zeo and my new polyphasic schedule
Oki
should chime in with my use of the zeo to develop a new "polyphasic"
schedule for myself over the past 6 months or so.
I went back to pure monophasic for a couple weeks and studied my zeo
data on it. Within the first few days I seemed to have re-adapted to
mono sleep and didn't note significant changes in my cycles over the
remainder of the 2 weeks. I noted, as has been noted extensively in the
literature, that I emphasize deep sleep at the beginning of the night
and rem at the end / early morning. I didn't realize how extreme the
difference is though! At least for me (I haven't studied the literature
enough to know how general or reliable the phenomenon is) I got almost
all (~90%) of my deep at the beginning of the night (first 2 cycles) and
the same for REM at the end. Light sleep was enriched in the middle
cycles.
This made me think about sleep efficiency and maximizing deep and rem
and minimizing light. Doing some simple math I saw that if I cut out
the middle hours of the night I would still get as much, if not more,
deep and rem as is recommended by zeo and many sleep "experts." My goal
is to sleep at least 65 mins of deep per day (not counting the power nap
which i rarely record on my zeo) and 90 mins of rem. I picked these
numbers somewhat arbitrarily (close to the average amount per night for
someone of my age). The concept was to take advantage of my natural
circadian rhythms rather than combating them.
For my evening nap I decided to sleep 2 hours starting between 8 and
10pm. If I stay up much later than 10 I get *very* sleepy and have a
hard time waking after 2 hrs and am better off sleeping through the
night (see below). I picked 2 hours because I noted that (while
sleeping monophasically) I usually finish my second deep cycle after
about 2 hrs mono sleep. Thus for my first nap I sleep: Light, deep,
rem, light, deep, wake.
For the morning nap I subtract the amount of rem from my evening nap
(typically 5-25 mins) and multiply by 3. I then sleep for the amount of
time noted there to ensure that I get enough rem every night. This is
pretty conservative as I almost always get more than 33% rem in the
morning nap (typically 40-50%). Sometimes I do a bit less than that
(like 2.5x) if I'm crunched for time in the morning. I always end up
with 90-120 mins of rem.
In addition I like to take a single power nap (25 mins) sometime during
the day. If I nap 4pm or later I sometimes have a hard time falling
asleep for my evening nap so I try to take it b/w noon and 4pm. I can
replace the power nap w/ some caffeine (tea or 1/2 cup coffee), but I
prefer not to and hardly ever do. I can also push through and not take
the power nap and I'm just a bit sleepy in the afternoon. I rarely use
the zeo for my power nap (cause i usually sleep in my car), so I can't
say too much about the data there. If I had to guess (based on a number
of times that I have used the zeo for power naps) I would say I am
getting in the neighborhood of 10 mins light, 10 mins deep, and 3 mins
rem per nap - assuming the zeo is accurate over those very short periods
of time (i'm not at all convinced that it is - happy to discuss more at
another time). I would like to do something more rigorous for recording
my power naps and am very interested in hearing about others and your
power nap results.
Typical schedule:
nap 9-11pm
nap 5-815am
nap 1-125pm
Notes and thoughts:
* Took very little adaption. The only tricky part for me was going from
a monophasic schedule of going to bed around midnight to going to bed
between 8 and 10. Only took a few days to get used to. Bare in mind
that I've been experimenting with polyphasic for the past 2 years,
however, so napping comes pretty easy to me.
* Easy to pop in and out of. I have the old problem of a partner who I
sleep with fairly regularly. If I join her for the morning nap there
isn't much of a problem because I just try to time my wake up to be
similar to hers. If we go to bed for the evening nap, however, it's a
bit awkward and annoying for me to be woken and get active in the middle
of the night while she is trying to sleep. For one, I'm a much heavier
sleeper than she is. We've tried a bunch of things over the past couple
years and it just doesn't work. Cuddling is important to a relationship
:) That's ok! If I sleep monophasically once or twice a week it
doesn't mess up my schedule at all! I still usually hit the mid-day
power nap if this happens. Also, if work or a social engagement
absolutely can't be avoided or worked around at that time I can still do
it and just sleep monophasically when I finally get to bed. I really
*need* to get an extra power nap in there before I do whatever is going
to keep me out late, however, or I'll start getting *really* sleepy by 10pm.
* Don't have a hard time doing any normal activity at night including
computer work or reading.
