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Can’t fall asleep because of the heat? You’re not alone. Research has shown that how quickly a person falls asleep and how well they can stay asleep has a lot to do with their ability to thermoregulate, or keep their body cool. That hasn’t been an easy thing to do for much of the northern hemisphere this summer, with heat wave after heat wave bludgeoning our bodies and turning our sleep schedules haywire.
Rising nighttime temperatures around the world due to climate change are starting to push the upper limits of our thermoregulation: A May study of more than 47,000 sleepers found that warmer temperatures at night led to less sleep and more tossing and turning before falling asleep, a true double whammy. That same study predicted that by the end of the century, climate change could shorten our sleep spans by 58 hours per year. Horrifying!
So what can we do with this information, besides allowing it to keep us up at night while we sweat through our sheets? A new study run by researchers in Europe, where heat waves this summer have been especially dangerous, proposed several ways of setting your body up for successful thermoregulation.
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