Uberman's Sleep Schedule

[Kisaragi]

Uberman's sleep schedule || kuro5hin.org

Basically you, uh, hack your brain into thinking you have a full night's sleep even though you just sleep a lot less than that. Meaning, less sleeping time, and more waking hours for work/assignments/grinding in mmos

So has anyone tried this and confirm it works as awesome as it sounds? :|

[iFarted]

Lol, I haven't tried it, but Kramer from Seinfeld tried it in one episode.


End result was that he ended up in a body bag being dumped into the Hudson River.

[Mitchi]

I read about someone trying this once on intructables.com, and I think the results were that she and her husband were very very sleep deprived for the two weeks that they did it.

also:

Uberman's sleep schedule is a potentially dangerous way to increase your waking hours. Although I found success with it to this point, there still may be physical and psychological dangers that I have not yet met, and there may be grave difficulties for others attempting the cycle.

Personally, I wouldnt try it anyway, I like my sleep. I just happen to be nocturnal, which can create problems on it's own.

[Firzin]

Won't this just lead to a horrendous amount of sleep debt?

[Nihil679]

I wouldn't try this.

With my limited AP psychology knowledge, I can tell you this is a pretty bad idea.

First is the fact that REM sleep does not come within minutes like it says, unless, like it later suggests, you sleep deprive yourself to where you are in REM rebound (I believe?) and instantly fall in REM sleep as soon as you close your eyes--- in short, narcoleptic attacks. If I remember correctly, REM comes later than an hour if you have the "average" sleep schedule.

It will take a lot more than a couple of minutes or hours to gain the full benefits of REM sleep, I am sure. Even if you can, think of it like this. You're driving a car some place. Would you rather get the tank full on the first station (assume that you have the money, lol) or would you jump on a low tank and get to the next station to fill it a little more and move on to repeat?

Another thing is your body's circadian rhythm. There's a reason most people are awake during the day and asleep at night, because your body is most adjusted to that. Messing it up is similar to the feeling of jet lag (rather, jet lag is a result of a messed up circadian rhythm), and that's exactly what you're doing if you're staying up through the day and taking random naps.

Last are all the things the author even says himself. If you fail to get your hourly REM sleep, you will literally crash, and it will only get worse if you continue it. You're going to get hungry a lot more since your body will be active more often and not taking a large rest. Surely a few hours of freetime can't equate to more on your food budget.

I think the only reason I would want to do this is for the intense dreams during REM. Other than that, the cons versus the pros are rather one-sided towards "no."

[Point]

^adding to that, since I'm also taking Psych AP this year: If you apply this method, you'll be missing the stage 4 deep sleep completely, and that stage is where your body goes through all the process of making repairs and, if you have not reached adulthood, stimulate growth. So in short, expect to live way shorter than everyone else if you constantly miss your deep sleep.

[Shugi]

Don't do this. Instead sleep at 7pm for 2hours. Then sleep at 2 to 8 am. You need 8hours of sleep, though sleeping for 8 hours straight doesn't necessarily give you the best sleep. I don't remember what this sleep cycle is called, but it works. You are a lot of energetic and my friend is on this sleep cycle and he's a lot more active since he switched. I'm personally going to switch over once summer starts.

[k0n]

The date is from 2002. I'm a nursing student. Some of these REM concepts he's talking about are somewhat false. I would not advise that this method of sleeping is helpful.

Depending how sleep deprived you currently are, REM takes 30~90 minutes to activate after stages N1, N2, N3 and N4 of sleep (or the NREM sleep). If you're updated with the current trends, N3 and N4 are combined as N3. After a completion of sleep, it repeats itself to the NREM stage and goes back to REM. If you're doing this, you'll actually miss your REM sleep since a 30 minute nap can make you miss your REM stage.

If you're planning to sleep deprive yourself, you'll quickly finish your NREM to enter REM sleep. Although REM sleep is the signal of a complete cycle of sleep, the NREM part (specifically N3 and N4) of sleeping helps build your body, recycles your fluid, and repair tissues. Sleep deprevation will also increase your chances of getting an infection immune system's function is weaken or impaired and you're more prone to judgmental mistakes. REM sleep will be faster to enter, but there isn't a huge significance gain compared to NREM. However, theories speculate that REM can improve your memory as well as feel stimulate due to the introduction of monoamine transmitters. Link

These monoanimes are anti-depressants.

tl;dr - In other words, you'll feel alright.

If you want my advice, just find a day or a weekend and see how long can you sleep. Set an alarm and measure how much of sleep do you really need and when your REM sleep occurs and use that as your guide. Everyone needs a different amount of sleep, but everyone needs sleep.

[kag]

There are some methods described here, more of less the same.
Sleep (or how to hack your brain) | Dustin Curtis

They did say if you ever miss one of the REM sleep everything will be out of balance.