Clinophobia (also known as Somniphobia) is a condition for people who fear sleeping. Whether you have fearsome monsters in your dreams or you wet your bed, this can be a serious condition if you have it. You can get some professional help if you have clinophobia here. (below is an excerpt from their website)

Defined as “a persistent, abnormal, and unwarranted fear of sleep”, each year this surprisingly common phobia causes countless people needless distress.

To add insult to an already distressing condition, most somniphobia therapies take months or years and sometimes even require the patient to be exposed repeatedly to their fear. We believe that not only is this totally unnecessary, it will often make the condition worse. And it is particularly cruel as somniphobia can be eliminated with the right methods and just 24 hours of commitment by the phobic individual.

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Check out this DIY on how to make a lucid dreaming mask! If you’ve experienced lucid dreaming before, this is the one you can make and help you stay awake even in sleep!

For the uninitiated, lucid dreaming is a phenomenon whereby a person who is asleep and dreaming realizes that he (or she) is dreaming, and continues to control the dream, acting out fantasies or gaining special powers all within the dream.

I find it a wonderful concept - every night you enter a fake reality (your dreams) and have the opportunity to break out of it (just like Neo in The Matrix).

[via] zedomax

Randy Gardner still holds the world record for 264 hours of sleeplessness as a 17 year old kid back in 1964.

Randy Gardner holds a Guinness world record for the longest period of time a human being has intentionally gone without sleep not using stimulants of any kind. In 1964, as a 17-year-old high school student in San Diego, California, Gardner stayed awake for 264 hours (11 days) with the help of friends, TV reporters, and shooting hoops. On his final day without sleep, Gardner presided over a press conference where he spoke without slurring or stumbling his words and in general appeared to be in excellent health. “I wanted to prove that bad things didn’t happen if you went without sleep,” said Gardner. “I thought, ‘I can break that (Peter Tripp’s 1959) record and I don’t think it would be a negative experience.’” Sleep experts now believe that such sleep deprivation stunts are dangerous

via wikipedia

I am sure many of you are plagued by snoring loved ones causing you to either get very little sleep or you just had to live with it. Among the wide range of anti-snoring devices available out there, uvulopalatopharyngoplasty surgery can prevent snoring. You might want to try this if you have some serious snoring problems.

Excerpt from Wikipedia:

LAUP became popular during the 1980s when it was aggressively marketed as a so-called “cure” for snoring. It was first emloyed by Yves Victor Kamami, a surgeon of the Marie-Louise Clinic in Paris, France, on people who were of slender build. Early results seemed favourable, and studies of flawed methodology were published. Longterm follow-up information was omitted entirely. The practice of using lasers to address snoring became widespread. During the late 1990s, researchers (including Finkelstein, Schmidt and others) published data which demonstrated that in a considerable number of cases, laser-assisted uvulopalatoplasty may also cause mild OSA in patients who formerly were nonapneic snorers, or lead to deterioration of existing apnea. These results are attributable to thermal damage inflicted by the laser beam.

Picture via findlayent

What is polyphasic sleep? Well, according to Wikipedia,

Polyphasic sleep is a sleep pattern intended to reduce sleep time to 2–5 hours daily. This is achieved by spreading out sleep into short naps of around 20–45 minutes throughout the day.

Facinating, isn’t it? Here’s a guy who’s trying it right now:

I’m starting this polyphasic sleep schedule today, so last night was my last night of “normal” sleep for a while. I still got up at 5am this morning, and then I’ll begin doing the naps every 4 hours starting this afternoon. I’ll use a countdown timer alarm set for 30 minutes, so I won’t oversleep. I’ve decided that my sleep times will be 1am, 5am, 9am, 1pm, 5pm, and 9pm. I aim to continue at least until Halloween… or death, whichever comes first. If it seems to be going well and I retain basic functionality, then I’ll decide whether I want to continue with it.

Remember, if you have an irregular schedule or work on and off, this polyphasic sleep might just do the trick for your sleeping.

Check out Uberman’s sleep schedule also, which seems to be a type of polyphasic sleep.

Picture via interactingarts