Hacking your brain into Awesomeness

[Kain]

Another article from cracked that i liked alot I'll be sharing 1 way everyday. You might want to bookmark this so that you can use it when school/uni starts again So here we go

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Much of the brain is still mysterious to modern science, possibly because modern science itself is using brains to analyze it. There are probably secrets the brain simply doesn't want us to know.


But by no means should that stop us from tinkering around in there, using somewhat questionable and possibly dangerous techniques to make our brains do what we want.


We can't vouch for any of these, either their effectiveness or safety. All we can say is that they sound awesome, since apparently you can make your brain...


#5.Think You Got a Good Night's Sleep (After Only Two Hours of Actual Sleep)

So you just picked up the night shift at your local McDonald's, you have class every morning at 8am and you have no idea how you're going to make it through the day without looking like a guy straight out of Dawn of the Dead, minus the blood... hopefully.

"SLEEEEEEEEEP... uh... I mean... BRAAAIIIIINNNSSS..."

What if we told you there was a way to sleep for little more than two hours a day, and still feel more refreshed than taking a 12-hour siesta on a bed made entirely out of baby kitten fur? No more sneaking naps at the fry station for you!

Holy Crap! How Do I Do It?


It's called the Uberman Sleep Schedule, and besides having a totally badass name, it's a way to get the maximum amount of essential sleep for your body without wasting hours of precious time you could be using to work or drink or farm for World of Warcraft gold. The schedule consists of taking six, 20-30 minute power naps, every four hours during the day. Of course, this new sleep pattern sucks to get used to, but it's a price you have to pay to basically extend your waking life by several years.

We're pretty sure Kramer did this once on Seinfeld. So it's probably a great idea.

The best way to start it off is to just jump right in. Get to sleep at 8pm, set your alarm for 8:30. Get up, play some Call of Duty, sleep again at 12, alarm at 12:30, and so on. After three or four days of this you will start to get high as hell because of sleep deprivation, and might just want to kill yourself, but don't do it! That would be absolutely counter-productive.
By day 10 or so, your brain will say, "Screw it! FINE, we'll do it your way," and will adapt to your new superhuman sleep schedule.


How Does It Work?


When you sleep normally, your body gets only about an hour and a half of REM sleep, the kind of sleep that is thought to be the most important to keeping your brain sharp. While other stages of sleep help your body to heal and grow, the REM sleep is what makes you feel rested.

Of course, sleeping in a bed doesn't hurt either.

The first few days of adjusting are tough because your body isn't getting ANY of this REM sleep, and your brain hates you for it. After the third day, or so, your brain figures out that you mean business, and every time you lay down for one of these naps, dives directly into REM sleep in an attempt to compensate for the deprivation. Do some quick math and that's two full hours of REM sleep, while those who are sleeping normally are only getting an hour and a half.


Before you know it, while the rest of the world snores away, you'll be up and drawing Hello Kitty on their faces.

[bebseh]

...or you could just copy/paste the URL

[Kain]

@bebseh I'm posting one every day to keep the readers interested. In addition to that some people don't like long posts so this might be better for those readers so that they would feel comfortable reading this
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#4.Hallucinate Like You Just Took LSD, Legally

Yes, that's right kids! Tell your dealer goodbye and worry no more about winding up naked on the roof of an office building after a bad trip. Now you can be stoned out of your mind by building a homemade deprivation chamber out of some regular, completely harmless household objects.


Holy Crap, How Can I Do It!


You are going to need three things: a ping-pong ball, a radio with headphones and a red light.


Step 1: Turn the radio to a station with just white noise (static), and put on your headphones.
Step 2: Cut the ping-pong ball in half and tape each half over your eyes.
Step 3: Turn the red light so it's facing your eyes.
Step 4: Sit there for at least a half an hour.
Step 5: Follow Ben Franklin and your new friend, Harold the unicorn, into the gumdrop forest, and live happily ever after.

How Does It Work?


It's called the Ganzfeld effect, and it works by blocking out most of the signals that go to your brain. It's the same kind of effect you get when looking into a soft light for a while and lose vision, except at a larger scale.


The sound of the white noise and the light from the outside of the ping pong ball are eventually ignored by your brain.

With all those signals out of the picture, your brain has to create its own, and this is where the hallucinations come in. We can't guarantee they won't involve, say, the ghost of Lizzie Borden trying to hack off your neck with an ax, but that's the risk you take, dammit.

Now, if you want a little more control over your hallucinations...(let's leave that for tomorrow)

[Neoxter]

Holycrap I'm gonna try the hallucination thing soon but I need a red light
question about the 1st one, what if we skipped a nap of these 4 hours interval, what happens? cuz if you go to work/uni/trip/out.. you won't find the time nor the place to sleep in.

