I strongly disagree about polyphasic sleep. Here’s a series of posts of mine here explaining why I don’t think polyphasic sleep works. I’m surprised how many rationalists seem to believe it works. The evidence supporting using polyphasic sleep to reduce sleep need is weak at best, and at worst the idea seems actively harmful. I suspect you are seeing some combination of a placebo effect and wishful thinking. Perhaps that’s impolite to say, but I think attempting to use polyphasic sleep to reduce sleep need is overall harmful to most people, and I want to highlight that.
Once I recall reading on the polyphasic sleep reddit that polyphasic sleep is a better way to manage sleep deprivation. That is to say, if you need to be sleep deprived, you’d do better on a polyphasic schedule. This seems reasonable to me. To be clear, it appears that to feel fully rested and get the full health benefits, you’d need to sleep a normal duration, regardless of how it’s broken up. Polyphasic might be more convenient, but the duration will be comparable.
Perhaps lucid dreaming or something similar could help you regain time “lost” to sleep. Or, you could look into what actually might reduce sleep need like the drugs I mentioned, or physical exercise.
The evidence that segmented sleep was the norm does not appear to be particularly strong, but it certainly has enough historical references to suggest it was common. Further, I don’t think segmented sleep was done for the purpose of reducing sleep need. Correct me if I’m wrong.
I suspect you are seeing some combination of a placebo effect and wishful thinking. Perhaps that’s impolite to say, but I think attempting to use polyphasic sleep to reduce sleep need is overall harmful to most people, and I want to highlight that.
I don’t think that’s harmful to say, but I think you’re wrong. I’m doing it. It’s working. There is your evidence.
Let me respond to your suggested explanations
1| Wishful Thinking – what does that even mean? I am sleeping more than 2 hours less per day than I did for 99% of my life and am less tired than I was on average for the past 5 years. That is an observable fact. I’m not oversleeping constantly and pretending as if that wasn’t the case. You either take that as a fact, or think I am deliberately lying, or think I am insane and unable to count to ten. Or I guess that I’m so wishful that I don’t notice what by now must be massive sleep deprivation after a month of cutting much needed sleep.
Placebo Effect – over 2 hours a day due to placebo?
Sorry, those are not the least bit convincing. The explanation ChrstianKl offered is the only one that has odds significantly over zero. If it is true, then I’ve been doing myself a massive disservice by having an inconsistent schedule for most of my life. Could be.
Some folks (e.g., puredoxyk) have suggested that you have to deny that some people seem to work okay on short polyphasic schedules (or believe they are lying) to suggest that it doesn’t work as described. I don’t think so. It seems that the fraction of people who seem to do well on short polyphasic sleep schedules is comparable to the fraction of people who are short sleepers. I don’t have any hard numbers for the former, but I believe it is on the order of 5% or so (puredoxyk suggested over 90% of attempts at short polyphasic sleep fail). The latter is more well studied. A fairly recent review stated that about 4.0% of people sleep less than 5.5 hours per night. So, my hypothesis is that those who do well on short polyphasic sleep schedules are short sleepers, and thus it doesn’t make sense to suggest polyphasic sleep as a way to reduce sleep requirements.
That is also really unconvincing.
We are talking about two hours a day in extreme cases. No-one naturally sleeps just two hours a day. (If I am wrong here, correct me).
The fact that most people who attempt polyphasic sleep fail is not some kind of covered-up fact or evidence against the concept. The website says so openly. Quote:
Uberman is the most commonly attempted, and most failed of polyphasic schedules. This is largely due to a misunderstanding of the difficulties associated with its adaptation period. Uberman is the most well known nap only schedule, and is an extension of the Everyman schedules, to the point of getting rid of the core sleep entirely. While Uberman is extremely difficult [...]
And at another point they say that no-one has ever been able to adapt to Uberman on his own (meaning without help). I am also not surprised as even adapting my current schedule, which is super easy in comparison, has all in all been very hard. I managed to do it because I set it as my top priority and put lots of will power into it. And if it is true that Uberman is much more commonly attempted—yeah, the 5% number sounds plausible.
And 3. Do you really think all the people doing polyphasic sleep don’t notice that they actually don’t sleep less than before? (This is the weakest point, I could believe that it were the case if evidence pointed in that direction).
Some folks (e.g., puredoxyk) have suggested that you have to deny that some people seem to work okay on short polyphasic schedules (or believe they are lying) to suggest that it doesn’t work as described.
We are talking about two hours a day in extreme cases. No-one naturally sleeps just two hours a day. (If I am wrong here, correct me).
I have one anecdote from a girl who said she was sleeping an hour a day for a year in a context where there wasn’t any reason for her to not be truthful about it. She didn’t even take any modafinil.
More importantly you think that there are a people who do long-term sleep of 2 hours per day with Uberman. Puredoxyk didn’t stay more than half a year on the Uberman schedule. See my answer at Skeptics SE: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/1007/196
If there are reports of people who lived long-term on polyphasic sleep that happened after 2011 when I wrote my post and that escaped my notice, please provide links.
I don’t think that’s harmful to say, but I think you’re wrong. I’m doing it. It’s working. There is your evidence.
A lot of people do well on six hours of sleep. Managing on six hours is not an extraordinary claim.
It’s well established in the literature that regular sleep schedules lead to better sleep.
You could also have gotten the same effect of feeling less tired easily with modafinil. Sleeping less without feeling tired doesn’t mean that the sleep has all the benefitial effects that sleep commonly has.
It’s worth noting that both btrettel and myself are well read in this subject and had discussions before about it. We aren’t simply judging something as not working because we don’t have information.
I don’t think that’s harmful to say, but I think you’re wrong. I’m doing it. It’s working. There is your evidence.
Your statements are evidence, but not particularly convincing evidence to me.
1| Wishful Thinking – what does that even mean? I am sleeping more than 2 hours less per day than I did for 99% of my life and am less tired than I was on average for the past 5 years. That is an observable fact. I’m not oversleeping constantly and pretending as if that wasn’t the case. You either take that as a fact, or think I am deliberately lying, or think I am insane and unable to count to ten. Or I guess that I’m so wishful that I don’t notice what by now must be massive sleep deprivation after a month of cutting much needed sleep.
