Simple Strategy For Sounder Sleep
You might sleep better if you crack open a window or leave your bedroom door open, at least that’s what helped improve the sleep of volunteers in a small Dutch study reported in November (2017). Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology recruited 17 healthy men and women in their twenties for a five-night experiment that involved tracking their sleep and assessing their sleeping environment. The volunteers had no sleeping disorders or health problems that could affect their sleep and didn’t use sleep medication. The researchers measured the carbon dioxide levels and humidity in the volunteers’ bedrooms and used sophisticated monitoring to assess the participants’ depth of sleep, their movements and awakenings during the night. The team found that the subjects slept best in ventilated rooms where carbon dioxide levels were lowest. The researchers noted that, compared to other rooms in a typical household, ventilation is often worse in bedrooms, which contain a “diverse profile of pollutants…to which we are all exposed…for nearly a third of our (lives)”. The conclusion: opening bedroom doors or better yet, opening windows, leads to better ventilation, and may lead to better sleep.
Source:
A.K. Mishra et al, “Window/door opening-mediated bedroom ventilation and its impact on sleep quality of healthy, young adults.” Indoor Air, November 21, 2017, DOI: 10.1111/ina.12435
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