Nature, or Nurture?

For sometime now (20 or so years), I’ve been sleep deprived. I’m not sure if the being a software developer had anything to do with it, but I’m sure it hasn’t helped. I’ve even though about changing my name to Tyler Durden.

Not long ago, a friend of mine (David Grubman) suggested that I do some reading on Polyphasic sleep (links at the bottom of this post). The idea sounded both interesting, and plausible – Train your body to enter REM sleep early in the sleep cycle, and when REM is over, wake up (typically 15-30 minutes in duration). Essentially, take a nap, instead of going to sleep. The most common of these polyphasic patterns is the Uberman schedule, which advocates six naps a day equally long, and evenly spaced. That amounts to a total of 1.5 to 3 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period – significantly less than the “recommended” eight hours.

So, back to my history. I can’t sleep. When I do go to sleep, I’m nearly guaranteed to wake up in an hour or less. Sometimes I go back to sleep and sleep the rest of the night, and sometimes I get myself a Scooby Snack and watch some TV. I’ve attended 3 sleep studies over the past 20 years, and all of them have been inconclusive. Part of the problem with those sleep studies is that they are looking for sleep apnea. I don’t have sleep apnea, and never have.

Some time back, my Mother saw an ABC special on “Night Eating Syndrome” (NES), and we thought that we had my diagnosis. It fit the symptoms perfectly:

• NOT sleep walking – I’m always wide awake when I get up
• Waking up (sometimes) several times a night, and feeling a strong desire for something to eat

I tried some of the therapies for NES, with mixed results. There is a medication that helps, but it has some side effects, and starts to lose it’s effectiveness after a few months of use. The whole discipline thing has never worked for me with my eating. I’ve got great discipline during the day, but typically, when I get up at night, I’ve got none whatsoever.

Enter Polyphasic sleep. During my reading, it was apparent that there is a long (2 weeks or so) grueling adaptation period, where it’s unsafe for you to interact with people or machines. I’ve been sleep deprived for long periods of time before, and didn’t relish the idea of burning a couple of weeks of vacation/life for such punishment.

As luck would have it, I’ve been hacking on a few personal projects lately, and those have held my attention into the wee hours for the last couple of weeks. So I’ve been moderately sleep deprived (which I’ve read is a good starting point for Uberman). Last night finally shutdown the computer around 1:30am, and crawled into the bed. I awoke at 2am fully awake, with vivid recollection of a dream. From my blog reading, dreams are associated with REM sleep, so I figured my body was already in the Uberman cycle, so I should try and take advantage of it. I went back to my computer, and piddled around on a new piece of code until 5:30am, then went back to bed. I made a mental note that I should probably get up at 6am, whether I’d fallen asleep or not.

I awoke at 5:58, again with vivid recollection of a dream. I felt refreshed (certainly not as dead I I would normally feel on 1 hour of sleep. Due to my mild to moderate sleep deprivation over the past several months, I haven’t gotten up at 6am of my own accord more than once or twice. I’m going to see how well I do today, taking naps every 3-4 hours. If I’m still lucid this evening, I’ll make a blog post about my condition <grin>

If indeed I am in an Uberman sleep cycle, why was it so easy? I wonder if I’m genetically or otherwise predisposed to this type of sleep pattern? It’s certainly something that’s been on my mind since Grubman mentioned it to me. I always thought that an early project I worked on, where we had to work both 2nd shift providing support, and 3rd shift fixing bugs nudged me into serious sleep problems.

Or, has the “Software Developer” lifestyle done this to me? It’s a project driven industry, where timelines can’t slip. I learned how to pull all-nighters early in my career. I’ve even accompanied several junior developers on their first all-nighter. My ability to stay up far longer than anyone else even paid off when our church had an event called “Up All Night”. Has all of this sleep deprivation trained my body to accept Uberman more easily than others?

I’ve got an hour to kill before my next nap. I’ll probably use that to plan how I can sneak away and get a nap while at work tomorrow….

dhw

PS. Does this post sound like it came from someone who is lucid?

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