[SysTaMatIcS]

Originally Posted by Kain

While other stages of sleep help your body to heal and grow, the REM sleep is what makes you feel rested.

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dives directly into REM sleep in an attempt to compensate for the deprivation. Do some quick math and that's two full hours of REM sleep, while those who are sleeping normally are only getting an hour and a half.

so you get 2 hours of REM sleep , what about the body?

[Kain]

Originally Posted by Neoxter

Holycrap I'm gonna try the hallucination thing soon but I need a red light
question about the 1st one, what if we skipped a nap of these 4 hours interval, what happens? cuz if you go to work/uni/trip/out.. you won't find the time nor the place to sleep in.

Originally Posted by SysTaMatIcS

so you get 2 hours of REM sleep , what about the body?

Your questions prompted me to do some searching

Basically polyphasic sleep (a.k.a: The Uberman Sleep Schedule ) Is a big no-no. It can be very stressing on your body, as stated in the beginning of the post, you will get a feeling of jet-lag when attempting to get used to it. I did a little googling and i'll give you a quick summary of what i learned:

Humans are basically used to monophasic or biphasic sleep. As in they sleep during the night or once in daytime and once at night. Babies for example are polyphasic, but growing up they adapt and become biphasic.

Getting used to polyphasic sleep is extremely hard and possibly dangerous for some individuals

Those well-defined effects of natural sleep affecting stimuli on sleep patterns lead to an instant conclusion: the claim that humans can adapt to any sleeping pattern is false. A sudden shift in the schedule, as in shift work, may lead to a catastrophic disruption of sleep control mechanisms. 25% of North American population may work in variants of shift schedule. Many shift workers never adapt to shifts in sleep patterns. At times, they work partly in conditions of harmful disconnect from their body clock, and return to restful sleep once their shift returns to their preferred timing

Conclusion

1. Healthy humans cannot entrain polyphasic sleep without a degree of sleep deprivation. It is not possible to sleep polyphasically and retain one's maximum creativity, alertness, and health in the long run
2. Whoever claims to be on a perpetual polyphasic schedule must be either suffering from a sleep disorder, or be a liar, a mutant, or a person with a mulishly stubborn iron-will that lets him plod through the daily torture of sleep deprivation
3. All the hype surrounding polyphasic sleep can be delegated to the same lunatic basket as miracle diets, scientology, homeopathy, water magnetizers, creation "science", electrolytic detoxifiers, or Sylvia Browne. If you are interested in any of these, visit the most entertaining site on the web run by the indefatigable guru James "The Amazing" Randi
4. If you do not believe the arguments presented in this article, or if you think the author is biased, ignorant or driven by a hidden agenda, please contact me. If you still plan your own polyphasic experiment, let me offer my best assistance. Let us together measure the effects of polyphasic sleep. Let your torture and lost health pay back in a contribution to science. Use SleepChart to track your progress. Your data, if submitted, will contribute to the understanding of human sleep patterns. Thank you
5. If you want to maximize the time spent in productive wakefulness, read about free running sleep. Let your biology work for you, not against you

Source

The source also provides some data of people who have attempted polyphasic sleep. For those of you who are interested this will definitely answer your questions.

[Neoxter]

that's what I thought, thanks.

so it's best to do what I do, after years of experience :P, take a nap in the afternoon it should be short not a 2-3 hours nap or else you will wake up tired as if a piano had fell on your head. When you wake up you will be refreshed, for best result take the nap after the lunch. I think this way combines both ways the biphasic and the polyphasic and it gives the best out of the two.

[Kain]

Originally Posted by Neoxter

that's what I thought, thanks.

so it's best to do what I do, after years of experience :P, take a nap in the afternoon it should be short not a 2-3 hours nap or else you will wake up tired as if a piano had fell on your head. When you wake up you will be refreshed, for best result take the nap after the lunch. I think this way combines both ways the biphasic and the polyphasic and it gives the best out of the two.

That would be a great idea. A 1 hour nap in the afternoon or 2 half hour naps are all you need to stay refreshed. Just don't sacrifice a good night's sleep. You should get a bare minimum of 4 to 6 hours a night depending on if you slept during the afternoon and your own "biological clock". This can vary from person to person.
Which is why you see people who sleep 4 hours at night and feel great and satisfied.

[Karkora]

oOoOoOo Im gonna try the Hallucination thing . . . . Ill let u know how it goes!

[Neoxter]

how are you going to do the red light thing? :P