If you asked me how I felt getting out of  bed just 1 week before I started using my light box, here's the blank stare I would have given you:

 But after a few morning breakfasts in front of my Philips GoLite Blu, I felt more like:

I Hate(d) Mornings

Mornings have just always been tough for me. Add to that a decade or so's worth of late nights in front of the computer and generally low natural-light-exposure teamed up to turn me into a night owl --who was struggling to adapt to a normal-person-schedule (cue sad trombone). To date, I've tried:

• Extending my sleep time to 8+ hours - this gave me huge performance benefits, but failed to deliver on better mornings
• Sleeping without an alarm for a month+ - this ended up just amounting to me sleeping in until 8-9am no matter what time I went to bed
• Following evening routines that kept me away from lights as I got ready for sleep - great for helping you close in on a consistent bedtime, but only part of a full solution
• Choosing a fixed rise time - sadly for me, this was a wagon that I just couldn't stay on

But these didn't cut it.

With the exception of caffeine (I'm too sensitive) or kids (which I hear can be great motivators), I felt like I had tried the things that would have given me the best chance of waking up ready to go... with no luck.   The more I dug into the biology & physiology behind sleep, the more I realized one thing:

We're Not Built For This

Humans have evolved over thousands and thousands of years, and we have developed a pretty robust set of biological systems catered to the environment in which we live. One such system is our biological clock, which tells us when we should be energized & awake VS. sedate & sleepy.

One major driver of this biological clock is - yep you guessed it - LIGHT (via photoreceptor cells in our retina that regulate non-visual responses to light, for all my fellow nerds out there). So when the first commercially practical light bulb lit up in 1879 (thanks to Mr. Edison), we opened up a whole can of biological "WTF?" 

No longer would the sun be sole proprietor of natural hormone release that helps us regulate our sleep/wake balance (melatonin to help us fall asleep, serotonin to help us get moving in the morning). 

On top of that, all these crazy ideas about man now being like a machine--able to turn on and off at the flip of a switch, his body fine-tuned to increase productivity and usefulness, and work 24/7-- didn't help much either.  No wonder the workers of the world started to unite!

Enter the goLite

I had just about resigned myself to my fate when Steve@Zeo, our resident sleep scientist, suggested I try getting a light box to give myself a healthy dose of good, ol'fashioned artificial light in the morning to get me started.

He explained that light therapy might help me stick to a fixed rise time which would stabilize my biological clock.  This in turn would not only give me more energy in the morning but keep going throughout the day.

It sounded almost too simple (and too good to be true), but at heart, I'm a follower of Ockham's Razor, which says:

It is futile to do with more things that which can be done with fewer.  

With a nudge from Ben@Zeo (our self-experimenter par excellence), I gave the light box a try this past November and I haven't seen the wrong side of the bed since. If you see me around, please forgive my unbridled evangelism for this little blue light - it's been a big game-changer for me.

Given my night and day experience with this, one question that I have is this: Could teenagers or college athletes (like my former self) win big with morning light therapy? 

If you're an athlete or a teenager (even better: a teen athlete) have you used light therapy to help you out?

If you're not a teen or an athlete but have tried light therapy, how did you like it? Tell us below!

It seems these days that everyone knows something about ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). 

Teachers swap stories about dealing with ADHD students, parents debate the pros and cons of medication, and health organizations like the National Sleep Foundation warn that people with ADHD are more likely to have sleep problems, such as an inability to "turn off their mind" or restless leg syndrome.

As someone with ADHD I can tell you that these problems are not unfounded.  I know that my medication--which is a stimulant--can keep me up if I abuse it.  I know that I also can't focus and be productive without it so I'm willing to trade a small bad for a big good. But I was curious about what this trade off could look like. 

Being an engineer, I'm all about how things work--my body's no exception--and I decided to look at my Zeo data to see what I could find. Before I dive into all the data, let me just let give you a bit of back story here.

I was a Sleep Athlete

I used to be an incredible sleeper; given the time, I could sleep 12+ hours on most nights.  I'd fall asleep as soon as I hit the bed and could even fall asleep with the sun in my eyes and friends yapping in my ear during car rides.  I never knew what a luxury that was until all of my superhuman sleeping powers came to an end sometime during college.

