All the most interesting about the siesta in the countries of southern Europe. Good luck experimenting with reducing sleep without harming yourself! Siesta in Southern Europe

Siesta - this is the daytime sleep (after dinner) from the Spanish "siesta". This is approximately from 12.00 to 15.00. But in some countries, for example in Italy, they dine after 16.00, so the time of the siesta, who practices it, shifts towards the evening.

Siesta or daytime sleep - has its own great value. There are many studies by famous scientists on the topic of influence daytime sleep. This is really helpful, I myself tested the effect of daytime sleep on own life and I can say that with the correct performance of the siesta, the efficiency of affairs during the day can be increased at least 1.5 times.

This is especially true during heavy loads (physical, emotional and mental), when the time of night sleep is reduced to 6 hours or less.

But, there are rules and contraindications here, so as not to hibernate and not spoil your whole afternoon. Let's consider everything in order.

Daytime Sleep (Siesta) and how it is useful for adults

As we have already said, daytime sleep is a dream in the period from about 12.00 to 15.00, up to a maximum of 16.00. But this does not mean that daytime sleep lasts all 3 hours, by no means.

1. Duration of Siesta. Most best effect daytime sleep gives if its duration is from 20 to 40 minutes, you can sleep up to 1 hour maximum (with severe overwork). More, it will be harmful. If you sleep for more than an hour, then most often for the body it will be an oversleeping, too deep a dive, during which a failure may occur. internal clock when the body can begin to confuse day and night.

2. Exit from daytime sleep. It is easiest and fastest to wake up just when the afternoon nap lasts no more than 40 minutes. If a person sleeps more, then the longer he sleeps, the more difficult it will be for him to get out of sleep. Often a late entry from daytime sleep is accompanied by severe headaches, while the body does not fully wake up before nightfall. At the same time, the efficiency of any business tends to zero.

4. Late afternoon sleep. In no case should Siesta go beyond 17.00, after this time it starts to get dark, and according to natural rhythms, if you sleep at this time (at sunset), a strong outflow of energy begins, and a person, as a rule, wakes up more tired than he went to bed. After 16.30 it is better not to go to bed at all, even if you are very tired, it will only get worse.

What does daytime sleep provide?

1. The most important thing that daytime sleep gives is the complete removal of stress, during which the accumulated negative emotions, fatigue and turns on the mode accelerated recovery organism. During the day, the body is able to recover much faster than at night. Including, a purposeful attitude to this helps.

2. Psychological rest - removal of psycho-emotional stress, stress. If the dream is correct, it really becomes much easier on the Soul.

3. speed dial energy to all energy systems - to the body, to, etc. In many ways, it happens due to turning off sources of uncontrolled voltage, consumption and burning of energy (physical, emotional, etc.).

4. In general, when a person works with overloads, daytime sleep allows you to stop the destructive processes in the soul and body of a person, avoid overwork, exhaustion and breakdowns.

5. Thanks to the siesta, you can significantly reduce the overall daily time for sleep - for 2-3 hours, and well-being, efficiency of life and business will increase. It works exactly like this for me.

Personally, I can say that it often happened that after 20 minutes of daytime sleep I felt as much rested, strong and energized as after 8 hours good sleep at night. It really helps me.

Mood. You need to set yourself up for nap- for 20, maximum 30 minutes. This will help you learn how to wake up and immediately get up alert in exactly 20 minutes. without an alarm clock, literally second to second. It works fine for me.

Body position during sleep. It is best to lie down, on a flat surface, on your back, arms at your sides. If the dream is correct, then you will quickly switch off and wake up in the same position. It's good when you sleep 20 min. without moving.

Relaxation. When you lie down, go through your whole body with your attention and relieve tension, completely relax, this is important. The deeper the relaxation of all muscles, the faster you will fall asleep (it happens almost instantly) and the better you will rest.

Awakening. If you did everything right, then your awakening also happens almost instantly and you are alert and full of energy (not lethargic) immediately get on your feet and are ready to act. There may be a feeling that you were somewhere very, very far away, and as if you flew into the body immediately jumping to your feet, this is normal. The impression that you disappeared not for 20 minutes, but for much longer is also good, it means that you did everything right and the siesta was a success.

Sleep is necessary for our body, but sometimes thoughts arise that the time spent on it could be more useful. But here's the problem - if you sleep 3-4 hours a day, instead of the recommended eight, your health leaves much to be desired. Multi-phase short-term rest is an alternative to a long sleep that takes all night and a total “lack of sleep”. About the pros and cons of the regime and how to switch to polyphasic sleep, read below.

Although the term "polyphasic sleep" was introduced only at the beginning of the 20th century, it is believed that this method of restoring strength is more than one hundred years old. Many great personalities are cited as an example as people who managed to sleep 3-4 hours a day and achieve breathtaking results in their field. Napoleon Bonaparte went to bed at about 22-23 o'clock, woke up at 2, was awake until 5 in the morning, and then fell asleep again until 7. Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher spent no more than 4-5 hours a day hugging Morpheus. And the famous inventor Nikola Tesla, according to some reports, fell asleep for only 2 hours at night, and 20 minutes during the day.

It is important to know! Leonardo da Vinci is considered the main adept of polyphasic sleep. According to legend, in order to realize all his plans, he reduced it to 20 minutes, resorting to such a rest every 4 hours of wakefulness.

Features of polyphasic sleep

One of the main arguments of fans of the theory of the naturalness of such a dream sounds like this: animals and babies rest in this way. Official medicine is in no hurry to open this seemingly incredible time-saving system for humanity. Despite the abundance positive feedback, many people, when trying to switch to "polyphase", note negative consequences for the body.