I do not believe you or anyone else involved in polyphasic sleep are deliberately lying, rather, I believe you have mildly deluded yourself and are avoiding disconfirming evidence. Let me be clear: mild delusion. You can clearly count to ten, etc. Again, this is rude to say, but look at it from my perspective. Sleep is important, and polyphasic sleep folks seem to get so much wrong about it, and they encourage people to get so little sleep. So I hope you excuse the potential rudeness and see this as a sincere attempt to help you.
It can be difficult to know how impaired you are when you are tired. That is especially true when combined with the strong desire for polyphasic sleep to work.
There are many additional possibilities other than “polyphasic sleep is reducing my sleep need”. As ChristianKl suggested, perhaps having a more regular schedule is helping. Perhaps it’s not so much the regular schedule as it is reducing time spent in bed awake, which as I recall can correlate better with feelings of restfulness than total sleep duration. (Consolidating one’s sleep into more continuous blocks is frequently a goal of people with sleep trouble, and the therapy is basically sleep deprivation, not unlike what I believe you are doing to yourself.) Maybe you are actually a short sleeper who previously had poor sleep quality that a consolidated schedule has fixed. Perhaps it’s something other than any of these possibilities. Given that the evidence supporting polyphasic sleep is weak at best, I encourage you to take these other possibilities more seriously. I should have given these possibilities more consideration as well, and I do now. I think there’s a strong possibility that your apparent improved restedness is not from polyphasic sleep, rather, some other change you made recently.
I also would suggest conducting more objective studies into your sleepiness. A basic measure of sleepiness is the Epworth sleepiness scale, but it is entirely subjective and may be a poor measure. The MLST is the standard objective test for sleepiness, but requires equipment to measure the onset of sleep, and it can be misleading if one suffers from insomnia. One can look at other measures, like, for example, how quickly one enters REM sleep upon falling asleep. That can be a measure of sleep deprivation. (As I said in other posts, despite the volume of things polyphasic sleep folks have written about how entering REM quickly most of the time is the goal of polyphasic sleep, it’s generally regarded as a sign of sleep deprivation or narcolepsy. Occasionally entering REM fast is normal, doing so the majority of times is not.) Various cognitive tests are common as well.
Placebo Effect – over 2 hours a day due to placebo?
In part. Placebo sleep seems to be a fairly strong effect. Thinking that you slept well does actually seem to help you. So it stands to reason that thinking polyphasic sleep works would make you feel and act a bit more rested on a polyphasic schedule.
We are talking about two hours a day in extreme cases. No-one naturally sleeps just two hours a day. (If I am wrong here, correct me).
There are many cases in the literature of very short sleepers, even as short as you suggest would be unnatural. One individual comes to mind immediately: Al Herpin claimed to not sleep at all, and some evidence does support his claim. It’s not hard to find people who claim to sleep about 4 hours per day, and the short sleep does appear to at least partially be explained by genetics. While I am skeptical when someone claims to sleep that little, I don’t see any reason to doubt these claims more than the claims of people who claim to use polyphasic sleep to reduce sleep need dramatically. Many of these folks (i.e., claimed short sleepers and polyphasic sleepers) likely are true short sleepers, and many probably are victims of sleep state misperception.
The fact that most people who attempt polyphasic sleep fail is not some kind of covered-up fact or evidence against the concept. The website says so openly.
I never claimed polyphasic sleep folks cover this up. They engage in run-of-the-mill denialism. “Those people did polyphasic sleep wrong.” That’s possible, but given that many people have tried it and whether or not they fail doesn’t seem to have much to do with what specifically they did, the most likely explanation is that polyphasic sleep doesn’t work, especially the most extreme types. Most people who try polyphasic sleep seem very enthusiastic, and they want it to work. They are like you. They put a lot of willpower into it, and seem very interested in doing it right. I don’t doubt their sincerity or that they did what they were told. Indeed, I don’t doubt anyone’s sincerity here (as I said, I don’t think anyone is lying).
And 3. Do you really think all the people doing polyphasic sleep don’t notice that they actually don’t sleep less than before? (This is the weakest point, I could believe that it were the case if evidence pointed in that direction).
No. It’s not a question of sleeping less than before, rather, of whether they achieve optimal levels of restedness. Standard advice is follow good sleep hygiene practices (most people don’t), treat sleep disorders, and sleep for a duration at which you feel rested. I doubt polyphasic sleep would work as well as that, and I think if one did a cost-benefit analysis, they’d find the costs of sleep deprivation outweigh the time benefits.
I could see someone pointing out a potential contradiction in my post in that I suggested people who use polyphasic sleep could suffer from sleep state misperception, but that they think they sleep a reduced amount. What I mean is that a polyphasic sleep proponent might believe they sleep only X hours, but they accidentally are asleep Y additional hours, which they are unaware of. For example, this could occur when they are reading or sitting down idly. As far as they are aware, they sleep less, but in reality they might sleep an amount closer to their previous amount than they believe. I don’t think this contradicts anything I’ve said.
There are many additional possibilities other than “polyphasic sleep is reducing my sleep need”. As ChristianKl suggested, perhaps having a more regular schedule is helping. Perhaps it’s not so much the regular schedule as it is reducing time spent in bed awake, which as I recall can correlate better with feelings of restfulness than total sleep duration. (Consolidating one’s sleep into more continuous blocks is frequently a goal of people with sleep trouble, and the therapy is basically sleep deprivation, not unlike what I believe you are doing to yourself.) Maybe you are actually a short sleeper who previously had poor sleep quality that a consolidated schedule has fixed. Perhaps it’s something other than any of these possibilities. Given that the evidence supporting polyphasic sleep is weak at best, I encourage you to take these other possibilities more seriously. I should have given these possibilities more consideration as well, and I do now. I think there’s a strong possibility that your apparent improved restedness is not from polyphasic sleep, rather, some other change you made recently.
Okay.
First, I concede that some of those are possible and admit that you might be correct.
Second, there are a bunch of issues with your argumentation here.
You’re mixing things together. If I adapted a polyphasic schedule and also fixed real issues in the process, and have now significantly better sleep due to fixing those, then I am not “mildly deluded yourself and are avoiding disconfirming evidence.” (note also that I am not avoiding any evidence because I have never encountered any evidence against p/s until today). Instead, I am correctly observing better sleep and am just attributing it incorrectly. So those are different things.
