The team says their findings suggest that by the year 2099, moderate temperatures could devastate 50 to 58 hours of sleep per person per year. In addition, they found that the effect of global warming on sleep loss was greater for residents of low-income countries as well as for older men and women.”Our results show that sleep – a vital recovery process that is vital to human health and productivity – can be damaged by warmer temperatures,” said lead author Kelton Minor of the University of Copenhagen. “In order to make informed decisions about climate policy going forward, we need to take a closer look at the multitude of future climate impacts arising from today’s choice of greenhouse gas emissions.”
Increase mortality and hospitalization
It has long been known that hot days increase mortality and hospitalization and make it harder for people to work, yet the biological and behavioral mechanisms underlying this effect are not yet fully understood. Recent data from the United States have suggested that sleep quality declines during the tropical climate, but how temperature fluctuations may affect changes in direct sleep effects for people living in different parts of the world is still unclear.”In this study, we provide the first evidence of a planetary scale that warmer temperatures than normal normally deprive a person of sleep,” said Little. “We show that this erosion occurs mainly by delaying when people are asleep and moving forward when they wake up in the heat.”
To conduct this study, researchers used anonymous global sleep data collected from accelerometer-based sleep tracking strips. The data includes 7 million nighttime sleep records from more than 47,000 adults in 68 countries from all continents except Antarctica. The steps from the type of wrist straps used in this study previously shown to be consistent with the independent steps of waking up and sleeping.Studies have shown that on very hot nights (above 30 degrees Celsius, or 86 degrees Fahrenheit), sleep decreases by a little over 14 minutes. The chances of getting less than seven hours of sleep also increase as temperatures rise.
“Our bodies are accustomed to maintaining a stable body temperature, which is what our lives depend on,” said Mncanyana. “Yet every night they do something remarkable without most of us knowingly aware – they dissipate heat from our core environment by opening up our blood vessels and increasing blood flow to our hands and feet.” He adds that in order for our bodies to absorb heat, the environment needs to be colder than we are.Early controlled studies in bedroom labs found that both humans and animals slept badly when room temperature was too hot or too cold. But this study is limited to the way people act in the real world: they change the temperature of their sleeping area to make it more comfortable.
Could not directly determine the cause
In a recent study, researchers found that under normal living conditions, people appear to be much better at adapting to colder climates than in hot climates. “Throughout the seasons, demographics, and different climates, external temperatures often deplete sleep, and the rate of sleep loss gradually increases as the temperature rises,” said Mncanyana.
It was also noted that people in developing countries seem to be more affected by these changes. It is possible that a large spread of climate change in developed countries could be involved, but the researchers could not directly determine the cause because they did not have data on climate access data between studies. Researchers also note that because they have found overwhelming evidence that the effect of global warming on sleep deprivation is unequal worldwide, the new study should focus especially on people at high risk, especially those living in the world’s hottest – and poorest – communities.
In future work, the team would like to work with global climate scientists, sleep researchers, and technology providers to expand global sleep patterns and behavioral analysis of other nations and conditions. In addition, they are interested in studying the impact of rising temperatures on the sleeping effects of incarcerated people living in tropical areas, who may have limited access to air conditioning.The study was supported by the Danish Agency for Higher Education and Science and the Independent Research Fund of Denmark.
A number of studies looking at the impact of climate change on human health have focused on how adverse weather conditions affect economic and social outcomes on a large scale. Climate change, however, can also have a profound effect on people’s daily activities – including a host of moral, psychological, and social consequences that are significant for health. researchers report that an increase in ambient temperatures is having a devastating effect on human sleep throughout the world.
Source Journal Reference: Kelton Minor, Andreas Bjerre-Nielsen, SiggaSvalaJonasdottir, Sune Lehmann, Nick Obradovich. Rising temperatures erode human sleep globally. One Earth, 2022; 5 (5): 534 DOI: 10.1016/j.oneear.2022.04.008
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