Recovery

Recovery is a method of repaying sleep debt by sleeping without alarms or other restrictions.

Mechanism

Recovery is usually applied in two cases:

• Before the adaptation. This reduces pre-existing sleep debt, which generally makes adaptation milder and possibly shorter.
• After failing the adaptation, which mostly includes oversleeping syndrome or being stuck in the stage 3/4 loop.

The time, which this process takes, depends on the amount of sleep debt and individual sleep efficiency. It's expected to last for 1-2 weeks on average, but might be shorter or even much longer in extreme cases.

At first, total sleep time may be unexpectedly high or low, but it stabilizes with time. Eventually, the total duration of sleep should become close to the personal monophasic baseline. This, as well as feeling refreshed and rested during the day, indicates that the recovery process has been successfully completed.

Variants

Technically, most non-reducing schedules are sufficient as the recovery variants. This section describes the most popular ones.

Monophasic

This is the most popular type of recovery. The nocturnal sleep should start at the same time daily and end with a natural wake when feeling refreshed enough. It's preferable to schedule a dark period before the core to increase sleep efficiency.

Biphasic

Biphasic sleep is often used for the recovery as well. Having two blocks of sleep, it is possible to use an alarm for one of them, without restrictions for the second one.

• E1 and Siesta may have a restricted nocturnal core if it's impossible to sleep for long enough due to social inconveniences. Thus, the block of sleep midday will have a free duration. Sleep during the day shouldn't be longer than ~2 hours, though, as this may destabilize circadian rhythm or make it difficult to fall asleep in the evening. For this reason, it also makes sense to restrict the daytime block of sleep, leaving the nocturnal sleep without alarms.
• On Segmented, it's possible to use alarms for the first core, waking up from the second one naturally.

Random

Random sleep is the quickest way to recover. This means sleeping as much as possible in any desired time. As much as this way is appealing, it is not recommended. Habitual random sleep reduces discipline, which makes it difficult to adapt to strict sleep schedules afterwards. Moreover, random sleepers are more likely to have a reduced sleep quality, which contributes to the adaptation difficulty as well.

Sleep restriction

It is possible to recover while still using alarms. The recovery with sleep restriction takes more time, but sometimes it may be necessary due to the social life restrictions. This method is generally not recommended due to its inefficiency.

Adaptation to Polyphasic Sleep Mechanism Basics Theory SWS rebound REM rebound SOREM SOSWS Repartitioning Wake time reduction WASO Methods Cold turkey Naptation Gradual adaptation Recovery Reverse gradual adaptation Stages Model Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3 Stage 4 Symptoms Insomnia Awareness during sleep Premature wakes Sleep inertia Wake time programming Failure Stage 3/4 loop Oversleep syndrome Unstable adaptation