Yeah, I hear protests from heavy sleepers including myself and my friend who sleeps more than 12 hours day; rather should I say 12 hours a day and night?(smile).
Before I drive my point, read what these famous people say about sleeping less.
Thomas Edison is known to have held sleep in contempt and he is said to have practiced catnapping. Due to his contempt for sleep, he would often claim to sleep less than it was actually observed by his co-workers.
Thomas Jefferson in his own words, indicated that he slept irregularly in a single block of 5–8 hours in the night, always after 30–60 minutes of inspirational reading.
Napoleon, yes we all read that he used to sleep on his legs.
Now I am going to write about Polyphasic Sleep: (isn't the name explicit?)
Polyphasic sleep is a term used to describe several alternative sleep patterns intended to reduce sleep time to 2–6 hours daily in order to achieve a better quality of sleep. This is achieved by spreading out sleep into short naps of around 15–30 minutes throughout the day, and in some variants, a core sleep period of a few hours at night.
But polyphasic sleep typically requires adhering to a rigid schedule, which makes it infeasible for many people.
Advocates(?) of polyphasic sleep believe that after undergoing controlled sleep deprivation during an initial adjustment period, the brain will start to enter the essential sleep stages much more quickly, as a survival strategy. Once this adaptation is learned, the theory goes, a comfortable and sustainable equilibrium of sleeping in only naps can be established.
I am not going to ask my husband to read this blog post. He will immediately say, "haven't I always said?"
Here are a few well known Polyphasic sleepers.
Leonardo da Vinci's sleep logs claim he slept only 15 minutes at a time, every two hours. The term "Da Vinci sleep" is often used as a synonym for polyphasic sleep.
Lord Byron, poet and hedonist.