Definition of the term

Habitual rest, beginning with the evening going to bed and ending morning awakening, is called monophasic, that is, whole. Polyphasic is a dream consisting of several segments (“poly” from Greek - numerous). The bottom line is that these segments should be strictly the same, but last no more than four hours. At the same time, about 20-30 minutes are allotted for sleep itself.

The school curriculum explains that sleep is divided into several repetitive phases:

Slow takes about 70 minutes. At this time, the body relaxes, energy is restored;
Rapid (REM) lasts 15-20 minutes. It promotes relaxation of the brain, during this period dreams appear.

It is the second phase that is considered necessary for a full recovery. And the first, long one, can theoretically be excluded without loss to the body. Fans of "polyphase" in this matter are moving from theory to practice. They accustom their body in the shortest possible time to pass slow stage and immediately start fast. In this way, instead of going to bed late and getting up early, and leaving the body without the necessary REM sleep, a person fully “pours out” his entire daily norm.

It is important to know! Using polyphasic sleep, in total, a person spends no more than three hours a day on it. Sleep for 20 minutes every 4 hours adds up to six equal cycles.

Purposes of application

The nuance of the system is that chaotic falling asleep for 15 minutes during the day returns a person to the state of constant fatigue. To reduce rest time and at the same time remain productive is possible only in case of strict adherence to the regime. Therefore, you can contact her if possible.

The technique is suitable for freelancers who work from home and prefer to devote night hours to work. It can be successfully used by housewives or students. For a mother on maternity leave, this method is hardly suitable, since her wakefulness depends on the child, and not on the alarm clock.

It is logical not to turn your whole life into following a minute-by-minute routine, but to switch to “polyphase” when necessary. For example, if you are preparing to create an important project that will take a lot of time.

health hazard

Physicians and biologists disagree about polyphasic sleep. Scientists who say that after the advent of electricity, a person no longer depends on the change of day and night, are positive about this practice.

It is important to know! Polyphasic sleep studies and related practical research demonstrate that a person can live without harm to the body in this mode for at least five months. And the scientist Claudio Stampi says that such a system returns humanity to nature, and our ancient ancestors existed exactly according to such a schedule.

But most doctors insist that it is necessary to observe biological rhythm dependent on the sun. This scientific opinion is supported by deterioration in well-being, which manifests itself when trying to sleep “polyphasically”:

But those for whom the experiment was successful argue that polyphasic sleep is harmful only if the regime is not followed, and poor health disappears after a period of adaptation.

Due to the fact that the process of entering the mode does not go unnoticed for health, adolescents are not recommended to conduct such experiments on themselves.

Polyphasic sleep options

There are many sleep techniques that are polyphasic. The simplest of them is Siesta. It turns out that many observe it unconsciously. This is an option when a person rests 5-6 hours at night and an additional hour and a half after dinner. Naturally, you need to go to bed at the same time.

Other modes of entering polyphasic sleep, the technique of which is more complicated:

"Everyman". We sleep once at night for 2-3 hours + three times for 20-minute rests during the day.
Biphasic: Sleep 6 hours at night and 20 minutes during the day.
"Dymaxion": sleep 4 times for 30 minutes every 6 hours.
Triphasic: we sleep twice for 2.5 hours during the day + again for 20 minutes.
Uberman: Sleep 6 times every 4 hours.
Teslovski: we sleep 2 hours at night and once 20 minutes during the day.

What time to sleep is an individual choice of a person. It is better to calculate on the calculator when you need to rest, and when you can stay awake.

Application in practice

The complexity of the system is that it is impossible to change abruptly from “monophase” to “polyphase”. The adaptation period lasts from 7 to 10 days.

Preparatory stage

This is the most difficult stage transition to new mode. A person should be prepared for the fact that during this time he will feel like a “sleepy fly”, the perception of reality will worsen, so it is better not to plan serious things for this period. Coffee, which may seem like a lifesaver to many, produces a short-term effect, in return prolonging the addiction period for a few more days.

Moving to the next level

Gradually, by about 10-14 days, the body gets used to "turning off" only in the allotted periods and does not require extra rest. By this time, the body changes its attitude not only to sleep, but also to food intake. Products previously included in daily diet, may cease to seem appetizing, while others, on the contrary, want to eat. It is important to listen to the desires of your body and satisfy them, and not try to use the old rules in the new regime.

Also at this stage, there is a feeling of "stretching" of time, a person no longer notes the change of day and night. Someone considers this a positive aspect, and some researchers attribute it to the development of a mental disorder.

Return to monophasic sleep

Those who have tried different methods"polyphasics", including sleep for 15 minutes every 4 hours, claim that they stopped their experiment not because feeling unwell, but because the new regime did not coincide with the rhythm of other people's lives. But most experimenters return to "monophase" even at the stage of adaptation due to the fact that they cannot cope with weakness and fatigue, which invariably reduces work productivity tester. There is no mention of any health problems during the reverse transition.

American blogger and coach Steve Pavlina, who has been practicing polyphasic sleep for about 5 and a half months, gives beginners the following recommendations:

Set a timer for the time you need to wake up.
Find interesting activity for the period of wakefulness, so as not to concentrate on fatigue.
If the transition is very difficult, give yourself an extra 20 minutes of sleep during the day.
Try not to eat meat and other heavy food before bedtime.
Focus on the reason and motivation that pushed you to new practice. It must be weighty enough.

