my god, does this work?

Baloogan · August 17, 2004, 6:22am

kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/15/103358/720

cp ps from artical

Over the past month, I’ve managed to convert my sleep cycles to something called the Uberman’s sleep schedule. The end result is that I am sleeping roughly three hours a day. How did I do it? Is it safe?

Background

The Uberman sleep schedule is a method of organizing your sleeping time to maximize your REM sleep and minimize your non-REM sleep. The goal of the sleep cycle is that you are actively in REM sleep within a couple of minutes of falling asleep and remain in that state until you awaken. I originally read about the schedule on everything2.

In essence, someone utilizing the Uberman sleep schedule is actively modifying their sleeping habits so that they can immediately jump from waking to a few minutes worth of stage 1 sleep straight to stage 5 REM sleep, as described in this discussion of sleep stages.

It is important to note that there are no studies as to the long-term physical or physiological impact of this sleep cycle. I really don’t know if this cycle is causing long-term damage to myself or not, and if this concerns you, I wouldn’t attempt the cycle. However, the benefits are fantastic.

The Uberman’s Sleep Schedule

Sleeping Hours
The Uberman’s sleep schedule revolves around forcing yourself to rely on six twenty to thirty minute naps spread throughout the day for your daily dose of sleep. I stuck to thirty minute naps, currently having them starting roughly at 2 AM, 6 AM, 10 AM, 2 PM, 6 PM, and 10 PM every day.

How & Why It Works
Over the course of a normal eight hour sleeping period, your body moves through a continuous cycle of five distinct sleep stages. Of these, stage 5 REM sleep has been found to be the part of the cycle that provides the benefits of sleep for your mind.

Essentially, the trick of the Uberman’s sleep schedule is to trick your mind into entering REM sleep as soon as you drift into a sleeplike state. Unfortunately, the only real way to do this is through sleep deprivation of sorts.

Adjusting To This Schedule
Adjusting to this schedule (as you might imagine) will make you feel like you’ve put your body and mind through a blender for a few weeks. Here are some general tips for adjusting that I found to be greatly helpful.
* Do the adjustment when you are in complete control of your schedule. I converted to the cycle during a three week vacation; it would have been impossible to get through a normal work day while adjusting to this cycle. I was by and large a zombie.
* Find a large project to work on while adjusting. If you don't keep busy, you will revert to a normal sleep cycle. In my first failed attempt at switching (on vacation more than two years ago), I didn't have an ongoing project to keep me focused.
* Use physiological "tricks" to teach your body the cycle. I found that using a dawn simulation trick worked nicely. Every time I went to lay down, I set my monitor to wait thirty-two minutes, then begin running a program that had a strobe effect along with some excessively loud music. I also used two alarm clocks, and during the day I would adjust my blinds such that the sun would start shining in my face roughly a half an hour later. These would force me to become somewhat conscious for a while, which was all I needed to keep going.
* Days 3 to 10 are the hardest and least productive. I spent the adjustment period working on two projects, one involving programming and another involving writing. At the start of day three, I stored a backup of these projects because I knew that my thought processes were starting to become nonsensical and bizarre. For the next week, I continued to "work" on the projects, but utterly failed to make any sensible progress (interestingly enough, the fiction I wrote in this period was entertaining in a Thomas Pynchon meets The Electric Company kind of way). Don't expect to be hugely useful during the actual forced adjustment to compressed REM sleep.
* Convert to a more nutritious diet. I've found that drinking a great deal of orange and apple juice makes the Uberman schedule easier to follow, as does eating plenty of vegetables and avoiding fatty foods like the plague.
You will discover that after day ten or so, you will automatically begin waking after about thirty minutes. Quite often, I find that when a dream ends, I just awaken automatically. Although I still use an alarm clock, I now do my 10 AM, 2 PM, and sometimes 6 PM naps at work on my breaks without an alarm and have no problem waking up from them, feeling utterly refreshed.

Benefits

The obvious first benefit is more free time. I currently clock in between two hours and fifty minutes and three hours and ten minutes of sleep per twenty four hour period. Compared to my previous sleep cycles (roughly nine hours a night), I have an incredible amount of time to do things that I wished I had time to do before I switched.

Although the first benefit is pretty much the only reason you need, I also found that switching to this cycle makes me feel generally healthier. As I noted, I started off this “experiment” by switching to a more healthy diet rich in fruits and vegetables. After my body finally adjusted to the quick batches of REM (about day eight or nine), I began to feel truly GREAT! I actually feel more energetic at this point than I did before this started.

Drawbacks

One drawback is that I hit a wall if I stay up for more than about five hours without a twenty to thirty minute nap. My concentration and energy seem to vanish in a matter of minutes and I absolutely have to go take a nap. This can create some problems in social situations, but one can somewhat shuffle the naps around to adjust for this.

Another drawback is that my appetite is substantially larger and I will often crave strange things that I don’t recall craving in the past. One great example of this is grape juice; I now drink this regularly, but before I switched I don’t recall ever wanting it. My speculation is that my body isn’t producing enough of some chemical that it would normally produce in stages 3 and 4 deep sleep.