* No apparent decrease in athletic ability. Am still able to do heavy
exercise for hours at a time.
In summary I've gone from ~50% light sleep on mono to ~35% light on
poly. The amount of extra time I get isn't dramatic (sleeping 5-6 hrs /
24 hr period), but I feel much better than I do on monophasic, and it is
a fairly flexible schedule that works for me.
Oki
Karolis
lots of SWS for recovery from exercise), minimizing "low value" sleep,
getting 2-3 extra hours AND feeling better at the same time.
How long is your typical morning nap? Do you go fast into REM or do
you have SWS stages as well during it?
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John Litborn
that it worked!
Oki
zeo data for the first time in months and looked at it together (I
look at it after every nap, but haven't analyzed it as a group for a
long time).
My average morning nap ranges from 2 to 4 hours and typically is just
over 3 hrs.
16 out of the last 20 morning naps that I have data for (recall that
zeo doesn't always recognize naps as part of your night's sleep that
it will store for you) I had a significant phase of sws in the first
cycle. The other 4 i went straight from light to rem (and generally
cycled back and forth from light to rem thereafter). In many of the
16 I never returned to deep after the first cycle (for example:
Light, deep, rem, light, rem, light).
Anecdotally I would also say that the more deep I get in my evening
nap the less I would get in the morning one. I would say that the
opposite is especially true (eg if I have a "bad" evening nap with
only 30 mins deep I'll have more deep in the morning nap).
Oki
On Oct 12, 4:23 am, Karolis <mind...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think this is brilliant - you take advantage of real benefits (like
> lots of SWS for recovery from exercise), minimizing "low value" sleep,
> getting 2-3 extra hours AND feeling better at the same time.
>
> How long is your typical morning nap? Do you go fast into REM or do
> you have SWS stages as well during it?
>
Oki
because you'd be adjusting your sleep instantly (based on the data and
your goals for rem and deep). I think it's quite likely that it
would work for others to just pick a schedule similar to mine and try
it for a couple weeks and see how you feel. I don't wear my zeo
*every* long nap (might be sleeping somewhere else or forget to put it
on) and I still do fine with just a default 2 hrs evening - 3 hrs
morning.
Oki
On Oct 12, 7:29 am, John Litborn <john.litb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I wonder if it's possible to adapt to this without a zeo, it's cool
> that it worked!
>
>
> > I think this is brilliant - you take advantage of real benefits (like
> > lots of SWS for recovery from exercise), minimizing "low value" sleep,
> > getting 2-3 extra hours AND feeling better at the same time.
>
> > How long is your typical morning nap? Do you go fast into REM or do
> > you have SWS stages as well during it?
>
Karolis
Does zeo record your sleep cycle length? What is it?
Do you honor the 90 min multiplier thing? Probably not because you
have accurate data from zeo?
When do you morning nap/when are you awake during the night?
Easy to wake up after evening nap?
This reminds me of the wake-back-to-bed sleeping thing lucid dreamers
do. Except now it makes sense why it works =)
Unclear what sleep lengths to set though.
jerry1962
but if you don't mind my asking: Why did you go off Uberman? You were
a role model for it.
Oki
device (and at higher resolution if you upload and analyze the data).
The 90 minute cycle is a rough average for everyone. I'm probably
fairly typical, but it can vary significantly. Also, defining the end
and beginning of a cycle isn't an exact science. Sometimes it's a
really pretty 90 min light-deep-rem - 90 min light-deep-rem, but
that's the exception rather than the rule.
The reason I picked 2 hours for my evening nap, however, is precisely
because of the 90 min cycle and my general adherence to it. I wanted
to hit 2 deep cycles in my first nap. The first 90 mins is for the
first complete cycle and the next 30 mins is to try to hit a second
deep cycle. At first I thought I should sleep 2.5 hrs in my first
nap, but since my second deep cycle is much shorter than my first I
found that I was passing it up most of the time and getting a lot of
extra light sleep and/or starting a rem cycle. I therefore cut it
back to 2 hrs and it has worked well for me.
Depending on the individual a 90 min nap (1 complete cycle) or a
somewhat longer nap (eg 2.5 hrs) might work better. I've actually
found it easier to wake from the 2 hr nap then the 2.5. I also have
an easier time waking from the evening nap than the morning one, which
I don't understand since I'm more likely to be in deep at the end of
the evening nap and almost certain to be in light or rem after the
morning one.
