Using a fan on a hot summer night may help you sleep better — and it’s not just about the temperature.
While a whirring fan may provide some much-needed relief from sky-high dew points and lingering heat, they can also alleviate noise pollution.
“Tuning out environmental noises with the soothing sound of white noise from a fan can significantly improve sleep quality,” the Better Sleep Council advises.
In a survey of Americans’ sleep, 27 percent of respondents who considered themselves to be excellent sleepers reported regularly sleeping with a fan in their bedroom.
But, there are even more benefits. Here’s what to know…
It’s not just white noise
With people awake longer hours during summer months, there’s more noise pollution, or unwanted and disturbing sound.
Fans can help to fight the negative effects of noise pollution, such as sleep disruption, insomnia, and chronic health conditions that include heart disease, depression, anxiety, and cognitive impairment.
Loud noises can even trigger an acute stress response commonly known as “fight-or-flight,” according to Peter James, an associate professor at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
James and colleagues found in 2017 that low-income communities and areas with a large proportion of nonwhite residents are disproportionately impacted by traffic noise. So are people who live in urban areas.
“We’ve made these conscious or subconscious decision as a society to put minority-race communities who have the least amount of political power in areas near highways and airports,” he told Kaiser Health News.
Tuning out these sounds can significantly improve sleep quality. Fans produce a consistent ambient noise that can “mask some of the lower-level fluctuations in background noise so that you’re not alerted to those signals,” Norah Simpson, a clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, told The Washington Post.
White noise may also make the ringing sound associated with tinnitus less noticeable. The audiological and neurological condition impacts approximately 10 percent of American adults, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.
There are other more obvious benefits
For one, fans can clear the air in a room.
“If you’re blowing a fan on you to help you cool, that’s great. But if you’re in a stuffy room, you actually want the fan to blow out all the carbon dioxide that has built up in the room,” John Saito, spokesperson for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, told The Post.
Exposure to too much carbon dioxide in a room may put people at an increased risk of tiredness, headache, eye irritation, sore or dry throat, dizziness, and congestion.
Secondly, fans cannot lower the temperature in the room, but they can make you feel more cool. Fans are able to cool people by displacing warmer air, and helping to evaporate sweat from the skin, according to NASA.
Getting the seven hours of sleep adults need to stay healthy is greatly impacted during hot and humid summers. And the season is becoming even hotter due to the impacts of human-caused climate change.
Hot and bothered Americans already lose over an hour of sleep each week in summer, according to SleepScore Labs, impacting an already shorter average sleep duration.
“In summer, the delta between the sleep we need and the sleep we get widens,” Nate Watson, SleepScore Labs’ Sleep Advisory Board chair, told Sleep.com. “Warmer temperatures’ impact on our ability to fall asleep along with increased social activities competing with sleep time are likely additional factors impacting these findings.”
Bear this in mind
Oscillating fans prevent air flow from moving in just one direction, according to Healthline.
The publication notes that fans can circulate dust and pollen, dry out your eyes and skin, and result in muscle aches.
Furthermore, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends using fans only if indoor temperatures are less than 90 degrees.
“In temperatures above 90 degrees, a fan can increase body temperature,” the agency said.
“When you’re sitting in front of a fan, it makes you feel cool. But just because you feel cool doesn’t mean that it’s exactly reducing the burden that your body faces,” Glen Kenny, a physiology professor at the University of Ottawa, told InsideClimate News.
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