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What happens when two kids sleep only two hours a day?
- dotBen 17y agoOn paper this kind of sleep cycle looks attractive for the typical geek. But I wonder what the long-term health implications are, and how this fits in with relationships etc. Also, I worked with a guy who did Uberman polyphasic sleep and he seemed out of it a lot, like he wasn't firing on all cylinders, at work.
- shard 17y agoI vacillate between thinking that if our body fights this hard against polyphasic sleep, there must be something wrong with the idea, and that sometimes we need to overrule our body's natural tendencies, such as wanting to eat lots of fats, sugar, and salt, and to not exercise properly. Also, I'm concerned that I would not be able to discern any degradation in mental capacities due to my degraded mental capacities. (Confession: I tried polyphasic sleep once, but didn't make it past the third day.)
- dotBen 17y agoTo your point, I don't think my former work colleague knew he was kind of out of it.. I can only describe it if he had been up all night smoking pot and was still feeling a little of the effects the morning after. To the health point: I think polyphasic sleep may also increase your desire for high fat, sugar and salt foods because it destroys the meal cycle.
- caitlinwoodward 17y agoI can't speak for Blake, but I have a horrible meal cycle as it stands already. Inconsistent in everything, mostly nutritional value. Already, a few months ago, I tried to schedule myself into small healthy snacks every couple hours, instead of a few large and pretty unhealthy meals. With this strict schedule on sleep, I'm eating within the first hour of waking up. (Eating a couple apples seem to help for the late night snacks.) Small breakfast after the 6am nap, small dinner right after my 6pm nap, etc. Some healthy-ish snacks sprinkled it the middle (but no too close to naptime).
- a-priori 17y agoThat sounds like a good plan. Food, sunlight and physical activity are signals for circadian cycles. You should try to incorporate each into every waking period, at least in the beginning.
- blakepalmer 17y agoI'm very sun-driven. I need to find a good way to incorporate that at night. It's been much, much easier for me to stay awake when the sun is out. Thanks for the tip!
- btilly 17y agoThat's because light resets your biological clock. Full spectrum lighting may have a similar effect on you. (It is sometimes prescribed for preventing seasonal affect disorder.)
- wildjim 17y agoQuick note, before I read the article: Watched a documentary recently, experimenting with 3hours/day. It was cancelled after a week because the "victim" was showing dangerous side-effects and beginning to show major-organ dysfunction, apparently from the stress caused by lack of sleep.
- caitlinwoodward 17y agoWhat was this documentary called? I'd like to see this, too.
- caitlinwoodward 17y agoAlso, the more I think about this... One cycle of three hours hardly encourages the body to enter REM. That person might've only gotten one 30 min sessions in that 3 hour cycle. Once we have transitioned, our body will be getting four 30 minute sessions of REM. Again, I want to emphasize that I'm not an expert on this, I've just read a lot. I think my thoughts would align with other polyphasers, though.
- csallen 17y agoAnyone know how old these two people are? Their writing is at such a level that I'm surprised they're young enough to refer to themselves as kids.
- peyton 17y agohttp://www.dymaxionduo.com/3-days-left/ http://www.dymaxionduo.com/3-days-left/ >If I recall correctly, I think I remember him once falling asleep at the Flying Saucer while we were out drinking. Kids these days...
- ghotli 17y agoEarly to mid twenties. They both have supportive work environments and a whole host of people helping them through the days. Theoretically it will take them a few weeks to get used to it.
- anatoly 17y agoI don't get it. Why are they calling themselves kids?
- crux 17y agoI had actually assumed they were doing it with their children. And wondered how long until they were investigated for child abuse.
- electromagnetic 17y agoI thought similarly, or that it was perhaps 16-18 year olds taking it upon themselves for a science project or something. However I'm now assuming it is people in their mid-twenties who apparently regard themselves so free of the inherent responsibilities of life that they refer to themselves as kids. I'm 22 and married. I immigrated to Canada (and the legal responsibilities inherent in this would likely scare the life out of these two 'kids'). My friends and family members of similar age to us have children (in fact our marriage is directly responsible for one of them), and I will likely have children before the two authors consider themselves 'adults'. I have responsibilities and obligations, like I assume most twenty year olds do, and I consider myself to have very few responsibilities in comparison to many of my friends and relatives. It must be a privileged life to be able to consider yourself a kid well into your twenties, I stopped thinking of myself as a kid when I had to get a full time job at 16. I definitely stopped thinking of myself as a kid when I was handling an intercontinental relationship and funding international travel, which as I said before has resulted in me immigrating to another country.
