Days 6 - 7

Day 6

What do I do know? I slept most of the last 13 hours! I regrouped. I was refreshed and pain free, a very wonderful thing after a migraine experience. Today is Saturday and I have the whole weekend to hang with my kids and enjoy the time we have together. Well, except that it's April and snowing outside. The joy of living in Canada!

So we did just that. We baked, we watched a matinee on TV, I coloured and trimmed one daughter's hair and braided the others. We thought about going out to a movie but couldn't decide on one, so we PPV'ed a comedy, moved the living room into a theatre, made popcorn and had fun! I did nap 2, 6 and 10 pm that day. My kids are very accommodating, often not even noticing my 20 minute disappearance every four hours. They are protecting my time too, answering the phone and giving me messages when I wake.

Day 7

I slept solidly from 2 - 6 am and woke refreshed. Before I started this experiment I absolutely needed 9 hours of sleep at night or I was tired. I mean falling asleep at dinner tired. Now I am finding 5 -5.5 hours of sleep is more than adequate and I'm feeling selfish because I feel so good! I am sleeping a consistent 4-hour core and 2 - 4 nap schedule right now (with the exception of my migraine days). I am falling asleep within 5 minutes of laying down and waking easily after an average of 20 minutes for each nap. Today my naps were at 10 and 2. My youngest son and I were engrossed in a board game right up until dinner so I skipped my last nap and went to sleep for my core sleep at 10 instead of 2 am.

Lucid Dreaming

I have yet to not dream during my naps as I am well aware of my dreams. However, one of the interesting outcomes uberman sleepers have experienced is lucid dreaming. Lucid dreams are dreams in which one is aware they are dreaming. I have had experience with lucid dreaming in the past and would love to explore this further.

When I was a teenager, I experienced horrible nightmares. At my wits end, I read what I could find on dreams (not much and all having to do with dream interpretation). Frustrated and angry with not finding any answers, and desperate to stop these nightmares, I decided to teach myself to be aware of my dream and change my dreams, I could do this couldn't I? As it was a consistent nightmare, in that it was the same dream repeated over and over, I would go in night after night and change it, a little bit at a time. When I was running and allowing panic to overcome me, I taught myself to push the panic away and reason my way through. When I couldn't see for the torrents of rain, I would grab an umbrella or duck under and awning to gain a better perspective. Eventually the nightmares went away. Since then, I have been highly aware of my dreams and able to recall them upon waking, or waking myself to escape a nightmare.

The only time this was not the case was when experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after my caesarean experience with my firstborn. My nightmares had become so severe that I avoided sleep and I started to hallucinate while awake. My doctors solution was "to get out more away from your baby" which I clearly ignored and did the best I could to deal with it on my own, using the techniques I had learned before. A solid nine months later I saw my first glimpse of normalcy and I tell you, it was like seeing heaven. From that point, it improved quickly, and though I will likely continue to experience some PTSD symptomology as a result of my continued contact with my abusive ex-husband (we have shared custody of our four children), it has been completely manageable from a psychological viewpoint.

Days 4 - 5

Day 4

1:00 - 3:00 am: sleep

6:00 am: nap
1:20 pm: nap
6:00 pm: nap
11:00 pm - 3:00 am: sleep

Day four was wonderful, I was ready to take the leap to uberman sleep that night as I was only sleeping 3 hours each night. I have not been tired this entire experiment and I was excited about the next step! Then a migraine started to set in that evening, around 9 pm. It started so slowly I thought it was simply a stiff neck from the busy day I had. I rarely take medication for any pain. My usual plan is to sleep and let my body restore function. If that doesn't work, then I turn to homeopathy, then herbs, then drugs, in that order. So I decided to forgo Uberman naps and get a few hours together. I stayed up an hour past my usual nap time and slept until I woke, which was four hours. That is when I realized this wasn't simple neck soreness, I was heading into migraine land.
 

