Talk:Polyphasic sleep

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Proposed merge with Segmented sleep (2010)
Another page on Wikipedia, Segmented sleep covers what seems to me the exact same topic as the subject of this page. Therefore, I propose that they be merged. Please leave a brief comment below, and potentially, a vote as to whether or not you think the merge needs to be done. makeswell (talk) 13:59, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose. See my comment at Segmented sleep.  --Hordaland (talk) 14:40, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose. They do seem like distinct concepts - one modern and the other old. --Gwern (contribs) 18:59 14 October 2010 (GMT)
 * Oppose. Polyphasic sleep is primarily about artificial sleep schedules, and might be renamed to reflect that; also, the maritime 4 hour watch and submarine 6 hour watch (18 hr. day) should be discussed. Segmented sleep is describing a natural, unforced sleep pattern, and should discuss siestas more. --Laguna CA (talk) 05:46, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose. per others. One is mainly historical, the other entirely modern, and in places contradicts it. Johnbod (talk) 20:31, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Support. I don't find these opposing arguments strong enough to keep us from merging, as clarified in a renewed discussion on this matter in section a bit below. Mikael Häggström (talk) 08:45, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
 * This page was merged according to the discussion a bit below. Pianostar9 (talk) 00:32, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Pie chart for Biphasic sleep
It seems the pie chart for biphasic sleep does not fit the description of biphasic sleep. The pie chart just shows monophasic with a lunchtime nap. Wouldn't it make a lot more sense if biphasic looked like the second pie chart in this image? http://i.imgur.com/p5qxL.png If there is agreement, could the pie chart be changed to correct this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.207.31.202 (talk) 13:51, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
 * No, that's segmented sleep, not biphasic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.230.146.250 (talk) 20:02, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

The everyman pie chart does not match the definition given in the table. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.229.28.56 (talk) 13:37, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Lack of credible citations
First off, let me say that I love (and I mean LOVE) the pie charts at the bottom. But the "uberman" "everyman" blah blah blah is just not credible. Or if it is, it needs a better link. The current one goes to a blog by some guy that links to a even less credible pseudoscience website.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I think it's irresponsible and dangerous to be advertising sleeping on these cycles on Wikipedia without solid academic research to back them up. As far as I can tell, these "uberman" sleep cycles are just fads that have no actual scientific basis. What does everyone else think? What should we do about this section? I don't even think it's meets Wikipedia's "noteworthy" designation. Leave comments if you don't want it deleted. Sean Egan (talk) 07:27, 19 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree with you. There were earlier some avid defenders of uberman and all that.  Perhaps they're gone now?  --Hordaland (talk) 08:12, 19 April 2012 (UTC)


 * There were indeed some avid defenders, such as Federico Pistono (User:Pain). See Talk:Polyphasic sleep/Archive 1.  They seem quieter or maybe even inactive now.  —Unforgettableid (talk) 18:06, 30 May 2016 (UTC)


 * I agree that it may be irresponsible/dangerous to advertise alternative sleep cycles without scientific basis. However, I disagree on the notability of the topic in that it is notable enough to warrant a page, just because its a large enough fad. Make it clear that the alternative sleep cycles do not have any scientific basis, but they are enough of a "thing" to be included. If, at the very least, from a factual standpoint. Which is, basically, "Uberman is a sleep cycle invented by 'so-and-so', it follows 'this' pattern". Don't make claims about it being "better" or "worse". If those kinds of claims are made, phrase them like "People claim" or in some other manner that doesn't imply the truthiness of the statement. Jarwain (talk) 20:25, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Segmented sleep
Wikipedia's rules [see "Identifying reliable sources (medicine)"] frown upon the idea of adding health information to Wikipedia unless you cite a peer-reviewed medical source. Now that I've removed all the unreliable medical claims from our "Polyphasic sleep" article, I think we can safely merge it with "Segmented sleep". It doesn't matter so much which of the two articles is merged into the other; the main point is that they should be merged. (We can discuss directional details in the section below this one.) Do you support or oppose a merge? If you oppose it, why? Cheers, —Unforgettableid (talk) 01:18, 1 July 2015 (UTC)


