Changing Climate: Know Its Impact On Your Sleep
Amount of sleep that people get per year may likely be reduced by climate change as per a study published in the journal One Earth.
Climate change may also have a strong influence on fundamental daily human activities - behavioral, psychological, and physiological outcomes. The present study evaluated the impact of climate change on human life with a focus on how extreme weather events affect economic and societal health outcomes on a broad scale.
‘Increasing ambient temperatures are found to negatively impact human sleep around the globe according to a new study.’
"In this study, we provide the first planetary-scale evidence that warmer-than-average temperatures erode human sleep. We show that this erosion occurs primarily by delaying when people fall asleep and by advancing when they wake up during hot weather," says first author Kelton Minor from the University of Copenhagen.
Sleep and Climate Change
The suboptimal temperatures may erode 50 to 58 hours of sleep per person per year by the year 2099. Moreover, the temperature effect on sleep loss was substantially larger for residents from lower-income countries as well as in older adults and females."Our results indicate that sleep - an essential restorative process integral for human health and productivity - may be degraded by warmer temperatures. In order to make informed climate policy decisions moving forward, we need to better account for the full spectrum of plausible future climate impacts extending from today's societal greenhouse gas emissions choices," says Minor.
The study team anticipated to further collaboration with global climate scientists, sleep researchers, and technology providers to extend the scope of global sleep and behavioral analyses to other populations and contexts.
Source: Medindia