Mattress Technology Advances
Here’s another innovation showing how technology can lead the way in enhancing sleep. This new mattress idea would control both heating and cooling at specific times of night. And, no surprise, by inducing a cooler period at bedtime, individuals demonstrated faster onset to sleep.
Although it’s been well researched that you breathe better in a cooler bedroom, an exciting area of research would be to discover how heating and cooling works during the night, because different stages of sleep react differently. For example, in REM sleep we experience some loss of thermoregulation such that our bodies naturally cool more. Yet, oddly, we suffer the worse breathing events in REM due to greater airway collapsibility.
Overall, it is not uncommon for sleepers, both normal and those with sleep disorders to experience awakenings at night due to apparent shifts in body and bedroom temperature. Probably 90% of the population has experienced waking up at night to pull up or pull down the covers. Resolving this behavior with mattress technology holds promise.