 * I Support this merge. The topics of these pages seem too similar to motivate having separate pages. The differences would be easier to explain within one single article. Previously, a similar proposal in 2010 opposed such a merge with the argument that one deals with modern aspects and one with old ones, but I think it would only be detrimental to dump some readers into an article with mainly historical and potentially outdated information where more current research has been done. One argument was that they contradict each other, but this is rather a reason to merge them in order to sort out any contradiction. If we want historical aspects, it would be better of as a section titled "History of .....", possibly forked to a separate article if it gets long enough. Another opposing argument was that one article deals with artificial sleep schedules and the other one with natural ones, again it would be better to explain those differences in one single place. Besides, I don't find definitions of the terms that necessitate a relation to history vs now, or forced vs natural. Mikael Häggström (talk) 08:41, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Choosing a merge direction
Wikipedia's rules [see "Identifying reliable sources (medicine)"] frown upon the idea of adding health information to Wikipedia unless you cite a peer-reviewed medical source. Now that I've removed all the unreliable medical claims from our "Polyphasic sleep" article, I think we can safely merge it with "Segmented sleep". But I'm not sure which of the two article should be merged into the other. Your thoughts, please? —Unforgettableid (talk) 23:07, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I think polyphasic sleep is a more common term but that's just from what I've seen. — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 07:27, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I vote for Segmented sleep. Since the term "polyphasic sleep" was, the last decade or two, popularized (either coined or adopted) by people trying to live on far, far less than 8 hr sleep in each 24, I'm inclined to let them have that term.  (They may well start a new article about the techniques, which would be fine.) Segmented sleep sounds more serious on that background.
 * Thanks for this initiative, Unforgettableid. A good one.
 * --Hordaland (talk) 22:04, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I thank you both for your insights. I now think it would be marginally wiser to merge the other article, Segmented sleep, into this one, Polyphasic sleep. The other article gets fewer page views than this one. The other article has also gotten fewer edits. We can use the article to show the real truth to those who think that you can live on far less sleep than 8 hours per 24. And perhaps this will help prevent them from creating another article which cites only unreliable references. —Unforgettableid (talk) 01:03, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Well, then, let me rather suggest rescuing the present Segmented sleep, which begins with "Segmented sleep, also known as divided sleep, bimodal sleep pattern, bifurcated sleep, or interrupted sleep" by renaming it Divided sleep. (I think both bifurcated and bimodal could as easily refer to a main sleep episode plus a siesta, not what 'Segmented sleep' is about. Interrupted might sound negative rather than neutral.) The term 'polyphasic sleep', though not definitely wrong, is at present seen as anything but the historically natural pattern that 'divided sleep' is claiming to be. What say you? --Hordaland (talk) 18:43, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree that Divided sleep is the most reader friendly name proposed so far. — Lentower (talk) 20:48, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
 * "Divided sleep" is the most reader-friendly. And "Divided" is a more common word than "segmented". But "divided sleep" is an uncommon phrase. The phrase "Segmented sleep" is used perhaps five or ten times more commonly online. —Unforgettableid (talk) 19:19, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

What about Sleep Patterns? It accurately encompasses what Polyphasic Sleep as been known to be (more than two phases of sleep, or more than one if going by a more literal meaning). It also encompasses Segmented/biphasic sleep. It would require a redirect, but the phrase is accurate for what we are discussing. An alternative would be Sleep Cycles but I believe that is too similar to Sleep Cycle which currently redirects to Circadian Rhythm (and is more fitting). It would also require a section discussing the "typical" one block of 8 hours sleep pattern. But I also believe it generalizes the scope of the article to better fit the merge. Jarwain (talk) 20:01, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

"Polyphasic sleep"
Yes, the word "polyphasic" is more complex. But I still think it's best, and still for the same two reasons as before:


 * Search engine optimization (SEO). I suspect that choosing the title "Polyphasic sleep" will boost our rankings when those interested in polyphasic "compressed" sleep do a Google search for the term [ polyphasic sleep ]. It'd be good if for us to reveal the real truth to those interested in such "tricks". On the other hand, there are no major myths we must debunk for the rest of our readers.


 * We should reveal the truth to those who are wondering whether polyphasic "get sleep quick" schemes are wise or not. If we call our article "divided sleep" or "segmented sleep", Web surfers might not think that our article discusses such schemes, and so they might not click through to view the article.

Considering my "SEO" and "let's debunk myths" arguments, do you support or oppose the use of the name "Polyphasic sleep"?