Also during the adaptation period, Pavlina refused important work and the steering wheel did not sit down. A user of the Russian entertainment resource "Peekaboo", who has tested the technique for himself, gives the following advice:

Try not to eat 3 hours before bed. WITH full stomach impossible to sleep short term. Eat food after waking up.
Drink a lot pure water. Not tea or drinks, but water.
If you don’t fall asleep immediately in the allocated 20 minutes, just lie down with eyes closed and relax. Gradually, the body gets used to quickly "switch off".
Looking for something to do at night. It doesn't have to be mentally demanding things in the first stage, because the body is still "sleepy".
Avoid alcohol completely.

The user of another popular Internet resource "Habr" stopped his experiment due to the fact that already at the stage of adaptation, his heart problems that had begun before intensified.

The more active a person's lifestyle, the harder it will be for him to exist in the "polyphase" mode. For athletes, this is almost impossible, since such a rest gives full recovery the brain, but the unstressed body.

Opinions on the technique of polyphasic sleep

Academician, doctor medical sciences Alexander Wayne, author of Sleep and Wake Disorders, believed that a person should calculate the time for rest individually. You need to listen to your body during the day, calculating the time when you most want to sleep. At this point, according to Wayne, you need to lie down for 1-2 hours. Another 2-3 hours the doctor recommended to “fill up” at midnight. He considered such a technique, in which sleep is given 4-5 hours, effective and acceptable for the human body.

Piotr Wozniak, on the basis of his research, on the contrary, claims that polyphasic sleep is not natural for the body and leads to a decrease in physical and mental activity. He notes that all the experimenters could not relax, and were forced to constantly work during their waking moments in order not to “turn off”. According to Wozniak, this categorically does not help development creativity or normal process learning.

Advice! Most doctors and scientists are positive about the idea of extra rest during the day. But they are not advised to give up the night “monophase”, switching to hard modes like “Uberman”.

Conclusion

Theoretically, the idea of fifteen minutes of sleep is quite enticing. If you manage to overcome the addiction period, you can get an almost super ability to stay awake for 20-23 hours. On the other hand, it will be difficult to use it, because such a regime requires relentless strict adherence and most often does not coincide with work, study, family and friends.

It is better to refer to the idea of polyphasic sleep periodically, for example, when it becomes necessary to complete work on a tight schedule. The main thing to remember is that you need to start the experiment a week earlier. Adherents of the new regime will also have to give up alcohol, caffeine and night snacks.

There is a belief that polyphasic sleep techniques can increase the amount of time you are awake and reduce the amount of time you spend sleeping up to 4 or 6 hours a night, and possibly even up to 2.

Polyphasic sleep is the practice of sleeping multiple times in a 24-hour period, usually more than twice, as opposed to biphasic sleep (twice a day) or monophasic sleep (once a day).

On this moment There are no studies on polyphasic sleep. Few activists try these polyphasic sleep techniques on themselves.

The most common polyphasic sleep techniques, there are 5 of them:

1. "Dymaxion". Sleep only 2 hours a day. 30 minutes of sleep every 6 hours.

2. "Uberman". Sleep like in Dymaxion only 2 hours a day, only here you need to sleep 20 minutes every 4 hours.

3. "Everyman". Here it is supposed to sleep 2-3 hours at night and 3 times a day for 20 minutes.

4. "Siesta". A very common technique in which you need to sleep 1 hour at lunchtime and once at night for a duration of 5 hours.

5. Tesla. Afternoon nap - 20 minutes and 2 hours of sleep at night.

Let's take a closer look at these polyphasic sleep techniques.

1. Dymaxion.

The term "Dymaxion" means the concept of using technologies and resources to their maximum power with a minimum use of resources.

The Dymaxion sleep schedule involves sleeping 4 times a day for 30 minutes, every 6 hours, usually at or around the 6 o'clock mark.

So, sleep at 6 am, 12 noon, 6 pm and 12 am for about 30 minutes. Of course, this is consistent with general concepts polyphasic sleep.

Obviously, this translates into a total of 2 hours of nap time, the same amount obtained with Uberman's polyphasic sleep technique. It turns out that the body simply needs the absolute minimum of 2 hours of sleep each day.

The scientists found that many had problems following this sleep schedule. It is believed that the break between sleeps at 6 hours is difficult to adapt, and 30 minutes of sleep is more of an adjustment.

2. Uberman

Many believe that Leonardo da Vinci took control of time throughout the day with Uberman's polyphasic sleep technique. At least part of his life he did not devote to normal night sleep. In general, the beliefs of some about how Da Vinci slept is the basis for Uberman's polyphasic sleep technique.

The Uberman sleep schedule consists of 6 sleep parts of 20 minutes in equal increments. Every 4 hours there is a 20-minute sleep, we can say that a person only has time to take a nap during this time.

That's all. No other sleep at night.

Adapting to such a regime is extremely difficult. If you or someone you know is going to try out polyphasic sleep, it's worth looking at other, more advanced sleep patterns first. simple techniques polyphasic sleep before moving on to the Uberman technique.

3. Everyman (everyman sleep).

The term "Everyman" was coined by the same person who coined the term Uberman.

Most people work during the day. A relatively normal working day is 8 hours, although many people work a little more.

Many polyphasic sleep techniques are very inconvenient. Everyman is designed to work around the normal life of people.

It consists of a period of sleep at night, when people are already accustomed to sleeping, and then a limited number of naps during the day, usually three.

In the "traditional" Everyman technique, the sleep schedule is a basic period of 3 hours of sleep from 1 am to 4 am, followed by 20 minutes each at 9 am, 2 pm, and 9 pm.

But, for a working person, a more suitable sleep schedule is from about 11 pm to 2 am, then for 20 minutes at 7 am, at 12 pm, and at 6 pm.

If you're interested or just want to experiment with polyphasic sleep but aren't sure if you can do it, then the Everyman technique might be good choice for you.

