Thursday, September 4, 2008

Polyphasic sleep and cold

En français
Summarizing the last few days I will say that the main problem for my polyphasic sleep now is the cold.
I've read some websites where people were telling not to get to warm during nap because you are going to have problems to get up. That probably right for some reasons.
But staying cold is worse.
Belfast is really a cold place. I have been wearing gloves this morning, and we're just supposed to be at the end of the summer.
The problem is that during the night time it's freezing even more.
I have seen myself oversleeping a lot because I just couldn't fall asleep when I should have because of the cold.
I fell that being polyphasic makes me even more sensitive to the temperature. So I really need to find something to be warm enough to fall asleep and cold enough to get up on time. Difficult problem.
I don't know if lots of polyphasic sleepers had real problems with temperature.
Anyway the point here is that polyphasic sleep looks like being more difficult in winter than in summer, probably because of the light as well, I will try to notice effects about that latter.
The question I will try to experiment now will be : Do we need to transform our sleeping patterns according to the season ?
I think that's an interesting point.

2 comments:

  1. The solution, that was proposed by some people for the problem of temperature is to do some warmup exercises before the nap. This would make you warm enough to fall asleep. If you are wearing enough clothes during exercise you might even sweat and want to take off your clothes. By the time it is time to wake up you would cool down and feel cold, and that would provide extra motivation to get up. You may also do some warm-up exercises after the nap. Exercises would also give you some initial focus, but be aware that this focus can go away very fast. Another advantage of doing exercises right after the nap is that it makes a good wake up routine, and having a wake up routine, that is almost automatic, is crucial for wake up.
    Make sure it is not too cold (if you have goosebumps it is probably too cold), just cold enough to feel slightly uncomfortable. Because you might still oversleep, and you don't want to wake up with sore muscles or sore kidneys.
    And does immune system weaken during cold? I don't know.
    Personally I don't think there is much difference in doing polyphasic sleep during different seasons. It is just very difficult any time of the year.

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  2. Thank you for the advice.
    I will try that.
    I don't think that immune system weaken during cold, I just think that you have to be more careful not to get sick.
    I also think that the season must have an effect. It already have on monophasic sleep : it's much more easier to get up in the morning when the sun is rising during summer than in winter when you get up during night and go home after work during night as well.
    Of course when you are polyphasic half of your "day" is night. The problem is that when the number of dark hours increases you feel generally more tired.
    It is easier for me to stay awake between 2am and 6am when I can see the outside light increase. But maybe that's only me. Anyway I want to investigate that effect a bit further.

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