When I started trudging into that murky minefield known as peri-menopause, I was just planning on never sleeping well again. The onset of menopause was simply the current issue at the top of a very long list of things that I thought had kept me sleeping badly for years. I had an Ambien prescription for use after I'd had a couple of bad nights' sleep and needed some guaranteed zzz's, and I'd developed a variety of coping mechanisms to deal with my time spent on the Night Watch, even when there was nothing that needed watching.
I had always given excuses to my insomnia, even before I had the very legitimate excuse of coming into menopause, where lack of hormones play havoc with women's sleep cycles. (Ever wondered why middle aged women can be so short-tempered and grumpy sometimes? You can get that way after years of no sleep.) But my insomnia excuses had started much earlier. First, it was because I was just a light sleeper. Then, because I was a new mother. Then came the aforementioned peri-menopause, followed by menopause itself.
The first night we moved into this new house, I slept with the shutters and windows thrown wide open. I don't think I slept much, but that wasn't the point. (And I was used to that by this time anyway.) From the vantage point of my bed, I could see the Milky Way galaxy stretched in a line before me, rotating slowly as the night progressed. I could see Antares, Scorpius and Sagittarius hanging low in the window. If I looked towards the hills there were mighty oak trees, standing silent and silhouetted against the dry brush.
And so began my love affair for sleeping with the bedroom window open. And after I became somewhat used to the idea that I could see a billion or so stars out of my window, I slept. Well. Extremely well, in fact.
This was a banner occasion for a long-time insomniac.
It wasn't the peace and quiet, because as anyone who lives in the country can tell you, it's really not all that quiet out here -- day or night. At night there are screech owls, coyotes, neighbor's dogs, the occasional car, and the dawn chorus beginning at around 4:30 a.m. Nights are anything but silent.
No, the sleep issue resolved itself once I finally started sleeping with the windows open and my room got cool -- downright cold, in fact. I had no idea, but lowering the room temperature is the biggest thing most people can do to improve their sleep. Studies indicate that a temperature range between 55 and 65 degrees is best for sleeping humans. Yet how many of us who live in urban areas and cannot open our windows at night, or live in hot areas where it doesn't cool off to those temperatures at all in summer? I know when I lived in the San Joaquin Valley, it was not uncommon on summer nights to find the temperatures hovering around 90 degrees at midnight, after a triple-digit day. But that was only in the cities, where the concrete from the streets and sidewalks created a "heat island" effect from all those man-made structures still radiating the day's heat, long after sundown.
Creating heat islands is just one more way we've over-civilized ourselves into a situation that's detrimental to our health and that of the environment. After all, if you live in a heat island, you will probably do whatever it takes to cool off, like running your air conditioner all night long. Who could blame you? But that's not wise for either your electric bill or the health of the planet.
But since sleeping in the cool night air is something our bodies are biologically programmed to do, there's no getting around it.
We need sleep, and we need to sleep someplace cool. Both things are just part of the basic operating instructions for owning a human body.
Here's a good NY Times article about this very subject:
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