4. Siesta.

Siesta is the most common polyphasic sleep technique and involves two separate segments of sleep during the day - once at night, and once in the middle of the day.

There are three different biphasic graphs.

"Power Siesta" which involves sleeping 20 minutes in the middle of the day and 5-6 hours at night, and the more common "Long Siesta" involving 4.5-5.5 hours of sleep at night and 60-90 minutes of sleep during of the day, and of course segmented sleep (which we will not talk about in this article).

5 Tesla.

Tesla is one of the greatest inventors in the world, he claimed to get only 2-3 hours of sleep a day.

"I don't think there's a better feeling that comes through human heart like I felt like an inventor when you see the creation in the brain and everything unfolds to success ... such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.
~ Nikola Tesla.

This method involves being awake for almost 22 hours every day: sleeping 1.5 - 2 hours a day and taking a nap for 15 - 20 minutes every four hours of wakefulness. If Tesla claims to have only slept 2 or so hours a day, he may have tried this method too.

Tesla is often compared to another famous inventor, Thomas Edison, who claims to get only 4-5 hours of sleep per night.

So we examined the most common polyphasic sleep techniques, before you start using these techniques, it is worth remembering that side effects from polyphasic sleep are not yet fully understood.

We haven’t touched on something in the “Magic” section on our website, the issue of dreams. And it would be nice, because dreams are a rather magical thing even in our age of scientific progress. Therefore, we are correcting and bring to your attention the article “ HOW to sleep less?» Where we will try to combine both sleep and scientific facts about sleep into something like a recipe - so that you can learn to sleep less.

"Sleep less?" - you ask? “What is there to learn! You sleep less - and that’s it ... ”But you need to remember the consequences. Sleep deprivation is a bad and sometimes dangerous thing. Therefore, the title of the article reads as follows: How to sleep less without harm to the body? And from this we will dance. So in the future, when you read “sleep less” in the article, you need to mentally add “without harm to the body.”

How to sleep less without harming the body? This question comes up when you study (or hear a glimpse of) the biographies of great people. Who did a lot of useful things, in particular, because they slept less than ordinary people. These people include the well-known Leonardo da Vinci, Napoleon, Gaius Julius Caesar, Margaret Thatcher, Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, Peter I, and many others.

Unfortunately, the great people who slept the least left no manuals for this, nor even a detailed description:

How little sleep have they had since childhood?
Or trained?
How did you learn, if you did?
So they slept all their lives or only during military campaigns or great deeds?
How did they eat?
What stimulants were used - or not used?

In general, there are a lot of questions. Therefore, we need to consider them in more detail.

First, let's define what "less" means. So, according to statistics, for a good sleep, the average healthy European and North American needs 8 hours of sleep.

Naturally, as in any other statistics, there are deviations from the average - both up and down. So, there are people who sleep 9, 10 hours. There are people who sleep 7, 6 hours. The length of sleep is associated, among other things, with age. So, scientists studied 110 people aged 20 to 83 years. It turned out that young people from twenty to thirty years old sleep an average of 7.23 hours a day. At the same time, people from 66 to 83 years old - only more than 6 hours. In addition, the elderly spend more time falling asleep. The young are able to fall asleep an average of 23 minutes after going to bed, the elderly need from fifty to seventy minutes.

Now let's talk about the dangers of lack of sleep.

How bad is lack of sleep?

The consequences of lack of sleep are probably familiar to most people:

little distraction,
some weakening of ingenuity,
irritability
drowsiness
fatigue
slow reaction.

Naturally, with an increase in the amount of lack of sleep, these effects are exacerbated. Thus, a slight absent-mindedness gradually turns into clinical absent-mindedness, and a slight weakening of quick wit turns into constant dullness, and so on. But these are just flowers chronic sleep deprivation a number of body functions can be disrupted, which in severe cases leads to obesity and hallucinations.

The result is simple: the harm of lack of sleep the more significant, the more chronic sleep deprivation.

Let's go back to our less". I hope you have already guessed that "less" is not a statistical concept, but an individual one? That the goal is set differently: Not“how to sleep 5 hours instead of the statistical 8”, and

"How to sleep less than I usually sleep - without harm to the body?"

Naturally, another question arises: "How to determine how much need less sleep (without harm to yourself, of course)?” We will consider the answer to this question at the end of the article. In the meantime, let's dwell on the moments that help reduce the length of sleep without consequences.

First question:

The question of the supply of substances and reserves in the body, or what to live without getting enough sleep?

This question is one of the key issues in reducing the amount of sleep. Although nutrition does not directly affect the length of sleep, it does affect another component of it - the harmlessness of sleep deprivation. Do you already understand what we are getting at?

Moreover, the harmlessness of lack of sleep more than half depends on the quality of human nutrition. So, if a person lives on coffee, chips and Coca-Pepsi, then after some time of lack of sleep, he will turn into a walking sleepy skeleton, in which everything falls out of his hands.

On the other hand, when a person has a reserve, and he also eats well, then the body there is something to generate energy for your movement. Even if these reserves are not replenished in sleep, the incoming substances are sufficient to ensure the energy processes of the body.

Why are we talking about reserves of substances? The fact is that sleep, in particular, performs important function synthesis. During sleep, a person moves little (compared to the day). Therefore, it is much easier for the body to carry out synthesis processes - all the energy spent on movement can be directed to the formation of reserves and other compounds necessary for life.

Naturally, during the day, when a person is active, the formed synthesized reserves and other high-energy compounds are destroyed, releasing energy.

Of course, if you reduce the time for the synthesis of reserves, then after a while the body's reserve will be depleted, and there will be nowhere to take energy for daily activities (= fatigue, sleepiness, bad reaction, etc.). That is, in this place those very unpleasant consequences occur.