- BoppreH 17y agoFunny, I've heard a lot of stories of people starting this sleep schedule, but not a single one of someone that managed to maintain it. Let's see how this one goes.
- caitlinwoodward 17y agoThis is why we started this website and are telling a lot of people, to help us maintain this cycle. It'd be very easy for me to say "Eh, screw this", but the fact that we have ~50 Twitter followers, local friends, and other people following us through the website, all helps to give us motivation. Okay! It's actually nap time, so I'll be back to answer some more comments in 30 minutes.
- kellishaver 17y agoI know people, and indeed, get like this myself sometimes (though not as often as I used to), who will have natural cycles in which they are awake for hours on end and sleep only 1 or 2 out of every 24. But even for those who seem to be naturally wired to do so, it only lasts for a few days before either their body or their mind needs sleep so badly that they a) fall asleep in the case of physical exhaustion, or b) must take sleeping aids to force themselves back into a normal pattern so they can think clearly again. Polyphasic sleep sounds good in theory. In practice, well, there's a reason why sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture.
- scott_s 17y agoAgain? This comes up every few months. A good discussion that explains why it's not a good idea: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=652650 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=652650 On that thread, I found crocowhile's comments particularly good.
- caitlinwoodward 17y agoThanks for the link to the other thread. It has some good discussion. Some good stuff to think about.
- scott_s 17y agoAlso: http://science.education.nih.gov/supplements/nih3/sleep/guide/info-sleep.htm http://science.education.nih.gov/supplements/nih3/sleep/guid...
- Tichy 17y agoPlease resubmit in a month or so. It sounds as if they haven't started the experiment yet?
- BoppreH 17y agoThey did, but are on their second day. I agree, there should be periodical updates here. I'm very curious about this.
- blakepalmer 17y agoThere's an RSS feed and a Twitter account if you guys want regular updates. We definitely want to let people keep track of what we're doing. Gives us some accountability as well. It's easier to keep going with the experiment when you have friends paying attention. The Twitter handle is http://twitter.com/dymaxionduo http://twitter.com/dymaxionduo
- simonista 17y agoCool blog design. One column per person style is something I hadn't seen before.
- WalterGR 17y agoThe navigation on the front page is terrible. It's impossible to know that "n days left" means n days left of normal sleep, and hence those should be read first. I was able to figure out the nav only after clicking the links and checking the "posted-on" dates.
- gcheong 17y agoPlease don't attempt to drive a motor vehicle or operate heavy machinery while doing this.
- fossguy 17y agoJust have a kid and you will learn by yourself. If he is colic, you will get even less.
- hackermom 17y agoA swedish student, Thomas Jönsson, performed a similar "polyphasic sleep" experiment 2 years ago. He slept 2.5 hours per day; 25 minutes every 4th hour. His aim was to improve his potential and performance on a wide front, and he increased results in several contexts (learning, and physical exercise being the most notable ones). He kept his experiment going for about 6 months. He was 23 years old at the time.
- csallen 17y agoInteresting he was able to improve physically. I've always been tempted to try an extreme sleep schedule, but one thing has kept me from doing so -- I go to the gym regularly, and evidence has shown that sleep is an essential part of muscle growth.
- blakepalmer 17y agoI've wondered about this as well. I've been exercising, and I'm curious as to how sleep will effect that. I'd be intrigued to see research on the topic.
- ddemchuk 17y agoReally nice blog design, I like it a lot. I've always thought that a split post design like that would be interesting for any sort of blog that revolved around the participation of a couple/pair. Good luck
- kwamenum86 17y agoYAPSE
- ck2 17y agoThat is a bit crazy extreme. I sleep 3 hours every 12 hours and it works great for me.
- petercooper 17y agoIt helps going into this sort of thing to know you don't have any underlying mental problems. I used to pull crazy sleep schedules as an early 20-something, but as a late 20-something even mild sleep deprivation leads to muchos weird psychological situations for me now. If I were giving any advice to early 20-somethings nowadays, I'd say save up your sleep deprivation experiments until you have a baby. You'll need them :-)
- jdietrich 17y agoInteresting experiment, but I can't navigate beyond the 'About' page because of all the Flash.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- caitlinwoodward 17y agoMy first time experimenting with sifr. Thought I'd try it out and see how it worked. =\