Hey guys, it's Michael Kummer here
and it's no secret that temperature is incredibly important. As far as sleep quality is concerned.
It's also important because it determines how quickly you can fall asleep. I'm sure you've
experienced it in the past. You know, you are hot, you are sweaty. Maybe you can't
fall asleep because you're way too hot, you're way too cold, or you wake up in the
middle of the night. So in this video, I wanna talk about some of the factors that
explain why temperature is important for sleep and give you some tips and tricks that you can apply
to improve the quality of your sleep to change the temperature in your room or under the sheets,
and to fall asleep a little bit quicker. But before we get started, make sure you
subscribe to this channel and you click on the little alert button so you get notified
when I publish more videos like this.
So one of the main reasons why temperature is so important for sleep quality is because your body's
core temperature actually changes before you fall asleep and then throughout the night, Most people
don't know that, but your body's core temperature needs to go down by about two degrees Fahrenheit
for you to fall asleep. So if you are in the way
of that temperature reduction, maybe because it's way too hot in your room,
or because there is a lot of trapped air under your sheets,
then you might not be able to fall asleep quickly. In addition to that, if you are too hot during the
night, and especially during the first half of the night, you might not get the deep sleep you need,
or not the amount of deep sleep that you need. The way the temperature, your core temperature
behaves during the night is that imagine it's like a U almost. So your temperature drops by two
degrees for you to fall asleep, and then it keeps dropping in the first half of the night, which is
when you have most of your deep sleep generally. And then your temperature rises again during the
second half of the night when you have most of your REM sleep and deep sleep is the physically
restorative phase of your sleep. So when your muscles recover and REM sleep is when your
memories get consolidated and a lot of things happen in your brain,
it's a very active phase of sleep. And during that phase, you actually warm
up a little bit and reached the warmest level when you wake up in the morning.
And so what you wanna do is to fall asleep quickly and as well as to stay asleep and spend enough
time in deep sleep and in REM sleep to support your body's natural temperature changes.
And there are a couple of things that you can do to accomplish that. And we'll talk about those in
this video. So let's talk about the things that you can do for going to bed to prepare your body,
to reduce its core temperature. And one of the things I'm sure you've
heard about it, take a hot shower by exposing your skin to hot temperatures.
Your body dilates the blood vessels in your skin and in your outer tissue, and as you get out of
the shower, those dilated blood vessels dissipate a lot of heat. So that helps your body to cool
down its core temperature. The second thing that you can do is, you know, that's very similar to a
hot shower is to take a sauna bath. I often hop into our infrared sauna
in the late afternoon or evening in preparation for my body to get ready for sleep. And
taking a hot shower, as well as jumping into a sauna has a couple of positive effects. And
I've written about many of those on my blog post about the benefits of infrared sauna,
so check that out. I'm gonna link it down below. But generally speaking, as far as
sleep is concerned, hot water or hot steam, or infrared radiation relaxes you. It puts you in
a better mood. It releases certain chemicals and hormones, endorphins, or beta-endorphins,
more specifically that put you in a good mood that helps you relax and get into a sense of calm
and that helps you to fall asleep quicker. In addition to helping your body to reduce
its core temperature. That's really the most important aspect as far as I'm concerned of,
you know, exposing your body to hot water or to a sauna. The other thing that you can do,
which is sounds kind of counterintuitive is jump into a Cold Plunge and this might
not work for everyone, but I've noticed by jumping into ice-cold water. It helps me actually
relax as well. Now, when you, if you've never done it before, if you jump into cold water, you're
gonna freak out most likely. So it's completely counterproductive to coming down and trying to,
you know, get ready for bed. But as you get used to the cold plunging experience,
you actually acquire a skill of helping you to calm down to downregulate your fight or flight
response that you normally experience when you jump into ice-cold water.
And by in my case, it's breathing. If I breathe in the Cold Plunge and try to relax once I get out,
I'm completely relaxed and I'm not necessarily amped up. It really depends on how you approach
the Cold Plunge. But for me, if I wanna relax, the Cold Plunge is a great way,
and I've seen my increase in deep sleep on nights that are preceded by cold plunging.
So might be something to figure out and to try out for yourself. But if nothing else,
hot shower and sauna bathing are excellent tools to prepare your body for a good night's rest. As
far as what you can do during the night, it's all about temperature regulation.
And one thing obviously you can do is you can turn down your AC you know, depending on how
sensitive you are to cold. You wanna set your AC somewhere between 62 to maybe 67 degrees or so.
So it's nice and cool in your room so that you don't overheat. The problem with that
approach is that it's not very efficient. You know, if, if, depending on how many AC
units you have in your house you know, in worst-case scenario, you have one unit that
controls the entire house, cooling down the entire house, just because your bedroom should be cool
is not very energy efficient, obviously. And it doesn't necessarily change the temperature
under your sheet. So I've had it in the past, at least before we got a bed cooling solution.
I'm gonna talk about it in a bit where the room was really cold, but I was still hot
under my covers. And so I had to stick out an arm or a leg or both legs because that helped
the body to dissipate heat. And again to fall asleep quicker and to then sleep better,
get more quality sleep, et cetera. The much better approach as far as I'm concerned is to invest
in a mattress cooling solution. So I've tried both Eight Sleep, the Pod Pro by Eight Sleep,
as well as the Chillisleep. And I have, you know, videos and blog posts to compare those two.
