Is It Possible to Replace Sleep With Five Daily Naps?

In a twenty-four hour day, a normal human can spend eight to ten hours sleeping – almost half the day, devoted to recovering from the first fourteen to sixteen hours. While many people long for the comfort of their beds to escape the burdens of life, many more find it frustrating how much of their time is wasted. That much time could be spent doing so much more. Imagine how much more they could do should they spend it sleeping. How much more...

Enter the power nap. Sleep in a short, compressed package that grants people energy. It may be tempting to believe, then, that by breaking up your sleep schedule into a series of brief naps, you could, in theory, save time "wasted" sleeping, but is that even possible? Or safe?

The Power Nap

The power nap is a mathematically calculated process designed to increase productivity and energy levels in the human body. It starts by understanding how sleep works.

There are five stages of sleep. An average human being spends the first ten minutes of the sleep cycle gearing up to sleep. The next ten? Neurons and brain cells link up, muscles relax, and the body recovers after the long day. The third and fourth waves bring about deep sleep, while stage five is REM sleep, where you dream. The cycle lasts ninety minutes, approximately, and repeats immediately afterwards.

Power naps exploit the first two stages of sleep so you can recover without entering deep sleep. A twenty minute nap would allow you to recover physically with sleep before you would ender deeper levels of sleep.

That way, you embrace the positive, reconstructive elements of sleep without ever entering the deeper stages where it becomes harder to wake up. Waking up in deep sleep will leave you feeling groggy all day. Waking up during stage two will leave you energized.

If we sleep to recover for the rest of the day, why not just take power naps instead of sleeping? We could power nap five times again, and walk away strong and able to face the day ahead of us.

Right?

Power Naps Can be Done for Short Term

Billionaire Steve Fossett made a bit of a fuss when he revealed that, during long fights and business trips, in order to maximize his effectiveness, he would take a few power naps in order to stay awake for long stretches of time.

So yes. If you are busy, have a deadline, or something, the five power nap strategy works. They are shots of energy to keep you pumping for longer. The method can keep you awake for a temporary period of time for longer stretches. Maybe a day or two. Three at most.

But what if you were to keep pushing?

Exactly 20 Minutes

The first pitfall is this: the nap must last exactly twenty minutes. As established earlier, after twenty minutes, you enter the third stage of sleep. What are the effects if you wake up later?

Waking up in stage three or four of sleep will leave you with sleep inertia. Your brain has to bring itself out of its hazy deep-sleep state, which means you will feel sluggish and out of it for a prolonged period of time.

If you last longer than twenty minutes, wake up fifty minutes later. That's the next point where it may be safe for you to wake up without the ill effects of sleep inertia. If you don't wake up before REM sleep, you won't be getting up until you have a full night's rest.

In REM sleep, you will be stuck in dream land. Your body will be paralyzed, and your eyes will rapidly move (REM stands for rapid-eye movement). While you can wake up at REM sleep, you will need to go straight back to sleep in an hour or so. You have gone too far, and should not stop here.

Long Term Damage

Steve Fossett may employ that power nap method for his trips, but note how he never said he does this for very long. This is because this strategy is not sustainable. Desperate for some energy? Sure, a few power naps can offer you the energy you need.

But it cannot be sustained.

REM sleep may not be essential for your body's health, but you will need to do it. If you wake up from each nap before you can enter REM sleep, then you will experience REM Rebound Sleep. Your body, craving REM sleep, will enter the state far faster than expected, and stay there longer than usual.

This is bad for a number of reasons, most obviously that the recovery stage of sleep is now completely thrown off. You do not really recover physically during REM sleep. Therefore, if your body, starved of REM sleep, demands you REM sleep, then that's going to push out stage one and two in favor of intense deep sleep.

What this means is that your power nap will leave you sleeping longer and recovering less and less. Like a drug, you will lack that energy you gained from the reconstructive portion of your sleep cycle.

Prolonged use from there will leave you experiencing sensations similar to sleep deprivation, as you will be spending less and less time recovering while sleeping, and more and more time REMing.

And the time you spend sleeping will be less and less comforting. When your body is put under stress related to sleeping, the possibility of experiencing sleep paralysis increases. Sleep paralysis happens when the body wakes up during REM sleep. The mind is awake, but the body is paralyzed. Sometimes, you will even be in a dream state even after you wake up, meaning you will see your nightmares play out in front of and around you.

Exhaustion. Living nightmares. The five daily nap strategy may sound cool at first, but, as things go on, it becomes a living nightmare.