Oki
On Oct 13, 4:53 am, Karolis <mind...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Awesome. I wanna try this, lol. A couple more questions.
>
> Does zeo record your sleep cycle length? What is it?
> Do you honor the 90 min multiplier thing? Probably not because you
> have accurate data from zeo?
> When do you morning nap/when are you awake during the night?
> Easy to wake up after evening nap?
>
> This reminds me of the wake-back-to-bed sleeping thing lucid dreamers
> do. Except now it makes sense why it works =)
>
> Unclear what sleep lengths to set though.
>
bsrubin
2 notes from Zeo:
1. We just put up a blog post about sleep cycle length as measured by
Zeo - it's worth checking gout over here: http://blog.myzeo.com/sleep-architecture-again/
2. Oki correctly notes that Zeo isn't optimized for polyphasic sleep
and will sometimes inappropriately merge or ignore some naps. If you
have some hacking skills we released a Data Decoder Library that can
get you ALL the naps Zeo recorded more precisely. Check that out
here: http://developers.myzeo.com/data-decoder-library/ and the
discussion on it here: http://blog.myzeo.com/forum/zeo-sd-card-decoder-library/
Best, Ben
>
> read more »
John Amschler
I'm new to this group and I'm extremely curious about your athletic
load during polyphasic sleep.
When you say you're able to do heavy athletic exercise what type are
you referring to for hours - what duration, sport and level of
exertion are you referring to? Cycling? Running?
Thanks,
John
PS - I've got a Zeo too, and I'll be using it to hack my sleep as soon
as I write some code to extract the data.
On Oct 11, 6:55 pm, Oki <biochem...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well as long as thezeotheme has popped back up again, I thought I
> should chime in with my use of thezeoto develop a new "polyphasic"
>
> I went back to pure monophasic for a couple weeks and studied myzeo
> data on it. Within the first few days I seemed to have re-adapted to
> mono sleep and didn't note significant changes in my cycles over the
> remainder of the 2 weeks. I noted, as has been noted extensively in the
> literature, that I emphasize deep sleep at the beginning of the night
> and rem at the end / early morning. I didn't realize how extreme the
> difference is though! At least for me (I haven't studied the literature
> enough to know how general or reliable the phenomenon is) I got almost
> all (~90%) of my deep at the beginning of the night (first 2 cycles) and
> the same for REM at the end. Light sleep was enriched in the middle
> cycles.
>
> This made me think about sleep efficiency and maximizing deep and rem
> and minimizing light. Doing some simple math I saw that if I cut out
> the middle hours of the night I would still get as much, if not more,
> someone of my age). The concept was to take advantage of my natural
> circadian rhythms rather than combating them.
>
> For my evening nap I decided to sleep 2 hours starting between 8 and
> 10pm. If I stay up much later than 10 I get *very* sleepy and have a
> hard time waking after 2 hrs and am better off sleeping through the
> night (see below). I picked 2 hours because I noted that (while
> sleeping monophasically) I usually finish my second deep cycle after
> about 2 hrs mono sleep. Thus for my first nap I sleep: Light, deep,
> rem, light, deep, wake.
>
> For the morning nap I subtract the amount of rem from my evening nap
> (typically 5-25 mins) and multiply by 3. I then sleep for the amount of
> time noted there to ensure that I get enough rem every night. This is
> pretty conservative as I almost always get more than 33% rem in the
> morning nap (typically 40-50%). Sometimes I do a bit less than that
> (like 2.5x) if I'm crunched for time in the morning. I always end up
> with 90-120 mins of rem.
>
> In addition I like to take a single power nap (25 mins) sometime during
> the day. If I nap 4pm or later I sometimes have a hard time falling
> asleep for my evening nap so I try to take it b/w noon and 4pm. I can
> replace the power nap w/ some caffeine (tea or 1/2 cup coffee), but I
> prefer not to and hardly ever do. I can also push through and not take
> the power nap and I'm just a bit sleepy in the afternoon. I rarely use
Oki
train for 2 hours I'm pretty well worn out, but otherwise fine. 3
hours and I'm completely exhausted and more or less useless for the
rest of the day. Been doing it for years and haven't noticed any
difference b/w my endurance or performance on poly or monophasic.
Oki