Finally something interesting…. I overslept, by four hours in my final nap of yesterday. I ave no idea why this happened, I went to sleep energetic and on a sort of high. Now ofcourse after my first nap after oversleeping I fel like fried shit. I slept through my alarm…. I will fix that tonight though,it will be connected to surround sound speakers.
2:6 report:
Ease in Sleeping: 6
Ease in Waking: 1
Ick level after waking: 8
Ick level after 20 minutes: 6
3:1 report:
Ease in Sleeping: 5
Ease in Waking: 5
Ick level after waking: 8
Ick level after 20 minutes: 4
This is really interesting, I’m curious as to how I can feel so fantastically untired and wonderful and then crash for four hours. Any polyphasers out there or people adjusting who care to comment?
Final thoughts: What the hell?
July 25th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Sleep is a complex process affected by many factors such as sleep debt, focus, circadian rhythm.
It seems that there is a reverse relationship between sleepiness and focus/consciousness. The sleepier you are the less focused you are. And in reverse the more focused you are the less sleepy you are. That increasing or decreasing one reversely affects the other.
It might have something to do with RAS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reticular_activating_system )
There might be a positive feedback homeostasis between RAS and sleep.
While you are awake and you have something to make you focused or excited you would feel less sleepy. It might even take you some time to relax and become sleepy. As you fall asleep the process probably continues. As you sleep becomes deeper and deeper, RAS is probably less and less active. So when you wake up it is hard to go from that very deep sleep state into focused state, it is very hard for something to catch your brain’s attention. If something important happens though (like you almost hit another car) you might suddenly become focused and the sleepiness would go away.
Here sleep debt might also be involved. When you have larger sleep debt you might be entering deeper stages of sleep faster and loosing your focus faster. In 10 minutes you might already be in SWS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow-wave_sleep)
Claudio Stampi’s research has shown that on polyphasic sleep body adapts by entering SWS and REM very fast. Some of the naps are usually SWS and the others are usually (REM). It might be that when you fall asleep you body chooses whether to enter SWS or REM. If you’ve been missing on REM your body might decide to skip SWS and enter REM directly. This might actually happen even on nonpolyphasic sleep and is called SOREM (Sleep onset REM). The higher sleep debt you have the faster you probably enter the needed sleep stage.
It is interesting to note that during REM sleep, the stage that most dream happen, the RAS is actually quite active. If you continue sleeping after the REM stage you start again from the lightest sleep then into deeper sleep and then into SWS, the deepest sleep. This might explain why it is much more easier to wake up during or right after REM. This might also explain why someone who is woken up after 2 hours of sleep might feel groggy and someone who who woke up after 20 minutes of sleep might feel very fresh.
Another major factor that affects sleep is circadian rhythm. During circadian low the balance shifts towards sleepiness and you become more sleepy and probably fall asleep faster and go into deeper sleep stages faster.
Wow, that was a long post. I must admit that most of it is speculation. But I had question similar to yours and these are some of the conclusions I came up with. I’ll probably also this theory in the google polyphasic sleep group.