Saturday, January 2, 2010

Day 2

I now also have a blog at http://xialuote.trypolyphasic.com. For now, these two blogs are duplicates of each other. Trypolyphasic.com is a very nice community for information on the subject, and I like the community of bloggers that is developing there.

Here's a link relevant to the subject of taking 90 minute naps:
http://www.saramednick.com/htmls/pdfs/Mednick-NN03[8].pdf. To summarize, this is a study done on how taking naps that include both slow wave sleep (SWS) and REM was found to promote learning. Participants also slept an average of about 7.5 hours at night. However, those who included a nap between training sessions did significantly better than those who only slept at night. This lends support to my belief that breaking your day up with naps will promote better learning. I don't think the amount of sleep matters as much as the frequency of sleep. In other words, sleeping every few hours for up to 90 minutes is better than taking your sleep in one go. Of course, one also needs to not be sleep-deprived for this to be most effective, so that is the caveat. My purpose is to see whether I can successfully adapt to 90 minute naps spaced throughout the day without feeling sleep deprived in between.

Nap report: Yesterday, I was late getting to my 11:30 nap, but I still enforced the 13:00 wake up time, as that isn't really negotiable in my schedule. I woke up then feeling like I could sleep more, but feeling alright otherwise. However, I delayed my evening nap more than I wanted to, and didn't take it until 23:00. I was tired when I woke up from it, in part because I had a hard time getting to sleep. Last night was one of the coldest so far this season. I used an electric blanket to warm up, and initially had a hard time getting warm enough to sleep, but then woke up during the nap feeling a bit hot. From about 00:30 to 3:30, I did some reading on the computer, and then played a game for a bit, which is different than my usual nightly routine of sitting down and reading a book or something else quiet. I got to my next nap a little after 3:30, and could not fall asleep for it. Again, I was cold. I used the heating blanket, but didn't turn the temperature up so high on it, and it was rather slow to get me warm. By the time I was comfortable and drowsy, it was 5:00. I was feeling really sleepy at this point and knew I needed the rest, so I just laid back down and went to sleep without setting an alarm. I didn't really like doing this as I want to be strict with my 5:00 wake time as well, but I also didn't want to get too tired and crash later, so I felt like it was necessary. I slept for about 3 1/2 hours, at which time I woke up on my own.

I'm starting to wake up tired from my naps, so I feel that the hard part of the adaptation is coming up already, meaning I need to be strict with waking times, and do what I can to fall asleep within 10 minutes during my naps. I need to review tricks that I used to use to fall asleep to help me with that. Something I'll be doing tonight is pre-warming the bed with the heating blanket before getting into it, and not leaving the blanket on during the nap, which just makes it too hot. I also need to review some relaxation techniques, and definitely be on time for naps today. I have plenty of time between naps, so there's no reason to be late getting to them again. Perhaps being tired between them will help me sleep for tonight's.

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