Hi there, it's Matt here and welcome back to a new episode that discusses a topic that

I have consistently been asked about over the years. What is the topic? It is

polyphasic sleep. So the question then, one sleep, two sleeps, five sleeps, wait five sleeps, really? Let me go back to

the terminology as we love here which is breaking down words and their meaning.

The phasic part of today's topic means the number of phases of sleep that are occurring within a 24-hour period.

The Polly part of the phrase refers to the idea of many such phases.

Hence the term poly, many phasic, many phases of sleep and here

within a 24 hour period.

Monophasic sleep, which is one single bout of sleep at night

across the 24 hour period, is how most of us sleep. Then there is bifazic sleep and bifazic sleep commonly

refers to one long about of sleep at night and then one siesta like nap in the afternoon.

Previously I've discussed Bipheseic sleep and the idea of napping on the podcast before.

And there I described that perhaps there is some evidence that we human beings

may be physiologically programmed to sleep in a biphasic manner.

So one long single bout of sleep at night and then this sort of shorter nap in the afternoon.

Many Mediterranean Latin cultures do this commonly.

And certainly that type of sleep we human beings,

we can adopt easily and without damage to our health or wellness.

In fact, often to the opposite result in terms of improvements in health and wellness.

And then came the, and I don't like this term

because I think it's maybe pejorative,

which is the sleep hacker movement for want of a better word and if you trace the literature and you go back in the historical record

...