'Sleep starts at the beginning of the night'

By now you have probably heard or read about hotel chain Holiday Inn offering a human bed-warming service.

This is obviously a daft (if effective) PR stunt so I won't dwell on it too much, but I would like to look at a particular quote that has appeared in a lot of the coverage around this story. The quote, attributed to Dr Chris Idzikowski of the Edinburgh Sleep Centre, is as follows:

There's plenty of scientific evidence to show that sleep starts at the beginning of the night when body temperature starts to drop. A warm bed - approximately 20 to 24 Celsius - is a good way to start this process whereas a cold bed would inhibit sleep.


"There's plenty of scientific evidence to show that sleep starts at the beginning of the night" - what exactly does this mean? If by 'night' we generally mean the time that we are asleep, then yes, sleep does usually start at the beginning of the night.

Here are a selection of sites using the quote or a version of it:

2 comments:

The Ridger, FCD said...

But ... if sleep starts when body temperature starts to drop, wouldn't a warm bed make sleep come later?

Not that I think it does, it just doesn't seem to follow from the argument.

And whatever happened to a good, old-fashioned warming-pan?

(And I ignore your question because I have no idea what that quote means.)

wolf tshirt said...

This doesnt apply to me. I do sleep at day time because my work it at night. .Why does the body become immune to this?