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Air Pollution, Heat, Carbon Dioxide, and Noise Affect Sleep Efficiency

For each of the environmental variables measured, the researchers compared sleep efficiency during exposures to the highest 20 percent of levels versus the lowest 20 percent of levels.

Through this analysis, they found that high noise was associated with a 4.7 percent decline in sleep efficiency compared to low noise, high carbon dioxide with a 4.0 percent decline compared to low levels, high temperature with a 3.4 percent decline compared to low temperature, and high PM2.5 with a 3.2 percent decline compared to low PM2.5.

Two other sleep environment variables, relative humidity, and barometric pressure appeared to have no significant association with sleep efficiency among the participants.

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Interestingly, only bedroom humidity was associated with sleep outcomes assessed with questionnaires, such that higher humidity was associated with lower self-reported sleep quality and more daytime sleepiness.

This suggests that studies based on questionnaires may miss important associations readily detected by objective measures of sleep. This is not surprising as humans are unconscious and unaware of themselves and their surroundings during large portions of their sleep period.

Also, most study participants rated humidity, temperature, and noise levels in the bedroom as “just right” regardless of the actual exposure levels.

This seems to habituate subjectively to our bedroom environment and feel there is no need to improve it, when in fact our sleep may be disturbed night after night as evidenced by the objective measures of sleep used in the study.

This suggests that more research is needed now on interventions that could improve sleep efficiency by reducing exposure to these sleep-disrupting factors.

This could be as simple as leaving a bedroom door open to lower carbon dioxide levels and using triple-pane windows to reduce noise. They also applied for funding that will allow us to investigate whether planting trees can improve sleep and cardiovascular health through improving health behaviors and the bedroom environment.

Source: Eurekalert

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