What is the Ideal Sleep Temperature?
Getting a good night’s sleep is essential for maintaining overall health and wellbeing, and one factor that can significantly impact the quality of your sleep is the temperature of your sleep environment. While some people prefer a cozy and warm bed, others find it easier to sleep in a cooler room. But what is the ideal sleep temperature for most people, and how does it affect our sleep quality?
In this article, we’ll explore the science behind sleep temperature and discuss some tips on how to find your optimal temperature. Whether you are a hot sleeper or a cold sleeper, understanding the ideal sleep temperature can help you achieve the restful and refreshing sleep you need.
- Last Updated: February 13, 2023
The effects of temperature on your sleep
While individual preferences may vary, research suggests that the ideal sleep temperature for most people is between 60-67°F (15.6-19.4°C). This temperature range helps to regulate the body’s internal temperature, leading to deeper and more restorative sleep. Additionally, adjusting your sleep environment to the right temperature can also help to reduce the risk of sleep disruptions, night sweats, and other sleep-related issues.
What are the risks if you don't rest at the best temperature for sleep?
As more research is being performed to study sleep, researchers and health professionals alike are getting a much better sense of how factors like temperature can affect sleep quality.
- The best temperature for sleep is relatively cool because it helps drop your core body temperature, which is one of the key signals your body receives telling it to sleep. This translates directly into poor quality sleep if you are too hot or too cold.
- In several studies, high sleep temperature has been directly linked to poor sleep quality, which worsens as the temperature gets higher. Some loss of appetite has also be noted to correlate with this higher sleep temperature. However, in the long run, poor sleep can actually contribute to obesity.
- Even a few nights of bad sleep can lead to sleep deprivation, which throws off the body’s mechanism of temperature self-regulation and perpetuates the cycle of poor sleep. This can rapidly escalate into more chronic sleep issues.
The poor sleep that results from not maintaining the ideal sleep temperature directly impacts health in several negative ways, all of which can have major long-term effects.
- Insomnia – Insomnia refers to difficulty in falling or staying asleep–or even both–and consistently sleeping at a less than ideal sleep temperature can quickly spiral into long-term struggles with insomnia.
- Sleep apnea – Struggling to find the right position to cope with poor temperature–or even just the disruptions that come with a less-than-ideal sleep temperature–can lead to sleep apnea, which affects as many as 22 million Americans. Sleep apnea can result when your airways are blocked during your sleep, interrupting your breathing and disrupting your slumber further.
- Obesity – As mentioned earlier, poor sleep has been linked to obesity, which can lead to its own set of health complications. Studies have shown these effects to be more pronounced in teenagers and children, likely because they need even more sleep than the seven hours that adults do.
- High blood pressure – Normal sleep allows blood pressure to go down, but disrupted sleep means that blood pressure doesn’t get as low. Because blood pressure remains higher, over time, individuals may develop chronic high blood pressure. This, in turn, comes with its own risk–including a radically higher likelihood of heart disease.
- Type 2 diabetes – Some studies have shown that good sleep is required for the body to properly maintain blood sugar levels; and so, the disruption caused by poor sleep temperatures can contribute to type 2 diabetes.
Conclusion
In conclusion, finding the ideal sleep temperature is an essential aspect of achieving a good night’s sleep. Research suggests that most people sleep best in an environment between 60-67°F (15.6-19.4°C), but individual preferences and factors such as age and health can influence this range.
It’s important to understand the impact of temperature on sleep quality and take steps to create a comfortable sleep environment that promotes deeper and more restorative sleep. Whether it’s adjusting the thermostat, shopping for the best cooling mattress, investing in temperature-regulating accessories, or simply changing your sleepwear, making small changes to your sleep routine can help you achieve the optimal sleep temperature for your needs. By prioritizing your sleep temperature, you can set yourself up for a more restful and rejuvenating night’s sleep.
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