Interestingly, one of the consequences of lack of sleep is obesity. See the logical connection? Everything is very simple:

The body does not have time to stock up at night the right amount nutrients.
The food lacks the necessary macro- and microelements.
The body includes a program of intensive fat gain (at least some nutrients) in order to somehow maintain its performance and still close up at least some reserve.

Naturally, due to the fact that the stock is produced very quickly, the quality of the "packaging" of spare substances is worse. That is, lack of sleep is directly related to obesity 🙂 A good nutrition (even more complete than with enough sleep) is very important.

Well, in order not to gain weight with lack of sleep, it is enough to follow a simple commandment, probably known to all women: do not eat after 19.00.

Let's take a closer look at nutrition.

The question of tryptophan and melatonin, or why old people sleep less?

Tryptophan is an essential amino acid that is not produced by metabolism in the human body. And its only source is products from outside. So this alone should be alarming.

One of the products of tryptophan metabolism in the body is melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone that regulates human circadian rhythms. Melatonin is produced during normal sleep hours. Naturally than less sleep the less melatonin. Against the background of a lack of tryptophan, this is very, very bad for health.

So, with age, the amount of melatonin decreases, sleep becomes superficial and restless, insomnia is possible. Accordingly, therefore, the elderly sleep less.

On the other hand, melatonin helps to eliminate insomnia, prevents daily regime organism and biorhythm. Accordingly, if you are going to sleep less, then to reduce harmful effects regular intake of tryptophan before bed- this is it.

Sleep as a time to eliminate harmful compounds = sleep as "maintenance" for the body.

There is a theory that sleep is a kind of technological repair for the body.

During the slow phase of sleep, when a person sleeps deeply and hardly moves, the body removes harmful compounds from fatty tissues (their storage sites). Harmful compounds include both metabolic products and various outside nonsense - lead from exhaust gases, preservatives from mayonnaise, pesticides from vegetables, nitrates from water, nicotine from cigarettes, acetaldehyde from ethyl alcohol and so on.

During fast phase sleep, when sleep is less deep, and a person moves a lot, blood flow becomes more intense, and harmful substances removed from cells and tissues enter the bloodstream - and forward, to the kidneys and further to the exit.

During the day, there are active decay processes with the release of energy for movement - and the body has no time to deal with such nonsense as maintenance and removal of toxins. At night, it's a different matter. The muscles are relaxed, the heart beats evenly - it is the very thing to bring out all sorts of nonsense (as long as the owner does not interfere).

It is logical to assume that less people sleeps, the less time the body has to remove harmful compounds. So lack of sleep is associated with greater intoxication of the body than at normal amount sleep.

What to do? Everything is very simple.

As you hopefully know, the safest place for the body to detoxify harmful substances is adipose tissue. Adipose tissue used in normal life infrequently, so it is the most safe place for deposits of any nonsense. As we have said, lack of sleep is associated with obesity. Naturally, the second function of obesity in sleep deprivation is the increased development of places where harmful substances can be stored that do not have time to be excreted by the body at night.

As you can see, everything is natural and interconnected.

So how to deal with it? Least, do not break the withdrawal cycles of harmful compounds. So, have you noticed that if you wake up a person at the wrong time, his head is like a hangover, it hurts, he feels bad in general. Is it clear now what it is? These are unrecovered harmful substances. They came out of the tissues, but they have not yet been excreted by the kidneys. So the body gets small symptoms of poisoning.

In terms of reducing the amount of sleep without harming yourself, what the body uses fixed rhythm to remove harmful compounds. So, during the night a person goes through 2-3 withdrawal cycles, approximately equal in time. Naturally, if you really interrupt sleep, then just between one cycle and another, in the intervals between them. But not during a maintenance cycle.

How to calculate these cycles? Here you will need a series of experiments on getting up and fixing your well-being. Main idea:

A person sleeps comfortably and gets enough sleep for certain time(say 8.5 hours).
This means that this time includes a multiple of maintenance cycles (3-4).
We divide one by the other and get the approximate duration of one body maintenance cycle (in our example, 2.125-2.8 hours).

Well, then a few more corrective experiments with under- and over-sleeping, and maintenance cycle time is determined quite accurately. Usually it ranges from 2 to 3.5 hours, which corresponds to the usual spread in sleep time from 6 to 10 hours. Well, on average, we get the usual 8 hours of sleep.

2.5 hours
5 o'clock
7.5 hours
10 hours

Accordingly, waking up after 3 hours, after 5.6 hours, after 8.1 hours, after 9 hours and any other options is more harmful. Which we don't need at all.

The question of the optimal alternation of sleep phases, or sleep as a medicine for the nervous system.

Chinese torture: A person was kept from REM sleep for some time. That is, here is a man, here he is falling asleep. Here comes the deep phase, he lies motionless, relaxed, breathing deeply. But as soon as the fast phase begins, as soon as the eyes begin to run, only the breathing quickens, as a specially appointed Chinese woke up the unfortunate.

Everything seems to be fine - the person is sleeping. But in about a week, sometimes in two (when a person is a ninja and is accustomed to everything), he gives up - and that's it, glitches, a broken roof and a painful death.

Therefore the question of enough alternating REM and non-REM sleep is an important issue in terms of sleep deprivation. Sorry, call fast or slow phase it is impossible at will (unless you drink tryptophan before going to bed, which will turn into melatonin and will regulate sleep rhythms). But you can take into account one nuance.

