TIME defines polyphasic sleep and explains the risks of the unorthodox sleeping practice.
Even if you can game the system and slip right into REM sleep, doing so isn’t natural, and the other cycles of sleep likely do have value, Avidan says. “When you start realigning and re-shifting the percentage of sleep stages throughout the normal sleep period, you end up shifting a lot of different physiologic functions that are very tied to sleep stages,” he says. That could result in consequences to your endocrine system and metabolic function.
