Body Temperature and Sleep Quality – Part One

Room temperature, Sleep Surface temperature, and body temperature can all affect your quality of sleep.  Heat is an enemy of quality sleep, don’t let a simple thing like heat ruin your health.

Your body temperature actually fluctuates throughout the day with 98.6 being a normal operating temperature, but can actually rise a few degrees during the highest awareness and active times of the day.  Body temperature drops by a few degrees as the body prepares itself for rest (normally close to regular bedtime).

With body temperature such an integral part of determining when we fall asleep, it’s interesting that during the REM sleep(Rapid Eye Movement – the 5th stage of sleep in which dreams may occur), your brain’s temperature-regulating cells switch off and let your body temperature be determined by how warm or cool your bedroom is.  Of interest during this stage is that your body temperature slightly decreases, however, your brain temperature increases.  This is thought to be caused due to the hypothalamus taking a break in temperature regulation. This is a key moment in which sleep surface, sleep clothing,  and ambient room temperature are very important in the quality of your sleep.

In a future blog, we will cover tips on temperature regulation including best practices with clothing, mattress design, the impact of body shape on sleep, and many other factors that you can control to help you sleep better.

If you are looking for information on other bedding products and sheet fabrics, here are links to other articles that you might find helpful:

• Let’s Talk Sheet
• The World’s Best Bed Sheets – Celliant