To be fair, the decline was a gradual thing that I never could have detected.  You get older, your sleep quality declines; it's natural.   Personally, there was also a lot going on and I really wasn't thinking about my sleep. I was formally diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed a common stimulant to help me focus.  My God, what a difference it made!  I could suddenly concentrate, study, whatever, whenever, and forever (if needed), and as a result my academics improved--so much that my GPA jumped nearly a whole point.

Take as Directed

The flip side was that these same wonder pills could keep me up. 

I once decided to see how long I could stay up by taking the meds as needed.  Like most people, I've done my fair share of dumb stuff and that was certainly up there.  After being up for 69 hours, I was physically and mentally useless by the end.  Not fun and definitely not recommended.In short, I know ADHD meds can keep me awake if I abuse them. 

That said, I often wonder how taking them as prescribed affects my sleep.  My particular medication's half life is about 13 hours, so when I take a dose in the morning I still have 40% of the drug remaining in my system by bedtime.  

As a general rule, I try not to take any medication during the weekend, which means that I have about 11% in my system on Saturday night and 3% by Sunday night. However, I often find myself lying in bed awake at night, frustrated because my mind is endlessly "ranting"--and for this, I blame my meds.

It's all about the Zeo Data, baby

While I like to argue, I generally do it best when I've got some data to back it up.

To prove that my medication can keep me up, I exported my 463 nights of sleep records (collected over the last few years) and crunched them into excel graphs as prettily as I could.

Below is a graph of a summary of all my nights since Nov 2007 (one of the perks of working for Zeo; you get to use the product well before anyone else.)

To get an even better picture, I took that same data set and viewed each sleep phase by percentages. 

Generally, my time in REM sleep is at its lowest on Monday and gradually increases until Sunday, when Monday rolls around again, it drops abruptly again.  It could be because my body adapts to the drugs retention  in my system for most of the week. 

During the weekend, the level drops down to 3% and by Monday it needs to re-adapt all over again.   Monday is also the day when the effects of my medication are felt most strongly.

To my surprise my deep sleep is consistent through out the week. 

My deep sleep occurs earlier in the night--which is normal-- and it seems completely unaffected by both the medication and the late bedtimes.

Yet when I took that same data and graphed it by absolute time, I was shocked to see that my sleep varies so regularly.  While lifestyle does impact my sleep (see A Note about Control), the only think that I can think of to explain why I sleep 40 minutes more every single Wednesday than Tuesday is the increase in medication within my system.

It also takes me about 10 more minutes on average to fall asleep on Tuesdays than any other day.

A Note about Control

I am awful at keeping a routine schedule (but I've got an excuse, right?).  

My weekend/weekday schedule has a noticeable impact on my sleep, as I typically go out on Friday and Saturday nights.   This pushes my bed time back a whopping one and a half hours on average.

However, the data shows that I fall asleep about twice as fast on Friday and Saturday nights than other nights of the week. 

If my time to sleep (a.k.a. Time to Z) was influenced by my medication, then I suspect my Time to Z would be the same on Friday as Thursday--and that Saturday and Sunday would be much faster than all the rest.  On Sunday, when the medication is almost completely gone from my body, my Time to Z is similar to days when I'm on medication (though this could be from my bedtime shifting forward again).

So does my ADHD medication mess with my sleep?  I can make a case for it, but it's not conclusive.  I think this calls for some more experimentation and a later blog post, not to mention more data and stories from other ADHD Zeo users.  But don't worry; I won't be staying up for 69 hours straight ever again.

Kuji Nakano is an engineer at Zeo and (still) holds the company ZQ record. He was instrumental in the design and development of Zeo Bedside and Zeo Mobile and continues to find new ways to bring sleep science into your home.

Sweet Dreams Are Made of This

When we're in REM sleep, we're generally not aware of the fact that we are dreaming.  It's only after awakening that we (sometimes) remember the images and events that our brain shuffled through during this time. However, a remarkable exception occurs when one has a lucid dream.  During this state, the dreamer is aware that s/he is dreaming (LaBerge, 2000, 2007).

In fact, one can think and reason clearly,  recall circumstances from waking life, and can intentionally act upon self-reflection while remaining in a dreamworld--a dreamworld, by the way, that is often indistinguishable from the "real world" (Kahan et al, 1997).  No game console could ever compete with that kind of immersiveness, let alone for free.

Our mission at Lucidipedia is to provide grounded educational resources that allow people to effectively learn and (hopefully) enjoy lucid dreaming as much as we do!