The argument is circular. You say that
evidence for polyphasic sleep is weak → your improvements probably come from other sources → they are not evidence for polyphasic sleep → evidence for polyphasic sleep is weak
Consider my perspective for a moment. Polyphasic Society prophesied a bunch if one does X , I estimated that they were credible based on presentation, I did X, I got pretty much exactly what was promised in about as much time as I thought it would take. Now you come telling me that all improvements are due to side effects and p/s has actually zero benefits. That’s not impossible, but clearly less plausible. Why should I believe it?
. 3. The paragraph reads stronger than the arguments actually are. Let me untangle them
3.1. A more regular schedule is the real cause – as I already said, this is the most likely explanation (in fact I added this as a disclaimer to every person I told about my habits and improvements IRL)
3.2. Reducing time spent in bed awake – Not the case, I think it has increased.
3.3. Consolidated sleep is the real cause – wait what?
3.4. Maybe something else – well this is a deux-ex-machina argument. Just stating that there are points in your favor that you are not aware of does not get assigned any weight in a discussion.
So really it’s still only 3.1
I also would suggest conducting more objective studies into your sleepiness.
Honestly, this just seems silly. The experience of tiredness is subjective. What matters is how tired I feel, and I feel significantly less tired than previously (except in the morning, as I’ve said already, and this is improving). I mean I get the argument that it could be placebo, but all of my life experience suggests that tiredness is an unstoppable force that only extreme feelings can really change. You – or at least I – can’t make myself less tired by force of will. It just doesn’t work.
That’s possible, but given that many people have tried it [[and whether or not they fail doesn’t seem to have much to do with what specifically they did]], the most likely explanation is that polyphasic sleep doesn’t work.
(excluding the [[]]): See, you’re assuming here that the number is lower than what should be expected, and that needs explaining. I don’t think that’s true. Like,
– Even the simplest polyphasic schedule is hard to adapt to
– Most people try harder ones first (that already gives you a majority that’ll almost unanimously fail)
– Most people probably don’t do it correctly
– Most people probably don’t try that hard (more controversially, most people are lazy to begin with)
I think 5% is a fine number to arrive at the bottom line of that filtering process. I don’t see any denial. This seems to be your main argument, and I don’t think it’s a good one.
(addressing the [[]]): Now that’s a really bold statement. Do you have evidence?
You’re mixing things together. If I adapted a polyphasic schedule and also fixed real issues in the process, and have now significantly better sleep due to fixing those, then I am not “mildly deluded yourself and are avoiding disconfirming evidence.” [...] Instead, I am correctly observing better sleep and am just attributing it incorrectly. So those are different things.
You are correct. This is exactly what I meant by “I should have given these possibilities more consideration as well, and I do now.”. I should have also changed the earlier part of my post to back away more from the placebo and wishful thinking statements. The purpose of the elaboration was to explain my earlier statements in greater detail.
(note also that I am not avoiding any evidence because I have never encountered any evidence against p/s until today).
That is not what I meant. As an example, consider that you dropped a glass of water. Someone who was tired might attribute that to being tired, but someone who very strongly wanted to believe that polyphasic sleep worked would probably try to find an explanation other than that they were tired.
The argument is circular. You say that [...]
No, I think you are putting words into my mouth. My assessment of the weakness of evidence for short polyphasic sleep schedules is based primarily on the a) evidence that it does not work, including self-reported evidence (most people completely fail, and I see no reason to believe they all are “doing it wrong”, etc.) and b) the fact that the standard mechanisms by which it could work are not plausible. I actually started investigating polyphasic sleep thinking the idea was plausible, but the more evidence I encountered, the less I believed.
I believe I have discussed a in sufficient detail.
For b, polyphasic sleep proponents used to claim that polyphasic sleep allows you to go into REM quickly, and REM was all you need, therefore polyphasic sleep was more efficient. To be fair, some of this is true, but the general message is false. The studies I linked to in my posts from 2014 suggest that deep sleep is the most important, but there’s reason to believe all stages are important. With that said, as I recall (will need to dig up the study for this), certain antidepressants completely suppress REM and those people are doing fine best I can tell (at least compared against other folks on similar antidepressants without REM suppression). The technical term for a sleep period where one goes in to REM fast is SOREMP and it’s taken as a symptom of either severe sleep deprivation or narcolepsy, and not regarded as good thing.
So, a better argument would be that polyphasic sleep allows one to get the same or greater amount of deep sleep, while reducing time in less important stages of sleep. This by itself seemed plausible to me in 2014, so I looked more into it. Unfortunately, as I stated in my 2014 posts, in actual polyphasic sleep, you experience each stage of sleep in relatively the same proportion as you did before. Both REM and deep sleep decrease. (Please note that this is contrary to what the Polyphasic Society claims! Their claims: “The body can also change the first portion of a ‘core sleep’ from mostly stage 1 and 2, to mostly stage 3 (SWS)” and “Because you are sleeping more often and getting dream-full REM in your multiple sleeps, you will be dreaming more!”)
There are also some arguments like “this is how our ancestors slept, therefore it’s how you should sleep too”. There are a few things I think about this. First, it does seem that many of our ancestors did do some sort of biphasic sleep, either with a gap in the middle of the night or a nap in the afternoon. I don’t think this was done to reduce sleep time, so it’s not an argument for those sorts of schedules. Also, while evolutionary arguments are okay for generating hypotheses, they also need to fit the evidence, and as I said, the evidence really isn’t a point in polyphasic sleep’s favor.
Consider my perspective for a moment. Polyphasic Society prophesied a bunch if one does X , I estimated that they were credible based on presentation, I did X, I got pretty much exactly what was promised in about as much time as I thought it would take. Now you come telling me that all improvements are due to side effects and p/s has actually zero benefits. That’s not impossible, but clearly less plausible. Why should I believe it?
You should believe me because the Polyphasic Society’s arguments are based on faulty understandings of sleep, and are contradicted by empirical studies, many of which were conducted by someone they hold in high regard, Claudio Stampi. See here for additional details.
And what is it about the presentation of the Polyphasic Society that makes them seem credible? Their assertions generally have no citations. They seem like your standard alt-med website, which I don’t consider credible.
If polyphasic sleep worked, you would see it advocated by sleep doctors and researchers, and also used by the military. These people are not unfamiliar with the idea. As I recall, the military is very interested in optimizing sleep, but they focus on things that actually work, like good sleep hygiene and getting physical exercise.
The paragraph reads stronger than the arguments actually are. Let me untangle them [...]
There are a very large number of possibilities. I mentioned consolidated sleep as an example because I know many people wake up frequently and this prevents them from having good sleep quality. Look up sleep hygiene. Any number of those pieces of advice could have had a big effect. Personally, I find having a regular schedule to be of the greatest help to me, but that might not be the case for others. I can not pin down what’s happening to you other than that I do not believe polyphasic sleep by itself is helping.
Honestly, this just seems silly. The experience of tiredness is subjective. What matters is how tired I feel, and I feel significantly less tired than previously (except in the morning, as I’ve said already, and this is improving).
Experience is subjective by definition. Why being tired is bad is not necessarily subjective, however. Does it matter if you subjectively “feel” awake if you’ll fall asleep if you sit down for 10 minutes? Does it matter if you subjectively “feel” awake if your cognitive performance is reduced?
See, you’re assuming here that the number is lower than what should be expected, and that needs explaining. I don’t think that’s true.
In my 2014 posts, I used a success rate which was based on numbers from a major polyphasic sleep proponent. Personally, I think this number is very high (i.e., the failure rate is lower than I would put it at), but I have not done the polyphasic sleep census I think would be necessary to figure out it more precisely. I choose this number as it was the only one I saw available, and I thought it would be hard to accuse me of trying to paint polyphasic sleep in a bad light if I used a number from a proponent, but I guess I was wrong.
– Most people try harder ones first (that already gives you a majority that’ll almost unanimously fail)
I am unsure. My own experience suggests that people gravitate towards the less extreme forms, as you did. I’m not aware of any polyphasic sleep census which would allow one to determine this.
– Most people probably don’t do it correctly
I’ve seen a wide variety of reasons given for why people fail, and it seems to be to basically be variations of the No true Scotsman fallacy or even straight up cherry picking. Sure, I’d expect many people who attempted polyphasic sleep to have done it wrong. I, however, see no reason to conclude that almost everyone who tried it did it wrong. The procedure does not seem that complicated and I do not think it’s particularly sensitive to many variables. The base rate for success for these sorts of things in general seems to be higher. I need a better explanation than just asserting that the majority of people do it wrong. Evidence for this assertion would be appreciated.
– Most people probably don’t try that hard (more controversially, most people are lazy to begin with)
I definitely do not believe that most people who try polyphasic sleep don’t try that hard. I’ve skimmed blogs where people tried this and the overwhelming impression I got was that they tried really really hard. And usually they seemed to think it would work up until they quit. This was my impression. I’d like to see some sort of polyphasic sleep census to help answer these questions, as I’ve said, that doesn’t exist.
One person I know tried polyphasic sleep, and as I recall, they definitely tried hard, but ultimately failed.
(addressing the [[]]): Now that’s a really bold statement. Do you have evidence?
I do not think this is a bold statement at all. It comes from my reading about polyphasic sleep over the years. I got the impression from people who failed that they did do exactly as they were told (or nearly so) and did try hard. That’s what I meant. Again, absent a polyphasic sleep census, I can’t give stronger evidence than pointing out a few of the blogs I recall skimming through. I’d be happy to do a few minutes of digging if you are interested.
Consider my perspective for a moment. Polyphasic Society prophesied a bunch if one does X , I estimated that they were credible based on presentation, I did X, I got pretty much exactly what was promised in about as much time as I thought it would take. Now you come telling me that all improvements are due to side effects and p/s has actually zero benefits. That’s not impossible, but clearly less plausible. Why should I believe it?
A lot of people believe in various alternative medicine paradigms because they make some predictions that turn out correct for themselves.
Do you think that in general controlled scientific trials aren’t necessary to gather firm knowledge?
That is a rhetoric question, and I don’t think it has anything to do with evaluation of evidence in the absence of controlled scientific trials. I’ll also note that there is a lot of evidence for Placebo having strong effects on health, but (afaik) not on total duration of sleep.
There’s scientific work on sleep and you believe in a hypothesis about sleep based on what you read on a website and limited personal experience.
You ask “Why should I believe it?” when someone tries to explain your experience with phenomena that are established by the scientific literature instead of trying to explain it with an alternative theory that’s favored by some people on the internet.
Newborns do sleep polyphasic but they sleep a lot more than two or three hours per day.
According to the article: “Finally, newborns vary greatly in the total amount of time they spend sleeping. In the first few days, the average newborn sleeps between 16-18 hours a day (Iglowstein et al 2002). By four weeks, newborn sleep averages about 14 hours.”
I believe in science. I don’t believe “science”. Their are supposed scientific studies proving all kinds of wrong things.
Maybe you took the fact that I haven’t responded further to the initial big posts as me rejecting further information. That’s not right. I intend to do more research. I just really have no time for it now, or in the coming two weeks and some. As of now, this whole discussion lead me to the state of belief that you’re probably just wrong and polyphasic sleep works, but only with about 70% confidence. That number could easily go down further.
You also shifted from “there could be some other explanations, maybe, if you aren’t just imagining sleeping less” to “there are scientific studies proving that your benefits come from other sources!”.
You also shifted from “there could be some other explanations, maybe, if you aren’t just imagining sleeping less” to “there are scientific studies proving that your benefits come from other sources!”.
No, you are not reading carefully.
I’m saying that you don’t need new hypothesis to explain the effects you got and that they can be explained by established effects, suggests that the experience isn’t evidence for the new hypothesis.
polyphasic sleep works, but only with about 70% confidence
“Works” is a very underspecified statement. In particular, I’m curious whether you mean “works for most people”, “works for some people”, or “works for a few people”.
I think it’s pretty evident that it does not work for everyone, but people for whom it works exist. So the question is really “for which part of which population does it work?”
I think it’s pretty evident that it does not work for everyone, but people for whom it works exist.
I don’t think that it’s evident that there are people who can sleep 2 hours per day with Uberman without taking a hit in some important cognitive functions.
There are many more reports on the internet of people who claim to eat nothing and live on light then there are people who claim to be successful on Uberman for longer periods of time.
I think we were arguing not about the applicability of p/s, but about the theory. So I meant “p/s works” = “splitting sleep into multiple phases in certain ways does increase efficiency and makes you require less sleep”
If that is not the case, I wouldn’t say p/s “worked” for me. Trying it would still have been one of the best decision I’ve made in years, but it would only be so because i also fixed real problems in the process. In that world, I would have achieved the same by improving hygiene and nutrition and fixing my schedule to regular, monophasic sleep, and arguably with less effort (although I actually kind of like the nightly hours, I might keep this even if I come to believe that it doesn’t improve efficiency.).
People are different. Few interventions (including chemical) work for literally everyone—e.g. some people just don’t react to common drugs or react in a way which the doctors politely call “paradoxical”. So even in theory p/s might work for some but not all people.
It seems to me that the closest analogy is diet. Take low-carb—does it “work”? The answer is: it depends. It does wonders for some people, does nothing for others, and screws up the third bunch. Unless you understand the mechanism by which it either works or doesn’t, all you can do is provide priors (e.g. works for 30%, does nothing for 60%, screws up 10% [fake numbers]) and say “try it and see if it works for you”.
I would want the same type of answer for the polyphasic sleep. What do you think are the baseline probabilities for, say, four potential outcomes?
OK, so basically you think that one in ten will benefit, nine in ten will suffer (and, presumably, revert back to “normal” sleep), and some small number will think it’s all the same. Hmm…
So I meant “p/s works” = “splitting sleep into multiple phases in certain ways does increase efficiency and makes you require less sleep”
This appears to be true if you must be sleep deprived. That is, if you want to operate at X% function, where X is less than 100, likely less than 70 or so, you would need to sleep a shorter duration on a polyphasic schedule than you would on a monophasic schedule. (“X% function” is somewhat vague, but I trust you understand what I mean.)
However, if you want high X% function (say, higher than 90%) then the required sleep durations appear to be the same in either case. This could easily make polyphasic sleep likely less efficient considering logistics (time spent getting into bed, etc.) and time to fall asleep.
I’d recommend taking a look at Stampi’s book for more information on polyphasic sleep being efficient for sleep deprivation but not so for normal levels of sleep. I also want to note that the estimated percentages I gave above are for illustration only. Look at Stampi’s book for more accurate information. I do not have a copy any longer.
I strongly disagree about polyphasic sleep. Here’s a series of posts of mine here explaining why I don’t think polyphasic sleep works. I’m surprised how many rationalists seem to believe it works. The evidence supporting using polyphasic sleep to reduce sleep need is weak at best, and at worst the idea seems actively harmful. I suspect you are seeing some combination of a placebo effect and wishful thinking. Perhaps that’s impolite to say, but I think attempting to use polyphasic sleep to reduce sleep need is overall harmful to most people, and I want to highlight that.
Once I recall reading on the polyphasic sleep reddit that polyphasic sleep is a better way to manage sleep deprivation. That is to say, if you need to be sleep deprived, you’d do better on a polyphasic schedule. This seems reasonable to me. To be clear, it appears that to feel fully rested and get the full health benefits, you’d need to sleep a normal duration, regardless of how it’s broken up. Polyphasic might be more convenient, but the duration will be comparable.
Perhaps lucid dreaming or something similar could help you regain time “lost” to sleep. Or, you could look into what actually might reduce sleep need like the drugs I mentioned, or physical exercise.
There are many people who work well on 6 hours. siIver might sleep better because he moved from an inconsistent schedule to a more consistent one.
Fair point. There likely are other possibilities as well.
Segmented sleep, what silver claims to be doing, was the norm of human society before electric lighting.
The evidence that segmented sleep was the norm does not appear to be particularly strong, but it certainly has enough historical references to suggest it was common. Further, I don’t think segmented sleep was done for the purpose of reducing sleep need. Correct me if I’m wrong.
To put it another way: segmented sleep with an alarm clock was never the norm.
I don’t think that’s harmful to say, but I think you’re wrong. I’m doing it. It’s working. There is your evidence.
Let me respond to your suggested explanations
1| Wishful Thinking – what does that even mean? I am sleeping more than 2 hours less per day than I did for 99% of my life and am less tired than I was on average for the past 5 years. That is an observable fact. I’m not oversleeping constantly and pretending as if that wasn’t the case. You either take that as a fact, or think I am deliberately lying, or think I am insane and unable to count to ten. Or I guess that I’m so wishful that I don’t notice what by now must be massive sleep deprivation after a month of cutting much needed sleep.
Placebo Effect – over 2 hours a day due to placebo?
Sorry, those are not the least bit convincing. The explanation ChrstianKl offered is the only one that has odds significantly over zero. If it is true, then I’ve been doing myself a massive disservice by having an inconsistent schedule for most of my life. Could be.
That is also really unconvincing.
We are talking about two hours a day in extreme cases. No-one naturally sleeps just two hours a day. (If I am wrong here, correct me).
The fact that most people who attempt polyphasic sleep fail is not some kind of covered-up fact or evidence against the concept. The website says so openly. Quote:
And at another point they say that no-one has ever been able to adapt to Uberman on his own (meaning without help). I am also not surprised as even adapting my current schedule, which is super easy in comparison, has all in all been very hard. I managed to do it because I set it as my top priority and put lots of will power into it. And if it is true that Uberman is much more commonly attempted—yeah, the 5% number sounds plausible.
And 3. Do you really think all the people doing polyphasic sleep don’t notice that they actually don’t sleep less than before? (This is the weakest point, I could believe that it were the case if evidence pointed in that direction).
I have one anecdote from a girl who said she was sleeping an hour a day for a year in a context where there wasn’t any reason for her to not be truthful about it. She didn’t even take any modafinil.
More importantly you think that there are a people who do long-term sleep of 2 hours per day with Uberman. Puredoxyk didn’t stay more than half a year on the Uberman schedule. See my answer at Skeptics SE: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/1007/196 If there are reports of people who lived long-term on polyphasic sleep that happened after 2011 when I wrote my post and that escaped my notice, please provide links.
