Polyphasic Sleep: Rest For Great Minds?

For many, polyphasic sleep is the dream of great minds, of the most creative figures. We know, for example, that Nikola Tesla slept between midnight and two in the morning. During the day, a nap was allowed. Albert Einstein, on the other hand, had a slightly longer night’s rest, which he completed with small daytime breaks.

The list of those who practiced this type of dream is longer than we think: Mozart, Voltaire, Balzac, Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, Sigmund Freud … That fragmented rest distributed throughout the day continues to be seen today as a strategy to be more productive. The assumption that the brightest minds in our past found it useful is for many reason enough to include it in their routines.

Now, is it healthy? Can something happen to us if we are tempted to convert monophasic sleep to polyphasic? Going from sleeping 8 hours straight to resting spread out throughout the day may not be a good idea. Let’s see why.

Polyphasic sleep: what it is, types and possible consequences

The objective of polyphasic sleep is none other than to achieve a longer wakefulness and a shorter and more concentrated sleep in small periods. It is clear that not all of us could achieve this pattern of rest no matter how much we wanted to. At the end of the day, the most common thing is to lie down and be immersed in a deep dream universe that remains constant for 6 or 7 hours in a row.

Now, there is no shortage of those restless and hyperactive minds that consider sleep as a waste of time. Why spend so many hours at night when we could do other things? That’s another idea of ​​polyphasic sleep: to achieve higher performance by “starting” and altering the hours of sleep-wake cycles.

Benjamin Franklin used to say that “he who goes to bed sooner and gets up sooner, is someone wise and rich . ” The phrase would have its originality if the famous politician, inventor and scientist had not overlooked a small detail: those who sleep little get up tired and are more likely to get sick.

Monophasic, biphasic and polyphasic sleep

Something that we undoubtedly know is that not everyone has the same habits or styles of rest. There are those who sleep completely, there are those who suffer very fragmented dreams and there are also those who experience a partition of rest when waking up, for example, in the middle of the night and, sometimes, at the same time.

For their part, experts in sleep hygiene differentiate different styles and types:

• Single phase sleep. It is that rest with a normal pattern and maintained for 6 or 9 hours in a row.

• Biphasic sleep. This type of sleep will be very familiar to us, it is the one in which we sleep between 4 and 6 hours at night, and then complete the rest in a daytime nap.
• Polyphasic sleep, on the other hand, defines a practice in which the person can rest between 4 and 6 times a day in shorter periods and never more than 3 hours.

Types of polyphasic sleep

Leonardo Da Vinci, Einstein, Sigmund Freud … None of them actually practiced the same kind of polyphasic dreaming. The reason is that there are many ways and strategies to carry it out. They are as follows:

• Everyman : defines a type of sleep in which you sleep 3 hours at night, and then complete it with three 20-minute naps throughout the day.
• Uberman : that’s just 3 hours of sleep a day in the form of six 30-minute naps.

• Dymaxion : it is the most extreme. It consists of sleeping only 2 hours a day, in the form of 30-minute naps every 6 hours.

For what purpose is this type of dream applied?

Many may be struck by this type of rest. At the end of the day, it means not only fragmenting your sleep time, but also sleeping fewer hours. Thus, advocates of polyphasic sleep claim that this improves our lifestyle and that the goal is to seek “quality over quantity. ” That is, it does not matter to sleep less as long as the rest is deep and restorative.

• Some use it as a work philosophy, in order to be more productive.
• Likewise, we have studies such as those carried out at the University of Ottawa that show that polyphasic sleep can be beneficial in the marine environment. When offshore it may be helpful to set multiple shorter rest times; in this way, rotations in navigation turns are also improved.

Is polyphasic sleep beneficial?

This is undoubtedly the most important point: is it beneficial or dangerous to initiate ourselves in the famous polyphasic dream? There are a number of key points that show us that it can clearly be unhealthy.

• Studies, such as those carried out by Dr. Claudio Stampi, show us that getting used to sleeping less than 6 or 7 hours translates into an accumulated lack of sleep that has consequences. Cognitive impairment is the most important.
• Sleep deprivation can slow reaction times, which can lead to traffic accidents.

• On the other hand, sleeping less generates hormonal and metabolic changes that increase the risk of chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity.

Let’s be clear, sometimes that attempt to be more productive or use night hours as a setting for creativity can take its toll. Consistently getting less sleep translates to poorer quality of life and worse health.