I'll sleep with a very light sheet up to around 25c.
I keep my house at around 22c during the Winter. I'll match a light sheet with a light blanket at that point as it gets chillier randomly during the season.
I dislike air currents flowing across my skin while I'm trying to sleep, unless it's crazy hot (the central air system moving air around is enough to annoy me while I'm trying to sleep, without a cover).
I do.
When I fall asleep in front of the TV (my bedroom is normally colder) without a blanket I wake up freezing.
Even in summer nights I prefer a very light blanket to cover myself.
It’s an interesting question, and could have imagined people sharing their beds with pets, but with livestock? Is funny.
I personally have sleeping problems in rooms that are too warm, and warm blankets don't help. It's not when going to bed but a few hours in - around REM time? I wake up panicking as if I'm suffocating. That's why I always sleep with the window open, also when it freezes on the winter. My SO is not so much a fan :).
Oh god, I'm not the only one who has this? I had trouble sleeping in a room my parents made for me and they wouldn't believe me when I said the room is too hot. If it's like 74F or above or so I can't sleep and I'll just continually wake up with that suffocating feeling.
Is there a name for this? It doesn't seem normal and I'm dreading it come summer in a city with no AC...
Damn, my wife is like that. I'm always cold, winter or summer. But i hate heavy bedding, and prefer light sheets and down comforters. But then, for many years, I slept in a nylon sleeping bag on a foam pad.
Got hit with an unexpected blizzard once when I was on an FTX in Colorado, in December. Pure freaking misery (slept in a mummy bag with a watch cap on). Never been so cold in my life, before or since. My right foot still starts to ache whenever I get cold.
So, I live in Florida now. Usually sleep with just a sheet, until my wife steals it at 3AM and wraps it around herself 5 times so I can't get it back.
I also have trouble sleeping with closed windows, especially when it's colder outside.
It's really nice to cuddle up under a heavy warm blanket when it's a bit colder in the room, tho it can make getting up in the morning a real pita when the room cooled out way too much.
I wonder if the "suffocating feeling" without an open window might be the result of higher CO2 concentration in the bedroom if it isn't aired regularly enough? Might be worse for smaller rooms without proper ventilation and more noticeable due to the sleeping position being lower than regular standing/sitting? There's also this old trope of plants in the bedroom supposedly being a very bad thing.
I guess I'm one of those weirdos that doesn't. I get hot really easily, so unless the sheets are really light cotton, I roast. Oddly enough, though, I love heated mattress pads. I can crank it up to 10 and sleep without sheets just fine.
Something relevant: does anybody have suggestions for weighted blankets? My SO is into big, heavy comforters and other bed coverings (no idea what they're called) and she'd probably enjoy that.
Weighted blankets sound interesting, I'm also interested. Personally, I love sleeping under heavy blankets, but my room has to be ~55 F in order for it to work, otherwise I'll roast and wake up super dehydrated.
Hospital blankets must be made from lead, but I don't know where they get them. Quilts are usually pretty dense.
I have this argument with my wife: in the winter we have a very nice down comforter. It is plenty warm on its own. She likes to through a heavy quilt we have on top of that. I say that it makes the bed colder... the quilt compresses the down in the comforter and it loses much of its insulation ability that way, more than the insulation added by the quilt on top. She refuses to accept this argument and says it's warmer with the comforter plus the quilt. I haven't wanted to win the argument badly enough to start taking measurements, but as a compromise, we've worked out having her double up the quilt on her side.
A long time ago they may have been made out of thick wool. I don't know if you've ever heard of or slept under a "military blanket" of the wool variety, but they're incredibly heavy and warm for their relative thickness.
My partner made me a 15 pound weighted blanket for Christmas and I love it. It's very cozy and feels nice. She made it out of light materials so it can breathe and be used in the Summer.
She didn't get the weight from the batting, it doesn't add enough.
She used weighted plastic pellets (like beads). As she added the batting, she would sew in pockets throughout the blanket and add in the pellets in a precisely measured way so that it would be evenly distributed.
I`m a hot sleeper as well, but you'll find that ambient temperature has a profound impact. I actually sleep more soundly with a sheet + (very) light comforter at about 17 degrees celsius or lower, having read that cool temperatures such as those are best conducive to quality sleep.. this is only true with adequate bedding, though that detail is often omitted.