Day 5

5:00 am - 6:30 am: sleep 10:00 - 11:30 am: sleep
2:00: nap
6:00 - 8:30 pm: sleep
9:30 pm - 7:00 am: sleep
My migraines started 6 1/2 years ago as a result of a very unfortunate incident that caused me extreme stress and though I don't get them very often, they usually last for two days. If I am able to get to my chiropractor early, I can sometimes shorten them to one day. For the migraine pain, I simply have always just slept them off, when possible. The longer I ignore it and don't sleep, the worse it gets. As I highly doubt my chiropractor was awake at 3:00 am, so I opted for sleep. Not wanting to annihilate my polyphasic sleep schedule, I took longer naps, which my body craved. I had meetings in the afternoon so I couldn't continue sleeping but by 6 pm the pain was so severe I was nauseous and it was impossible to keep my eyes open from the pain. I apologized to my family and I crashed, hard. When I woke at 8:30 pm I knew I was on the right track as the pain had lessened. However I knew if I pushed it and tried to stay awake, it would be much worse. So I went back to bed after making sure my kids had brushed their teeth and tucking them in. I crashed again and made myself stay in bed until it was gone. That wasn't hard, as I only woke up twice and was able to go back to sleep fairly well again.

 

What have I done to my polyphasic sleep schedule?

Polyphasic Sleep - Day 3

10:00 - 2:15 am: sleep
6:15 - 6:35 am: nap with dream, very refreshing
10:00 - 10:20 am: nap
6:30 - 7:20 pm: nap
11:00 - 11:20 pm: nap
1:00 - 3:00 am: sleep

This has been an interesting three days! With all of this extra time, and the incredible lack of fatigue that I have been feeling (I was constantly fatigued before this), I am accomplishing huge chunks of my "to do" list. Problem: I'm running out of things to do. Short of becoming even more annoying to my family because of my new uber-efficiency, I'm spending more time with friends and that has been wonderful!

Yesterday I spent several hours with a good friend who is planning a business startup. I helped walk her through her first steps and what she needed to do, it felt good to share in her excitement, they have a solid idea that is going to take them far. I am so excited for her and her husband! That meant skipping my 2 pm nap but I slept a little longer at 6:30 pm to make up for it. I'm not sure if the extra sleep helped though because I was feeling a bit tired after my 11:00 pm nap so I went to bed a bit early and slept a bit longer at 1:00 am this morning. It is now almost 5 and I feel great!

One of the things I was curious about was my belief that it is during sleep that our bodies repair themselves. If an uberman sleeps only 2 hours, when does your body repair? I have had significantly less sleep than I normally do and yet I feel less fatigue and more refreshed than I have in quite a while. In talking to other polyphasic sleepers, it turns out that we don't actually repair physically during sleep, only our brain needs this.

Another concern I had was, if and how does diet effect sleep? Well in my personal experience, I have found that only eating just before going to sleep makes it more difficult to wake from a nap. Steve Pavlina discussed in his uberman log that it was his vegan diet that contributed greatly to the ease in which he adopted uberman sleep. Although I eat a very healthy diet (processed food almost never enters my body), I do eat meat protein and drink coffee, though never more than two cups a day. I thought a lot about eliminating caffeine from my diet for this experiment, but I wanted to see the effects of my normal diet. Caffeine is a stimulant, however it has never effected my ability to fall asleep in the past so I decided to continue with my 1-2 cups a day. I was right and actually, drinking a cup just before I nap leaves me very refreshed upon waking. So, I have learned that eating shortly after a nap and coffee before a nap are good things. I would love to hear from other polyphasic sleepers as to the effects of diet during your experience!

Polyphasic Sleep - Day 2

48 hours completed of my polyphasic sleep experiment and I am feeling great. My day went like this:

8:30 pm - 1:30 am: sleep
5:35 - 5:55 am: nap. Cold again so didn't sleep well, but I did dream.
10:00 - 10:20 am: great nap. Had a great dream.
2:00 - 2:20 pm: didn't sleep, just dozed.
10:00 pm - 2:15 am: sleep

I missed my 6 pm nap because of a social engagement. Normally this shouldn't cause an issue with everyman sleep (it will with uberman sleep), especially if my body was adapted to this new schedule. But when I didn't sleep for my 2 pm nap as well, I was tired for the first time at 10 pm.

With each of my naps, I have my alarm set for 20 minutes but most of the time I am awake or almost awake when it goes off. For the core sleep each night, I am allowing my body to wake when it wants and last night has shown a clear improvement from the previous night, 4 instead of 6 hours. I awake refreshed and clear headed each time, a far cry from what I used to call normal sleep!

I have been thinking about the conditioning one usually needs to experience when transitioning into polyphasic sleep. For most, the "aha" moment when it all starts to work and the fatigue leaves is when the sleeper experiences REM sleep during the 20 minute naps. This is usually between day 4 and 7. However I have one thing, I feel, that gives me an advantage going into this experiment. I have experienced REM sleep during 20 minute naps for years. Why?

The reason is, I have four children. Children sleep polyphasically from birth and thought we usually 'adapt' them to a monophasic sleep schedule by the age of five, there were a lot of years of sleep deprivation for this mom! I was a single married, meaning although I was married, my husband had very little to do with our children or the daily duties of running the household, including traditional male roles like mowing the lawn. I adapted by running a business from my home so I could take care of our kids and our home while still having an income. Also, my third son didn't sleep more than two hours for four years, which in essence meant I didn't either. I believe when a mother is chronically sleep deprived, her brain learns to enter REM quickly upon going to sleep. Or at least that is what happened to me. A question for parents, have you found the same experience? If not, what experiences have you had that caused you entering REM sleep rapidly?

Polyphasic Sleep - Day One

I have completed my first day of polyphasic sleep. This is going to be interesting as with a try polyphasic sleep schedule, a "Day" is relative. I will endeavor to focus on a day, for this blog, as the time from midnight to midnight. So here it goes, my plan was to start with something like this: naps at 6 am, 10 am, 2 pm, 6 pm, and sleep from 10 pm to 2 am. My schedule went like this:

12:00 - 3:15 am: sleep

5:00 - 5:30 am: nap (after which I decided to start this polyphasic journey instead of just read about it)

10:00 - 10:20 am: nap

2:00 - 3:00 pm: nap, which will teach me not to sleep in the sun like a cat!

8:30 pm - 1:30 am: sleep

This differs slightly from the plan I made. Yet only slightly, because of my cat sleep in the afternoon. I chose to skip my 6 pm nap because of this and go to bed a bit earlier instead.

I found that with my 10 am nap it was difficult to fall asleep, possibly because I am excited about this new adventure! That is partially why I chose to nap in the sun at 2 pm, to help me fall asleep as I LOVE to sleep curled up in a sunny patch, even if it is the middle of the carpet!

I am using an alarm clock to wake me each time and was warned about not getting up when it goes off (like what happened with my 2 pm nap). Yet, as I am working up to true Uberman sleep through the Everyman sleep schedule, I am not going to get upset about a few challenges at this point. I felt no fatigue at all today and my body was telling me to nap right on schedule. I hadn't anticipated this happening until my body had become more accustomed to this new way of sleeping. Intriguing.

One of the suggestions I received was to have a BIG list of things to do to keep my occupied. I have that in spades though it is getting accomplished quicker than I thought. Steve Pavlina recommends doing more active work (not reading on a comfy couch) during the night as this is when fatigue can catch you. So my plan is to do the bulk of my writing at night (like I am doing now, is is 3 am) which keeps me focused and sitting at a desk. If you have any suggestions to help me along, please throw them my way!

