Short sleepers

Apparently there are some individuals who only need 3-4 hours a sleep a night naturally and do not suffer from sleep deprivation. They are called "short sleepers", and an oft-quoted statistic says that they are 1%-3% of the population. That percentage seems high to me, since a scientist who studies short sleepers has only found 20 individuals so far. I have been deeply enjoying my extra time that I have acquired by changing my sleeping schedule and gaining an extra 3-4 hours of awake time a day. However, it is not without some penalties. I do have to be fairly careful to keep my schedule consistent, and it sometimes meshes poorly with other activities. It would be pretty nice to sleep as little as 3 hours mono-phasically. These "short sleepers" have a mutation on a gene known as hDEC2. Well, there is another gene lottery that I lost; I have to compensate for it with creativity and hacks. More information on short sleeper can be found in this Wall Street Journal article. 

Not a short sleeper.

Perhaps, not surprisingly, many people that claim to be short sleepers, are in fact, simply depriving themselves of sleep. Symptoms of severe sleep deprivation include: confusion, memory lapses, hallucinations, headaches, eye bags, increased blood pressure, irritability, ADHD-like symptoms, and increased risk of diabetes. That last one is a little odd since coffee consumption has been shown to decrease the risk of diabetes. I know from previous experience that one of my early symptoms of sleep deprivation is that I lose precision in tracking objects with my eyes, and I will get multiple after-images when there is a bright light, or I will be unable to focus on text. My eyes seem to drift across the page, without reading the material. So glad that I am not in college anymore. 

What about the symptoms of non-severe sleep deprivation? Turns out that there is a very easy way to diagnose that. You feel tired or sleepy. That is all there is to it. One of the disqualifications of people that claim to be short sleepers, but in reality are sleep deprived, is that when they have a break in their schedule - a vacation or a weekend, they will tend to sleep in. It is one of the reasons that I try not to use an alarm during this polyphasic sleep experiment - because the point is not to try to get by while sleeping less per se, it is to try to get all the sleep I need more efficiently.