Creatine supplementation

Creatine is an agent in metabolism, where it helps recycle used ATP (ADP) back to ATP. This aids in alleviating anystage-pressure and thereby symptoms of sleep deprivation (easing stage-3). Along with this, Creatine has been shown to significantly (15% or so) reduce SWS requirement in rats, along with a similar decrease in TST. This has not been thoroughly studied in humans yet, but some research is there and suggests it is applicable. Anecdotes do also confirm that creatine decreases sleep requirement, in some cases by a whole 2 hours.

As such, creatine supplementation may be of help for individuals looking to reduce their sleep needs somewhat, and could help get people over the barrier when a schedule "just about" doesn't work for them (cant-adapt).

The dosage used in most successful trials is about 0.3-0.35 g/kg.

A word of warning

Creatine has been observed (including by trusted polyphasic sleepers) to cause significant hair loss, though this may be placebo and other studies have contradicted the finding. At least some of this hair loss seemed to be reversible when taking creatine short-term. This effect is NOT direct hair loss through creatine on its own, but through an increase in DHT (dihydrotestosterone, a strong testosterone), which, again, has been contradicted by some studies.

Do not take creatine if you are hormonally male and do not want to risk hair loss.