Sleeping Cooler in Hot Summer Months

I love the clear, sunny days of early summer. Everything bursts with color. Trees and lawns grow lush and green. Everywhere you look, flowers blossom in all the vibrant colors Mother Nature has to offer. Bees buzz and butterflies flutter around all that blooms. Birds sing their beautiful songs from the treetops. And there’s nothing like the feeling of warm sunshine on bare skin.

Summer progresses, and it gets hot. Here in the southwest it gets really, really hot. Triple digits all summer, and over 110° is an all too common occurrence. I won’t even try to describe what 120° feels like. In other areas, the temps don’t sound as dramatic, but high humidity makes 90° and beyond feel just as oppressive, if not worse. Heaven help you if it’s 100° with that kind of humidity.

July is statistically the hottest month of the year for most of the northern hemisphere, but to me, it always feels hotter in August. By then the scorching heat is wearing on me. I’m tired of getting into a hot car, I’m weary of it still being 100° at 9:00 and 10:00 pm. The continuous heat is exhausting.

By August, I’m ready for some relief. But summer’s not finished yet. Not by a longshot. Most of us still have at least another month of summer weather as we head into August.

With that in mind, here are some refreshing techniques to keep you sleeping cool and comfortable on the downhill slide of summer:

• Stay hydrated. It sounds simple, basic, obvious even. And it certainly isn’t a challenge to drink more liquids when it’s hot outside. But if you spend most of your time in climate-controlled homes, offices, stores and vehicles, you may not be feeling the need for as much to drink as your body would like.
• When you’re well hydrated, your body is more efficient at maintaining your body temperature in a comfortable range all day and even through the night. A little extra bonus is that while you’re drinking a nice, frosty-cold beverage, you immediately feel cooler. A small, icy beverage before bed can work wonders to cool you and help you get to sleep. Just watch out not to drink too much right at bedtime. You know why!
• Check out our blog post from June of 2017 where we offer up some great ways to keep your bedroom cool and dark in the summer. There are some ideas here you may not have heard of before. Worth a try?
• One of my favorite ways to feel cooler as I drift off to sleep is to listen to something watery. By that, I mean recordings of rain falling, ocean waves, water lapping the edge of a lake, or the running of a creek. Caveat here; see the idea above about drinking plenty of liquids. You don’t want to take that too far right before bed and then fall asleep to a babbling brook!

Here’s one of my favorite soothing, cooling audios: