[Dragaera] Sleep cycles

[Jerry Friedman]

--- On Fri, 1/22/10, Lydy Nickerson <lydy at demesne.com> wrote:
> > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jerry Friedman"
> "David Dyer-Bennet" <dd-b at dd-b.net>
> Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 11:08:01 AM GMT -08:00
> US/Canada Pacific Subject: Re: [Dragaera] Sleep cycles 
> > --- On Fri, 1/22/10, David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b at dd-b.net>
> wrote: ...   
> >>> I find I get an energy peak just about when I
> should be going to bed most days.   
>    
> >> Me too. 
> >>     
> >>> I think a 28 or so hour day might work very
> well for me.       
> >> When I was in college in the early '80s, I heard
> of a Caltech student who arranged his schedule so he could
> have six 28-hour days in every week. It sounded like heaven
> at the time. Now I need less sleep, and though the day we go
> off daylight savings time may be my favorite day of the
> year, I suspect that 25 or 26 hours would be perfect for me.
> 
> >> Jerry Friedman doesn't use caffeine or anything
> like it.     
> > 
> > While I'm no expert on sleep studies, anecdotal
> "evidence" that I have heard regarding such subjects leads
> me to believe that humans are very adaptable critters. We
> can probably adjust to just about any length of sleep to
> wake cycle, provided it is regular, and that it involves
> some amount of REM sleep. 
> > In general, I've heard that long cycles are less
> efficient than short ones. The "DaVinci" sleep cycle (aka
> Polyphasic sleep ) of 4 hours wakefulness to 15 minutes of
> sleep is one of the most efficient in terms of ratio between
> waking/sleeping states. Thomas Edison is reputed to have
> slept this way. 

I don't think I could do that, and if I could, it wouldn't
be all that efficient.  I can enjoy naps, but a 15-minute
nap probably requires at least an hour of inactivity for me,
and I often feel logy afterwards.

> > Longer periods, such as the 18 hour/6hour ratio that
> is common for most adult Americans involves a greater
> percentage of time asleep. (3:1) 
> > I've also heard of those on 24-hour sleep cycles,
> which involves staying up for 24 hours, then sleeping for 24
> hours.

I don't think I could do that either.
...
 
> I'm studying sleep right now, hope to become a
> polysomnographic technician, which is fancy talk for a sleep
> tech that puts all the wires on your head and watches you
> sleep.  Current thinking is that people do best if they
> can consolidate seven or eight hours of sleep. 
> Although some people can get by on six, most that do are
> experiencing sleep deprivation.

One question then is whether the ineffectiveness
caused by the sleep deprivation totally cancels out the
extra hour of wakefulness.

> Naps can be
> restorative, but they hav a high chance of causing you not
> to fall asleep at night when you need to.  The myth
> that people work best on a 25 hour day has been
> disproven.  It was the result of an early experiment,
> but has since been found to be experimental area. 
> (They didn't properly control for small lights in the
> office.)  So that's what I know, which isn't much, I
> admit.

It's good to hear from somebody who's really studied
this.  I don't know whether I'd work better on a
25-hour day, but I feel sure I'd be more comfortable.

Jerry Friedman