal (much of it spent talking about the sleep diet itself) and how much we ate (nearly three times our normal amount!). The routine was fairly straightforward. Twenty-minute naps were scheduled around the clock at 12 AM, 4 AM, 8 AM, 12 PM, 4 PM and 8 PM. Oversleeping was not allowed. We relied on alarm clocks and each other to get us up, with varying degrees of success. Sometimes a little extra urging was required. For about half of the naps Id remain fully clothed, as I would for a typical afternoon catnap. The rest of the time Id go through some sort of bedtime ritual (brush my teeth, clean up, don pyjamas and hop into bed). Bedtime had become a sort of arbitrary concept since we could conceivably do it as often as six times a day. Day three, the sky fell in. None of the naps, whether they resulted in actual sleep or not, seemed to provide any relief. We moved around the loft as zombies. I spent an hour and a half watching two ants wrestle each other before realizing they were grains of wild rice

trapped between the folding leaves of the kitchen table. Conversations trailed off in the middle of sentences and started up again when no one was around. We were plagued by what sleep scientists call microsleep, the sudden onset of sleep in increments lasting anywhere from a millisecond to several minutes. We were forever having to wake each other up. Our bodies had started pilfering sleep from the edges of consciousness. No diversion seemed satisfactory. Board games, television, exercise, none of it made a bit of difference. The time between naps seemed to extend endlessly beyond endurance. Yet we endured. Wed read the blogs. Wed known this was coming. Like many desirable things, the polyphasic experiment gets worse before it gets better. The first week is a dedicated exercise in sleep deprivation. Youre starving your body and mind, hoping that the strain will break a thousand years of monophasic habit and hotwire your system to take advantage of the napping regimen. Theres sound scientific theory behind this. Newborn babies are polyphasic sleepers and only fall into the society-sanctioned monophasic pattern over time. Even adults left in free-running sleep conditions often break sleep into two or more segments. This has led some researchers to believe that preagricultural humanity was polyphasic, or at very least biphasic (see sidebar). The hypothesis is still quite recent, Stampi says. Ten to fifteen thousand years ago we were probably much more polyphasic than monophasic. Until we passed from being members of small hunter-gatherer tribes into a more organised agrarian society. Of course, theres no way to know for sure. Youd need a time machine. However, studies into two remote tribes, one in Borneo and the other in the Amazon, indicate that the proportion of polyphasic sleep is a lot higher in societies that have not been exposed to modern civilisation. Still other researchers believe that humanity is made up of all three predilections, an evolutionary precaution to protect communities around the clock. The distinction between day people and night people is another aspect of this theory. The blogs provided assurance that the unpleasantness was a transitory stage and science told us that we werent entirely nuts for going through with it. Knowing this should have made it easier to weather. It should have but it didnt. During the next two days, the three of us hit record peaks of distress. We were napping with increasing success. Spikes of lucidity were common but the flipside was unbearable. It was self-inflected torture. The words, I cant believe were doing this to ourselves were on infinite repeat and we passed microsleep between us like a narcoleptic version of the hot potato game. Sleep had developed a personality, hovering a threatening nod away.

This is where faith comes into the experiment and where most people relent. You have to believe that polyphasic success is just around the next bend or youd never be able to justify the discomfort. We began to see differences in how each of us was adapting to the polyphasic regime. As our bodies started to adjust, our responses became increasingly singular. Vanessa and I found waking from naps at 4 AM and 8 AM difficult, while John seemed more at risk for the 12 AM and 4 AM slots. Vanessa found the process of waking up extremely stressful, whereas John and I found the effort to stay awake more strenuous. John and Vanessa fell asleep more quickly but I often seemed more rested after the naps. Vanessa dreamed frequently, I to a lesser degree, and John not at all. They had to get up immediately upon waking or risk falling asleep again, whereas I was able to stay awake with my eyes closed and still in bed. Our diets also started to take on peculiar trends. I now required a banana after nearly every nap. All of a sudden, I was copping a six-banana-a-day habit. This suggested a physiological response. Potassium is important to the generation of deep (slow-wave) sleep. Experiments at the University of Wisconsin into the Shaker gene, a gene that controls potassium production, indicate that test subjects with mutations allowing for increased potassium levels need a third as much sleep as those without the mutation. This has led scientists to nickname the mutation the Thatcher gene, after the Prime Minister who slept a scant four hours a night. Was I unconsciously supplementing my sleepdeprived self with the potassium-rich bananas? On the sixth day, we crested the tipping point. Naps were now dominantly rewarded with sleep and, afterwards, a comfortable state of enthusiastic alertness. Our moods improved immeasurably. We started to fill our surfeit of waking hours with projects and diverting adventures. There were still peaks and troughs but the newly felt benefits of polyphasic sleep drowned out any residual discomfort. This is where polyphasic theory comes into play. REM sleep, which usually occurs 90 to 180 minutes into the traditional sleep cycle, is polynappings Holy Grail. Sleep science once presumed it to be the most important and rejuvenating stage of sleep, crucial in the storage of memories and in the fine tuning of mental processes. New studies suggest that slow-wave sleep may be just as significant. According to the blogs, after the initial period of sleep deprivation (around five days), your system begins fast-tracking you into REM sleep. Thats when the polyphasic thing works its magic. Youre getting REM sleep every time you take a nap. Stampi says this impression isnt entirely accurate.

