My bedroom is an inferno, but this cooling sleep system makes my rest heavenly

When I first moved into my current apartment, I didn’t realize how hot it was. It was the tail end of winter, and as a person who generally runs cold, I didn’t initially mind the toastiness of the building.I loved not having to run space heaters as I did at other apartments or the fact I could open the window for fresh air and still feel comfortable.

And then, summer came.I don’t know how to describe it other than hell-like. My plants wilted.My cat looked miserable and I feared that both of us would suffer heat stroke. Nighttimes were spent tossing and pushing blankets off, a fan blasting directly at my face.

I thought, Is this what menopause is going to be like?When winter returned, I was almost giddy, but then it got even hotter.I wasn’t the only one who noticed.Other tenants felt it too. One day, I returned from work to find a thermostat and note taped to my door with instructions to monitor how warm my apartment got throughout the day.

I slapped it on my fridge and was consistently shocked at the numbers it gave: 88, 91, 94, 99 — no wonder my sleep had become so crappy.“Most people like to sleep in the lower end of the room temperature range, something in the neighborhood of 65 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit,” shared Dr.Gillian Goddard, a renowned Manhattan-based endocrinologist and author of The Hormone Loop: An Empowering Guide to Restoring Hormonal Harmony, from Puberty to Menopause.

“Some of that is because we’re lowering our core body temperature.”When that happens, other body processes, such as metabolism and heart rate, slow down, so the body can focus on repair.We experience deep sleep (necessary for physical restoration) and REM (necessary for mental restoration and the sleep stage where dreaming takes place).If it becomes too hot, our metabolism begins to rev back up, disrupting the sleep cycle.

“You tend to get less REM,” Dr, Goddard says, something I found fascinating, as I had noticed I hadn’t been dreaming as frequently...