No air conditioning required.
Jenni June raised four kids as a single mom, in homes in Oregon and Southern California where she wasn’t able to have air conditioning. She says it was hard to see her kids struggle to sleep in the summer heat.
As a result, she developed some creative tricks to cool down her kids before bedtime, like dampening and freezing a teddy bear that they could take to bed.
“It definitely broke my heart for my kids. It was hard to keep them cool and comfortable, and to protect their sleep,” said June, who now works as a child and family sleep consultant. “When a room is overheated because it’s warm outside, it’s a little more of a challenge to keep your core body temperature cool. And that’s absolutely necessary for us to be able to segue into those deeper, more restorative stages of sleep, and transition from one sleep cycle to the next without full arousal in the middle of the night.”
Cooler temperatures actually help your body produce more melatonin, the powerful hormone that work to make you feel sleepy, she explained. So sleeping in a hot room — where it’s nearly impossible to cool down — will be an obstacle to a good night’s rest. The effects of poor sleep are varied but often catastrophic, from avoidable motor vehicle accidents to increased risk of developing heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.
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