My studies have shown that in fact the polyphasic sleepers will jump into whatever type of sleep is most required. Sometimes its REM, sometimes its slow-wave sleep, he says. The significant thing is that polyphasal sleep bypasses the normal wave progression. Thats actually a very impressive feat. This is what allows you to function on such small amounts. Your body is prioritizing, giving you immediate access to restorative cycles that would normally take hours to achieve. Youre getting the best quality sleep in a quarter of the time and naps are rewarded with pronounced alertness and a sense of having rested for several hours. This is supposedly what allows the polyphasic sleeper to remain functional for 22 hours a day. Probably slow-wave sleep and whatever function it accomplishes, were still not quite sure, has first priority, Stampi adds. Sleep deprivation studies, not just mine, but any study shows that the sleep state you maintain the most is slow-wave sleep. REM sleep is important but secondary.

Time on Your Mind


I have a curious constitution. I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely. - Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of Four

The regime had fallen into an easy rhythm. By the time I moved back to my own apartment a few days later, the three of us were flying high on our success. We had also exhausted three weeks supplies in less than 10 days. There was no weight gain. It was just that longer days required more food energy. Reintegration into normal life wasnt as easy as Id hoped. As a freelance writer, my schedule is fairly flexible. Finding 20 minutes now and then wasnt a problem. But being a freelancer also means working around other peoples schedules. Passing out in the middle of a movie premiere or interrupting an interview with the singer from Interpol for my 4 PM nap wasnt going to work. Ironically, in sleeping less and liberating more time, more of my life was going to revolve around sleeping and time managementI was always either going to bed or getting up. I had a hell of lot more time on my hands but keeping to the schedule was demanding. There was also the problem of filling the extra time Id gained at night. The first thing you realize is that living a longer day isnt about getting more work done. Having more time doesnt incline you to want to work more. It does however give you time to spend on

things you couldnt normally fit in. Sure, I gave a little more to my work but the real gain was in the quality of my spare time. I worked on three book proposals and found myself planning and executing three-course meals at four in the morning. I started hosting a weekly movie night at a local caf and teaching myself to play the bass. I read voraciously. Documentaries and whole seasons of television shows raced through my DVD player. And I began deejaying at a club. All this, plus extras, and I never felt stressed for time. My life felt fuller and richer but my waking hours had also taken on a kind of compulsive thirst for novel projects. Laxness and lack of inspiration only encouraged sleep. It was becoming increasingly evident why so many, shall we call them, relaxed overachievers had been associated with polyphasic sleep. The sleep itself was more dynamic. My dreams were vivid and memorable, even lucid. They often seemed like continuations of waking life or rehearsals of it. Only the odd insertion of, say, a squid swimming through a metro station or Evelyn Waugh berating my roommate for unwashed dishes would inspire me to observe simply, oh, this is a dream. On one occasion I dreamt the instant of waking from my nap no less than four times, each with increasingly absurd results, before waking in earnest. Not all the naps resulted in dreams however. Some of them were profoundly dreamless. I would lay my head down only to be woken up what seemed like seconds later, 20 minutes having evaporated in an instant. This gels with Stampis assertion that naps produce whatever type of sleep the body most requires. Fast tracking into REM without the usual preamble might produce the sensation of uninterrupted consciousness. Whereas dipping instantly into slow-wave might feel like blacking out. Polyphasic life also made my thoughts seem more fluid, more nimble. Even when I wasnt actively pursuing some project, I felt vigorous. I was able to spend hours pondering, chasing an abstract thought or questioning a long-held perception. Epiphanies became commonplace. One such realizationI couldnt believe it hadnt occurred before, maybe not so extraordinarywas that killer whales were in fact just very large dolphins. I was also thinking a great deal about sleep in general. It was starting to dawn on me just how distressingly ill-educated we actually are about sleep, this thing that constitutes a third of our lives.

