REM naps

[Ben Kuhn]

Hi, polyphasic folks,

I successfully made it to Everyman and I generally feel fine (still a little tired at night but otherwise great). However, I've just started tracking my sleep with a Zeo and have noticed that I'm not getting any high-REM naps at all (they're usually about 5/10/5 minutes REM/light/SWS). Is this expected? If not, what should I do about it?

Thanks!
Ben

[Malcolm McCulloch]

When I was on uberman (for about a week before I got a nasty cold and then overslept) my naps were typically about evenly distributed between RLD (rem/light/deep). Except my noon nap, which is almost always almost entirely REM (15mins+). In fact, I seem to have REMnaps at noon even if I've been monophasic then get a short night's sleep and then take a noon nap.

When I was on everyman this summer, some of my naps would be like you describe, but as I said, noon was almost always great, and I'd fairly often get 10-15mins REM in my other naps.

Puredoxyk recommends tweaking schedules with tiny shifts. If that's possible for you logistically, then I recommend sliding your naps around, maybe 15 mins earlier. Try a new time for 5 days or so, and see how that affects your tiredness and the REM. Then try another shift. Keep logs about what works/doesn't. I haven't actually done this myself, so I'm curious how this works for you.

What do your cores look like, zeo-wise? If you're not getting a lot of deep at night (around 1.5h+ I'd say) then it totally makes sense that your body would want more during the day.

(also, are you using the main zeo histogram or going into the menu on the left? it gives you stuff quantized by minute, which is much more powerful, and can sometimes elicit that what looked like mostly REM and light actually had some deep, or whatever).

Malcolm

--

Malcolm McCulloch

Philomath & creator

www.malcolmm.cc

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[Ben Kuhn]

Thanks Malcolm! That's helpful; I'll try it.

As a note, I talked to Val, who was also adapting recently, and he mentioned the same experience, and I think implied that some other folks in the Leverage adaptation also had similar problems. Anyone at Leverage want to weigh in?

My modal core is about 60/45/90 R/L/D (and yes, I'm using the finer histogram).

Do you remember how long it took you to start getting REM naps at noon?

Thanks again!

Ben

[Malcolm McCulloch]

Umm, well my first one ever was on day 2 of my original 2011 uberman attempt (blog post here) based not on zeo but on a vivid dream. My blog post for day 3 doesn't report this, but I'm fairly certain I also had a REM nap the following day. I quit that attempt after 6 days (citing Stampi's article as why) but I retained the ability to have REM naps at noon, which I would do periodically later in the schoolyear when I was tired, dozing off for a few minutes on a hard surface in public, having a vivid dream, then waking up (sometimes even before the 20min alarm I'd set). This doesn't happen quite every time, but it's pretty typical of a nap taken at that time of day.

My sense is therefore that this ease is an innate property of my physiology, which is weakly supported by having a grandfather who regularly naps around 12:30 or 1pm.

That core sounds pretty good. How consistent is it? Like what would be your 1week min/max on those values?

--

Malcolm McCulloch

Philomath & creator

www.malcolmm.cc

[Ben Kuhn]

Hm, okay, in that case I won't be too disappointed if I can't get a REMnap then. The SWS part of the core is pretty consistent, but REM and SWS vary more: something like 49-84, 27-57, 84-99.