Ryan Bergara, a Buzzfeed Motion Pictures Staff member, decided in early April to take on a different sleep schedule than the one he had been using his entire life. What he discovered concluded what a lot of us probably already know.

We know that there are definite benefits to getting the recommended eight hours of sleep each night. We feel refreshed and recharged when we wake up in the morning. But there are health benefits too.

Getting a good night’s sleep has been proven to curb inflammation in your body, improve your memory and cognitive functions, and even extend your lifespan, along with many others. The sleep pattern that most people sleep in is called a monophasic pattern.

This means that we sleep for eight hours each night (ideally) and then stay awake for the other 16 hours of the day. However, not all countries sleep in this pattern, such as those in Latin America. They use what is called a biphasic pattern where they sleep for five or six hours at night and then have a 30 to 90 minute nap in the afternoon.

Bergara chose neither of the most common patterns of sleep. Instead, he wanted a greater challenge, and engaged in a polyphasic sleeping pattern. The idea of this method is to break up sleep into several chunks in order to maximize the amount of time awake.

To get started in his endeavor, Bergara interviewed Jackson Nexhip, the author of “Polyphasic Sleep and Productivity.” Bergara chose the sleep schedule called the Everyman which meant he would sleep barely over five hours per day total. Another option would have been the Uberman where people sleep for less than two hours every night via six twenty minute naps. Uberman sleepers incur an extra 20 years in awake time!

Before beginning his new sleeping method, Bergara consulted with sleep expert at UCLA, Dr. Alon Avidan, who said the body requires a minimum of seven hours of sleep at night. Still, Ryan was determined to follow through on his experiment.

He says days one and two were exceptionally hard. He barely had enough energy to work out and complete his regular daily functions. He suffered from short-term effects that Dr. Avidan had warned him about like slower reaction times, cognitive problems, lack of creativity, memory issues, and increased irritability.

By day four, in his YouTube video documentation of his experiment, Bergera admits that he’s brain dead and incapable of doing anything. By the fifth day he claims to be feeling better, but co-workers say he laughed hysterically about a “joke” his boss made about making hummus.

At the end of day seven, Bergera finally caved in and got some extra sleep. He says he was beginning to get sick and an injury he sustained at the gym wasn’t getting better because of the lack of sleep.

By the end of the experiment, Bergera says he learned how important getting the right amount of sleep is for functionality. He says he didn’t experience any of the supposed benefits of the polyphasic sleep pattern and he now feels that the extra time awake each day isn’t worth it.

Dr. Avidan warned him that very few people can function using a polyphasic sleep pattern and most people’s bodies are best suited for biphasic sleeping. Bergera says he couldn’t agree more.