A lack of sleep due to the heat has been one of the less photogenic consequences of Britain’s long summer.
While sunshine looks splendid in a beer-garden photograph, it becomes rather less charming at 2.47 am when the bedroom feels like a conservatory.
New research supplied by Bulk says 68% of us admit they have been left tired after struggling to sleep during this summer’s heatwaves.
Sleep has not been the only routine knocked sideways. According to the same research, 56% say the heat changed the types of food they ate, nearly half reported eating less healthily and 56% said their normal fitness routine had been disrupted.
Why hot weather has disrupted our sleep routine
The survey found that 59% of respondents had been waking earlier because of the heat. Opening a window is not necessarily the elegant solution either: 35% said they could not sleep with their windows open because of outside noise.
Summer routines can compound the problem. Rowan Cooke, Associate Director of Innovation at Bulk.com, argues that longer days, later evenings and changes to eating and social habits can upset normal sleeping patterns.
“With warmer weather, buzzing social lives, and drinking and eating late, we can confuse our bodies’ internal clocks. So if you’re feeling like you’ve slept less during the last few months, chances are you have.
“We are here to put your routine back on track. Strategies such as reducing blue light before sleep and improving your diet can all help prevent nighttime wakefulness and calm your nervous system. Even implementing supplements such as magnesium and tryptophan can increase your chance of falling to sleep faster and enjoying better quality of rest.”
Some of that advice requires more caution than others, but the underlying idea is straightforward: after months of improvisation, routine needs to become boring again. Sleep generally has little interest in your summer social calendar.
Reset your sleep with a regular fitness routine
Bulk recommends bringing daytime exercise back into the week as summer winds down.
Its reasoning is that regular exercise supports the sleep-wake cycle and can help establish clearer periods for activity and rest. Exercise is also presented as a way of reducing stress and creating a calmer platform for sleep later in the day.
The useful part is not some heroic September fitness campaign. If hot weather has pushed a familiar routine off course, restoring the routine itself is the more practical objective.
A frantic attempt to compensate for an inactive August rather misses the spirit of relaxation.
Diet can be part of rebuilding better sleep habits
Food has also shifted during the hot weather according to Bulk’s figures, with 56% saying the heat changed what they ate.
The company points towards foods containing fibre, including fruit and vegetables, as being associated with better sleep quality, while diets high in saturated fats and added sugars are linked in its advice with poorer sleep.
Caffeine and alcohol are also singled out as poor companions immediately before bed because of their potential to interfere with relaxation and sleep.
There is no requirement to turn dinner into a laboratory experiment. The broader lesson from the supplied advice is considerably less exciting: re-establish normal meals, stop letting summer evenings drift indefinitely towards bedtime and give the body a recognisable pattern again.
Cut evening blue light rather than blaming the phone for everything
Screens inevitably find themselves in the dock.
The research says blue light can stimulate receptors in the eyes associated with the body’s internal clock and suppress the natural production of melatonin, making it harder to fall asleep. Its suggestions include switching on a phone’s blue-light filter or using blue-light glasses during the evening.
Reducing screen exposure before bed also fits neatly with the larger goal of establishing a distinct wind-down period.
The filter button alone, however, is unlikely to turn midnight scrolling into an exemplary bedtime ritual. Technology has many talents. Restraint remains an optional accessory.
Be sensible about magnesium and tryptophan supplements
Bulk also suggests magnesium and tryptophan as possible additions to a pre-bed routine.
Tryptophan is described in the supplied material as an essential amino acid used by the body in the production of serotonin and melatonin. Magnesium, meanwhile, is highlighted as a mineral that can also be obtained naturally from foods including nuts, seeds, green leafy vegetables and bananas.
This is the point at which general lifestyle advice and individual supplementation should not be casually treated as the same thing. The supplied material gives no information on dosage, individual suitability or contraindications, so it does not provide enough evidence to make a personalised supplement recommendation.
That distinction matters. A banana is one thing. Turning the bedside table into a branch of a nutrition shop is another.
A calmer evening may be the most useful reset of all
Perhaps the least glamorous recommendation is also the easiest to understand: build a repeatable final half-hour or hour before sleep.
Research also suggests activities such as meditation, stretching, skincare or writing the following day’s to-do list. The activity itself matters less than the repetition. It creates a recognisable boundary between the day and bedtime, something summer’s lighter evenings can rather enthusiastically erase.
With autumn approaching, there is an obvious opportunity to rebuild the habits that slipped during hotter nights: regular movement, steadier eating, less late-night stimulation and an evening routine that occurs roughly by design rather than eventual exhaustion.
Whilst we spent much of the year asking for a proper summer. It arrived. Apparently nobody remembered to order the sleep.
