Ubersleep? Hacking Sleep? Stupid!
October 17th, 2005
I’ll have to take my geek hat off for a second and play doctor. One of the current hot topics in the blogosphere is polyphasic (or Uberman’s) sleep. The basic idea is by taking multiple small naps throughout a 24 hour period, a person can get by on less sleep. The experience suggests that these people immediately fall into REM sleep and will eventually become acclimated to an overall shorter sleep time. The idea is that less sleep time equals more productive time. The bull continues and continues.
Certainly a person can alter their sleep pattern in this method. I have no doubt. I see people with crazy sleep schedules all the time. Let me tell you why you should not do this.
You increase your chances of having a car wreck. tes says “I hit a wall” if staying awake more than 5 hours. The normal sleep pattern allows a person a good buffer of sleep time. A person is able to go several hours longer than expected if needed. Polyphasic sleep seems to take this buffer away. Obstructive sleep apnea is a sleep disorder that alters people’s natural sleep patterns. Thousands of car wrecks a year are attributed to obstructive sleep apnea. Narcolepsy is a sleep disorder characterized by sudden onset of REM sleep (sound familiar?). Untreated patients with narcolepsy have a ten times more risk of car accidents than normal subjects.
Your health will suffer. Sleep restriction in healthy volunteers causes multiple physiological abnormalities. This includes increased inflammation, activation of the sympathetic nervous system, hypertension, and glucose intolerance. Epidemiologic research suggests that people who report short sleep duration have more symptomatic diabetes, more ischemic heart disease, and decreased survival. Source.
Less sleep equals more fat. tes’s “appetite is substantially larger.” Lack of sleep is associated with abnormalities in the hormones that control food intake. If you want to
give up sleep for a bigger waistband, this is a good way to do it.
People who sleep normally, live longer. This abstract in sleep medicine discusses how “short sleep over a prolonged period may be associated with an increased risk of mortality.” Read the research; is it worth the risk?
Granted these are not the most hardcore research studies in the world; however, I could find no medline searches dealing with polyphasic sleep in humans. Searching for sleep deprivation, however, yields a few thousand articles for one to read through.
We do so much to try to prolong our lives and protect our health. In theory, slow wave sleep is when our cellular system best repairs itself. This sleep system takes away that restorative slow wave sleep. Please forgive the geek analogy, but… why would one overclock your life and burn out sooner?
Addendum: Welcome digg! We are honored to be highlighted. Feel free to visit the rest of the site. We have over 1000 tech-related tutorials. I’ll be posting a follow-up sleep post in our blog later today as well.
October 1st, 2006 at 12:37 am
Comparing this to narcolepsy is stupid. Furthermore, the way you explain narcolepsy is completely misleading and seems to intentionally leave out important information to makke your point.
That said, I think polyphasic sleep can be okay, but getting only 2 or 3 hours seems a bit ridiculous.
October 2nd, 2006 at 1:38 am
I, personally, am a practicing advocate of Polyphasic sleep. I sleep 20 minutes ever 4 hours, at 4A, 8A, 12A, 4P, 8P and 12P. I lost about 20 lbs after 4 weeks (I believe on account of being more active, having many more hours that previously). This type of sleep can not be compared with sleep deprivation (to which the above claims do hold true). Your brain is able to get its required sleeping when you close your eyes. I used to have a horrible time falling asleep and would such only get 4-6 hrs of sleep per night. Now, I fall asleep immediatly and wake up nearly exactly 20 minutes later. It is true that you do not have a buffer in sleep, as your point out. Your body becomes immediatly tired upon the set naptime (as it attempts the REM sleep while you are awake). But why cant you pull into a parking lot for 20 minutes? Although not best, sleeping the first 10 minutes is still better than skipping the break. I remain tired for the remaining 10 minutes, but the first 10 help tremendously (especially as compared to an hour nap for someone who sleeps monophasically).
Also a curious note: when a baby is born, it follows a polyphasic sleep pattern, which it gradually out grows on account of unknowingly being forced into a monophasic mattern by its parents.
October 25th, 2006 at 6:31 am
You’re biased perspective and lack of conclusive evidence is distracting. Attempting to read this, many flaws stand out.
Firstly, you reference a “blog” of a polyphasic sleeper as support for your arguements. A “blog” is hardly scientific in nature. Even a sampling of many blogs, though more appropriate, would not be a stirring arguement.
Secondly: “Lack of sleep is associated with abnormalities in the hormones that control food intake.” Does not support your point of view at all. It seems quite obvious, that if one is up more often, they would need more food and energy to survive, so it stands to reason that these hormones would be more or less abundant.
Thirdly: “You increase your chances of having a car wreck.” -Is completely fabricated. Jumping to this conclusion only does more to show how ignorant and unable to provide legitimate reasons for your statement you actually are.
Also: It is quite odd that the most important statistics in this statement lack a source, and more than half of the relevant sources are blogs.
Although I respect your right to voice your opinion online, (Opinion being all that you have managed to produce in this badly written and useless piece of trash.) Please do not play pretend that you are writing a legitimate article that “holds any water” scientifically. If you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about please add a disclaimer that says such. Perhaps you can produce a rebuttal with real facts? I would much like to see such a thing. I’m certain you could find more blogs to use at “sources” If you search hard enough….
Disgusted,
Kevin
October 25th, 2006 at 3:01 pm
Christopher:
Thanks for the comments. I would also note that newborn babies can’t control their bowel functions. I am not sure that is how we should pattern our lives as adults based on that.
Kevin:
Less insightful comments from you… mostly just flames. I have training in sleep medicine. I am a MD. My blog post is obviously my opinions regarding the topic. Your comments suggest that you are just flaming away without any real medical knowledge.
There are many studies regarding sleep deprivation/fatigue and the dangers of driving:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi…
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/322/7290/829