In the summer, without AC, I can only sleep with a single sheet barely covering me. But the quality of sleep is noticeably lacking unless I'm particularly lucky. This is because, in environments that aren't super-well climatized like modern high-rise condos, temperature may swing and fluctuate a lot, so reaching thermoneutrality (the correct amount of covering on you) can be difficult, particularly with just a sheet in my experience.
As we’re seeing here, we don’t always. Taking the premise as true though, maybe it’s modesty, or a way to normalize temperature fluctuations? From my experience in the Phillipines though, I’m with the rest here who are denying the premise of the article.
Plus no sheets means no anti-monster force fields.
which is pretty ineffective since mosquitos are quite good at finding the body part that's uncovered. If you sleep like a cocoon and don't move i guess that works.
If only your face is uncovered, I think you are more likely to notice a mosquito, either by sound or by touch. On the other hand, mosquitoes can reach you through a net or thin sheet if it is against your skin, as I have found to my cost.
Point the fan at the uncovered part. Mosquitos tend to dislike fan airflow. Also works outdoors. The airflow also triggers your pressure sensors so spontaneous firing isn't an startling issue if the fan breeze hits something other than your head.
Obviously for use in the hot summer; also if you sleep with a fan pointed at you in Korea, you'll catch fan death and die. Cultural myths about fan death is an interesting sleep related topic. With respect to nature vs nurture, different cultures certainly do weird things such as fan death related to sleep but the vast majority cross culturally like blankets; that would imply blankets could be genetic in some weird way not merely cultural.
Where I live the state bird is the mosquito. Which doesn't really narrow down my state of residence LOL. Here I am daydreaming my way to sleep counting sheep and a touch/pressure sensor in my skin spontaneously fires as they sometimes randomly do, and ugh there's a mosquito or fly or whatever on me wake up and swat it. Now wrapping in a blanket means the pressure sensors saturate full on all the time so I don't startle. I suspect its worse for men with body hair. Randomly a leg hair catches airflow and red alert a bug has landed on me! Its the same as the tickle reflex, leaning on me while cuddling on the couch is comfy and sleep inducing, tickling is not even remotely sleep inducing.
Speaking of pressure, I sleep on my side with my legs partially up and if I force myself to sleep otherwise, I wake up in that position, so may as well give in. So... maybe TMI but without squooshing at least a thin blanket between my legs there's kind of a self inflicted thigh-vise on my male parts which as any male will attest is uncomfortable. This is a universal problem for males who lift weights and sleep on their side, unless you guys have invented an interesting hack for this problem...
I would hypothesize that a cover would restrict air flow around your sweat glands which would reduce your scent on the air around where you're sleeping. It would also mask the outline of your body. For insects adapted to bite humans, hiding these signals and providing a physical barrier would possibly reduce bite incidents. Reducing bites from potentially pathogen-spreading insects would have an evolutionary advantage.
If it's friggin' HOT, and as long as there's privacy in my own room, nothin', and nada, no need for close proximity insulation technology, and for bugs? I use my mosquito bed net I bought from Amazon.
Blankets and sheets also protect from ghost, witches, monsters from under the bed... ask any child, if you're under something that hides you (or that you cant't look at), automatically you won't be found. Things that you can't look at can't look at you, too.
I wonder if that common anxiety is the distant echo of an ancestor who slept in trees—don’t dangle, lest you get pulled to your doom by a hungry “monster”.
A sheet over the head also protects against killer robots, as it interferes with face recognition. It also protects against alien abductors, as their paralysis-ray guns can't penetrate fabric with sufficiently high thread counts.
These days, I mainly protect myself from the spouse's dreaded fan, that constantly blows the icy breath of Borealis across the bed. But it's nice to be safe from all the monsters, too.
In all seriousness, they protect from anything hunting via heat. Snakes and a great many insects wont notice a warm body covering in an insulating blanket as they would bare flesh.
Is the temperature of the blanket or sheet, under which I'd be sweating profusely for 8 hours, meaningfully less than the temperature of my bare flesh without the covering?
My metabolism is still producing the same amount of heat energy, and my radiant surface area doesn't increase much. If anything, the efficiency of convective and evaporative cooling drops significantly when I cover myself, so you'd think that the blanket would give off a stronger heat signature.
Could be wrong about how this works, but... if it was true that a person under blankets radiates about as much heat as a bare body, that would mean blankets aren’t very good at keeping us warm.
I borrowed a FLIR to check my house insulation, inevitably screwing around will happen. Also images.google.com is full of FLIR people pix. In summary the outside of clothing is much colder than skin, surely blankets are similar.
