Turning up the heat before bed could be messing with your sleep
When it is cold outside and you spend your days wrapped in sweaters and blankets, a warm, cozy bed and a warm bedroom might seem like a good idea. But apparently keeping your bedroom too hot can influence your sleep quality in a negative way. Read more to find out why.
Body temperature
Turning the heat up can mess with the temperature in your bedroom, resulting in different kinds of issues. A bedroom that is too hot or cold could cause you to have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. Our bodies function on a ‘biological clock’ called the circadian rhythm. This rhythm is cause by the cycle of night and day, causing us to get sleepy at nighttime. Whenever day turns into night, our bodies automatically know that it is time to go to sleep. At that moment, your body temperature starts to change, cooling down during the night.
Too hot
If you have every tried to fall asleep in the middle of summer without any airconditioning to keep you cool, you know the struggles of snoozing when your body is way too hot. When your bedroom gets too hot, your body will have a harder time cooling off. This will make it more difficult for you to fall asleep even though you might feel tired. The temperature in your room does not only mess with your ability to fall asleep, it also determines how much time you spent in the different stages of sleep. When your body gets too hot, you spend less time in the slow-wave sleep (deep sleep) and in the REM sleep phase; the phase used for emotional processing, memory consolidation and development of the brain. Missing out on precious REM-sleep time might cause you to have issues concentrating during the day and could make you sleepy and more forgetful. You might want to keep that temperature down, just to protect your sleep quality.
Dreams
An unexpected result of having a bedroom that’s too hot or cold, is the influence it has on dreams. If you wake up a lot during the night, the chances of remembering the dream you had right before that moment, are higher. This means that when your sleep gets interrupted a lot, you feel like you have more dreams than when you stay asleep for longer periods of time. The amount of nightmares you remember after waking up, also increases because of this.
The ideal temperature for you bedroom is said to be 18 degrees Celsius (around 65 degrees Fahrenheit). If you like your bed to be warm when you hop in, you might want to consider a hot water bottle to warm your bed instead of heating up the whole room; your body will thank you for it.
Also read: These five tips will help you fall asleep faster
Source: Sleepguide, Libelle, Sleep Foundation | Image: Unsplash, Zohre Nemati