Cheers, —Unforgettableid (talk) 19:19, 6 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Well, your arguments are not exactly supported by policy (we don't prioritize SEO), but yeah, like I said above I think that's the more common name, and it's something that people look for. — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 19:56, 6 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Now I am confused. The first suggestion was a merge.  My suggestion (1 July 2015) was to continue to have two articles, for example polyphasic and Divided or Segmented sleep.  The former about sleeping 30 minutes every four hours, etc, and whatever else.  The latter about the historic sleep pattern, divided in the "middle" of the night.  I'm not sure if others still consider the idea of retaining the second article about Ekirch's historical look at things.
 * However, scanning down this Talk page, I see that I did some research and expressed an opinion on 29 December 2007, above. It seems to agree with what appears to be consensus here.  So I'll back out now instead of arguing against what I thought in 2007.
 * I'm glad there is someone willing to work on making the information more serious, less frivolous. Have at it!  --Hordaland (talk) 03:28, 7 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Oppose a merge at all - this was rejected before, and would need a discussion before proceeding to names and directions. This discussion makes an assumption that a merge is to be desired, which it should not. Johnbod (talk) 20:34, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I think that discussion is far from over, as I pointed out in section above. Mikael Häggström (talk) 08:41, 12 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I Support "Polyphasic sleep" by being the most common name. Mikael Häggström (talk) 08:35, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Biphasic and polyphasic sleep
I think this article should be renamed to "Biphasic and polyphasic sleep", and Segmented sleep being merged into it as well. All these terms describe a similar topic. The terms are slightly different, but it would much less confusing and fragmented if we had one single article that explained the differences. Mikael Häggström (talk) 10:25, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Piotr Woźniak
Piotr Woźniak is mentioned on the page, with a citation needed. The one below should work. Perhaps someone could add it for me?

http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic.htm Geneven (talk) 21:32, 2 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Here is a newer article (2010) by Piotr Woźniak on the subject. I'll add it, but as it is his own writing (blog), perhaps someone might add an outside source stating what P.W.'s position is?  --Hordaland (talk) 10:56, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

I don't think that the opinion of a single researcher is enough to justify the statement "researchers ... warn that", especially with "researchers" in plural. Do you? Nik.mess (talk) 20:39, 14 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I've reworded the current article, but it seems non-neutral to claim that one software developer's blog is worth more than any other software developer's blog. Wozniak may have published research, but a blog is a blog. 2620:0:100E:421:892:55C3:EF4D:C8D9 (talk) 20:33, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Pie charts and copyright
I removed some pie charts from the article; see the section below. An interesting side question is the following. Were the pie charts illegally copied from the identical pie charts found in an article posted at &lt;highexistence.com&gt;? I suspect the answer is "no". The original .png versions of the pie charts were uploaded to Commons in Dec. '08. The uploader marked them as "Own work" and released them to the public domain. The &lt;highexistence.com&gt; article appears to be newer. The pie charts included in that article were uploaded to http://static.highexistence.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/, which implies that the article wasn't posted until May '09. —Unforgettableid (talk) 02:44, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Improperly-sourced content
Dear friends,

I have removed some improperly-sourced content from the article. Our rules (see "Identifying reliable sources (medicine)") frown upon adding health content to Wikipedia unless you cite a peer-reviewed medical source. Unfortunately, HighExistence.com is not such a source.

Please see also the yellow box, which starts with the words "Ideal sources for Wikipedia's health content", at the top of this talk page.

My main concern regarding the improperly-sourced content is the "Hours saved daily" column. I am concerned for two reasons:


 * 1)  The column implies that polyphasic sleep can allow a person to save time by sleeping less without any unwanted medical side effects.  If you'd like to make such a claim, I'd like to see a peer-reviewed medical source.
 * 2)  The column implies that monophasic sleepers need to sleep exactly eight hours per night.  This is a misrepresentation of the recommendations of modern medicine.
 * 3) * In the US, the National Sleep Foundation recommends that healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 65 should get between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per day, though it adds that some adults may need more or less than that.  Nowhere do the foundation's sleep time recommendations say that they should get precisely eight hours of sleep per day.
 * 4) * The foundation adds that younger individuals (infants, children, and teenagers) should sleep even more than that.  The younger a child is, the more they should sleep.

If, for some reason, we settle upon a consensus that the improperly-sourced content should be restored to the article, then we should at least remove that one column.