Right now I am using Eight Sleep. We've been using that for I think over a year and it's been
a game-changer for us because the Pod Pro by Eight Sleep, what it basically does is it's a mattress
cover that you can use to retrofit any existing mattress. They actually sell the cover separately,
the Pod Pro cover, or they sell the entire mattress set. So in our case, we got the
entire set, including a memory foam mattress, the cover, and then a separate control unit
that circulates temperature-controlled water through silicone tubes that are woven into
the mattress cover. So I can set the exact temperature that I want to sleep and we
can do that on both of our sides separately. So my wife has slightly different settings than
I have. I typically like it a little bit colder. She likes it a little bit warmer, but with that.
I can control the temperature of my mattress surface. So I never overheat and what's even
better, and that's what I really like about Eight Sleep. And what I think sets it apart is
that I can set different temperatures for different stages of sleep.
So I have a, my coldest setting is actually for falling asleep. So when I go to bed and well,
actually Eight Sleep starts cooling down the mattress before I go to bed because I told the
app when my bedtime is, roughly. And so it starts cooling it down. And as soon as I go to bed,
it starts warming it up slightly. So as I go into my first half of the night,
where most of the deep sleep occurs, my temperature actually is a little bit warmer.
Then my falling asleep temperature, but then during the second half of the night, it
warms up and it's at the warmest setting when I wake up. So I have a bedtime temperature.
I have a deep sleep temperature, a REM sleep temperature, and a wake-up temperature.
And that mimics that U-shape, that I have mentioned before, even though mine is cold at the
beginning. That's just how I like it personally. But what that means is that you are never in the
way of your body's natural temperature cycle. So with Eight Sleep, I can support exactly that
U-shape and make sure my body is at the right temperature throughout the night. I'm never too
hot. I'm never too cold. And it's just perfect. And honestly, I can't imagine not having that
anymore, because that would be absolutely awful. And we've had it actually, you know,
during traveling or when we traveled, we didn't have a temperature-controlled bed or mattress
and it was just hot. You know, my legs sticking
out. I uncover myself, recover myself. All of the things that you normally do
throughout the night, because the temperature is just not right. So
getting a mattress, a cooling solution is one of the best things that you can do
to support your sleep and to improve the quality of your sleep. In combination with doing,
you know, the hot shower before, or maybe the sauna bathing before, you know, all of the
things that you can do before going to bed. But then during the night controlling the
temperature under your sheets is one of the best things that you can do. The other thing that I
recently figured out is despite having the mattress cooling solution that I needed a pillow
that provided enough airflow. Because even though the surface of my mattress is now
cold or cool to my requirements,
that my pillow was still getting hot. And I didn't like that very much.
And so we also invested in a pillow, I think it's called a carbon air pillow that has like holes and
carbon fiber and everything. It enables airflow. So hot air never gets stuck between my, you know,
head and the pillow, but can dissipate. And so my head remains in my neck area,
especially remains cool as well. So that combination has been an absolute
game-changer for us in terms of sleep quality. And everyone that I talk to who got some sort
of mattress cooling solution, be the one from Eight Sleep or another one. I actually have
a good friend that uses a Chilipad and everyone says they absolutely love it and cannot imagine
not having that technology again. And so that's really, again, a great investment. If you haven't
done it yet, if you feel like too hot or too cold, or, you know, whatever during sleep,
if you're not sleeping well, if you're, you know, wake up a lot and to uncover and recover yourself,
investing in a sleep or in a bed cooling solution or mattress cooling solution,
really one of the best things that you can do for your sleep and ultimately for your health.
Besides that obviously, there are a number of other things that you can do in terms of
controlling the temperature. I've noticed that whenever I eat large meals before going to bed
especially if I eat a lot of protein in the form of meat, I tend to get hot flashes and there is a
thing called I think it's called meat sweat. I've never really looked into it. If there is
a real correlation between, you know, meat and sweating and getting too hot. Or if it's just the
amount of calories or the amount of protein or the amount of food that, you know, I sometimes consume
too late or too close to bedtime, but I can tell you that that's one of the
main factors, you know. Keep your dinners light don't eat too much before going to bed.
Leave enough time before your dinner and going to bed, even though that's challenging because
honestly, sometimes I have dinner at five and I eat a huge meal because it might be
my only meal of the day or maybe the second meal of the day and I worked out twice.
I'm super hungry and then even leaving four hours from five to nine,
which is usually when I go to bed. It's sometimes too much. My stomach is still full and I feel
I'm, I'm, I'm hotter than I would normally be. Now I can compensate
very often for that by just turning down my Eight Sleep a little bit, but still.
It's not ideal. So keep your dinners lighter. Don't consume alcohol before going to bed. There
are certain other things that you shouldn't have or do right before bedtime because it either,
you know, increases your heart rate, it revs you up, it increases your body
temperature and all of that is in the way of getting a good night's rest and falling
asleep quickly. So take your hot shower. Jump into the sauna before bedtime,
invest in a mattress cooling solution, avoid late meals and alcohol consumption before going to bed,
and it can guarantee you you're gonna improve your sleep. You're gonna fall asleep quicker
and wake up more rested the next morning. If you like this video, give it a thumbs up.
If you didn't like it, let me know the comments, what I could have done better. Until next time.