Siesta
Siesta biphasic schedule[1], which consists of a longer core at night and a shorter core during the day.
| Siesta | |
|---|---|
| chart link
Legend
| |
| Total sleep | 6 hours 30 minutes |
| Proposed by | None, used by humans throughout history. |
| Difficulty | Moderate |
| Specification | 1 long core sleep, 1 daytime short core |
Origin
Throughout history, Siesta has been a very common sleeping pattern in Spain and many other countries around the world. However, it is most likely that humans naturally sleep in the non-reducing form of these schedules, meaning there is little to no sleep reduction involved, and with more flexible sleep timings.
Mechanism
Similar to E1, Siesta sleep takes advantage of the circadian dip around early afternoon. Siesta is considered to have 2 core sleeps, a long one at night and a short one in the day. In contrast to E1, the day core contains 1 full cycle, which is much more restorative than a short nap. The longer daytime sleep also allows for a shortened nocturnal sleep. Usually, the wake gap from the end of the night core to the daytime core can be between 6-9 hours.
However, unlike most standard scheduling where a core sleep would make use of a multiple of the 90m sleep cycle, the standard reducing Siesta (6.5h total) utilizes a 5h core, because last 30 is likely to contain extra REM sleep. Based on the typical human sleep structure, it is expected that SWS would be almost, if not fully covered in the first 3 full cycles of sleep (4.5h). On monophasic sleep, the REM cycles are often longer than 90m, so the 30m may also help with waking up after completed sleep cycles.
Adaptation
It is likely that during parts of adaptation, waking up from the core could be difficult because of SWS wakes (SWS repartitioning in progress) or REM wakes. Over time, waking up will become refreshing. The daytime core is usually reported to be less challenging to manage. However, for those unaccustomed to sleeping this long in the day, it could require learning and adjustment.
Difficulty
Over the years, Siesta has reported great success, with the majority being with the non-reduced version. However, the standard reducing version has less success, due to the need of an adaptation to reduced sleep. Overall, the adaptation is relatively mild. It could be easier than E1 in some cases. With good time management and a functional alarm setup, most individuals should be able to adapt to the reducing Siesta version.
Lifestyle considerations
Siesta sleep is overall a popular schedule, though it is significantly less popular than E1. First, managing a daytime core can be difficult, in comparison to the 20 minute nap on E1. However, recent trends of working from home or flexible school/work hours are making Siesta achievable for many. Another issue is that food time needs to be scheduled either right after the day core, or a few hours before it to ensure its quality. However, there is more leeway in scheduling meals with the daytime core on extended versions, as the total sleep time is higher. After adaptation, the whole schedule can become flexible by flexing one or both core sleeps with small increments.
Siesta (especially extended) is often done by athletes who perform intense exercises. Roger Federer and Usain Bolt are two of the many athletes who are known to habitually take a long sleep in the day. The day core provides recovery after an intense workout session, granting extra sleep time to meet the increased SWS requirement. It has been shown that after an endurance training session, SWS pressure rises and a daytime core allows SWS to be gained[2]. The occurrence of SWS in the long siesta is said to release the growth hormone (GH), which regulates glucose levels and glycogen storage, which often become depleted under intense exercise sessions.
On another note, Siesta-like sleep patterns is also known to be an adaptation of humans to diseases[3] (including chronic infectious diseases). Humans generally sleep more when severely sick, and often in a way resembling extended variants of Siesta, where both core sleeps are much longer than usual to allow for cognitive and physical recovery from sickness.
Variants
Over the years, many Siesta sleepers have adapted to non-standard variants, including alternative reducing ones. The timing of the core sleeps also reported mixed results. Beginners should also look through the differences in the alternate scheduling variations before choosing the desired one to attempt.
Late core
Over the years there a few successful attempts with this variant. The main idea behind this setup is to allow a longer wake gap in the day to suit 9-to-5 jobs. A sleeper would have a core at night, go to work, and then a long sleep block to rejuvenate after work. The advantages of this schedule includes time awake in the evening and night hours. For this reason, this variant can accomodate for many lifestyles.
