Global warming could deprive people of sleep

Everyone knows what it's like to fall asleep on a hot summer day.stuffy room. In the morning after such torment, people feel overwhelmed and tired. Surely, many of you with the advent of summer have already encountered this unpleasant feeling, especially for residents of the southern regions. We do not recommend simply putting up with such a situation and just trying to cheer yourself up with coffee, even properly prepared, in the morning. It is better not to regret the money for air conditioning. The fact is that such sleep problems increase the risk of developing cardiovascular diseases, impair the cognitive abilities of the brain, and also contribute to the development of depression. Scientists from the University of Copenhagen say that in recent years, an increasing number of people are facing lack of sleep and unhealthy sleep. They attribute this to global warming. Moreover, in their opinion, by the end of the century, people on average will lose 13-15 days more sleep per year than now.

Almost all over the world people are sleep deprived due to global warming.

Content

• 1 How temperature affects sleep
• 2 Which people tolerate heat worse
• 3 Human bodies are not adapted to high temperatures
• 4 The nights will get hotter

How temperature affects sleep

We have previously said that global warming threatens people's health more than, for example, the coronavirus pandemic. Now, scientists from Denmark have found another confirmation of this.

“Sleep loss due to climate change is happening right now, not in the future, but today,” says Kelton Minor, lead author of the study.

The researchers, in their work published inOne Earth magazine studied fitness bracelet data from about 50,000 people collected between 2015 and 2017. Trackers recorded when people fell asleep and woke up, as well as how they slept. The data was anonymous, however, scientists compared the information received with the climatic features of the place where they were. In particular, they compared sleep data with outside air temperature.

Of course, information about the temperature insideThe scientists did not have rooms where people slept. They only compared sleep on a chilly night in June with sleep on a hot night that came a few days later. They also studied how people slept in cold weather when abnormally warm weather arose outside.

Needless to say, this study is unique.of its kind, since scientists did not rely on self-reports, which are considered unreliable. In addition, the study covered the whole world, and not a separate region.

People sleep very badly when the temperature outside reaches 25-30 degrees

As it turned out, people slept best whenthe air temperature dropped below 10 °C. When the thermometers rose above this value, the chances of sleeping less than seven hours increased. Accordingly, the higher the temperature outside, the more time people did not get enough sleep. With outside temperatures over 30°C, people lost an average of about 15 minutes of sleep per night.

It may seem that 15 minutes is not so much.a lot of. But, as other studies have shown, these 15 minutes most likely fall on the overvalued stage of “slow-wave sleep”. We only have about an hour of sleep a day. Therefore, reducing it even by 5 minutes significantly affects the well-being of a person.

The hardest thing to fall asleep in the heat of the elderly and women

What kind of people tolerate heat worse

As scientists have found, the heat hits somegroups of people are stronger than others. People become less tolerant of temperature with age. People over 70 are about twice as sensitive to high ambient temperatures. They sleep an average of 30 minutes a day, as opposed to 15 minutes like younger people.

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In addition, women suffer more than men.Even at a young age, they lack sleep 25% more of the time than men. As expected, people in low- and middle-income countries are affected about three times more often than people in high-income countries. Obviously the reason is the lack of air conditioning in the rooms.

Human bodies are not adapted to high temperatures.

During this study, scientists were able tofind out that human bodies are not able to adapt to high temperature. People who are exposed to high temperatures all year round, or who have experienced hot summers, suffer from it in the same way.

The human body cannot adapt to the heat

Scientists believe this is due to the fact thatThe body is highly dependent on internal body temperature. Just a few degrees above or below the norm lead to the fact that our organs cease to function normally or even shut down. Body temperature is one of the main factors affecting sleep. Before going to bed, the body sends blood to the extremities and slightly cools the head. Without it, falling asleep becomes much more difficult.

The nights will get hotter

According to some scientists, global warmingclimate is more strongly reflected in the nighttime temperature than in the daytime. And this situation applies to most of the world. For example, in the United States, nights in summer warm up twice as hot as days. It looks like the nights will continue to get warmer.

“Before the nights were given the opportunity to cool the body.But when the heat becomes chronic stress, the body does not cool down and recover. This is a key factor that harms people's health, ”says Rupa Basu, a public health expert in the United States.

Researchers from Copenhagen calculated thatwarmer nights already cost people about 44 hours of rest per year. There are also 11 extra days of "napping" where people get less than seven hours of sleep. By the end of the century, this figure could increase to 50 hours per year, if we can not reduce the amount of emissions and switch completely to renewable energy sources. True, according to environmental activists, renewable energy sources threaten the planet with another serious problem.