In terms of the "hunting snake theory", perhaps it's a radiation-vs-convection thing?
Supposing your body has the same amount of waste-heat per second and the whole system has reached a steady state, perhaps less of it would be leaving as infrared light (detectable by some snakes' "pit organ") and a greater proportion would be leaving via the upward rise of warmed air.
I need something covering me. I’m sure it’s a culture/childhood thing to an extent, but I can’t sleep without a layer. It’s another reason why I always wear shorts and a t-shirt to bed too (plus I can’t stand the idea of making my sheets filthy even more quickly by wearing less).
I cannot sleep with any layer, very uncomfortable indeed. To be honest, I cannot stand the idea of getting irritated by clothing during my sleep. Not only that, even the faintest bit of light or even the slightest periodic ticking of the clock (or anything for that matter) annoys me. A thin blanket will do in the summer, but usually tucked to the side when hot, and a second blanket of the same material in the winter, a third blanket of the same material as a bed sheet. Everything needs to be dead quiet and super dark when I'm sleeping. I'm trying to achieve the darkness to the point where the capability of the human eye adaptation to low-level ambient light won't matter (absolute pitch black).
There's a difference between the argument that people have an evolved biological preference for warmth and pressure, and the argument that this is because it evokes conditions in the womb.
Without elaboration, the latter sounds like Freudian psychobabble to me.
My dad and his army unit would sleep under wet bath towels in the sweltering El Paso summer nights, in the late 1960s. He would wake up in the middle of the night, when the towel dried up and stopped cooling with evaporation, and have to go get it wet again.
It seems like an evolved reaction - make sure we are under cover, out of sight while sleeping and helpless. But given how much we move around, snore, talk, and make commotion while sleeping, having a simple cover may not help much. Maybe it was evolved for a smaller frame?
I have definitely used a damp sheet and a small fan to keep cool on very hot nights. Idk about a towel - but the damp sheet felt great. When it's that hot you're already laying there soaked in sweat.
It's caused in large part by reduced blood flow to the extremities due to the cold. If you are useing damp cloth to keep cool then you will have plenty of blood flow. Unsanitary conditions do make increase the risks.
I don't think they meant trench foot per se. If you lie in a bath, your wet skin goes soft and is relatively easily rubbed/peeled away around the extremities (toes, fingers).
I've noticed similar softening when walking with sweat/rain-soaked socks. Also assumed it was the condition people talk of which makes keeping feet dry on jungle expeditions so important.
Got it, however tap water is far more sanitary than jungle water, also walking around is going put a lot more stress on your skin than sleeping. Also, there is a difference from having a damp cloth on you and having water sloshing though your boots.
Historically the only option was to be constantly setting though a heat wave for days at a time. Though drying sweat leaves behind a lot of salt which does help simply being a little damp is not a huge deal.
Standard Western bigotry. Here in he middle part of the earth (ie near the equator) it’s super common for people to sleep without any cover. It’s still considered more “proper” to use blanks because that’s how westerners do it, but it needs to be learned. People don’t do it automatically, and kids kicking off their blankets is a common theme between parents. Your hottest nights are just not hot enough.
Also, I live in SE Asia. Our nights are hot, but we have fans and use very thin blankets. (Not even sure if they're called blankets, but they're very light weight and maybe should be called sheets)
In Canada during the summer it's common to use a sheet (yeah, a super thin cover).
It has nothing to do with temperature. It keeps any breeze of my skin. For me at least, this is much more comfortable because there's simply less stimulus. A breeze really distracts me.
They specifically mention having looked into areas near the equator, like Papua New Guinea and Kenya. They may be wrong, but it's not like they only looked at the West and assumed the rest of the world was the same.
It isn't on/off for me. Every night is a bit different, even though my thermostat has the same setting day by day. One foot uncovered. Or two. Or neither. Thick blanket, or thin, or both. Many options and throughout the night the configuration changes.
I used to live in the Philippines with no AC and even then, except for the hottest nights, we slept with light sheets/blankets on. Sometimes with the fan blowing under the blanket on hot nights.
I wonder about spider bites or something. Imagine sleeping on the forest floor with no covering, ants would crawl on you and stuff. Well, at least at picnics they do. A lot of bugs are nocturnal I think.
I didn’t read th article but from what I understand the need for cover comes from the time we are infants, where swaddling and being covered feels secure and comforting. I think the need for a cover is carried all the way through adulthood as an ingrained means of protection of outside elements.
