Human sleep modes

Introduction

Sleep is essential to human health and functioning. The need to sleep is probably one of the most unpleasant things one has to deal with when they have stuff to do, yet the ability to sleep may be one of the most pleasant ones when they don’t. That’s why we take a look at the ways people manage (or mess up) their sleep.

A circadian rhythm is what entangles people into the sleep-wake cycle, the duration of which is usually roughly equal to the time it takes for Earth to complete a full rotation about its axis on average.

Before control of fire¹², those cycles were all hyped: all the important stuff should have been done during daytime, and it was dark at night before that. Fire was — as they were calling it back then — rad, though people were still into hunting and gathering: agricultural revolution happened only around 12,500 years ago, and they didn’t have computers before that. Anyway, now one may have stuff to do all day long, but the rhythms are still there.

Whether naturally or by choice, many people do follow those rhythms, even despite insomnia and hard time waking up. But some opt for non-24-hour sleep-wake, irregular sleep-wake, biphasic/polyphasic sleep, or a combination of those.

In this article, we are going to investigate how various sleep modes affect human lives.

Non-24-hour sleep-wake

That’s a rare disorder that happens when you stop fighting insomnia and using an alarm. Well, at least that’s how it may work if you have DSPD (there’s a rumor that some people don’t have it, so apparently they just go to bed and wake up early, without an alarm or anything). If the cycles are still regular, you still can plan things, just not for any daytime. It only screws regular fixed-time activities, such as an office job.

But let’s be realistic: such a regularity is not exactly what happens if your days are at least slightly different. Usually one day you may get tired more than usual and fall asleep earlier. The next day you may get excited or worried about something, having trouble to sleep, or simply stay longer to finish the stuff you were working on, and the day after that – have an event to attend at a fixed time, setting an alarm, and screwing even that regime. What brings us to the next mode.

Irregular sleep-wake

Wikipedia says that it’s an invisible disability, and that “[i]t can create social, familial, and work problems, making it hard for a person to maintain relationships and responsibilities, and may make a person home-bound and isolated”. Though it may be a problem, it’s not a big deal if you are already asocial, except for possible work problems that were already mentioned above.

Although it brings a bunch of other minor inconveniences. Let’s see what happens when you want to visit a regular store: it seems that you have 16 hours of wakefulness, and if the store works for 12 hours per day, there is at least a 4-hour overlap every day. Yet you may sleep up to 12 hours, being sleepy for the last few hours, and taking time to get past sleep inertia when you wake up, as well as to have a breakfast, take a shower, etc – what shrinks the convenient working time. A store may also not be that close to you, so one may add a hour to dress up and get there. All that combined may leave no overlap at all on an arbitrary picked day. Add other things you may want or have to do, and it gets inconvenient rather often: even if you get an overlap, it may not be the time you’d pick if there was a choice. While if you are awake during daytime, most of the time you are awake would work to visit that store.

It’s probably even worse if you order a delivery: since the most responsible people rarely end up being couriers, and delivery companies usually schedule delivery for a range of a few hours, you have to plan being awake for a few hours, possibly a few days ahead. That means that you should maintain at least some kind of a regime during those few days, or adjust the time on the day of delivery.

When you’re trying to adjust your regime to fit the plans, it may involve staying awake longer than you would like to, or trying to sleep when you don’t want to. Both are a waste of time, since you’re neither sleeping nor productive during that, and the latter is the same as one of the downsides of having a regime.

Biphasic and polyphasic sleep

Those are fancy names for daily napping. Napping is generally nice: you may observe that cats do that rather often, and they know what’s good. Napping is common among other animals, too.

But biphasic/polyphasic sleep is more than just occasional napping: it is also called “segmented sleep” and “divided sleep”, implying that it’s about dividing your sleep into a few periods during a cycle.

A bunch of organizations, including NASA and U.S. military, researched the topic, since it’s a nice topic to research. Now there are napping guides, napping tips, napping experts, and napping professionals out there, according to a quick web search. It seems that it is even good for your working memory, though it’s not clear how it affects you in a longer term.

Yet it may be quite practical when combined with irregular and non-24-hour sleep: it may be more easily adjustable than a 8-10-hour sleep, since you don’t normally have 16-20 hours without sleep behind you with it, yet the body should still be able to stay awake for those 16-20 hours rather easily. And let’s consider the store situation again: with two equidistant 4-5-hour naps every 24 hours, you get a guaranteed overlap of 7-8 hours, without any adjustment.

Without irregular and non-24-hour sleep, it may even be compatible with a daytime job: working, sleeping, doing other stuff, sleeping again, in a loop.

It may require some effort to get into this mode and to stay in it, since it’s rather easy to stay “late” for a whole day if you’re busy, then fall asleep for a long time, and then get trouble getting a nap after a few hours of being awake. But if you’re willing to put effort into its maintenance, it might be easier to just put that into maintaining a regular 24-hour regime.

Hypnotics and stimulants

Hypnotics (sleeping pills) and stimulants (caffeine, amphetamine, cocaine, etc) may help to manage your sleep, though the most efficient ones are usually illegal, and even the legal ones have unpleasant side effects when abused.

Sleep deprivation

According to Wikipedia, sleep deprivation has unpleasant consequences, so it’s not a nice way to get more of free time. Among other things, it may lead to a somewhat interesting condition of microsleep.

Conclusion

It would be awesome to sleep when it’s convenient, and be awake when you have stuff to do. Alas, it’s not exactly how a human body works.