Why learn Lucid Dreaming Techniques?

The lucid dream state provides a multi-sensory experience in which you embody all of your dream senses (taste, touch, sight, sound, and smell) in the same way that you do in waking life with one difference:  it allows you to deliberately and voluntarily direct the lucid dream--from isolated elements to the whole plot--in any way you desire.

Imagine using this to help you overcome a particular fear, or to take a "leap of faith" and experience something that you might shy away from in your daily life.  It's possible that such experiences could make you feel more confident and capable (and, indirectly, more self-assured and happy) as a person.

For instance, imagine applying lucid dreaming techniques within the following (popular) scenarios:

• Learning to fly
• Resolving nightmares or fears
• Rehearse waking life events
• Experiment with new behavior, such as fantasies that might be considered taboo
• Explore states of consciousness

With all these amazing possibilities, it's no surprise that many people enjoy lucid dreams--it is an awesome "spiritual" sport.

How to Lucid Dream In 3 Easy Steps

In reality (and in dreams), learning how to lucid dream is pretty straightforward and easy.  How easy?   So easy that you really need 3 basic steps:

1. Recall Your Dreams
2. Discover Dreamsigns
3. Recognize Dreamsigns

Sounds too good to be true, right? Let me break it down a little.

1.  Recall Your Dreams

In Lucid Dreaming, dream recall--that is, remembering your dreams--functions as your stepping stone for dream analysis; if you didn't learn how to recall your dreams, you might not be able to take control of the dream itself the next time you're in REM sleep. 

The actual recall part is simple; upon waking up, ask yourself " What was I dreaming about?"  As you remember, write down any memories in a journal.  While this can be a little frustrating as first, don't worry if you can't remember everything.  Lie still, keep your eyes closes, and let your mind do the hard work.

2. Discover Dreamsigns

Once you've amassed 2-3 weeks worth of dream recollections in your journal, take the time to review your notes and identify any recurrent dream-like features (anything bizarre or out of the ordinary is a good clue)--these are your dreamsigns.  When rereading, ask yourself "Are there any particular dreamsigns that reoccur within multiple dreams?  If so, you've found your target dreamsign.

3. Recognize Dreamsigns

Once you've established what your dreamsigns are, you can now start going to bed prepared.  As you fall asleep, say to yourself "The next time I see my dreamsign, I will tell myself that I'm dreaming."  Once you start to do this within the dream--a.k.a "turn lucid"--you can then learn how to master your dreams using various techniques.

Lucid Dreaming with Zeo

For me, the greatest feature of the Zeo PSC for those looking to induce lucid dreaming is the SmartWake™setting.  Since it wakes you after leaving a deeper stage of sleep--and dream-rich REM sleep tends to occur towards the latter half of the night--this feature not only helps you to better recall your dreams but can also help you enter a lucid dream state.

To experience Lucid Dreaming with Zeo and SmartWake™, try the following techniques:

1. Enable SmartWake™ to wake you up after about 6 hours of sleep (in order to ensure that you're in or close to REM sleep cycles)

2. Once you wake up, immediately practice Dream Recall.

3. Try to enter a dream by using Lucidipedia's WILD (Wake-Initiated Lucid Dreaming) technique.  WILD's aim is to fall asleep while staying lucid (i.e. remembering that you're dreaming) throughout the entire process.  However, WILD is only shown to be effective after awakening from REM sleep, so make sure to check your Zeo to see what state you were in when the alarm went off!

 Increasingly, more researchers speculate that lucid dreams can be used as test cases for theories of dreaming to investigate the nature of consciousness and dreaming (Hobsom, Kahn, and Pace-Schott, 1994; Hobsom, 2009; LaBerge, 2000).

As such, it's possible that a device like Zeo could become one of the tools of choice for lucid dreamers (especially since the Raw Data Library is now available!).  We here at Lucidipedia are excited to see what the future--and our dreams--hold!

Sweet Dreams! ---Lucidipedia

Tim Post is the founder of Lucidipedia, an online educational community that teaches lucid dreaming to help anyone learn how to lucid dream, or improve their own techniques.

My Monophasic Sleep Pattern

Here's a story about my use of the Zeo to develop a new "polyphasic" schedule for myself over the past 6 months or so...