> If you Google around for this question, you’ll end up with a bunch of theories about blankets simulating the warm, enclosed feeling we had in the womb. There could be some element of theoretical protection or security imbued by the blanket, which might be another bit of conditioning, but Hoagland thinks the womb comparison is pretty unlikely. “I’m very suspicious of anyone who implies that this goes back to the feeling of being in the womb,” she says. “I think that’s very far-fetched.”
1) Various studies have indicated that sleeping with a weighted blanket can trigger an uptick in the brain’s production of serotonin
2)The other element that might explain our need for blankets is what Hoagland refers to as “pure conditioning.”
Well anti-anxiety compression vests work for cats and dogs and there's some very preliminary evidence that deep pressure touch improves subjective relaxation https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3688151/
This is actually the first time I've ever heard of weighed blankets. As someone with severe anxiety that's helped with a hard squeeze, I'm very interested in getting one, I just wish I could try one first.
> work for cats and dogs
That could still be conditioning.
> deep pressure touch improves subjective relaxation
That could still be conditioning.
I'm not saying it definitely is conditioning, but I don't see enough evidence to rule it out.
For example, these animals could associate the pressure with the warmth and comfort of being the in the womb. So in a way they've been conditioned by being in the womb. Maybe animals grown in a 'test tube' wouldn't give the same results.
I don't. Currently I have really effective heating and cooling in my apartment, that I am not billed separately for, so the temperature is pretty close to 70F (21C) all the time (the apartment management has even exhorted people to keep the heat turned up in the winter so pipes don't freeze).
I don't feel comfortable (and sometimes feel cold) unless I am under a flat sheet, but I haven't used a blanket in years.
The only way I would ever use a blanket is if the room temperature was significantly below 68F (20C) but even if I preferred that, it's not allowed due to the risk of causing a flood.
I definitely do. I live in Atlanta and regardless of weather I can't sleep all the way through the night if I don't at least have a comforter on the bed when I go to sleep.
It's currently summer where I live and my wife has been sleeping upstairs at our room with two freaking blankets (one of them pretty heavy). Since NYE I have been sleeping at the ground level of the house where it's cooler, practically naked every night, desperate to be able to sleep without sweating profusely. I guess my wife really likes her serotonin bump.
I don’t read a lot of articles because I can get an informative gist of an article quickly through reading comments. But I also rarely vote articles up or comments up for this reason
Since you are new to HN, you may not know this, but it is considered poor form to complain about being downvoted. And more often than not, it invites even more downvotes as a result.
From the HN Guidelines (which I recommend reading):
> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
I'm not new, I've had countless accounts over the years, about a decade longer than you, with complete disinterest in being gamified, a different account on each browser on each device. You get excited about karma if you like. The complaint wasn't about being downvoted, it was about the people who do it with a complete lack of rationality, or consistency if you look at the other comments. Some threads attract intelligent people, some threads... bless. I've always considered HN downvoting to be broken, and will complain about it as much as I like. Guidelines are for children and idiots; I've lived long enough to know how to behave without some valley kid's views. Delete it for what? Flag it if you want - I've seen far more stupid flags than that.
The amount of coverage that you need may vary. Experiment and you can find the combination that will help you both fall asleep and stay ventilated during the hot nights.
I figured out I just need 3 areas to cover to feel really comfy:
For hot sleepers, this can be immensely difficult to get right. I struggled with insomnia for months in part due to the fact that temperature fluctuated as the convecs heater sucks. Best results were to keep the room cool enough that I could sleep with a sheet and light comforter. Having the comforter "partially" covering when I felt hot doesn't work. Layering sheets doesn't work either, as by the time you've piled enough, it traps too much heat which doesn't escape.
I prefer the 'savasana' position, I actually find it more confortable without a pillow in this position, I can also be by the sides or any other position, just not for all night long, I found it actually decreased upper back and neck pains after I removed the pillow
Before going pillowless, I had a buckwheat pillow. It is less cushy and fluffy than standard Western pillows. I believe they are typical in Japan and not hard to find these days. It helped wean me off the giant fluffy Western pillows.
I have respiratory problems. I sleep better without breathing in allergens and dust mites and god knows what from a pillow. Though it did take a bit of time to get used to doing it differently from how I had my whole life.
For a year or two I didn't sleep with a pillow, I can't remember why I stopped using one or why I started again. I was still sleeping on a mattress though. I just used my arm as a pillow.
When I'm hiking, I'm sleeping on the ground without a pillow, and I've never had a problem with it.