Pre-polyphasic Sleep

As I mentioned in my previous blog, I am intrigued by Polyphasic sleep and wanted to try this for myself. Often overwhelmed by the demands of full-time work, being a mother, author, volunteer, soon-to-be student, and trying to eke out time for myself, I am looking for options. In addition, I have a non-monophasic sleep cycle as it is, so finding solutions to my sleeplessness in the middle of the night would be wonderful too.

Traditionally, my sleep cycle typically looks like this:

8:00 pm to between 12:00 - 2:00 am: Sleep
12:00 - 2:00 am to 4:00 - 5:30 am: Tossing and turning, wide awake
4:00 - 5:30 am: Possibly falling back to sleep
5:30 am: alarm and time to get up
Life
5:00 pm: return home from work

At this point I either fall on the couch and nap for 20 - 90 minutes or I push through until bedtime at 8:00 pm.
Weekends I nap once during the day for 20 - 90 minutes in the early afternoon, if needed.

So, for two days I tracked my sleep schedule. This time, however, I chose to get up when I was wide awake at night and be productive (hence the increased blogs, among other things). I chose to do this organically (meaning following my need to sleep with no alarm clocks). Here are my findings:

Friday, March 29

I woke up at 6:30 am.
1:30 - 3:00 pm: nap
9:00 pm - 1:20 am: sleep
I got up and decided to stay up until I felt ready to sleep again.

Saturday, March 30

5:00 - 7:00 am: sleep
3:00 - 3:20 pm: nap, awakened by my oldest son who I was telling about polyphasic sleep and he kept my nap to 20 minutes :-)
10:00 pm - 7:30 am: sleep

Sunday, March 31

6:00 - 6:30 pm: fell asleep watching a documentary
8:00 - 10:00 pm: I tried to fall asleep for two hours then just got up

Monday, April 1

12:00 am - 3:15 am: sleep
5:00 - 5:30 am: sleep, awakened by alarm

It's at this point that I think, why not just start this polyphasic sleep experiment and see how it goes? My sleep schedule has already started in that direction and I have the flexibility right now to test this fully. My thought was to focus on obtaining an Uberman schedule of naps at 2, 6, 10, 2 , 6, 10 but to initially allow flexibility at night until I had the schedule down during the day. Historically I am an early riser so my plan was to start with something like this: naps at 6 am, 10 am, 2 pm, 6 pm, and sleep from 10 pm to 2 am. So here it goes, Day One.

Polyphasic Sleep

One happy coincidence of finding the 4-Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss was learning about polyphasic sleep. Poly-what you ask? Polyphasic sleep is sleeping several times a day for shorter periods as opposed to Monophasic sleep (once per day) or Biphasic sleep (twice per day). Most of the human population in North America are monophasic sleepers, meaning they sleep for 6-9 hours, usually during the night, per day. Other populations, in Europe and in Mexico, have a largely biphasic sleep pattern in which they sleep for six hours at night and have a 20 minute 'siesta' nap after lunch.

Here is where it gets interesting. Polyphasic sleep can be divided into two types (well three if you consider Dymaxion sleep a viable option, however only Buckminster Fuller was able to successfully do this). The first sleep pattern is commonly defined as Everyman. This is when a "core" sleep at night is dispersed with 20 minute naps during the day. Interestingly more naps and a subsequently smaller core sleep, the less sleep you need. For instance, if you choose two naps, your core sleep will be 4.5 hours long for a total of 5.25 hours. If you choose 4 naps, then your core sleep needs only be 1.5 hours long for a total of 2.5 hours of sleep. Finally, the Uberman sleep pattern is where there are six naps every four hours, giving you an astoundingly small amount of sleep at only 2 hours a day.

