Uberman
Uberman is the most widely known form of polyphasic sleep, with its appeal being the large amount of extra time it provides. For this reason, it is also one of the most widely attempted schedules by many first-time polyphasers. However, the adaptation success for this schedule is few and far between, with virtually all attempts at the schedule ending in failure, since it does not meet the minimum sleep need for the majority of people.
| Uberman 6 | |
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Legend
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| Total sleep | 2 hours |
| Proposed by | Puredoxyk |
| Difficulty | Extremely difficult |
| Specification | 6 naps equidistantly placed throughout the day |
Mechanism
Since REM and SWS cannot realistically be cut, all(or at least as much as possible) of them must be accounted for by naps. The extremely low total sleep time means it requires intense sleep compression, possibly reducing the cycle lengths to under 60 minutes. After adapting, falling asleep becomes very quick and the transition to REM or SWS would also be almost immediate, giving nearly negligible amounts of light sleep. This would allow up to about 1h50m of REM and SWS combined. Even so, this is still far below the combined requirements for most people, which means REM and/or SWS have to be cut in order to maintain this schedule, which is considered unhealthy.
History
This schedule is invented and named by Marie Staver (Puredoxyk) and her buddy Psuke Briah in 1999, drawing inspiration from a TIME article about Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion sleep. It was first revealed in a post on everything2.com in 2000.
Puredoxyk stayed on the schedule for 6 months in 2000 and she was not able to re-adapt to it later.
Steve Pavlina adapted to the schedule in 2005, and stayed on it for 5 months, and has not done it again ever since.
Difficulty
Both Steve Pavlina’s blogs and Puredoxyk’s book Ubersleep greatly understated the schedule’s difficulty. Puredoxyk adapted to the schedule in times of extreme stress at university, and was unable to adapt to it again afterwards. Nevertheless, people tend to overestimate their chances of succeeding. There has been no detailed accounts of someone adapting to the schedule in more recent times. You may see many logs of people attempting this schedule, but most of them ends in just a few days, presumably because the author overslept and gave up. Those failures are often used to discredit polyphasic sleep altogether, without ever considering more reasonable schedules.
Human supervision
It is important to realize that willpower alone is not enough for adapting to this schedule. With SWS deprivation, willpower simply will not help you. People have reported unconsciously disabling or ignoring electronic devices and performing other actions necessary to go back to sleep, with no recall whatsoever afterwards. People have slept through noise-based alarms, flashing lights, loud fans, and repeated maximum-voltage shocks from a Pavlok. It is therefore very useful, if not necessary, to have constant human supervision to make sure you are awake when you are supposed to be. To our best knowledge, no one has ever adapted to this schedule without the help of another human. Puredoxyk was woken up by Psuke and Youtuber Aeia was woken up by her twin sister during their uberman adaptation. Without the help of other people, it is virtually impossible that you would ever adapt to this schedule.
Adaptation
Adapting to Uberman is extremely difficult. While some people may claim that there is an easier method, that is simply not the case. Any methods of adapting to this schedule involves prolonged, intense sleep deprivation which is necessary to produce the level of sleep compression required.
Without previous napping experience, naps will mostly contain light sleep or traces of SWS. As the REM need is not being fulfilled, REM pressure quickly builds up to high levels, causing a REM rebound. This usually happens around day 3-5. <This will appear to suddenly alleviate the sleep deprivation, making people prone to overconfidence about the adaptation.> After this, naps mostly contain REM, and SWS pressure starts to build up. SWS rebound usually occurs on day 7-8 and it is the hardest part of the adaptation where most people oversleep and fail their schedules. After avoiding this first crash, subsequent crashes once every 2-3 days also needs to be avoided. REM and SWS pressure gradually reaches an equilibrium and the schedule is finally stabilized. This can take weeks and some may need up to 6 weeks on the schedule.
Delaying the SWS rebound
It is possible to delay the SWS rebound by a few days by adding extra naps in the night for extra SWS gain during the first days of adaptation. Steve Pavlina used this method to delay his SWS rebound until around day 12. It is not generally a good idea though, since the rebound will eventually happen and doing this just drags out the adaptation process by a few days and overcoming the SWS rebound is essential to Uberman adaptation.
Gradual adaptation via rhythmic preservation
These are possible transition schedules to Uberman with sleeps scheduled to start at the same time as the goal Uberman schedule. It might train the body rhythm to align the waves of tiredness with Uberman naps. This could reduce the transition difficulty somewhat. Still, intense compression and repartition will be required at the each transition, especially the final jump to Uberman. With two transitions, the adaptation is stretched out to several months and the overall difficulty is only slightly reduced. Overall, this may not be worth the extra time required.
Naptation/Exaptation
This methods involves staying awake for 1-2 days to quickly increase sleep pressure and/or start with naps every 2 hours instead of 4 to quickly acquire the ability to gain REM during naps.
Variants
Extra naps
Having one or two extra naps might make Uberman more sustainable for people since 2h is far below the minimum requirements of an average person, and consequently lower adaptation difficulty. However, these variants even less realistic socially since 3h5m and 2h40m wake blocks are simply too short for doing anything. No one is known to have adapted to these variants of Uberman.