Despite the advantages, adaptations to this variant are known to be harder than the default version, because shifting the main sleep away from the SWS peak will require management of food, exercise and lighting to ensure a sufficient amount of SWS. (See also: dark period) Those with lower SWS requirements will likely find this easier. The short core is pushed much later into the afternoon and early evening. This core may start as late as 19:30. Even so, however, it may be still socially intrusive.
Slightly modified core length
There has been only one notable case that has adapted to a 5.5h night core. Since there is still a small chance of SWS wakes during adaptation or in the case of high SWS requirements, adapting to this variant is not recommended. The advantage of this core length may benefit high REM requirements, and buffing the total sleep to a safer amount for ~17-18-year-old individuals. The additional 30m may yield a longer period of wakefulness and the daytime sleep can be delayed further.
This Siesta variant would line up with the 90m cycle scheduling rule, however, so far it has reported much less success than the standard version. It is alleged that people with slightly lower monophasic requirements (e.g, 7h) would have a comfortable time adapting to this variant. However, it is also very possible that after adapting to the default Siesta version, the night core can naturally shorten down to 4.5h, but it does not happen very often. With some amount of extra sleep, it is possible to attempt this version if one wants to rake in a bit more extra time during emergency events.
Night core extension
This variant also sees a lot of success, mostly in people with active lifestyles or are still growing mentally and physically. The adaptation difficulty is much milder than the default version, and extending the night core follows the 90m cycle rule (mostly for convenience). This extended version still gives a decent amount of sleep reduction for people whose monophasic need is around 9h each day. The most common form of scheduling this setup is to have a slightly longer core at night and keep the daytime core as it is. However, the night core can still be further extended, which would raise the total sleep higher and become non-reducing Siesta (no sleep reduction from monophasic) if it is preferred. An example would be a 6.5-7h night core, and a 90m daytime sleep for an individual with ~8-9h monophasic baseline.
Daytime core extension
Contrary to the first version of Siesta-extended, this version surprisingly scores some successes thus far, but with a stranger distribution of sleep that looks almost like Segmented sleep. Sleepers who would resort to this variant likely have work hours at night of some sort, and other commitments in the evening. As a result, the night core is often cut short, hence the extension of the daytime core by a full cycle. Ideally in this setup, the dark period would start 1.5-2h before the night core, and resume until ~1.5-2h after the night core to stabilize the circadian rhythm with a solid dark period. Without proper dark period management (e.g, shift work, rotation work hours), it is tremendously difficult to make this variant work, however.
Shortened daytime core/Non-reducing variant
A 60m sleep block is usually discouraged for attempting under most, if not all, polyphasic patterns. However, under non-reducing condition, it can be natural to wake up after 60m rather than a full 90m core. 60m sleeps have been anecdotally researched and tried by a couple of polyphasic sleepers over the years who often naturally fall back to this seemingly "odd" sleep duration. The reason is that the 60m sleep duration provides mostly SWS and the sleeper would likely wake up during the transitional light sleep stage, before the usual REM sleep block would enter. Under non-repartitioned sleep, all sleep cycles follow the regular order, in which NREM1 initiates the cycle, followed by NREM2 (starting to actually fall asleep), SWS (deep sleep, unaware of the surrounding), NREM2 (transition stage) and finally REM sleep. The body at this point has completed the required amount of vital sleep in the day and naturally wakes up, without compressing the core sleeps. However, outside of non-reducing condition, a 60m sleep block should not be scheduled from the start.
Another great boon of non-reducing version is that sleepers do not have to be confined to a specific duration of daytime core length, as long as it's no shorter than ~50m (to differentiate with E1). and can be as long as ~2h. Thus, non-reducing Siesta has a lot of flexibility in scheduling, and heavily favors natural wakes (e.g, 60m daytime core one day, and ~80-90m core the next day). It is also not a requirement to sleep at the exact same hours everyday for both sleeps even when adapting (though consistency of sleep times is great). The goal is to ensure there is no sleep reduction from monophasic baseline to get as much productivity during the day as possible (for events or circumstances that require sharp decision-making and/or focus like examinations).
References
- ↑ polyphasic.net. Retrieved 20-11-2020.
- ↑ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20308699/
- ↑ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26193476/