On the flip side, I always need an inflatable pillow or a pillow section built into my inflatable mattress when I'm camping, otherwise I need to sleep on my backpack or a pile of clothes or something. Can't sleep without a pillow for the life of me.
When I camp I have to put my backpack somewhere, may as well be under my head. "naked and alone" TV show is not terribly historically accurate, surely humanoids have always a bag of something or a rolled up something to rest their head on. Alternately my wife can sleep on my arm and with some work to get my arm position right the blood flow is not cut off; theoretically a household of humanoids could sleep in a line, with the unfortunate one on the end being one of those back sleepers. Interesting bonus is if someone wakes up from hearing a tiger approach statistically half the tribe is awakened automatically for free, silently. Interesting problem is one member wants to roll over or use the bathroom at night and everyone is unhappy.
A few decades back I visited a traditional zulu village museum. In the wattle and daub huts they had thin logs for pillows, somewhat like firewood. Couldn't find an image in a quick web search.
194 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 230 ms ] threadI keep my house at around 22c during the Winter. I'll match a light sheet with a light blanket at that point as it gets chillier randomly during the season.
I dislike air currents flowing across my skin while I'm trying to sleep, unless it's crazy hot (the central air system moving air around is enough to annoy me while I'm trying to sleep, without a cover).
I personally have sleeping problems in rooms that are too warm, and warm blankets don't help. It's not when going to bed but a few hours in - around REM time? I wake up panicking as if I'm suffocating. That's why I always sleep with the window open, also when it freezes on the winter. My SO is not so much a fan :).
Is there a name for this? It doesn't seem normal and I'm dreading it come summer in a city with no AC...
So, I live in Florida now. Usually sleep with just a sheet, until my wife steals it at 3AM and wraps it around herself 5 times so I can't get it back.
I wonder if the "suffocating feeling" without an open window might be the result of higher CO2 concentration in the bedroom if it isn't aired regularly enough? Might be worse for smaller rooms without proper ventilation and more noticeable due to the sleeping position being lower than regular standing/sitting? There's also this old trope of plants in the bedroom supposedly being a very bad thing.
Something relevant: does anybody have suggestions for weighted blankets? My SO is into big, heavy comforters and other bed coverings (no idea what they're called) and she'd probably enjoy that.
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B073451HTY/ref=psdcmw_3732181...
I have this argument with my wife: in the winter we have a very nice down comforter. It is plenty warm on its own. She likes to through a heavy quilt we have on top of that. I say that it makes the bed colder... the quilt compresses the down in the comforter and it loses much of its insulation ability that way, more than the insulation added by the quilt on top. She refuses to accept this argument and says it's warmer with the comforter plus the quilt. I haven't wanted to win the argument badly enough to start taking measurements, but as a compromise, we've worked out having her double up the quilt on her side.
She used weighted plastic pellets (like beads). As she added the batting, she would sew in pockets throughout the blanket and add in the pellets in a precisely measured way so that it would be evenly distributed.
In the summer, without AC, I can only sleep with a single sheet barely covering me. But the quality of sleep is noticeably lacking unless I'm particularly lucky. This is because, in environments that aren't super-well climatized like modern high-rise condos, temperature may swing and fluctuate a lot, so reaching thermoneutrality (the correct amount of covering on you) can be difficult, particularly with just a sheet in my experience.
Plus no sheets means no anti-monster force fields.
That's basically how I sleep, though I do move around a bit.
Obviously for use in the hot summer; also if you sleep with a fan pointed at you in Korea, you'll catch fan death and die. Cultural myths about fan death is an interesting sleep related topic. With respect to nature vs nurture, different cultures certainly do weird things such as fan death related to sleep but the vast majority cross culturally like blankets; that would imply blankets could be genetic in some weird way not merely cultural.
Speaking of pressure, I sleep on my side with my legs partially up and if I force myself to sleep otherwise, I wake up in that position, so may as well give in. So... maybe TMI but without squooshing at least a thin blanket between my legs there's kind of a self inflicted thigh-vise on my male parts which as any male will attest is uncomfortable. This is a universal problem for males who lift weights and sleep on their side, unless you guys have invented an interesting hack for this problem...
This is why, as every seasoned hitchhiker knows, always travel with a towel.
A sheet over the head also protects against killer robots, as it interferes with face recognition. It also protects against alien abductors, as their paralysis-ray guns can't penetrate fabric with sufficiently high thread counts.
These days, I mainly protect myself from the spouse's dreaded fan, that constantly blows the icy breath of Borealis across the bed. But it's nice to be safe from all the monsters, too.
