Sleep patterns and polyphasic schedules

Since I reintroduced regular training into my schedule I've started eating more and sleeping more. I've noticed that I am hungrier more often and eat every 3 hours or so. As a result, my stomach has been conditioned to expect food every 3 hours. This becomes a problem when I sleep. I wake up 3-5 hours after sleeping feeling hungry. I'll normally either ignore it or make myself a small snack like 1 egg or so.

My thoughts meandered upon modeling sleeping patters after eating patterns and sure enough a google search provided a name for this idea: polyphasic sleep schedules (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep). It purports more time and energy in the day with less sleep. I researched the ideas and they seem to have a sound base, but I have a few problems with it. The amount of deep rem sleep could possible be affected, deep rem sleep keeps us from going insane. And I'm not sure how this would affect an athlete. Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison and Winston Churchill are said to have converted to this type of scheduling.

Has anyone had experience with this type of pattering or have some medical background and ability to shed some light on the subject? It would be much appreciated, this was a wandering thought and will remain as such for now but perhaps sometime in the future i'll experiment with it.

Don't do it.

And that's all I'm saying about this...

Although it's possible to adapt to the schedule, our bodies are meant to have one longer sleep pattern. Less stress overall. More stress = lesser ability to perform well especially during hard exercise like rings work.

This would be an excellent question to PM to one of our moderators, Robb Wolf. Sleep patterns are something that are a special interest of his.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

I was able to function on a polyphasic schedule but my stress level was high and my training was of poor quality and frequency. I found myself just wanting to relax or sleep on my off-time.

Sure, I could be awake and to day to day stuff like my job and etc but it didn't mean I was functioning physically well. For me that means training not just mild activity.

The solution to waking up during the middle of sleep is to just have food in your stomach before you go to sleep. Slow digesting protein helps (milk) me. Good for muscle growth.

ts00nami,

My personal view on this is that sleep is for sleep...no waking for 8-10 hours. Once you are awake for more than 3 seconds you disturb melatonin production. This then messes up prolactin production etc etc.

Although it doesn't address your question directly, an absolutely fascinating book is "Lights Out" by TS Wiley. It is extremely thought provoking. The basic idea of the book is this: you should sleep in an absolutely pitch black room and sleep for around 9.5 hours. It goes into many details and relates it to evolution. Worth picking up.

Hope this helps,

Rob.

Thank you all for your input,

Briandx, Didn't realize it would exacerbate stress so much. I perform well under pressure, but not stress. If it's anything like the stress I endure during consecutive sleepless nights for finals week I'll be sure to steer clear.

Coach Sommer, Just contacted him at his website, thanks for the referral.

Blairbob, I'd rate my current stress level at a 0 out of 10, occasionally a 1 and I'd like to keep it that way. It seems polyphasic scheduling is only feasible for sedentary lifestyles. I'm normally snacking right until bed time, I'll make sure I add a slow absorbtion protein to the mix, although I am lactose irritable, so I'll make due with a substitute . What scheduling did you experiment with by the way? I was considering an uberman or dymaxion (just out of curiosity, I'm most likely dropping the idea all together now).

Gymrob, I've always had some trouble staying asleep, but I had no idea 3 seconds was sufficient to disrupt hormone production. I'm assuming this includes making myself mid-sleep snack. I love books like that, I'll be sure to check it out, hopefully it can help me sleep easier at night.

For whatever reason, my polyphasic schedule was typically 2 sleep cycles another later during the day. Since each sleep cycle is 1.5-2h, figure about 3-4 hours of sleep, sometimes 4 1/2-5. Very rarely would it be 3 and 1 or 2 and 2.

At the time there were a lot of stressors, but I got used to this sleep schedule over time because I would have to be up early in the morning looking for craigslist jobs and gigs.

Still, it sucks.

Short answer, it's bad and reasonless.

For a long answer check this http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic.htm

(at 20y, I try to sleep 8,5 h on normal days and 9h on training days.)