10 Things You Need to Know About Sleep
Good to see last night's programme from the BBC on getting a better night's sleep. Entitled, "10 Things You Need to Know About Sleep" and hosted by Kate Silverton the programme explored some of the science behind why we fall asleep - and why we sometimes don't!
10 Things You Need to Know About Sleep led with a seemingly new concept that temperature and sleep onset are inter-linked. As we discuss on the Sleepbreeze FAQ page it is sometimes hard to fall asleep when the weather is hot. This is simply because the normal fall in body temperature that we experience around bedtime takes a lot longer when the air around our body's is warm. Hence the need sometimes for a cooling fan like the Sleepbreeze to give the body a gentle nudge in the right direction.
So, what was behind the physiological concepts that the programme was exploring? Put simply, when our deep body temperature rises our skin blood vessels dilate to help loose heat and regain equilibrium. The experiment that Kate Silverton took part in, where she was immersed in a bath of relatively hot water, was an attempt to trick the body into vasodilating and causing a subsequent drop in body temperature (triggering sleep onset). It is worth mentioning for anyone wanting to try this that in hot weather we tend to be vasoldilated as much as is possible (and often sweating into the bargain), so this wouldn't work as well in a heatwave.
Basically, to achieve sleep onset you need to get the body's physiological processes AND the environmental conditions around you working together. Hence, when trying to sleep in hot weather you need to be vasoldilated and possibly sweating (which will happen anyway if it is hot enough) AND have some air movement over your skin to help dissipate the heat from the skin surface.
And just to round off this post, it was nice to see former colleague Dr Barbara Stone on the programme.