I went back to pure monophasic for a couple weeks and studied my Zeo data on it.  Within the first few days I seemed to have re-adapted to mono sleep and didn't note significant changes in my cycles over the remainder of the 2 weeks.

 I did notice, as has been described extensively in the literature, that I emphasize Deep sleep at the beginning of the night and REM at the end / early morning.  I didn't realize how extreme the difference is though!  In my case, (I haven't studied the literature enough to know how general or reliable the phenomenon is) I got almost all (~90%) of my Deep sleep at the beginning of the night (first 2 cycles) and the same for REM at the end.  Light sleep was enriched in the middle cycles.

Developing A New (Polyphasic) Schedule

This made me think about sleep efficiency and maximizing Deep and REM and minimizing Light.

Doing some simple math I saw that if I cut out the middle hours of the night I would still get as much, if not more, Deep and REM as is recommended by many sleep "experts." The idea was to take advantage of my natural circadian rhythm. My goal is to sleep at least 65 mins of Deep per day (not counting the power nap which I rarely record on my Zeo) and 90 mins of REM.

I picked these numbers somewhat arbitrarily but they are close to the average amount per night for someone of my age.

For my evening nap I decided to sleep 2 hours starting between 8 and 10pm.  If I stay up much later than 10 I get *very* sleepy and have a hard time waking up.  I also noticed that when I slept monophasically, I usually finished my second Deep cycle after about 2 hrs.  Thus for my first nap I would sleep: Light, Deep, REM, Light, Deep, Wake.

 To calculate the morning nap, I subtract the amount of REM I got from my evening nap (typically 5-25 minutes) from my total REM goal (90 minutes) and multiplied the difference by 3.  I then sleep for that amount in order to get enough REM every day.

90-20 = 70; 70 x 3 = 210min (so I need to sleep 3.5 hrs in the morning)

Admittedly, 90 minutes is a pretty conservative estimate for an entire day, as I almost always get more than enough REM during the morning nap (45%-50% is often REM).  Sometimes I do sleep less than 3.5 hours if I'm crunched for time in the morning, though I always end up with 90-120 minutes of REM no matter what.

 In addition, I like to take a single power nap (25 mins) sometime during the day.  If I nap at 4pm or later, I sometimes have a hard time falling asleep for my evening nap so I try to aim between 12 noon and 4pm.

Sometimes I've replaced the power nap with some caffeine (tea or 1/2 cup coffee), but I prefer not to.  I can also push through the day without the power nap and I'm just a bit sleepy in the afternoon.

 For the nap itself, I usually sleep in my car (and rarely use the Zeo) so I can't say too much about the data there; if I had to guess based on previously recorded power naps, I would estimate 15 mins Light, 5 mins Deep, and 3 mins REM for each. I would like to do something more rigorous for recording my power naps and am very interested in hearing about others and your power nap results.

Notes & Thoughts

• Took very little adaption.  The only tricky part was training myself to go to bed between 8 and 10pm instead of midnight but that only took a few days to get used to.  Bare in mind that I've been experimenting with polyphasic for the past 2 years so napping comes pretty easy to me.
• Easy to pop in and out of.  I have the old problem of a partner who I sleep with fairly regularly.  If I join her for the morning nap there isn't much of a problem because I just try to time my wake up to be similar to hers.  If we go to bed for the evening nap, however, it's a bit awkward and annoying for me to be woken and get active in the middle of the night while she is trying to sleep.  For one, I'm a much heavier sleeper than she is.  We've tried a bunch of things over the past couple years and it just doesn't work.  Cuddling is important to a relationship :)  That's ok!  If I sleep monophasically once or twice a week it doesn't mess up my schedule at all!  I still usually hit the mid-day power nap if this happens.  Also, if work or a social engagement absolutely can't be avoided or worked around at that time I can still do it and just sleep monophasically when I finally get to bed.  I really need to get an extra power nap in there before I do whatever is going to keep me out late, however, or I'll start getting really sleepy by 10pm.
• Don't have a hard time doing any normal activity at night including computer work or reading.
• No apparent decrease in athletic ability.  I'm still able to do vigorous exercise for hours at a time.

In summary I've gone from ~50% Light sleep on mono to ~35% Light on poly.  The amount of extra time I get isn't dramatic (sleeping 5-6 hrs /24 hr period), but I feel much better on polyphasic than I do on monophasic, and it is a fairly flexible schedule that works for me.