Crazy? Impossible?! Wait, let me explain. To understand how this works, lets learn a bit about our brains. A normal sleep cycle is 90 minutes and as a monophasic sleeper, we repeat this cycle several times without waking, or waking briefly and falling back to sleep, each night. Rapid Eye Movement sleep occurs late in this cycle. REM sleep is the critical phase of sleep in which we experience dreams. When deprived of REM for too long, as anyone who has experienced sleep apnea knows, this leads to extreme irritability and hallucinations. REM sleep in adult humans typically occupies 20-25% of total sleep, about 90-120 minutes per night.

Polyphasic sleep is based on the premise that only REM sleep is biologically needed for humans. Let's take a cue from other mammals. Did you know mature horses sleep an average of just 2.5 hours every 24 hours in short intervals of 15 minutes each? Adult giraffes sleep an average of just 1.9 hours per day. We, as humans, were born polyphasic, as all parents can attest to. Newborns sleep in a two-hour cycle, during which 80% of their total sleep time is in REM. What we have learned is that if we sleep more frequently and for fewer hours, we enter REM stage faster and more efficiently then if we are monophasic sleepers. Thus, polyphasic sleepers are sleeping optimally.

Now you are asking, why is this a happy coincidence and what is the relevance to your life? In reading my previous posts, you can see that I plan to be working full-time, working towards my MBA as fast as possible, writing my book, AND being a parent/partner/daughter/sister. If that isn't too busy for you, what about my French classes or my volunteer work? How about exercise, time to eat, maybe even clean the house, and *gasp* time for myself? I was thinking a little, no a lot, about how I am to fit everything in and gave it to the universe to decide. I had believed that I would have to compromise on my job in order to achieve everything and stay sane. Then this book, this idea, fell into my lap. If I have four to six extra hours in a day, just imagine what I can accomplish!

I checked every link in the book and kept digging. I read Steve Pavlina's Sleep Logs and how Dustin Curtis successfully became a polyphasic sleeper. I found PureDoxyk's Ubersleep book and read through her website. I thought about the pros and cons of this a lot over the last week and here is what I came up with.

Many of us have 'sleep problems' as they are defined by a monophasic paradigm. I personally find I have no problem falling asleep and sleep a solid 4-6 hours upon going to bed at 8 pm. However, I wake up... and I mean fully awake, between midnight and 2 am. In my belief that I needed eight hours of continuous sleep at night, I would then lay in bed for the next three to four hours, finally falling back to sleep. I would almost always experience horrible dreams during this second sleep cycle only to be awakened by my alarm at 5:30. Exhausted, I would stumble through the day and either crash on the couch when I returned home from work for a 20-90 minute nap or push through to bedtime. Fun? Not even a little.
So I looked at my sleep craziness in light of polyphasic sleep. Both of my parents have had siesta naps their entire life, as did my mother's parents before her. My body loves 20 minute naps and I wake easily from them, almost always having experienced REM sleep. What my body has been trying to tell me is that I am not a monophasic sleeper! So I tracked my sleep schedule and here is what I found. It won't be a big reach to move to everyman polyphasic sleeping at all.

Finally, in reading several sleep logs of true uberman polyphasic sleepers, I saw their initial fatigue rates and found many others have quit because of this in the first week. My thought is, why go all or nothing? Why not move towards uberman sleep through becoming an everyman sleeper first? Reduce the fatigue, allow my body to adjust, and see what works best for me? So, here I am, experiencing my own experiment! I too will be tracking my polyphasic sleep logs here.

One last note, I have learned from other Uberman sleepers of some very unique and exciting benefits beyond having an extra six hours of sleep a day. I will blog more on those as my experiment unfolds.

Pre-polyphasic sleep log
Polyphasic sleep log - Day 1
Polyphasic sleep log - Day 2
Polyphasic sleep log - Day 3
Polyphasic sleep log - Day 4-5
Polyphasic sleep log - Day 6-7

Slow Carb Diet

As I continue on this exciting journey towards a better me, I posted previously about my plans for work and school. Well those are only part of the changes I am experiencing. I also am focusing more on my health and time management (more on time management in my next blog post).