Other Effects

One particularly noteworthy effect (I consider it a benefit, but others might consider it a drawback) is that all of my dreams are very intense and I find myself remembering them as well, down to minute details. Personally, I don’t have any difficulties handling the imagery that my dreams produce, but many people have difficulties with their dreams in a normal sleep schedule - if that is the case, Uberman is simply not for you.

Conclusion

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.

you could get 3 hour long LDs???

DreamAddict · August 17, 2004, 6:30am

sounds fun to try!
I’m going to read more on this, thanks!

Technodreamer · August 17, 2004, 10:03am

A lack of NON-REM sleep will result in death. Sorry. I don’t think it works, but it’s worth a try.

Sureal · August 17, 2004, 2:56pm

If it’s possible, it’d be very unhealthy for you. Not to mention the fact that your Subconcious would start stopping you from becoming lucid (whilst lucid, you’re in a state of REM, and if you have little NREM, your subconcious would start making you lose lucitiy, giving you FA’s and making you wake up more often).

In short, if this does work, it’ll be unhealthy and give you shorter LD’s.

r3m0t · August 17, 2004, 2:57pm

No, this could not give you 3 hour long LDs. The idea is taking sleep in 30 minute pieces.

DreamAddict · August 17, 2004, 10:37pm

If you click the link and read, you will find a long thread of people that have tried this. Each has their own variation, and some sleep 3 hours.

Nic · August 17, 2004, 11:07pm

lol… this reminds me of an episode of Seinfeld where Cramer starts reading this book on Leonardo davinci (some artist. i dont remeber his name) and he sleeps 20 minutes every 3 hours. lol its a really funny episode.

Nathan_Roy · August 18, 2004, 5:11am

Haha. You dont’t know who Leonardo from Vinci is? He was many things besides an artist. And yes, he did use the Ubermans Sleep Schedule, or something near it.
I was going to try it, but my schedule conflicted with it too much, and I dont really want to go through the first week of crappy tiredness. Theres another topic on this by the way, can’t find the link tho…oh well.

Nukem · August 18, 2004, 2:08pm

I don’t understand the logic in this story. The body takes the sleep stage needed. You can not force REM or something like that… For example the delta sleep stage is a very important one, without it you die. If the body needs delta it will take delta. If you wake yourself too soon the body can’t complete the cycle, and that’s too bad…
If you sleep like this why would you fall in REM at once, it’s not logical. I think the sleeper will fall into delta sleep and that very little REM sleep will kick in. The dreams are NON-REM dreams.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to try this……

Syphex · August 19, 2004, 12:55am

BenDrummin58 · August 19, 2004, 1:08am

i think this is entirely a bad idea…if you want to dream more…just go to bed earlier or sleep in. do not skip the beginning stages of sleep…your probably going to end up being exhausted and tired after waking up, and…as everybody else mentioned…without some things…you could die. sleep is good…ENJOY IT! lol. if your wanting to lucid dream longer or something…SPIN.

Kimius · August 19, 2004, 3:44am

how long does delta wave sleep last anyways? as far as i can tell, the uberman method gives about 5 minutes of normal sleep first, and then the rest with rem sleep. if those 5 minutes are enough, then there wouldn’t be a problem, right?

sounds like a interesting idea for me to try. too bad i only saw it AFTER the summer holidays. two whole months i had to get in to that cycle, but nooooo. i had to see it AFTER school started…

Nic · August 19, 2004, 9:41pm

nah i knew he was more than an artist. I just couldn’t remeber if he was reading a book about Davinci or if it were another artist.

CCHawk · August 20, 2004, 8:34pm

sorry to post replying to the off-topic part of this convo… but isn’t seinfeld great!!!

anyways, back on track… that idea of sleeping doesn’t make much sense to me. what would you do in the extra time, the only time you’d have extra really is in the middle of the night… so you’d sacrifice normal time of your day to nap so you could have more overall time. just, if that time is mostly being nocturnal what’s so great about it?

plus, i know it would be hard to get anybody else to do this with you… so you’d be awake while all your friends just sleep during their normal schedules.

milod789 · August 20, 2004, 9:18pm

Well there are a number of people who use sleep deprivation as a method to enhance their ability to lucid dream by taking advantage of rem rebound. I think the jury is still out on how helpful this is though.

Keep in mind that sleep deprivation( if it works )does not necessarily grantee you lucid dreams just more rem sleep.

Will this method work? It might. I just think it is unnecessary to put your body (not to mention your mind) through the horrors of sleep deprivation (not fun despite what you might hear to the contrary). Also, I do not see how a person would be able to function in their day to day life using this method. Most people have to go to school or work during the day. I doubt your teacher or boss will allow you to take a time out to take a nap. Ok, they have nap time in kindergarten.

Anyway, while this method might be effective or at least helpful it seems a little extreme in my opinion.

I look forward to hearing peoples results. We will never know if it will work until someone tries it. Someone else that is. I think I’ll pass on this one.