Think of the valuable, productive hours you’ve wasted sleeping. Night after night you shut down for six, seven, even eight hours of unconsciousness. While some may believe that nightly rest is essential for human survival, others have a very different take on how we should recharge.

Polyphasic sleep [1] is a system of rest that breaks sleep into several short periods taken throughout the day. Instead of sleeping for several hours at a time polyphasic sleepers train themselves to skip the first four phases of sleep [2] and sink immediately into REM [3], the deepest and most rejuvenating stage of sleep.

The Uberman sleep experiment [4] is a form of polyphasic sleep that requires participants to take 20-30 minute naps every four hours around the clock. Total daily sleep time: about three hours. The benefit of this innovative sleep regimen is clear: approximately 21 hours in which to work and play each day. But to this sleep addict — anything less than six hours leaves me a fog all day — the cons seem insurmountable. Not only do polyphasic sleepers require extraordinarily flexible schedules (how would your boss feel about you catching a 20 minute cat nap during the late afternoon board meeting?), but they must also possess the supreme will to push through the initial transition from regular sleep. The first two weeks can be brutal as the mind and body try to figure out why exactly they are being deprived of necessary snoozing.

I enjoy the occasional mid-day nap, especially on Sundays when freezing rain is pounding against the windows, but polyphasic sleep is not on my 2006 short list. I am a firm believer in the healing and restorative power of consecutive hours of sleep — and doesn’t everyone deserve a nightly break from the pressures of waking life?

How many hours of sleep do you need? Please comment below.

[via Mercola [5]]

(Image: trevwilliams.co.uk/ metips/metips/sleep.html)