There are all kinds of sleep hacks and advice out there that claim to help us drift off more easily or snooze for longer stretches, but one expert is sharing a super simple way to boost your chances of a good night’s sleep. According to behavioral sleep disorders specialist Michelle Drerup, all it takes is keeping your socks on when you hit the sack.
“It sounds counterintuitive, I know, but by wearing socks to bed and warming your feet, you may actually lower your core body temperature and fall asleep faster,” says Drerup, the director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Cleveland Clinic. “By making your feet warmer, you’re opening up blood vessels to help cool down the rest of the body.”
A small study from 2018 backs this up, finding that young men who slept in socks fell asleep almost eight minutes faster and slept for 32 minutes longer than those who didn’t. They also woke up fewer times during the night.
- Socks aren’t the only thing that can help with this cooling that promotes better sleep.
- Keeping your bedroom around 65-degrees can also keep your core temperature cool as you sleep.
- Taking a warm - but not hot - shower or bath before bedtime can also give the same result to help you feel sleepy.
- But sleeping in socks isn’t for everyone. Sleep specialist Jennifer Mundt encourages people to not blindly follow sleep advice and to use their own judgement of what feels comfortable. “If you wear socks to bed and you feel like your feet are too hot, by all means, take your socks off,” she explains. “It’s the same idea with room temperature. People can get really hung up — ‘Oh, I heard from this podcast or this book that the bedroom should be this exact temperature.’” Instead, just listen to your body if you feel too warm or too cold.
Source: CNN