How to Sleep on Hot Summer Nights: Science vs. Myth
Heatwaves are like kryptonite to sleep, but our ancient ancestors dealt with wild temperature variations, and so can you
This article is part of a Wise & Well Special Report: Extreme Heat and Human Health.
Cavemen must have had all kinds of problems drifting off at night. Sleeping on dirt floors, rocks for pillows, sabertooth tigers prowling around the cave entrance. But at least they scored a cool, dark place — two among several key ingredients to successful sleep.
Not all our ancestors slept in caves, of course. Throughout prehistory, humans slept outside, cowboy style, yet without jeans or jammies or even miracle-cooling 900-thread percale sheets. How’d they endure hot summer nights?
Fact is, summer slumber has always been a rocky endeavor, and humans have never slept as much as we’ve been led to assume.
As I explain in my book, Make Sleep Your Superpower, we’ve been fed a big lie — by pharmaceutical companies and organizations they’ve helped fund — that we need eight hours or more of sleep every night. Failure to achieve that magical threshold supposedly leaves us all walking around like sleep-deprived zombies. The myth is further fed by claims that our ancestors slept a…
