Let’s face it, mariners need to be experts in sleep. From split watch schedules to operations requiring “All hands On Deck” sleep not only comes at a premium but is a critically important factor in accident prevention and remaining healthy. To highlight these issues we have brought you many articles on the subject including the popular “Night Shift A Cause Of Cancer” and “Get Some Sleep! Accident Photo Of The Week“. This week we will continue the series with tips on how to cheat sleep.
Editorial Note: Sleep loss and driving ships is a deadly combination. We don’t suggest you ever attempt to cheat sleep, we simply hope to broaden your knowledge in the subject.
The Basics Of Sleep
Quality not quantity. No matter how much your mother tells you that you need eight hours of sleep, if you’re not tired and you can’t truly relax, your sleep time will be worthless.
The key factor is the number of complete sleep cycles we enjoy. Each sleep cycle contains five distinct phases, which exhibit different brain- wave patterns. For our purposes, it suffices to say that one sleep cycle lasts an average of 90 minutes:
- 65 minutes of normal, or non-REM (rapid eye movement), sleep
- 20 minutes of REM sleep (in which we dream)
- Final 5 minutes of non-REM sleep.
Source: CentACS
00-04 Watchkeepers: Maximize “Core Sleep”
“Core sleep” is a variant of Uberman sleep that adds a block of sleep, usually several hours, to the Uberman schedule, replacing one or two naps. (This term is also sometimes used to describe accidental oversleep by someone following Uberman, though one will more likely see the term “crash”, and occasionally “reboot”.) Another variant is called Everyman sleep schedule. Buckminster Fuller advocated Dymaxion Sleep, a regimen consisting of 30 minute naps every six hours. A short article was published about this schedule in the October 11, 1943 issue of Time Magazine. According to this article, he followed this schedule for two years, but after that had to quit because “his schedule conflicted with that of his business associates, who insisted on sleeping like other men.”
Source: Wired How-To
Keys to the Midday Nap
A successful midday nap depends on two things: timing and (no kidding) caffeine consumption. Experiments performed at Loughborough University in the UK showed that the sleep-deprived need only a cup of coffee and 15 minutes of shut-eye to feel amazingly refreshed.
1. Right before you crash, down a cup of java. The caffeine has to travel through your gastro-intestinal tract, giving you time to nap before it kicks in.
2. Close your eyes and relax. Even if you only doze, you’ll get what’s known as effective microsleep, or momentary lapses of wakefulness.
3. Limit your nap to 15 minutes. A half hour can lead to sleep inertia, or the spinning down of the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which handles functions like judgment. This gray matter can take 30 minutes to reboot.
Source: Wired [Continue Reading →]
