Some links I came across with a thorough, well researched view of sleep. Two articles, with key excerpts:
Good Sleep, Good Learning, Good Life
“…Myth: Since we feel rested after sleep, sleep must be for resting. Ask anyone, even a student of medicine: What is the role of sleep? Nearly everyone will tell you: Sleep is for rest. Fact: Sleep is for optimizing the structure of memories. If it was for rest or energy saving, we would cover the saving by consuming just one apple per night. To effectively encode memories, mammals, birds and even reptiles need to turn off the thinking and do some housekeeping in their brains. This is vital for survival. This is why the evolution produced a defense mechanisms against skipping sleep. If we do not get sleep, we feel miserable. We are not actually as wasted as we feel, the damage can be quickly repaired by getting a good night sleep. It is our brain dishing punishment for not sticking to the rules of intelligent life-form: let the memory do restructuring in its programmed time.”
Polyphasic Sleep: Facts and Myths
“It appears that polyphasic sleep encounters the precisely same problems as seen in jet lag or shift-work. Human body clock is not adapted to sleeping in patterns other than monophasic or biphasic sleep. In other words, the only known healthy alternatives are: (1) a single 6-8 hours sleep block in the night, or (2) a night sleep of 5-7 hours combined with a 15-90 min. siesta nap. Those numbers differ substantially across the population and there is no single recommended dose of sleep for everyone.”
The site these articles came from, www.supermemo.com, is called “Super Memory: Forget About Forgetting”. I’ll be looking more into it soon.
I used to look up and read blogs on polyphasic sleep on a regular basis but only recently came upon yours (obviously they are old posts, and from what I gather you do not polyphase any longer). I was curious if you had heard of or tried a triphasic 90 minute schedule? I used to be quite overweight and lost roughly 100 lbs with strength training and core exercises (so sore muscle recovery was a large part of my routine) and it was not nearly as bad as when I tried polyphasic with uberman, which any ailment seemed to kick to the side.
Anyway, hope all is well!