So, for example, you set that your output loop harmful substances lasts 2.5 hours. You can set an alarm and wake up just in time. But studies show that waking up during REM sleep would be a good idea. If the alarm wakes up in the middle deep sleep, then the awakening will be difficult and may not take place at all. But when a person wakes up during the fast phase, he is, as it were, already half awake, and then it’s just a matter of technique.

A new question arises: “How to wake up during REM sleep?” Well, for the lazy, there are special watches where you can set an alarm and set the rise time spread (say, plus or minus half an hour), and the watch uses a motion sensor to determine the fast phase closest to the lift point (if it falls into the spread), and wake up owner during REM sleep.

For those who are not lazy, you need to come up with a solution 🙂 Perhaps motion sensors from a security alarm and a small programmable controller like Muller or Klinkman will help. And then write a program, configure the sensor - and go!

The question of stimulants, or is it possible to drink coffee with lack of sleep?

There are two stimulants different types. Some are responsible for the synthesis of substances, they accelerate the creation of reserves. And when a person assumes that, say, he will have intense days and nights in a month, he begins to drink these substances and accumulates a good reserve for himself in order to survive lack of sleep without loss.

Stimulants of the second type (coffee, tea and other drugs) stimulate the processes of disintegration of substances and the subsequent release of energy. I hope you have already guessed that they will work only as long as there is something to decompose with the release of energy. When supplies are depleted, coffee, etc. either does not help, or proceeds to the decomposition, no longer of reserves, but of the body proper.

The conclusion is simple: coffee, etc. — main enemy with lack of sleep.

Substances of the first type are responsible for accelerating the synthesis, or scientifically, anabolism, and are commonly called "anabolics". We do not encourage you to eat steroid hormones with lack of sleep. Moreover, they are mainly responsible for protein synthesis. We need synthesis large group spare substances. Therefore, you can use substances with general anabolic activity:

vitamins in general and a nicotinic acid(niacin) in particular.
Essential amino acids (in particular, tryptophan and methionine).
A number of adaptogen plants (for example, Chinese magnolia vine, Rhodiola rosea, Eleutherococcus, ginseng).
Beekeeping products (apilak (bee royal jelly) and pollen).

We went through the general issues, and move on to methods of reducing sleep.

How to sleep less - guidelines.

Oddly enough, the question of how to sleep less has worried people for a long time. And periodically, one or the other came up with all sorts of systems. What all these systems have in common is that they individual. That is, they were developed everyone inventor specifically:

to his rhythms
under his diet
under his age, weight grew and so on.

And the thoughtless application of these techniques on ourselves will lead to only one part of our task - how to sleep less. The “without harm to yourself” part will remain in question. But with the help of imagination, perseverance and the points described above, any of the following techniques can be adapted under your own individual metabolism and rhythm of life. And to achieve the goal - to sleep less without harm to yourself.

By the way, almost all the recipes that you will read below belong to the group " Polyphasic dreams". That is, instead of single-phase sleep (only at night), a person sleeps several times a day. By the way, polyphasic sleep is characteristic of many animals (for example, cats, dogs, wolves). Therefore, it is logical to assume that since human bodies evolved (at least for a while) along with the animal world, they should have a similar sleep system. So from the point of view of theory, polyphasic sleep for a person is the norm, and it is laid down at the genetic level. And single-phase, characteristic of most people, is nothing more than a habit from childhood.

Sleep Less with the Leonardo da Vinci Method

Leonardo da Vinci's recipe for a minimum of sleep: 15 minutes of sleep, then 4 hours of work, then again short-term sleep. And so day after day, year after year. At the same time, he slept well.

Unfortunately this method does not take into account not only the period of maintenance of the body, but also the duration of deep and non-REM sleep. So you can forget about the harmlessness of the method, at least in terms of the accumulation of toxins in the body.

A sleep-reducing mode called "Übermensch"

Another recipe for less sleep is the Übermensch mode. Übermensch means Superman in German. So it's supposed to be a cycle for superhumans. This cycle includes sleeping for 20 minutes every four hours. As a result, it turns out that you sleep six times a day and theoretically get enough sleep. But the regime has one drawback: if you miss at least one phase of sleep, you will feel sleepy and tired.

It is said that someone Steve Pavlina practiced this cycle for 5.5 months, but after that he returned to normal sleep in order to live in unison with his family. As you can see, this method is not very different from the Leonardo method - except for 5 minutes more. With all that it implies.

Sleep reduction mode "Dymaxion".

One Bucky Fuller began to sleep for thirty minutes 4 times a day every six hours, which amounted to only two hours of sleep. At the same time, he said that he had never felt more energetic. Doctors examined Bucky after two years of such a cycle and declared him completely healthy.

This experimenter also did not continue to sleep according to his system, returning to normal life at the request of his wife and business partners.

As you can see, we have increased the duration of one stage of sleep right up to half an hour. This is twice as much as according to the Leonardo method - but this is already more like the truth, because in half an hour you can somehow fit both fast and slow phases of sleep. No one talks about a full maintenance cycle - but, nevertheless, the minimum is already being observed.

The next option is another sleep reduction cycle from the legend area.

Recipe for a minimum of sleep from Salvador Dali

They say that in order to sleep less, the artist put a metal tray on the floor next to him, and between the large and index fingers hand, hanging over the tray, pinched the spoon. As soon as he dozed off, the spoon fell on the tray with a clang and woke him up. The state, intermediate between wakefulness and sleep, refreshed Dali, and he returned to work furiously.

This method was known to the ancient Greeks and Macedonians. So, descriptions have been preserved of how Alexander the Great was taught not to sleep long time in the same way - he sat in front of a copper basin and held in his hand big Stone. When he began to fall asleep, the stone fell out of his hand, rattled against a copper basin, and the young conqueror woke up.

