The spring and summer months can make sleep feel impossible, with everything from sweltering temperatures and noisy late-night barbecues to rowdy birdsong and early sunrises to contend with. Numerous studies have shown that our sleep changes for the worse when spring arrives. Being stressed about it won’t help – though, of course, it is understandable to be concerned about the climate crisis that will see our temperatures reach extremes and make sleeping even harder.
But on a sleepless night itself, try to relax. “It’s totally normal to have the odd bad night,” says Dr Allie Hare, sleep consultant at the Royal Brompton hospital in London. “Accept that if there is a major heatwave, you might have a couple of nights that are not quite so good, rather than getting really anxious about it and then trying to sleep. As soon as you try to sleep, you won’t sleep.” (If the sleeplessness has “gone on for more than a couple of weeks it is important that people see their GP”, she adds.) Here, experts give their advice on how to sleep better in the summer months.
