Thread: Dividing Sleep into Two

I'm considering dividing my sleep into two parts. One from about 7-11pm, and the other from 4:30-8:30am.

I really should know the answer, but haven't been on-topic on this forum lately and have forgotten some specifics about sleep. I've googled this, but trust members of this site better than the crap sources I was coming up with.

Assuming I successfully conditioned my body to sleep on this schedule, would it be detrimental to my health? I suppose more specifically what I'm asking is, if I sleep for two 4-hour periods separated by 5 hours, will the total 8 hours act as a regular session of sleep? Will the cycle completely start over after I've been awake? Will I never get adequately long periods of REM?

Note that there would be no sunlight deficiency problems, as it currently gets dark at about 5pm here, so the normal problems with strange 'nocturnal' sleep schedules wouldn't arise.

The google results suggested it was bad for you due to REM loss. However, I've read before that when one loses sleep, the lost REM will be 'made up for' and longer the next night. This makes me think it might work.