The version of awakening from the fall of a stone on a copper basin seems more plausible than the awakening from the fall of a spoon on a tray. But the authors did not check the method, so they do not state this categorically.

Sleep mode "Everyman"

Or, translated from English - "any person." Probably, it is meant that any person can follow this method. The method consists in the fact that there is one phase of sleep at night lasting 3-3.5 hours (here we are gradually approaching the consideration of the duration of body repair cycles) and three phases of sleep during the day for 20 minutes.

In addition, there are a couple of options for this sleep mode.

So, the first assumes the duration of the main phase of sleep 4.5 hours at night and 2 twenty-minute sleep during the day.
The second option is the main sleep of 1.5 hours and 4-5 dreams of 20 minutes each. The second option does not take into account the repair cycles of the body, and the first is good for those who have 2 full repair cycles in 4.5 hours.

So the Everyman mode is already something. The main thing in it is to coordinate the duration of maintenance and the duration of the main sleep cycle.

Dual sleep.

Dual core sleep is another two variants of sleep. The first involves 2 large sleep intervals of 2.5 and 1.5 hours, as well as 2 short twenty-minute nap breaks. The second option is 3.5 hours + 1.5 hours plus one twenty-minute nap.

As you can see, only the second option at least partially takes into account the repair cycle of the body. An hour and a half sleep in both cases is the middle of the repair cycle, and not the best option for use. Although a theory is just a theory. And, quite possibly, there are people for whom this type is the very thing.

Sleep mode "Siesta"

This dream is practiced by many high school students and students (you probably know it too). The technique is very simple: 5-6 hours of sleep and one nap during the day for 90-20 minutes, respectively. These 5-6 hours can fit a multiple of most people's repair sleep cycles, so this option is by far the healthiest of all.

No wonder they invented siesta, no wonder 🙂

And in this case, the siesta is a good option reduce sleep duration by one repair cycle. That is, 2 repair cycles of 2.5-3 hours each fit into 5-6 hours of the main cycle (just average values). So a siesta is a good option for a gradual transition to greater productivity. By the way, if I had a choice, then he would stop at a daytime sleep of 20 minutes. An hour and a half of daytime sleep is just about getting a heavy head and other hangover in the middle of a body maintenance cycle.

A couple of tips:

It will not be easy to switch to new multi-phase cycles and from about the third to the tenth day you will feel like a zombie. Just be patient, eat healthy low-fat food and you will be fine. In about two weeks, you will feel the promised result. Such experiments can only be carried out if you know for sure that you have two or three absolutely free weeks left and that your work and study can coexist with your new schedule. As, in other matters, and your family.

As they say on Wikipedia:

So, general idea The method of reducing sleep is as follows: the recommended minimum sleep is 4 hours a day, which are divided evenly over all days. The principle of breaking is simple - the shorter the dream, the more often it should occur. And vice versa.

Comparative table of the described methods of reducing the duration of sleep:

Sleeping mode	Total sleep time (hours)	Percentage of time of day	Description of the method
normal sleep	8.0	33.3%	The prescribed 8 hours
Segmented sleep	7.0	29.2%	Two sleeps of 3.5 hours.
Siesta No. 1	6.5	27.0%	5 hours at night + 90 minutes during the day
Siesta No. 2	6.3	26.4%	6 hours at night + 20 minutes during the day
Dual Core #1	5.3	22.2%	3.5 + 1.5 hours + 20 minutes
Dual Core #2	4.6	19.2%	2.5 + 1.5 hours + 2 x 20 minutes
Everyman #1	5.2	21.5%	4.5 hours at night + two twenty minute cycles
Everyman #2	4.0-4.5	16.7-18.8%	3-3.5 hours of sleep and three twenty-minute cycles
Everyman #3	2.8-3.2	11.8-13.2%	1.5 hours of sleep + 4-5 twenty-minute cycles
Dymaxion	2.0	8.33%	4 thirty minute cycles every 6 hours
Ubermensch	2.0	8.33%	6 twenty minute cycles every 4 hours

For last, we've saved a couple of the more unusual and more original recipes reducing the amount of sleep.

Wolf technique to reduce the amount of sleep.

Once, as a child, I came across a book that described the life of a naturalist. So, for scientific purposes, the author lived with wolves for several years and observed the nuances of their biology. what is happening around even during sleep? And figured it might be related

with sleep mode
with sleeping position.

So, wolves sleep for about 15-20 minutes every hour or two (when they are not running after prey). And they do it curled up. The author of the book experienced the wolf method on himself - and he succeeded! That is, he slept lightly for 15 minutes, curled up in a ball. And fell asleep completely. As soon as he began to sleep sleep, and the scientific facts about sleep into something like a recipe - so that you can learn to sleep less. For 15 minutes in the usual position - all the problems of lack of sleep manifested themselves.

This method does not take into account the multiplicity of periods of the day and hours of sleep / p (for some reason, wolves do not use hours). And if that doesn't bother you, then you can start trying! Oddly enough, I trust wolves more than Leonardo da Vinci. Who, quite possibly, also slept curled up...

The second method is the Wayne method.

The description of the method was found somewhere on the forums, so I quote:

This system was developed by Wayne in 1975 - he had been studying dreams and sleep for many years at the Department of Dreams in Moscow.

First, the whole idea is that a person should make the most rational use of the resources that are at his disposal. Including he should sleep only at the time of the day when he sleeps most effectively. This time is determined individually for each and can fall at any time of the day (for example, 12 days).

The second problem is that a person can sit back and still not sleep only during daylight hours and usually not much more than 2-3 hours. The rest of the time (especially at night) a person should be busy with something. Otherwise, wakefulness will turn into flour for him. Therefore, it is necessary to decide in advance what I will do for more than 20 hours a day? At the same time, computer plans should be no more than 12 hours a day.