Sleep Rock Thy Brain


Life is one long process of getting tired. - Samuel Butler

Socially, polyphasic sleep was a bit of a star-maker. My first public appearance was at a party hosted by a pop star friend. I arrived fashionably late, sliding in shortly after my midnight nap. Every time I was greeted with the conventional half-hearted, What have you been up to? My answer was a blithe, Well, Ive given up sleep. A short explanation later and theyd be dragging people across the party towards me, happily regaling them with tales of my wild experiment. Everyone wanted to hear about it. Everyone had questions. It was a little like being a celebrity, all that attention and cachet. As the party wore on, another role suggested itselflab rat. In any case, the word was out. I was Sleep Guy. Thereafter, at any social gathering or public setting, I was the focus of an assortment of attentions. Most often it was just curiosity. How was I getting on? I looked great! When was my next nap? I have a million questions! Why do you seem so energized? It must take so much willpower! How do you keep from getting bored? I have a million questions (you must be so tired of talking about this)! There were some odd reactions. A musician friend of mine told me, The fact that you dont sleep makes me angry. This I attributed to a mix of concern and intimidation. Others had more pressing concerns. How are you down there? You know what I mean? Down there? The answer to this was good as ever. I was now a fully functioning member of society and a polyphasic sleeper. I barely even needed an alarm anymore. I would simply wake after twenty minutes, fresh and ready to go. My level of comfort with the new routine was so pronounced that I started toying with little side experiments. Id noticed when I went to bed drunk that my naps were between forty minutes to an hour longer. Surprisingly, I didnt wake drunk, merely hung-over. My body had learnt to process the alcohol away on polynappings accelerated schedule. I had ample opportunity to confirm these findings. An article on sleep inertia, the period between three minutes and two hours after waking when your body is clinically drunk, inspired an experiment in oversleeping.

Generally, sleep inertia is an unpleasant bi-product of slow-wave sleep, a groggy sensation that makes you feel like you havent rested or that youre still half-asleep. I would turn it into a cheap buzz. Sleep inertia doesnt feel good because youre not expecting to feel drunk. But take a long nap before heading out for the night and its as good being two drinks ahead. After a month on my own, I called to check on John and Vanessa. I discovered that Vanessa had quit in the third week, the repeated waking up was simply too frustrating for her. And John was struggling to find a balance between workaday life and the naps. He had tried following a more flexible schedule but was crashing regularly, oversleeping hours at a time, sometimes even while sitting upright. I was confused. Id also altered my nap schedule, eliminating the naps that fell when I didnt feel tired and adding them where I did. To me it seemed a natural adjustment and it was working. In fact, Id become less of a prisoner to my naps. I could delay them if needed, with little sleep debtno crashing. Skipping a nap simply meant sleeping a little longer or pressing a few naps closer together. But this tailoring of the schedule went against the polynap trends status quo. The successful bloggers were immoveable on the subject. Screw with the schedule and fail. Stampi balks at this conventional wisdom, advising against the strict regimentation of the popularized systems. He advocates a more free-running polyphasic strategy, tailored to the specific needs of the sleeper. Arriving at the right polyphasic strategy is largely about understanding your own physiology, Stampi says. Its very singular. Much of it has to do with whether you are a day or a night person, a lark or an owl. Some people will function best with many short naps; others will do better with fewer, lengthier naps. Also, when to take those naps is individual. Its not a simple formula. Its a learning process. Your friends difficulties are likely the result of their specific sleep needs, he adds. Vanessa might have done better napping less but longer while Johns chronobiology evidently requires a more regimented strategy than yours. Dr. Christian Guilleminault, Associate Director of the Stanford Sleep Research Center and cofounder of the journal Sleep, largely agrees but adds. On average, eight hours is the right amount of sleep. But everyone is different; some may require as little as four hours, others as much as twelve, he says. Polyphasic sleep is a strategy for maintaining optimal alertness in sleep-deprived situations, such as those experienced by emergency personnel. It is not meant to be a lifestyle. There could be definite dangers associated with polyphasic sleep.

