Sleep is physiologically necessary for a person and is an important condition for his health. National health organizations around the world recommend at least 6-7 hours of sleep a night and warn that lack of sleep can lead to a number of diseases, as well as its excess.
The largest study to date has shown that the global increase in temperature caused by the climate crisis is leading to a reduction in the duration of sleep in people around the world.
For health and well-being, a person needs a night’s sleep of at least 7 hours. However, global warming increases the air temperature at night even faster than during the day. The study showed that on average a person loses 44 hours of sleep per year, which is equal to 11 nights.
As the temperature of the earth rises, the duration of sleep decreases. This change has a particularly strong impact on certain groups of the population. When the temperature rises by one degree, lack of sleep is observed in women, people over 65 years of age and residents of poor countries. Scientists studied the data of 47,000 people who wore tracker bracelets.
Previous studies have shown that an increase in air temperature is harmful to human health. The risks of a heart attack, a tendency to depression, which can eventually lead to suicide, increase in injuries, accidents, and reduced performance. Lack of sleep is also associated with such disorders. Scientists have suggested that the disturbed mode can serve as a starting point, which leads to such unfortunate consequences. Unfortunately, the human body cannot adapt to hotter nights.
“For most of us, sleep is a familiar part of our daily lives. We spend nearly a third of our lives sleeping,” said study leader Kelton Minor from the University of Copenhagen. “More and more people around the world are sleep deprived,” he added.
“In this study, we provide indisputable evidence that an increase in average temperature disrupts human sleep patterns. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, as the estimates are based on careful, conservative calculations,” Professor Minor said.
Reduced sleep duration due to warmer nights affects a huge number of people. If you take a city with a population of one million people, then at temperatures above 25 degrees Celsius, about 46,000 people will suffer from inadequate sleep. “If we look at India and Pakistan, which are in a heatwave and heatwave zone, we already see billions of people suffering from insufficient sleep,” Minor said.
In a study published in the journal One Earth, scientists analyzed outdoor sleep data. Higher temperatures have been found to shorten sleep duration by taking longer to fall asleep. The human body needs to cool down before deep sleep, but this is more difficult when the ambient temperature is elevated.
The researchers found that the effect of warm nights on the human body is noticeable in all countries, regardless of climate. A negative effect is already observed at temperatures above 10 degrees.
“Unfortunately, we have not found evidence that people who live in warm countries are less susceptible to the effects of higher temperatures on sleep. We expected that their body would adapt better, but this is not so, ”said Professor Minor.
Professor Minor believes that the path that the world has chosen, upsetting the balance in the environment, will have consequences for every person.
“Our joint decisions as representatives of society can cost us dearly,” he added.