A lot of people do well on six hours of sleep. Managing on six hours is not an extraordinary claim. It’s well established in the literature that regular sleep schedules lead to better sleep.
You could also have gotten the same effect of feeling less tired easily with modafinil. Sleeping less without feeling tired doesn’t mean that the sleep has all the benefitial effects that sleep commonly has.
It’s worth noting that both btrettel and myself are well read in this subject and had discussions before about it. We aren’t simply judging something as not working because we don’t have information.
I appreciate the detailed reply.
Your statements are evidence, but not particularly convincing evidence to me.
I do not believe you or anyone else involved in polyphasic sleep are deliberately lying, rather, I believe you have mildly deluded yourself and are avoiding disconfirming evidence. Let me be clear: mild delusion. You can clearly count to ten, etc. Again, this is rude to say, but look at it from my perspective. Sleep is important, and polyphasic sleep folks seem to get so much wrong about it, and they encourage people to get so little sleep. So I hope you excuse the potential rudeness and see this as a sincere attempt to help you.
It can be difficult to know how impaired you are when you are tired. That is especially true when combined with the strong desire for polyphasic sleep to work.
There are many additional possibilities other than “polyphasic sleep is reducing my sleep need”. As ChristianKl suggested, perhaps having a more regular schedule is helping. Perhaps it’s not so much the regular schedule as it is reducing time spent in bed awake, which as I recall can correlate better with feelings of restfulness than total sleep duration. (Consolidating one’s sleep into more continuous blocks is frequently a goal of people with sleep trouble, and the therapy is basically sleep deprivation, not unlike what I believe you are doing to yourself.) Maybe you are actually a short sleeper who previously had poor sleep quality that a consolidated schedule has fixed. Perhaps it’s something other than any of these possibilities. Given that the evidence supporting polyphasic sleep is weak at best, I encourage you to take these other possibilities more seriously. I should have given these possibilities more consideration as well, and I do now. I think there’s a strong possibility that your apparent improved restedness is not from polyphasic sleep, rather, some other change you made recently.
I also would suggest conducting more objective studies into your sleepiness. A basic measure of sleepiness is the Epworth sleepiness scale, but it is entirely subjective and may be a poor measure. The MLST is the standard objective test for sleepiness, but requires equipment to measure the onset of sleep, and it can be misleading if one suffers from insomnia. One can look at other measures, like, for example, how quickly one enters REM sleep upon falling asleep. That can be a measure of sleep deprivation. (As I said in other posts, despite the volume of things polyphasic sleep folks have written about how entering REM quickly most of the time is the goal of polyphasic sleep, it’s generally regarded as a sign of sleep deprivation or narcolepsy. Occasionally entering REM fast is normal, doing so the majority of times is not.) Various cognitive tests are common as well.
In part. Placebo sleep seems to be a fairly strong effect. Thinking that you slept well does actually seem to help you. So it stands to reason that thinking polyphasic sleep works would make you feel and act a bit more rested on a polyphasic schedule.
There are many cases in the literature of very short sleepers, even as short as you suggest would be unnatural. One individual comes to mind immediately: Al Herpin claimed to not sleep at all, and some evidence does support his claim. It’s not hard to find people who claim to sleep about 4 hours per day, and the short sleep does appear to at least partially be explained by genetics. While I am skeptical when someone claims to sleep that little, I don’t see any reason to doubt these claims more than the claims of people who claim to use polyphasic sleep to reduce sleep need dramatically. Many of these folks (i.e., claimed short sleepers and polyphasic sleepers) likely are true short sleepers, and many probably are victims of sleep state misperception.
I never claimed polyphasic sleep folks cover this up. They engage in run-of-the-mill denialism. “Those people did polyphasic sleep wrong.” That’s possible, but given that many people have tried it and whether or not they fail doesn’t seem to have much to do with what specifically they did, the most likely explanation is that polyphasic sleep doesn’t work, especially the most extreme types. Most people who try polyphasic sleep seem very enthusiastic, and they want it to work. They are like you. They put a lot of willpower into it, and seem very interested in doing it right. I don’t doubt their sincerity or that they did what they were told. Indeed, I don’t doubt anyone’s sincerity here (as I said, I don’t think anyone is lying).
No. It’s not a question of sleeping less than before, rather, of whether they achieve optimal levels of restedness. Standard advice is follow good sleep hygiene practices (most people don’t), treat sleep disorders, and sleep for a duration at which you feel rested. I doubt polyphasic sleep would work as well as that, and I think if one did a cost-benefit analysis, they’d find the costs of sleep deprivation outweigh the time benefits.
I could see someone pointing out a potential contradiction in my post in that I suggested people who use polyphasic sleep could suffer from sleep state misperception, but that they think they sleep a reduced amount. What I mean is that a polyphasic sleep proponent might believe they sleep only X hours, but they accidentally are asleep Y additional hours, which they are unaware of. For example, this could occur when they are reading or sitting down idly. As far as they are aware, they sleep less, but in reality they might sleep an amount closer to their previous amount than they believe. I don’t think this contradicts anything I’ve said.
(Will respond to a part, no time for everything)
Okay.
First, I concede that some of those are possible and admit that you might be correct.
Second, there are a bunch of issues with your argumentation here.
You’re mixing things together. If I adapted a polyphasic schedule and also fixed real issues in the process, and have now significantly better sleep due to fixing those, then I am not “mildly deluded yourself and are avoiding disconfirming evidence.” (note also that I am not avoiding any evidence because I have never encountered any evidence against p/s until today). Instead, I am correctly observing better sleep and am just attributing it incorrectly. So those are different things.
The argument is circular. You say that
evidence for polyphasic sleep is weak → your improvements probably come from other sources → they are not evidence for polyphasic sleep → evidence for polyphasic sleep is weak
Consider my perspective for a moment. Polyphasic Society prophesied a bunch if one does X , I estimated that they were credible based on presentation, I did X, I got pretty much exactly what was promised in about as much time as I thought it would take. Now you come telling me that all improvements are due to side effects and p/s has actually zero benefits. That’s not impossible, but clearly less plausible. Why should I believe it?