Shorter naps
This is a hypothetical variant that is said to be done by Leonardo Da Vinci. However, there is absolutely no concrete evidence that makes his case a compelling fact. Da Vinci's life was devoted to various legendary inventions, so it seems to make sense that such a genius mind would probably require an abnormally low amount of sleep to create all the brilliant works in his lifetime. However, Claudio Stampi, a polyphasic sleep researcher, has disputed that Da Vinci followed this Uberman variant. The scarcity and uncertainty of evidence among the science of sleep that is only at the fledgling stage unfortunately fails to fully confirm this "myth" that seems to have been instilled into casual internet users.
Nevertheless, there was an anecdotally successful Uberman sleeper at the end of the 1950s (Chapter 11 of Why We Nap). This sleeper, in his journal, recounted his adaptation to this Uberman variant that totaled only 1h30m of sleep each day, mirroring the alleged Uberman variant of Da Vinci. It did take him 25 days to adapt, and he remained on it for a couple months. However, like many other anecdotal accounts about the quirks of Uberman long-term, the artist's creativity sharply declined because he barely recalled dreams from the Uberman naps anymore. Vivid dreaming had been an inspiration on his artwork, yet after being "adapted" for a while, his dream recall ability took a turn for the worst. It is believed that the malleability of SWS and REM pressure changed and after several months, his naps gave little room for REM sleep while trying to redeem the necessary amount of SWS to fuel his daily performance. It is also possible that, despite him feeling well on all fronts, the loss of dream recall may signal that he was bound to suffer from REM deprivation should he continue the schedule. The discomfort kept rising, which eventually forced him to drop the schedule. He was able to sleep 8h monophasically after the Uberman attempt, with little to no repercussions to total sleep time. However, he was a moderate insomniac, which may play into his adaptation success chance, with low requirements of vital sleep.
Given the absurdity of this Uberman variant, it would be better to adapt to the standard variant, whose success is more well-known overall.
Denser nighttime naps (U6-modified)
In this variation of Uberman more naps are placed during the night since sleep pressure is generally higher during nighttime and it would also be easier to schedule one’s life around longer daytime gaps. However, it is very difficult to stay awake for long periods of time on Uberman and this is likely even harder than regular Uberman. No one has been known to have adapted to this, either.
Research
Up to date, there has only been one official study on Uberman sleep, which is motivated by its existence and creation from Puredoxyk and its widespread practice over the decades. In 2013, the research focused on the Endocrine and cognitive effects of Uberman sleep. This study lasted for 5 weeks, which is interestingly the longest polyphasic sleep study to ever last among all existent studies. Unfortunately, after the researchers in charge of this study have been contacted via Email, only the information of the Abstract is available.
This study sheds some light on the vision of a long-term Uberman lifestyle as well as its implications on overall well-being of polyphasic sleepers. It is remarkable that most of the subjects quit the experiment because of social life constraints rather than the would-be grueling adaptation by week 3, and one remaining subject did last until the end of 5 weeks, without showing any cognitive impairments. Under laboratory conditions, it is guaranteed that these participants were woken up timely during this adaptation, hence it is safe to assume no oversleeping instances occurred. While it is most obvious that Uberman requires an extreme adaptation, and none of these sleep subjects were habitual nappers or sleep mutants, the remaining subject might have adapted to Uberman after 5 weeks, given his cognitive performance and cortisol secretion pattern become stable (the same as on monophasic). At the same time, 5 weeks may not be enough for a successful Uberman adaptation. Even if it was a success, it took laboratory-controlled environment to get this far on Uberman - a regular adaptation with multiple alarms, no human assistance as mentioned before, will most definitely lead to failure.
Despite the seemingly positive news on this hostile schedule, it was reported that growth hormone was completely suppressed and now it was secreted after 6 naps. This suggests that the subjects likely woke up during SWS or traces of SWS, and that SWS was most likely interrupted. Because of GH's suppression, it is then likely that it would be impossible to do a lot of physical activities or training on Uberman, because of the radical change in GH.
Lifestyle Considerations
Based on the official research of Uberman, it now becomes clear as to what downsides Uberman suffer. Basically no room for exercising, high tendency for obnoxious weight gain, inflexibility of sleep even after adaptation and most notably, social life limitation is what makes Uberman unsustainable long term. The cons vastly outweigh the benefits, which are large sleep reduction and powerful dreaming. 3h40m wake gap between each nap is usually too short to schedule or even simulate real-world commitments; Steve Pavlina worked from home when adapting to Uberman, and Puredoxyk also had a flexible job. Therefore, only work-from-home lifestyles would benefit from an Uberman adaptation.
The cruel adaptation has little mercy on skipping a nap. Doing so further develops the chance for a long crash during adaptation. Even after adaptation, the risk of oversleeping remains, and many alarms may have to be maintained for several months. Like any other nap-only schedules, Uberman does not support the clearance of brain waste via the glymphatic system, because the longest sleep duration is only 20 minutes. There could be some hidden mechanics behind the intensely deep naps that help facilitate this biological process, but it is currently unknown as to how because an average SWS baseline per day(~90m) cannot be preserved on this schedule. The study in the previous section also confirms how difficult it is to sustain Uberman, reflecting on the minuscule adaptation success, even if adaptation is going in one's favor. Conclusively, only sleep mutants, insomniacs or external circumstances that result in a continuously low amount of vital sleep requirements should attempt Uberman.
