Does anyone know the possible effects of sleeping twice a day for 3-5 hours in lieu of one big 8 hour lump, either athletically or just in general?

I can't site the studies, but I've read that you need the longer sleep to get into REM sleep. They've done studies with mice and those with the shorter bursts had higher levels of cortisone, the stress hormone, even though they were getting the same number of hours of sleep.

Also, athletes often need closer to 9-10 hours of sleep for recovery and to avoid injuries.

Sleeping feels nice. I'm a grad student, so I'm normally underslept and overcafinated. I went to bed at 9:30 the other day, woke up at 8, ate breakfast, rode twice my normal morning laps, went to school, and didn't feel lazy or waste time on bikeforums all day.

Anecdotal evidence: sleep is good.

I wish I could get to sleep right now.

Polyphasic sleeping or whatever its called.

There is a few sites saying its the in thing. Only it has a few problems. Like always having to be able to take a nap during a long day with family, work, etc.

So your with a dozen people and your asleep mid day while their all awake, and your awake all night while their asleep, etc

I remember a few years back, working four 12 hour days, from 6:45 p.m. to 7 a.m. There were some workweeks where I only got 4-6 hours of sleep for the week.....nevermind per day. I was dead tired getting out of work, but by the time I got home (45 minutes later), I was usually wide awake.

Sleep is good, especially in a long, single stretch.

yes. there are multiple, dynamic phases of REM sleep that will not be attained without a longer, single bout of restfulness as mentioned above.

Sleeping in two short naps is not going to provide any athletic benefits. As already mentioned, you very likely will not get enough deep sleep. Do a search on sleep levels and you should find plenty of information on how we sleep. The short synopsis is that sleep is required more for mental reasons than physical. When you sleep, there is much going on in your brain, a lot of which we don't fully understand. We do know that we need certain amounts of the deepest levels of sleep in order to be fully rested. The best way to get qulity sleep is simply do what's natural and get a good night's rest.

Didn't Kramer try this? Like taking short naps through the day in place of sleep.

More breakfasts!

Agreed. However, there are times when I get a little too much sleep (>10 hours) and feel like crap for the day. I do however notice a direct corellation between how much time I spend doing productive stuff and the amount of sleep I get. If I get between 6 and 9 hours of sleep, I am feeling and perform my best. If I get less, I generally feel scattered and off. If I get more, I am lethargic. I have had longer naps (~3 hours) during the day for periods when I am up late working on prejects and I find this is a bad cycle to get into as waking up from these naps is pretty muc impossible. Getting up once each day is hard enough!

I have read that REM cycles work in 3 hour cycles and a 9 hour sleep would run 3 cycles. That is why it is sometimes recommended that people sleep in 3 hour cycles. I would think though that each successive REM cycle is more effective and restful than the previous leading to think that 3 successive cycles is better than two during the night and one during the day. I am no expert though and just going by things I have read and heard on the matter. I would just say sleep just during the night.

Actually its 90 min cycles. (the 90 min is average, it varies per person)

If you go to sleep and use no alarm, you will awake naturaly at the end of one of the 90 min cycles. If you get awoken, alarm or exterior noise, significant other smacking you, whatever, you awake and feel like crap, like you either have over or under slept. Due to the fact you never finished your cycle.

If you awake at the end of one of the cycles, you feel well rested, almost regardless to the number of cycles you actually got, as long as its a multiple of the 90 min.

There are ways to achieve it. Dual alaram, alarm clocks. On set to a low noise so only when your at the light end of a cycle will it wake you, set 15 min ahead of when you want up. So it goes off, then as you reach the end of a cycle it becomes enough to wake you, and your up, feeling good. The second alarm is set loud and at the absolute latest you can get up, just in case

There are also many alarms that use light, no noise to wake up. These work on the same principle and will wake you at the end of a cycle.

Its why sometimes you wake up feeling great with only 6 hours sleep, and sometimes you wake with 8 and feel like crap.

The original poster is taling about polyphasic sleep though, which is related but slightly different. There is a blog site with the daily ramblings of someone doing it at

https://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/15/103358/720
https://www.ubersleep.com/

Thanks everyone. The info jarery gave me is closest to what I learned in psychology classes. Though there seems to be a resounding consensus that one big lump sleep works better... I guess I'll find out and let ya'all know.

G'luck

Actually the people on polyphasic sleep are happy, energetic, and get a lot of extra time each day.

The biggest problem is it has almost zero tolerance. Miss your sleep time by an hour or 2 and it takes days to recover. And for most people living in a real world with a social life, with other people who are not on the same schedule.....and well its too easy to blow your sleep time.

Imagine beign at a party and having to go find a quiet nap time for 90 min while the party goes on......not !

If you have a Polar S720i series HRM, and use it sometime while you sleep, you can get a good idea of your sleep cycles. When you are in the deeper levels your heart rate should be lowest with a significant increase when you are in light sleep, turning over, etc.

As I recall, as the length of time you sleep increases, the time quicker you enter deep sleep and the longer you stay there.

If you really wanted a smart alarm clock, it would monitor your heart rate and go off when it senses an increase indicating you are nearly awake.

When in doubt, use Wikipedia!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic

Hey good idea supcom. an excuse for more shiny blinkies and gadgets !!

A remote alarm hooked to a heart monitor buried inised the matress...hopefully the wife doesnt catch me shoving electrical wires and devices into the bed

This became a really great topic!