In response to a heavy workload and need to stay up relatively late, I have looked into sleep cycles. From the research, I discovered polyphasic sleep which consists of multiple ("poly") phases ("phasic") of sleeping each day. In the most extreme case there is the Uberman cycle that calls for a rigid schedule of 20 minute naps every 4 hours. Do a bit of math and the total amount of time asleep is only 2 hours. Aside from possible side effects, that pattern doesn't fit with many schedules and is typically used only in extreme scenarios.
The most common pattern is monophasic sleep: one 8 hour slumber. What I have been experimenting with, however, is biphasic sleep. This is composed of a 1.5 hour long nap coupled with a 4.5 hour core sleep: grand total of 6 hours. This cuts back 2 hours of sleeping and therefore logically adds 2 hours of being awake. The timing of these naps are crucial as they need coincide with natural sleep cycles you go through while unconscious (REM and non-REM). As a result, someone on this cycle is able to stay up later and wake up earlier.
After school, I take my nap at 4:30 PM, waking up at 6 PM. I then do whatever needs to be done including homework, and at the latest I sleep at 2 AM. This allows me to wake up at around 6:30 AM and so far no sign of sleep deprivation have shown up. If that continues to be the case, this might become a long term thing.
This sleep pattern coupled with a sleep cycle alarm clock app that I found works wonders. By monitoring your sleep cycles, it is able to coerce you awake at just the right moment during light sleep rather than startle you. This leaves you feeling refreshed and full of energy, ready to start a brand new day.
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ReplyDeleteVery interesting article. I think many people, including parents and teachers, overlook how sleep deprived students are these days due to homework and studies. The only thing is a small grammatical error when you says "The timing of these naps are." It should read "The timing of these naps is" since timing is singular. For formatting, I would recommend that you put a space in between each of your paragraphs to help break up your ideas. In terms of your content, you should talk about sleep cycle alarm clocks and some apps that your readers can download. I've never heard of such alarm clocks,and I would be very interested to read about it, particularly since I myself get around five hours of sleep a night and nap about twice a week.
DeleteI find this post to be very relatable since I stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning doing homework. I follow the biphasic schedule, taking a nap first then waking up to finish my homework. I downloaded an app for sleep monitoring, but I have not tried it out yet. Hopefully, it will "leave me feeling refreshed and full of energy."
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