Why do I sleep better in a cold room? A cold sleeping environment helps lower your body temperature, making it easier to experience deep sleep. This is why you usually feel well-rested after sleeping in a cold room. Plus, lower temperatures help with melatonin production and better sleep quality.
Being in a comfortable environment is essential for healthy sleep. Keeping your sleeping quarters at a temperature near 65°F (18.3°C), give or take a few degrees, is ideal. Your body's temperature decreases during sleep, and a cool, but not cold, room will help you settle into and maintain sleep throughout the night.
Our body temperatures naturally peak and decline during a 24-hour period, with the highest numbers occurring in the late afternoon and the lowest ones around 5 a.m. Sleep usually begins when our body temperature drops, so a colder room can encourage us to fall asleep faster.
Well, it turns out that keeping a cool head helps the body to regulate its core temperature. If we heat up too much, then we try to dissipate the heat by pumping blood to our hands, feet, and head. By transferring the heat through to the pillow, our bodies cool down and allow us to sleep more deeply.
A Cooler Room May Lower Your Stress Hormones
Whereas a hormone such as melatonin can help you fall asleep; stress hormones, such as cortisol, can prevent it. There are so many things in life that cause us stress and when you throw a lack of sleep on that: it's like throwing fuel on a fire.
14-15° - If your home is this cold, you may be diminishing your resistance to respiratory diseases. 18° is the recommended night time bedroom temperature. 19-21° is the recommended daytime temperature range for occupied rooms.
A National Sleep Foundation poll found that cool room temperature was one of the most important factors in getting a good night's sleep, with as many as four out of five respondents saying this was important to them. The best bedroom temperature for sleep is approximately 65 degrees Fahrenheit (18.3 degrees Celsius).
Cold air inflames lungs and inhibits circulation, increasing the risk of respiratory conditions, such as asthma attacks or symptoms, worsening of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and infection.
Part of what the survey discovered is that sleeping cold increases REM sleep. This can burn as much as 140 extra calories per night while sleeping. That can be significant because over the course of a year it can lead to losing as much as 14 pounds.
Sleeping in a cold room may also fight the aging process. More anti-aging hormones, known as melatonin, are reportedly released from the body in a cold room than in warmer temperatures. The antioxidant fights off inflammation and strengthens the human immune system.
“Looking at the available research, most studies agree that a temperature between 60 and 67 degrees Fahrenheit is optimal for sleeping, with temperatures above 75 degrees and below 54 degrees disruptive to sleep.
Hormones
Imbalances in your hormone levels can lead to night sweats or hot flashes. Many females experience night sweats as part of premenstrual syndrome due to fluctuations in estrogen and progesterone levels. Night sweats and hot flashes are two of the most common symptoms of menopause.
For the best sleep, experts recommend keeping the temperature between 20 to 22 degrees.
The World Health Organization recommends keeping indoor temperatures between 64 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit for healthy people. The minimum temperature should be kept above 68 degrees Fahrenheit to protect the very young, the elderly, or people with health problems. Watch out for signs of hypothermia.
A good house temperature in winter for night time is somewhere in the 17-19 degrees Celsius range. This is a manageable temperature that won't feel too cold if you do have to get up at night. Overnight you should always aim to lower your temperature a bit.
And The World Health Organisation (WHO) suggests 18 degrees is the ideal temperature for healthy and well-dressed people. Both agree this is also the ideal temperature for sleeping. In practice, you should be heating your home based on the age and health of your household.
For starters, men tend to run hotter than women as a result of having more muscle mass, which generates more heat than fat. "Body temperature is a reflection of metabolic rate — if somebody pushes a lot of weights they will push their basal metabolic rate up and run hot," Professor Dawson told 9Honey Coach.
Dr Carmel Harrington, author and sleep specialist at Sleep For Health, says: Our ideal body temperature for sleep is 18 to 19 degrees Celsius. Every degree above that makes it harder to sleep – and anything over 25 degrees can make for a very uncomfortable night.
Thanks to your body's natural hormones, your core temperature drops in the evening ready for sleep. This is what helps you to nod off. It then rises again in the morning preparing you to wake up. Some people can be particularly sensitive to this change, leading them to wake up feeling too hot during the early hours.
You Have a High Metabolism
Body temperature naturally rises as it burns food to fuel itself — so it's only logical that a higher rate of metabolism would result in an overall higher body temperature. As such, people with a high metabolism are more susceptible to overheating at night.
Although men and women maintain an internal body temperature of 98.6 degrees, men typically have more muscle mass and generate more heat by using more calories to fuel those extra muscles. When that heat evaporates, it warms up their skin, their clothes and the air just above the surface of their skin.
"This study highlights the role of social support on sleep quality," she said. "It finds that sleeping with one's spouse, especially those in deeper quality relationships, [results in] better quality sleep." Drews theorizes that older couples in happy relationships would derive a benefit from sleeping in the same bed.
An ideal bedroom temperature is around 16-18°C (60-65°F). Hot, cold or draughty rooms can seriously impact on your sleep, in particular REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Temperatures over 24°C (71°F) are likely to cause restlessness, while a cold room of about 12°C (53°F) will make it difficult to drop off.
Less Sunlight: Your body produces more melatonin when you see less sunlight, which can make you more sleepy than normal. Colder Temperatures: Exposure to cold temperatures has been shown to increase metabolism, requiring more sustenance and sleep.