Stampi supports this view. Hes not an advocate of polyphasic sleep as a lifestyle. We still know very little about the long-term effects of polyphasic sleep, as to the positive or negative effects, he says. Numerous studies have linked chronic sleep deprivation to increased instances of heart disease but this might also be attributed to increased stress levels in people worried that they are not getting enough sleep. A night of rest is also when our bodies produce melatonin, a hormone that helps regulate our sleep cycles, repairs and prevents cell damage and promotes longevity. Studies of night shift workers showed reduced melatonin production and increased rates of cancer. However, Stampi notes that melatonin production can be maintained while awake, so long as there are periods of time spent in relative darkness. It is plausible to live a healthy polyphasic life, particularly with the use of sleep bonusesdays when you can sleep as much as you wantbut there may be a price to pay, Stampi admits. We just dont know. Tests of that sort would require generations of polynappers. The reality is that we live in a sleep-deprived age, Guilleminault says. That has a lot more to do with ignorance than anything else. Scientists still have much to learn and the public needs to be educated. Compare it to nutrition, he adds. Fifty years ago, the public knew almost nothing. People abused themselves constantly in the name of dietary health because they didnt have the information they needed. That is very much what is happening today with sleep. Guilleminault is right. Most of us know that sleep functions in cycles but few of us even understand the significance of that. We fail to grasp that sleep and wakefulness are not separate states so much as a continuum, a free-running cycle that gradually ebbs and flows through multiple states of alertness and rest. Alpha waves are a good example of this since they function as both the state of consciousness where were most disposed to learning and as the earliest stage of sleep. This crucial misunderstanding has a lot to do with the emphasis placed on the totemic 8-hour sleep, a buzz concept (not unlike the Four Food Groups) meant to aid us but that more often prevents us from learning enough about sleep.

The 8-hour rule, for all that its designed to steer us towards a better nights sleep, may have the opposite effect. For the person who sleeps eight hours but requires twelve, the only reward is confusion and chronic fatigue. For the four-hour sleeper struggling to get the prescribed eight, guilt and stress will wreak their own havoc. Guilt (for sleeping too much or too little) and stress play a huge part in sleep-related illnesses. But, so far, rather than attack the root of the problem, that sleep is not as cut and dry as we pretend, we prefer to look for easy workarounds. As you read this, soporifics like Ambien and Lunesta are commanding world sales in the $4 billion range. Companies in Japan and the United States are manufacturing sleep rooms that will confer a perfect snooze for a fee. Scientists are tapping the genes to find genomic solutions for reducing, or eliminating, our need for sleep. Big Pharma has developed stimulants like Modafinyl, that will let you stay awake for 48 hours with no apparent side effects, essentially making you forget the need for sleep. And people like me have adopted strategies to whittle sleep down to its least increment. Our culture is unhealthily manic about sleep. On the one hand we want more of it, the best we can get. On the other, we want to be free of it, to be unshackled from its exertionsand, yes, sleep will force itself on you. Both Stampi and Guilleminault believe that sleep science is begging to be the next revolution in public health. We treat sleep too casually, says Guilleminault. The damage from that attitude is already evident. At the beginning of the polyphasic experiment, I had been searching for some magic regime that would liberate me from the monotony of sleep and bring me into an exclusive fellowship of greatness. In some measure, Id achieved that result. No, I wasnt being shortlisted for the Nobel Prize but I had made significant steps towards improving myself and my station. Id secured several writing assignments and made inroads on the book front. Id made a pilot for a radio column and started prototyping a magazine. Id raised my game in the kitchen and had taught myself to play the bassline to the Velvet Undergrounds Sunday Morning. I was flush with ideas and ambition. All of this was the result of polynapping. It had given me the time, the energy and the inspiration to pursue these things passionately. I might not have joined the ranks of the worlds superachievers but I had certainly surpassed my previous standards. In addition to the manifest gains, Id found something even more valuable. Id had my eyes opened to an entire culture and science of sleep. Beyond the polyphasic strategies I had added to my arsenal, Id acquired a much better understanding of how sleep works and how much we still have to learn. Stampis studies, while specifically concerned with

polynapping, have larger implicationsthat with sleep, the distribution, not the amount, may be where the real benefits lie. The time has come for people to question the canonical 8-hour sleep, listen to their bodies and figure out what works best for them. Guillemenault puts it simply "The right amount of sleep is the amount we need not to be sleepy while were awake."

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