While some parts of the world, especially Europe, reach record temperatures on a yearly basis, sleeping has become even more difficult for many people due to high temperatures and heat waves. While it is becoming increasingly clear that the world must find some very serious solutions to the ongoing climate crisis, there are at least some clues that can help us relax our sleep.
Tips to help you sleep in the heat
- Regions where warm days are followed by relatively cool nights can be suitable places for passive air conditioning. In this approach, you basically have to try to create a relatively cooler environment by trying to keep the heat out during the day. This effort can be as simple as keeping curtains and blinds closed during the sunniest part of the day. It can also be supported by a ventilation method that opens doors and windows early in the morning and later at night, allowing cool air to enter the house and warmer air to exit. However, you have to keep the doors and windows closed when it is hot outside during the day. In short, we aim to prevent the ingress of hot air while keeping the air inside the house as cool as possible.
- Another method would be to keep your bedding and pajamas cool. For example, if you place linens in a sturdy plastic bag in a freezer, they will be pretty cold when it’s time to use them. Similarly, you can choose pajamas that breathe as much as possible.
- You can try to stay cool by placing the frozen water that you will keep next to your bed on areas such as your neck, head, wrists, elbows, or by squeezing it from spray bottles.
- A cool shower before going to sleep can also lower your body temperature and help you sleep more comfortably. However, you should not keep the water too cold during this shower, because your body may try to increase its temperature too much to compensate for this heat loss, causing you to feel hotter than usual.
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