Polyphasic Day 13

First, as expected, I missed my 9pm nap, and also adjusted the 6pm and 12am naps slightly wider to accommodate my social life. There was a small down period while a passenger in someone's car, so I tried to sleep, but it was short and I don't think it accomplished anything. After the 12am (really 12:25) nap, I tried to get back to the normal 1.5 hr cycle (which I normally use as 2 cycles per sleep) by putting in a nap at 1:30 to make up for the lost one at 9pm. I then slept at 3am as normal and it is now 4:30am.

As far as sleepiness, I am somewhat pleased: I feel very tired, but not a lot more than usual for this time of day (night). I may be able to recover better from the loss of a nap now than last week.

Due to the fact that I have continually been having trouble in the night while being fine during the day, I decided to look up some sources suggesting what might be going on. Based on info from the Polyphasic Society, it seems as if I'm exhibiting classic Deep-Sleep deprivation.

REM deprivation is more common and the side-effects are more well-known, including hallucination. SWS deprivation, on the other hand, is A) less common (REM is needed more and more often. Think water instead of food), and B) more subtle. Classic SWS-dep signs: extra night-time grogginess, extra hunger, feeling cold, blacking out (no memory of time awake). I seem to have all of those: I've definitely noticed a few times where I overslept and had no recollection of hitting the alarm.

Given that I'm thus SWS deprived, there are 2 possibilities: either my system isn't adjusting properly to allow for SWS in my naps, or it has done so but is only getting enough SWS for steady-state, not to allow it to make up for the SWS I missed before. If the 2nd is true, a couple of extra long naps in the early night will refill the SWS meter, so to speak, and the problem is solved. If the first, though, the same remedy will likely solve the problems in the short term, but will make SWS adaptation more unlikely and more difficult. Instead, I should stick with it until the 2nd possibility becomes true and then follow that route.

So which is it? It's probably impossible to tell without better sleep monitoring stuff than I've got available (apparently there's a suite of products, now, that are very, very good at helping you figure out what kind of sleep you're getting. I've been thinking today of ordering a LarkLife, for instance, and I'd be interested in Zeo if it hadn't gone out of business). So I'm going to try getting more SWS without ruining my adaptation in another way. I'm going to try to get more SWS naps without changing their length.

To do this, I'm intending on increasing SWS "pressure" (the body's assumed need for certain types of sleep) by A) waiting until early night-time (standard SWS time), and B) increasing body temperature through use of a hot shower immediately before the nap. Once I've got the pressure increased, I'll take more naps during that period.

I guess we'll see how it works out. Tomorrow is the 2-week line, so I'll have some overall progress report info, as well as some decisions on how to move forward.