Warm and Cold Sleepers

Generally, I’m a very physically sensitive person. I try not to complain, but most utilization of my feeling sense is usually brought to an extreme, making pain from pinches or hair-pulling higher and, as the title of this post would suggest, makes temperatures reach extremes much faster.  Now at first, I wasn’t sure what I would write about that would be interesting for a topic of temperatures. This was because the ideas of hot and cold cloud our everyday lives, from the heater and defogger in your car to the freezer that you took tonight’s dinner out of before you went to work to defrost, but a conversation with my good friend John “Jack” Kelly struck me with this idea. With the weather turning colder, Jack’s dad had him take out his window air conditioner which he uses while he sleeps at night. Personally, I agree with this notion, as saving electricity is not only good on the wallet, but good for the environment. However, the night that Mr. Kelly had Jack take the window air conditioner out, it was pouring out by the time Jack was ready to go to bed, causing him to have to keep his window shut. Now being uncomfortable while trying to fall asleep is one thing, but waking up at 1am in the latter half of fall in a puddle of your own sweat is most certainly absurd, and it made me ponder the idea of how deeply temperatures, hot and cold, impact our sleep. Similar to Jack, I also prefer sleeping in the cold, as it allows the proper utilization of layers to keep you warm and make you feel like a living burrito. Honestly, I thought this was the norm; I understand that not everyone has poor blood circulation and, in turn, feet and hands that could be used on a bruise for healing, but I just thought that starting with coldness and ending with layers of warmth and comfort was a part of human nature. This perception was shattered when, after telling his story of the night prior, Alexis, another person that I was with, confusingly responded “You want it to be cold when you sleep?”, continuing to explain that she prefers it to be at a comfortably warm temperature, using light sheets and blankets and short pajama pants for maximum sleeping pleasure. At first, it was hard for me to understand where she was coming from, but after thinking about the comfort experienced from a hot tub or a sauna, or the comfort that a hot furnace of a blazing campfire can provide, the connection of a warm temperature and comfortable sleeping became clearer and clearer to me. To finish this story/eye-opener, I will state that I’m still a cold sleeper, and that probably wont change unless it causes complications with the missus, but I do now understand both sides of the hot and cold sleeping story and I think that whether you are a hot sleeper or a cold sleeper says something about how you enjoy comfort.