标题: Sleep and (Surrounding and Body's) Temperature [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 2-23-2016 16:13 标题: Sleep and (Surrounding and Body's) Temperature Sumathi Reddy, Best Temperature for Sleep; Thermostat settings trump light, bedtime to ensure a good rest; prompting the brain to cool down. Wall Street Journal, Feb 23, 2016. http://www.wsj.com/articles/the- ... ts-sleep-1456166563
Quote:
(a) "The role of temperature has gotten increased attention after a study published last year found sleep may be more tightly regulated by temperature than by light. What’s more, core body temperature, which tends to fluctuate by a few degrees over the course of the day, needs to drop to help initiate sleep.
"Setting the thermostat to around 65 degrees Fahrenheit is good for sleep, studies have found. Research has also found that room temperatures as low as 60.8 degrees are best when people pile on the blankets.
(b) "Temperature is a big point of debate for couples. Women tend to raise the thermostat while men want to lower it.
(c) " 'People tend to set their ambient house or bedroom temperature a little higher than is actually optimal for sleep,' says Matthew Walker, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.
"The body’s core temperature needs to drop by about 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit to initiate sleep, Dr. Walker says. “If our core temperature is too high the brain cannot easily make the switch from being awake to being asleep, or create the best quality sleep.”
"Core body temperature is the temperature of our heat-producing core, which is the brain and abdominal cavity. As the ambient temperature drops [but in winter in the West, room temperature is pre-set, and does not change at night], so too does our core temperature. It usually reaches the lowest level in the early morning hours, before awakening.
(d) "Taking a hot bath before bed has a similar effect. The hot water brings the circulating blood to the surface of the body, which is one of the quickest ways to drop core body temperature.
" 'When you get out of the bath you cool down more quickly, which is what the body wants to do at bed time,' says James Horne, a neuroscience professor at Loughborough University in England. His research has found that young, healthy people have about 10% more slow-wave sleep when they take a warm bath [seemingly as opposed to shower] before bedtime. He says soaking in water that is about 102 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes in the early evening will improve sleep. A shower won’t have the same effect, he says.
Note:
(a) "A study published in October in the journal Current Biology that examined sleep patterns of preindustrial societies found temperature played a critical role. The 94-person study suggested 'the daily cycle of temperature change, largely eliminated from modern sleep environments, may be a potent natural regulator of sleep,' says Jerry Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at University of California, Los Angeles, and senior researcher on the study. The study looked at three groups living in tropical, natural environments."
Yetish G et al, Natural Sleep and Its Seasonal Variations in Three Pre-Industrial Societies. Curr Biol, 25: 2862-2868 (2015). www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26480842
(b) "In a 2008 study in the journal Brain, a group of researchers in the Netherlands put 24 people in a thermosuit that allowed them to manipulate temperature by running water through the veins of the suit. They found that a 0.4-degree-Celsius (or 0.72-degree-Fahrenheit) increase in skin temperature—which allows the body to release more heat—led to fewer wake-ups and more slow-wave, or deep, sleep."