As some of you know, I have been wanting to lose the pounds I have 'found' while working at a sedentary job for the last year. No problem, in January I simply re-adopted the proven ways I have used to lose my baby weight and maintain my weight since 2006. Problem, no weight loss. Now if you know me, I'm a bit stubborn (sshh Tracy and Terri!). So instead of giving up, I changed things. I pulled carbs from my diet. Nothing. I added aerobic exercise, to the tune of one hour a day. No change. This is now two months without one ounce of weight loss. Congratulations on my body's ability to optimize caloric content!

Not to be bested by my efficiencies, I added weight training to increase muscle size and optimize my body's calorie usage. Again nothing... except for the expected weight gain of muscle building (not a bad thing). OK, yes I am not 20 anymore, but I am not even perimenopausal, I won't blame this on age or hormones... or can I? Hmm.

I was due for a complete physical so I quickly booked one with my physician. We went over the usual workup and I discussed possible reasons with her. Having been in alternative healthcare for thirteen years, I do know a bit about testing, so I asked for not only a complete workup but a full hormone panel. She questioned this, but I explained that I suspected a hormonal imbalance outside of menopause if this wasn't a thyroid issue. She shrugged and filled out my REQ (medicalese for medical requisition form, this one being for phlebotomy/urology).

Off to my sister to get poked (she is a phlebotomist) and my doctor's office called the same day to book a follow up appointment... ah, they found something! Now my doctor knows me well and she had the results printed for me when I arrived (she knows I always want a copy of everything). She said the culprit was PCOS (Polysystic Ovary Syndrome) and I chuckled. She looked up from her computer with a questioning glance. I told her that I had extensive knowledge of PCOS due to my work as a doula. I have worked with several mothers in helping them successfully conceive with this diagnosis.

PCOS is a hormonal imbalance with excess androgen and reduced progesterone. I have no symptoms as are commonly seen with this, even my fasting glucose results were stellar (a risk of PCOS is subsequent insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes). However, this is exactly what I was looking for as I felt strongly that my weight had a hormone connection. After requesting a pelvic ultrasound REQ to check for ovarian cysts and endometriosis, I was off to the holistic drugstore. Vitex (Chasteberry), homeopathic Pulsatilla, and Omega 3,6,9 were my first plan of attack. These had worked well for my clients, especially in combination. Not a quick fix, it often takes 3-6 months to see the positive effects. However, combined with nutritional support, I plan to see changes sooner. I will give it three months before I add prostaglandin cream for day 14-28 of my cycle.

 

Then, something interesting happened. I pulled my rhomboid major when I challenged my weight training routine with full pushups to failure. It was completely my fault as I was not using proper technique. No, it didn't just hurt, I couldn't breathe without pain. Ouch! As I was recovering, Brian downloaded a new book to my Kobo he found called The 4-Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss. Without the ability to move (yes, my back hurt that bad), I read the book in three days. Or to be more specific, I re-read 2/3 of it several times and skipped the guy parts (not applicable, obviously). His logic on many things parallel my experience and his Slow-Carb Diet is brilliant.

My experience has been that cutting carbs from my diet worked every time. However, Brian suspected that in doing so, I was putting my body into starvation mode. With that logic, I had previously upped my caloric intake significantly with protein but to no avail. The premise of the Slow-Carb Diet is to not cut carbs, but to substitute the fast carbs (anything white, including brown rice) with beans. The other aspect, no sugar, including fructose (that means, are you ready for it... no fruit). He also maintains that a weight loss of 20 lbs per month without excercise is to be expected.

Now, consider this: I needed to lose weight and treat my PCOS nutritionally (which means a diabetic type diet), all while recovering from my shoulder injury. I put that request out to the universe (I had asked Brian to watch the Secret to help him understand my almost constant optimism) and it was answered completely with the Slow-Carb Diet.

We are exactly one week into this and we have both lost inches already. I will keep you posted on my progress, I am very excited!