Normally our body temperature lies between 36.5–37.5 °C (97.7–99.5 °F). Human body always tries to maintain this temperature. During hot summer sweating helps to cool our body and when temperature falls below the normal range our body speeds up metabolism to generate some heat. You need to burn some stored calorie (or from food) to produce heat, its simple physics!
Sleep deprivation and obesity both are harmful, can cause life threatening diseases. Health-conscious people always take care of both, that means they always ensure having adequate sleep and at the same time they avoid overeating. Especially obese people try to burn excess fat by vigorous exercise and limit calorie consumption. Now researchers are saying maybe we should consider fight against obesity and sleep deprivation as same battle-ground.
That means along with other benefits, proper sleep can help us to lose weight; especially it’s also important that at which temperature you are sleeping. In the year 2014 journal Diabetes published a study carried on some individuals. As part of the study five men were asked to sleep at the National Institute of Health Clinical Center. These volunteers were doing their regular activities but slept in the climate controlled room of the institute. All of them slept wearing hospital cloths and under only sheets. During the first month of the four month study, room temperature was 75.2 degree Fahrenheit or 24 degree Celsius. Room temperature for the remaining three months were 66.2 °F (19 °C), 75.2 °F (24 °C) and 80.6 °F (27 °C) respectively.
Researchers continuously monitored health conditions of the participants. During the cold months, participant’s active brown adipose tissue (BAT) commonly known as brown fat was increased and it decreased during warm months. This brown fat speeds up metabolism and increases insulin sensitivity. Boosting your metabolism means fighting obesity and increasing insulin sensitivity means decreasing risk of type-2 diabetes. So the bottom line is, may be besides maintaining healthy lifestyle with healthy fiber rich diet and regular physical exercise you can consider sleeping in slightly cooler bedroom at night.
Few more benefits of sleeping in cool environment
Our body produces a special type hormone called melatonin. This hormone signals our body to sleep. Normally our body produces more melatonin during darkness and body prepares for sleep. Production of melatonin decreases with light and our body understands it’s time to wake up. But production of melatonin is not only dependant on light, it also depends on temperature. Temperature between 60 °F (15.6 °C) and 68 °F (20 °C) is most suitable for melatonin production. That means if you can sleep in this temperature range you will sleep better.
Melatonin is a very effective antioxidant. It has anti-aging effect, improves brain health and helps to prevent Alzheimer. It also helps to fight against cancer.
Sleeping naked will help you to sleep in cool temperature
How to sleep in cool temperature
It may be difficult to get cool bedroom in hot summer days. But your arsenal is not totally empty. Easiest option may be an air-conditioned bed room. What if you don’t have any? It that case besides using a fan you should drink sufficient water to make sure your body has enough liquid for sweating. Because sweating is actually a process of cooling your body and fan will evaporate sweat. You can use fluorescent lamps or LED lamps instead of incandescent lamp because incandescent lamps produce more heat than light. You should also keep window open if possible and lastly you may consider sleeping naked if you don’t feel uncomfortable.