So, in the first 2 weeks, you will probably re-read everything that you have long wanted to re-read, fix all the broken faucets in the house and watch all the old films. I know at least 3 people who gave it up just because time has nowhere to go.

It is believed that, in principle, a person (adult, healthy) needs to sleep 4 hours a day. 2.5-3 hours a day is a shortened version for extreme people (it only works if you strictly follow the rules).

The most important thing to start with is to identify the time when you sleep most effectively.

To do this, you need to choose a couple of days for yourself when you can afford not to sleep for more than a day and not work very hard. Assuming that you woke up like normal person between 7 and 11 am, then the experiment starts at 12 at night. From 12 at night we begin to listen to own feelings. In theory, it should turn out that you want to sleep in attacks. For some time, there is simply no strength to keep your eyes open, and then after 15-20 minutes it becomes bearable again. For all these observations, a piece of paper is started on which one must honestly record the time at which one begins to want to sleep, the time - how many minutes this attack lasted; and still it is necessary, at your own discretion, to evaluate the strength of each attack in three point system(from 1 to 3 rate how much you wanted to sleep and how hard it was to fight sleep).

All this mockery of oneself should continue until at least 20.00 next day. Better yet, a day from the beginning of the experiment, i.e. until 12 at night.

The next day, with a fresh mind, carefully consider the statistics obtained. It would appear that the cravings for sleep recur every few hours, and usually they appear either at almost the same interval, or alternately with one long and one short interval.

Of all the registered seizures, you must first identify the most long-term. And then 2 of them are the strongest, i.e. those in which there were especially "heavy" phases. So, it turned out 2 periods of time in which you really want to sleep. Usually one "attack" is somewhere between 1 am and 6 am, and the other is somewhere in the afternoon.

The one that is closer to the night, i.e. closer to the time from 00 to 04, will be allocated to the long part of sleep. And the other is short.

For example, if I have such a phase of an irresistible desire to sleep begins at 5 am and another at 12-13 pm, then the long half of my sleep will begin at 5 am, and the short half at 12.

This means that exactly at 5 (for someone it may be exactly 5.15) I go to bed and set myself an alarm clock in order to sleep exactly 2 hours. In general, it was originally meant that another 2 hours can be slept at 12 noon, or I could oversleep 4 hours at once; then in any case I would have had enough sleep up to the roof, and I would have managed 4 hours of sleep a day for the rest of my life.

But Wayne himself came to the conclusion that if you very accurately identify the time when a person most wants to sleep and go to bed exactly at right time, then at night it’s enough to sleep for 2 hours, and the second (daytime) phase can be reduced to 30 minutes or an hour ... And sometimes (about once a week) you can’t sleep at all during the day ....

It is also important that during the day there must be three hours of rest. It means something like sitting with a book over tea or something like that (this is the very time in which you re-read everything in the world). For example, I learned Chinese from nothing to do. 3 hours without physical and mental stress. And it must be between 10 am and 10 pm. The rest of the time you can do whatever you want.

At first, you need to occupy yourself with something especially hard so as not to sour for a long time and in order to be well tired at the moment when it is time to sleep. To lie down and fall asleep immediately.

IMPORTANT POINT: And the most important thing - when you wake up, you need to convince yourself that you want to sleep only by inertia, and in fact the body no longer needs sleep ... It's hard to believe after 2 hours of sleep, but it's true ... After 5 minutes to sleep I don’t want to - as my friend rightly noted: you just need to take yourself by the scruff of the neck, pull yourself out of bed, put yourself face to face and kick yourself in the ass 😉

It must also be added that during the first experiment, you can miss the time ... If it seems to you that going to bed 15 minutes later would be smarter - better listen to yourself and try ... If it seems that something is wrong with the whole time plan then, write down all the phases when you really want to sleep for another two days and check the results ....

If you can’t sleep for less than 4 hours, give up all the experiments in figs, and accustom yourself to sleep exactly 4 hours a day from 5 to 9 in the morning. THIS is definitely enough for everyone.

As you can see, this method combines and

taking into account the optimal time to fall asleep
alternation of body repair cycles
alternating and proper amount of fast-slow phase sleep

That is, this mode allows sleep to function to the fullest extent of all read. The difference from other sleep modes that we have considered earlier is the reasoned choice of the exact time when it is time to sleep. Well, if you consider that you need to sleep not exactly 2 hours, but exactly the body maintenance cycle, then everything generally falls into place.

By the way, have you noticed that last method rises Important question. Probably the most important for the topic of reducing the amount of sleep.

Sleep Less Help Hot Thirst Goal

Please note that if lack of sleep is not associated with biological disorders, then it is typical mainly for people who are very keen on achieving the goal. Not just dreaming to read in free time. Namely thirsty achieve your goal as quickly as possible.

Why is this key moment? Because it answers the question posed at the beginning of the article: “How much less sleep do I need than usual?” The answer is simple: as much as you want to achieve your goal.

Here is what Margaret Thatcher had to say about it:

“I never slept more than four or five hours a night. Anyway, my life is my work. Some people work to live. I live to work. I often sleep only an hour and a half, preferring to sacrifice sleep time to have a decent haircut."

As you can see thirst goals are a very important component.

So if you really crave to achieve the goal, then the sleep pattern will develop by itself. Well, if you take into account the things described, especially about the “without harm to yourself” part, then your performance increases significantly.

Good luck experimenting with reducing sleep without harming yourself!

Well, if anyone has experience in implementing these or any other methods, please, share! The practical part is much more important than the bare theory!