. 3. The paragraph reads stronger than the arguments actually are. Let me untangle them
3.1. A more regular schedule is the real cause – as I already said, this is the most likely explanation (in fact I added this as a disclaimer to every person I told about my habits and improvements IRL)
3.2. Reducing time spent in bed awake – Not the case, I think it has increased.
3.3. Consolidated sleep is the real cause – wait what?
3.4. Maybe something else – well this is a deux-ex-machina argument. Just stating that there are points in your favor that you are not aware of does not get assigned any weight in a discussion.
So really it’s still only 3.1
Honestly, this just seems silly. The experience of tiredness is subjective. What matters is how tired I feel, and I feel significantly less tired than previously (except in the morning, as I’ve said already, and this is improving). I mean I get the argument that it could be placebo, but all of my life experience suggests that tiredness is an unstoppable force that only extreme feelings can really change. You – or at least I – can’t make myself less tired by force of will. It just doesn’t work.
(excluding the [[]]): See, you’re assuming here that the number is lower than what should be expected, and that needs explaining. I don’t think that’s true. Like,
– Even the simplest polyphasic schedule is hard to adapt to
– Most people try harder ones first (that already gives you a majority that’ll almost unanimously fail)
– Most people probably don’t do it correctly
– Most people probably don’t try that hard (more controversially, most people are lazy to begin with)
I think 5% is a fine number to arrive at the bottom line of that filtering process. I don’t see any denial. This seems to be your main argument, and I don’t think it’s a good one.
(addressing the [[]]): Now that’s a really bold statement. Do you have evidence?
You are correct. This is exactly what I meant by “I should have given these possibilities more consideration as well, and I do now.”. I should have also changed the earlier part of my post to back away more from the placebo and wishful thinking statements. The purpose of the elaboration was to explain my earlier statements in greater detail.
That is not what I meant. As an example, consider that you dropped a glass of water. Someone who was tired might attribute that to being tired, but someone who very strongly wanted to believe that polyphasic sleep worked would probably try to find an explanation other than that they were tired.
No, I think you are putting words into my mouth. My assessment of the weakness of evidence for short polyphasic sleep schedules is based primarily on the a) evidence that it does not work, including self-reported evidence (most people completely fail, and I see no reason to believe they all are “doing it wrong”, etc.) and b) the fact that the standard mechanisms by which it could work are not plausible. I actually started investigating polyphasic sleep thinking the idea was plausible, but the more evidence I encountered, the less I believed.
I believe I have discussed a in sufficient detail.
For b, polyphasic sleep proponents used to claim that polyphasic sleep allows you to go into REM quickly, and REM was all you need, therefore polyphasic sleep was more efficient. To be fair, some of this is true, but the general message is false. The studies I linked to in my posts from 2014 suggest that deep sleep is the most important, but there’s reason to believe all stages are important. With that said, as I recall (will need to dig up the study for this), certain antidepressants completely suppress REM and those people are doing fine best I can tell (at least compared against other folks on similar antidepressants without REM suppression). The technical term for a sleep period where one goes in to REM fast is SOREMP and it’s taken as a symptom of either severe sleep deprivation or narcolepsy, and not regarded as good thing.
So, a better argument would be that polyphasic sleep allows one to get the same or greater amount of deep sleep, while reducing time in less important stages of sleep. This by itself seemed plausible to me in 2014, so I looked more into it. Unfortunately, as I stated in my 2014 posts, in actual polyphasic sleep, you experience each stage of sleep in relatively the same proportion as you did before. Both REM and deep sleep decrease. (Please note that this is contrary to what the Polyphasic Society claims! Their claims: “The body can also change the first portion of a ‘core sleep’ from mostly stage 1 and 2, to mostly stage 3 (SWS)” and “Because you are sleeping more often and getting dream-full REM in your multiple sleeps, you will be dreaming more!”)
There are also some arguments like “this is how our ancestors slept, therefore it’s how you should sleep too”. There are a few things I think about this. First, it does seem that many of our ancestors did do some sort of biphasic sleep, either with a gap in the middle of the night or a nap in the afternoon. I don’t think this was done to reduce sleep time, so it’s not an argument for those sorts of schedules. Also, while evolutionary arguments are okay for generating hypotheses, they also need to fit the evidence, and as I said, the evidence really isn’t a point in polyphasic sleep’s favor.
You should believe me because the Polyphasic Society’s arguments are based on faulty understandings of sleep, and are contradicted by empirical studies, many of which were conducted by someone they hold in high regard, Claudio Stampi. See here for additional details.
And what is it about the presentation of the Polyphasic Society that makes them seem credible? Their assertions generally have no citations. They seem like your standard alt-med website, which I don’t consider credible.
If polyphasic sleep worked, you would see it advocated by sleep doctors and researchers, and also used by the military. These people are not unfamiliar with the idea. As I recall, the military is very interested in optimizing sleep, but they focus on things that actually work, like good sleep hygiene and getting physical exercise.
There are a very large number of possibilities. I mentioned consolidated sleep as an example because I know many people wake up frequently and this prevents them from having good sleep quality. Look up sleep hygiene. Any number of those pieces of advice could have had a big effect. Personally, I find having a regular schedule to be of the greatest help to me, but that might not be the case for others. I can not pin down what’s happening to you other than that I do not believe polyphasic sleep by itself is helping.
Experience is subjective by definition. Why being tired is bad is not necessarily subjective, however. Does it matter if you subjectively “feel” awake if you’ll fall asleep if you sit down for 10 minutes? Does it matter if you subjectively “feel” awake if your cognitive performance is reduced?
In my 2014 posts, I used a success rate which was based on numbers from a major polyphasic sleep proponent. Personally, I think this number is very high (i.e., the failure rate is lower than I would put it at), but I have not done the polyphasic sleep census I think would be necessary to figure out it more precisely. I choose this number as it was the only one I saw available, and I thought it would be hard to accuse me of trying to paint polyphasic sleep in a bad light if I used a number from a proponent, but I guess I was wrong.
I am unsure. My own experience suggests that people gravitate towards the less extreme forms, as you did. I’m not aware of any polyphasic sleep census which would allow one to determine this.
