Summer Bed Audit for Better Sleep

 Turning down the air conditioner may not solve summer sleep if your bedding is trapping heat. Learn how to audit your sheets, covers, mattress protector, pillow, pajamas, and airflow to create a cooler microclimate inside your bed. 

Transcript

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Welcome back to Night Shift with Justin S. King, How to Transform Your Life One Night at a Time. Tonight we're talking about summer. A lot of people will just turn on their air conditioner to make their room cooler, but they still wake up hot. But if you're waking up hot, it's because your thermostat controls the bedroom, but your bedding controls the microclimate touching your body. I recently heard Dr. Michael Bruce suggest making seasonal changes to your sheets and pillow. That caught my attention because we often change our daytime clothes for summer, but leave our beds exactly the same all year. So start with your sheets. Don't focus exclusively on thread count, but recognize that tightly woven high thread count sheets may attract more heat. Lightweight cotton, linen, or lighter materials can breathe better than dense high thread count sheets. Next, lighten your covers. Replace the heavy comforter with a thin blanket or top sheet. Layers are useful because you can remove one without uncovering yourself completely. Then check what's underneath you. A thick waterproof mattress protector may be the hidden heat trap. Your sheets can feel cool at first, but they can't overcome a plastic-leg barrier or a mattress that holds heat. The same applies to your pillow. Dense memory foam often retains warmth. A breathable pillowcase may help a little, but sometimes the pillow itself needs to be changed. Ventilated foam latex, shredder latex, or other breathable fills may sleep cooler. If you share a bed, try separate blankets. You may need only a sheet while your partner wants something heavier, and separate covers also travel less shared body heat. Use a fan to move air across the bed. Air conditioning cools the room while moving air helps moisture evaporate from your skin. There is some recent studies about the dangers of having a fan on you during the evening. You may want to look into that. It may cause dry eyes, dry mouth, worsen congestion, or cause sinus irritation. It could circulate dust pollen or other particles that aggravate your asthma. It may cause you to become too cold later in the night or may disrupt your sleep. So you may want to move air across your bed, but not directly on your face. Dr. Bruce also suggested sleeping without clothes but wearing socks. May help when your feet are cold by increasing circulation and helping your body release heat. But if your feet already feel hot, adding socks makes total sense. So for tonight's night shift, it's a summer bed audit. Check five things your sheets, your blanket, your mattress, your protector, your pillow, and your pajamas. Identify the one layer most likely trapping heat and replace or remove it for three nights. Don't just cool the room while leaving the oven on inside your bed, your thermostat. Your thermostat controls the room. Your bedding controls the climate where you actually sleep. That's it for tonight's episode of Night Shift. My name is Justin S. King, and I help entrepreneurs find peace tonight, tomorrow, and for the rest of their lives through sleep optimization, emotion regulation, and discovering their purpose. Good night.