My metabolism is still producing the same amount of heat energy, and my radiant surface area doesn't increase much. If anything, the efficiency of convective and evaporative cooling drops significantly when I cover myself, so you'd think that the blanket would give off a stronger heat signature.
Thoughts?
(But they do keep us warm)
Supposing your body has the same amount of waste-heat per second and the whole system has reached a steady state, perhaps less of it would be leaving as infrared light (detectable by some snakes' "pit organ") and a greater proportion would be leaving via the upward rise of warmed air.
"I’m very suspicious of anyone who implies that this goes back to the feeling of being in the womb,” she says. “I think that’s very far-fetched.”
Without elaboration, the latter sounds like Freudian psychobabble to me.
It seems like an evolved reaction - make sure we are under cover, out of sight while sleeping and helpless. But given how much we move around, snore, talk, and make commotion while sleeping, having a simple cover may not help much. Maybe it was evolved for a smaller frame?
It's caused in large part by reduced blood flow to the extremities due to the cold. If you are useing damp cloth to keep cool then you will have plenty of blood flow. Unsanitary conditions do make increase the risks.
I've noticed similar softening when walking with sweat/rain-soaked socks. Also assumed it was the condition people talk of which makes keeping feet dry on jungle expeditions so important.
Historically the only option was to be constantly setting though a heat wave for days at a time. Though drying sweat leaves behind a lot of salt which does help simply being a little damp is not a huge deal.
It has nothing to do with temperature. It keeps any breeze of my skin. For me at least, this is much more comfortable because there's simply less stimulus. A breeze really distracts me.
> If you Google around for this question, you’ll end up with a bunch of theories about blankets simulating the warm, enclosed feeling we had in the womb. There could be some element of theoretical protection or security imbued by the blanket, which might be another bit of conditioning, but Hoagland thinks the womb comparison is pretty unlikely. “I’m very suspicious of anyone who implies that this goes back to the feeling of being in the womb,” she says. “I think that’s very far-fetched.”
These are the reasons
1) Various studies have indicated that sleeping with a weighted blanket can trigger an uptick in the brain’s production of serotonin 2)The other element that might explain our need for blankets is what Hoagland refers to as “pure conditioning.”
Surely that could be a result of conditioning.
This is actually the first time I've ever heard of weighed blankets. As someone with severe anxiety that's helped with a hard squeeze, I'm very interested in getting one, I just wish I could try one first.
> deep pressure touch improves subjective relaxation That could still be conditioning.
I'm not saying it definitely is conditioning, but I don't see enough evidence to rule it out.
For example, these animals could associate the pressure with the warmth and comfort of being the in the womb. So in a way they've been conditioned by being in the womb. Maybe animals grown in a 'test tube' wouldn't give the same results.
I don't feel comfortable (and sometimes feel cold) unless I am under a flat sheet, but I haven't used a blanket in years.
The only way I would ever use a blanket is if the room temperature was significantly below 68F (20C) but even if I preferred that, it's not allowed due to the risk of causing a flood.
I sleep under just a thin sheet when it's warm, and above a certain temperature I definitely prefer nothing at all.
But there is certainly something comforting about the weight of a heavy blanket, that much is true.
People sleep in different ways. Here are some pictures of things related to sleep. Sleep is poorly studied we should study it more.
The thermoregulation and serotonin studies were helpful.
From the HN Guidelines (which I recommend reading):
> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If it bothers you this much, you're better off deleting your comment.
I figured out I just need 3 areas to cover to feel really comfy:
- feet (socks are enough)
- lower back
- my face around the eyes
I tell you, it's all such a head ache.
I can’t image finding a comfortable sleeping position on a bare floor with no pillow. But other animals like dogs seem fine.
Before going pillowless, I had a buckwheat pillow. It is less cushy and fluffy than standard Western pillows. I believe they are typical in Japan and not hard to find these days. It helped wean me off the giant fluffy Western pillows.
I have respiratory problems. I sleep better without breathing in allergens and dust mites and god knows what from a pillow. Though it did take a bit of time to get used to doing it differently from how I had my whole life.
[1]: http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/cbd59529ce184feba45db6c513db67f8/a...
For a year or two I didn't sleep with a pillow, I can't remember why I stopped using one or why I started again. I was still sleeping on a mattress though. I just used my arm as a pillow.
When I'm hiking, I'm sleeping on the ground without a pillow, and I've never had a problem with it.