I’ve seen a wide variety of reasons given for why people fail, and it seems to be to basically be variations of the No true Scotsman fallacy or even straight up cherry picking. Sure, I’d expect many people who attempted polyphasic sleep to have done it wrong. I, however, see no reason to conclude that almost everyone who tried it did it wrong. The procedure does not seem that complicated and I do not think it’s particularly sensitive to many variables. The base rate for success for these sorts of things in general seems to be higher. I need a better explanation than just asserting that the majority of people do it wrong. Evidence for this assertion would be appreciated.
I definitely do not believe that most people who try polyphasic sleep don’t try that hard. I’ve skimmed blogs where people tried this and the overwhelming impression I got was that they tried really really hard. And usually they seemed to think it would work up until they quit. This was my impression. I’d like to see some sort of polyphasic sleep census to help answer these questions, as I’ve said, that doesn’t exist.
One person I know tried polyphasic sleep, and as I recall, they definitely tried hard, but ultimately failed.
I do not think this is a bold statement at all. It comes from my reading about polyphasic sleep over the years. I got the impression from people who failed that they did do exactly as they were told (or nearly so) and did try hard. That’s what I meant. Again, absent a polyphasic sleep census, I can’t give stronger evidence than pointing out a few of the blogs I recall skimming through. I’d be happy to do a few minutes of digging if you are interested.
A lot of people believe in various alternative medicine paradigms because they make some predictions that turn out correct for themselves.
Do you think that in general controlled scientific trials aren’t necessary to gather firm knowledge?
That is a rhetoric question, and I don’t think it has anything to do with evaluation of evidence in the absence of controlled scientific trials. I’ll also note that there is a lot of evidence for Placebo having strong effects on health, but (afaik) not on total duration of sleep.
There’s scientific work on sleep and you believe in a hypothesis about sleep based on what you read on a website and limited personal experience.
You ask “Why should I believe it?” when someone tries to explain your experience with phenomena that are established by the scientific literature instead of trying to explain it with an alternative theory that’s favored by some people on the internet.
The REAL polyphasic sleep pattern set:
Newborn sleep patterns A survival guide for the science-minded parent
http://www.parentingscience.com/newborn-sleep.html
Some good info in the article
Newborns do sleep polyphasic but they sleep a lot more than two or three hours per day.
According to the article: “Finally, newborns vary greatly in the total amount of time they spend sleeping. In the first few days, the average newborn sleeps between 16-18 hours a day (Iglowstein et al 2002). By four weeks, newborn sleep averages about 14 hours.”
I believe in science. I don’t believe “science”. Their are supposed scientific studies proving all kinds of wrong things.
Maybe you took the fact that I haven’t responded further to the initial big posts as me rejecting further information. That’s not right. I intend to do more research. I just really have no time for it now, or in the coming two weeks and some. As of now, this whole discussion lead me to the state of belief that you’re probably just wrong and polyphasic sleep works, but only with about 70% confidence. That number could easily go down further.
You also shifted from “there could be some other explanations, maybe, if you aren’t just imagining sleeping less” to “there are scientific studies proving that your benefits come from other sources!”.
No, you are not reading carefully.
I’m saying that you don’t need new hypothesis to explain the effects you got and that they can be explained by established effects, suggests that the experience isn’t evidence for the new hypothesis.
“Works” is a very underspecified statement. In particular, I’m curious whether you mean “works for most people”, “works for some people”, or “works for a few people”.
I think it’s pretty evident that it does not work for everyone, but people for whom it works exist. So the question is really “for which part of which population does it work?”
I don’t think that it’s evident that there are people who can sleep 2 hours per day with Uberman without taking a hit in some important cognitive functions.
There are many more reports on the internet of people who claim to eat nothing and live on light then there are people who claim to be successful on Uberman for longer periods of time.
I think we were arguing not about the applicability of p/s, but about the theory. So I meant “p/s works” = “splitting sleep into multiple phases in certain ways does increase efficiency and makes you require less sleep”
If that is not the case, I wouldn’t say p/s “worked” for me. Trying it would still have been one of the best decision I’ve made in years, but it would only be so because i also fixed real problems in the process. In that world, I would have achieved the same by improving hygiene and nutrition and fixing my schedule to regular, monophasic sleep, and arguably with less effort (although I actually kind of like the nightly hours, I might keep this even if I come to believe that it doesn’t improve efficiency.).
People are different. Few interventions (including chemical) work for literally everyone—e.g. some people just don’t react to common drugs or react in a way which the doctors politely call “paradoxical”. So even in theory p/s might work for some but not all people.
It seems to me that the closest analogy is diet. Take low-carb—does it “work”? The answer is: it depends. It does wonders for some people, does nothing for others, and screws up the third bunch. Unless you understand the mechanism by which it either works or doesn’t, all you can do is provide priors (e.g. works for 30%, does nothing for 60%, screws up 10% [fake numbers]) and say “try it and see if it works for you”.
I would want the same type of answer for the polyphasic sleep. What do you think are the baseline probabilities for, say, four potential outcomes?
Makes things noticeably better
Makes things a bit better
Makes no difference
Makes things worse
You’d have to be more specific. Probabilities if what kind of person attempts or succeeds to adapt which schedule?
No specifics. General population (or if you want, take the half above the median), and any polyphasic schedule.
8.5% – 1% – 0.5% – 90%
But those feel frustratingly uninformed
OK, so basically you think that one in ten will benefit, nine in ten will suffer (and, presumably, revert back to “normal” sleep), and some small number will think it’s all the same. Hmm…
This appears to be true if you must be sleep deprived. That is, if you want to operate at X% function, where X is less than 100, likely less than 70 or so, you would need to sleep a shorter duration on a polyphasic schedule than you would on a monophasic schedule. (“X% function” is somewhat vague, but I trust you understand what I mean.)
However, if you want high X% function (say, higher than 90%) then the required sleep durations appear to be the same in either case. This could easily make polyphasic sleep likely less efficient considering logistics (time spent getting into bed, etc.) and time to fall asleep.
I’d recommend taking a look at Stampi’s book for more information on polyphasic sleep being efficient for sleep deprivation but not so for normal levels of sleep. I also want to note that the estimated percentages I gave above are for illustration only. Look at Stampi’s book for more accurate information. I do not have a copy any longer.