Dan on March 11th, 2006
This week’s sleeping went quite well. There were oversleeps here and there but overall I’m satisfied. Both school days went perfectly as did last night. Tonight should also go well. What I’ve found is that with the 2 core naps I can skip a 25 min nap when necessary and still function fine. However, the likelyhood of my oversleeping at my next nap in this situation is very high. When I do follow it and take all of my naps oversleeping either doesn’t happen or is much shorter.
So long as I’m doing something engaging I’m not tired at all. The problem is when I’m in class reviewing something I understand and am bored out of my mind. I start nodding off at that point. I probably had 20+ microsleeps in some of my classes on Thursday. I guess that’s better than not understanding the material.
I’ve found that napping in an unusual place isn’t as hard as expected. I’ve been sleeping in the library on campus now for 2 weeks. Every nap resulted in some amount of sleep. I’ve slept while sitting in a normal chair with my head down on a desk and also on a nice soft chair with a foot rest. I’ve been using my Etymotic Research ER4 canal phones (thanks Dave!) along with a white noise MP3 track to assist in blocking out everyone else. Even without the MP3 (as on Thursday when my battery went dead) they work very well as ear plugs. I highly recommend them, if not for the sound quality alone.
Dan on March 1st, 2006
It seems that I may have finally found a sleep pattern that works for me. It goes as follows:
Naps:
1AM - 2:30AM
5AM - 6:30AM
1PM - 1:25PM
5PM - 5:25PM
9PM - 9:25PM
Total sleep time of 4 hours 15 minutes. I have been doing this for a few days now and have found that it works very well. I’m not tired and my naps can be very flexible without worrying about them. The 9PM nap often becomes 10PM or 11PM without a problem.
I still need to use multiple alarms. I found that using two timers and my cell phone works very well. I set one timer just out of reach of my bed and the other on my dresser across the room. Both go off at the same time with my phone on a 2 min delay in case there is a problem. To shut both alarms off and then cancel my cell alarm I have to get up, shut the first alarm off and then walk across the room. It works very well.
I’ve spaced my eating out a little differently as well. I now eat at the 3, 7, and 11 hours, with the 3PM meal moved to a little before 2PM on school days. This works very well since the timing fits into my schedule and I have 30 min in the morning to prepare each meal.
Dan on February 25th, 2006
This week my sleep patterns have been a bit unusual. I would frequently take extra naps at night, getting a total of 4.5-6 hours of sleep in a day. Getting through the night has been quite hard. I’ve been getting in the bad habit of “snoozing” - waking up after a nap and then taking another one right away. There were also a few days when I woke up from a nap and decided to lay there for a minute - and woke up 1.5-5 hours later.
This wasn’t a problem since I this week was school vacation. I didn’t have to worry about being late to class. Next week will be the true test. I’ve been slowly giving up these extra “snooze” naps and getting out of bed right away. Last night I decided to go back asleep after my 1AM nap and didn’t set an alarm. Luckily I woke up at 3AM, my normal breakfast time. My body does seem to be getting used to waking up after shorter periods of time. There were a few days where I slept more than 1.5h on my core nap, but woke up multiple times during it.
On a side note, the low amount of sleep hasn’t seemed to affect workout recovery. I’ve been working out 3 days a week. The workouts themselves give me a lot more energy and keep me awake. I’m very happy that I started working out again. So happy in fact that yesterday when I showed up to work out and the gym was closed I was quite disappointed.
Dan on February 20th, 2006
I’ve always liked spicy food. Chili, General Tso’s Chicken, curry chicken, buffalo wings, etc. It’s gotten to the point where I call Frank’s Red Hot “weaksauce” and don’t consider something hot unless it has at least Cayanne, or even better Habaneros in it. For those of you who don’t know, habaneros are the hottest pepper in the world. Very little is required to make something hot. For example, earlier today I was crushing habaneros that I dryed a few days ago. When finished I licked the small amount of dust left on the spoon and my mouth was burning for about 5 minutes.
Only recently have I taken interest in the chile, the mechanisms of how it makes food spicy, and the side effects. Through our favorite friend the search engine I’ve found plenty of interesting data. I won’t restate all of the basics, but here are a few to get you started.
Capsaicin is the chemical in chile peppers that causes the spicy or burning sensation. The body has receptors that are sensative to this chemical. The interesting side effect of this is that the body produces endorphins to help stop the pain. Endorphins cause a natural high. This explains why many people like capsaicin-infused foods.
For the past two weeks I’ve been using much more capsaicin products in my food, including store bought habanero sauce, homemade habanero sauce, and chili powders. I’ve found that the rush of endorphins temporarily helps to make me more alert and less tired. It’s an interesting way of reducing sleepiness related to polyphasic sleep. Plus it makes food taste better 
It’s gotten to the point that I won’t eat certain foods in resturaunts anymore because they aren’t hot enough. I was at Uno’s Saturday night and skipped on the chili because it’s mild and they didn’t have anything to spice it up. I think I’m going to start carrying habanero powder with me when I eat out. That should solve the problem.
Dan on February 13th, 2006
Ever have one of those weekends when you know you have stuff to do but just aren’t motivated to do it? That’s how this weekend has been. I’ve acomplished a few things, like listing an item on Ebay, writing up ideas for my new website, and cooking some new foods. Other than that I blew through the weekend without acomplishment. No laundry washed, no cleaning of the apt, and no polyphasic sleep. Sleep plays a big part of it since life is shorter on monophasic sleep. Days fly by much quicker when you are missing 5 hours.
I also ate pretty poorly this weekend consuming candy, cake, and snack foods. My appetite has been through the roof this week. I’m constantly hungry and crave snack foods. I’m not quite sure what is causing this but I don’t like it. I’ve gone for 3 months now on my nutrition plan without incident and I don’t want to change it now. It could be a combination of sleep changes and eating pattern changes. I’ve been moving my meals around to different times everyday due to sleep patterns. I’m hoping that once I re-adjust back to polyphasic sleep my appetite will slowly return to normal. Between monophasic sleep, working, school, and general apathy life has been quite different this month.