Kind regards, —Unforgettableid (talk) 02:33, 23 May 2016 (UTC)


 * I"d like to go the other way. This article keeps getting sourced by people talking about how great Everyman and Uberman are; and the great scientific opinion is that these reduced-sleep schedules are harmful.  This article's content doesn't properly cover this, and so many are apparently reading this article and concluding that polyphasic sleep is a great way to increase waking hours and waste less time sleeping the day away.  Something is wrong here.  --John Moser (talk) 09:23, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Additional Material
| Live the Dream: Men's Health UK, Men's Health Germany — Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.193.39.153 (talk) 10:54, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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NREM2.. Necessary?
It isn't known whether or not the NREM 2 stage of sleep is necessary for two reasons.
 * 1. The reduced sleep spindle or k complex activity during sleep as a result of this stage being removed might not mean anything considering the fact that most of that stuff goes on in SWS sleep
 * 2. The sleep spindle and k complex activity may be shifted over into SWS sleep during repartitioning after being adapted to a schedule.

People primarily going after the uberman and dymaxion schedules are missing the point because people don't really try those schedules for anything more than fun. The schedules that people are seriously interested in are the Everyman schedules and tri-core dual-core schedules, which emphasise getting the proper SWS sleep.

The Wikipedia article on this topic needs to remain consistent with the current exploration being done on this topic, which is chokingly limited to the online community. Not a lot of institutional research is being done on the contingencies of the architecture of intentional polyphasic sleeping. Funds are being drawn for the purpose of getting professional research done. But the ultimate goal is to minimize time spent asleep and time spent awake in a healthy way so the idea is to keep this page of information open to the possibilities.

YelloJello33 (talk) 18:43, 16 April 2020 (UTC)YelloJello33

Scheduled polyphasic sleep content
FYI. I've removed the content added in April about scheduled polyphasic sleep. There were several issues with it – it didn't have citations, and it used a lot of jargon without defining terms – but most importantly, that isn't what this article is about. It's unfortunate that "polyphasic sleep" means different things to different people, but this article has been about biphasic and polyphasic sleep in general, not about polyphasic sleep as practiced by some people to minimize their sleep time, for at least a decade. In addition to the added content, the edits removed existing content and restructured the article to change its whole emphasis.

To add content about the second meaning of polyphasic sleep there are two good options. Someone could add content to the Biphasic and polyphasic sleep section in this article, which could certainly use it, but that would be probably work best if it's limited to a few paragraphs. Or one could create a whole new article and have the two articles link to each other. But repurposing this article to be about scheduled polyphasic sleep isn't an option. (Okay, technically it is, but only with discussion here first, which I suspect wouldn't reach that consensus.) Dan Bloch (talk) 08:17, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Incorrect interpretation of study results?
In the Interrupted Sleep section, Wehr's 1992 study is said to have demonstrated that,

"At first the participants slept for about eleven hours, presumably making up for their sleep debt. After this the subjects began to sleep much as people in pre-industrial times were claimed to have done."

However, the study itself reads that,

"When individuals were transferred from the long photoperiod to the short photoperiod, their sleep episode (the interval between the first and last 30-s epoch of sleep during the night) expanded from 7.7 ± 2.2h to 11.0 ± 0.8h (mean s.d., t = 11.754, P <0.001, N = 7). The cumulative amount of sleep per night also increased from 7.26 ± 0.21h to 8.36 ± 0.82h (mean s.d., t = 4.145, P < 0.006).  In each case, sleep divided into (usually) two bouts, several hours in duration, with a  1-3h waking interval between  them"

I wonder if, perhaps, this 11 hour overall sleep window was misinterpreted as having been a continuous bout of sleep? The chart in figure 1 also does not seem to display any uninterrupted sleep of that length.

Kilometers to Verona (talk) 19:30, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Benefits? No scientific evidence?
This article appears to go to great lengths to downplay and deny benefits of polyphasic sleep. For example "There is no scientific evidence that this [polyphasic sleep] is effective." "A 2021 review found no evidence supporting the benefits of polyphasic sleep but instead adverse physical, mental and performance effects." This is the tone of the whole article, yet if I simply follow the link to the article for "nap" I find a whole section on Benefits. Apparently this article became political somehow. 98.156.185.48 (talk) 19:37, 6 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks. "Polyphasic sleep" has two meanings. The second meaning, briefly mentioned in this article, refers to reduced-sleep schedules which are supposed to improve productivity.  The negative sources are directed at this meaning but the second of the paragraphs you mention incorrectly refers to the primary meaning.  I've fixed this. Dan Bloch (talk) 03:44, 19 April 2024 (UTC)