Cut From Steel

Two men reached the moon and could not get a night's sleep

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin finished the first moonwalk in history on 20 July 1969 and then tried to rest inside the lunar module.

NASA's own account of that rest period is thoroughly unglamorous. The cabin was noisy with pumps. Warning lights could not be dimmed. Even the window shades glowed, lit up by the sunshine outside.

Armstrong found the Earth shining through the lander's optical telescope directly into his eye, and he described it as being like a light bulb.

They closed their suit helmets to shut out the noise and the lunar dust. The suit cooling systems, built for the scorching surface outside, were far too cold for sleeping inside the Eagle. Aldrin took the floor. Armstrong curled up on the engine cover.

Aldrin managed a couple of hours of mentally fitful drowsing. Armstrong got nothing at all. Aldrin summed the whole business up afterwards by saying you are simply not going to get any sleep while you are waiting for liftoff.

Two men with the finest training on earth, inside the most expensive machine ever built, lost the night before the most dangerous flight of their lives. Neither man lacked nerve. The cabin was cold, loud and lit, and no amount of character fixes a cold, loud, lit room.

The room beat two of the most disciplined men alive. You are working with the same equipment they were, in a bedroom you actually control.

You are sleeping in a room that runs too warm

You go to bed at eleven. At three in the morning you are awake again, blaming your bladder or your age or the dog. Then you lie there until half past four working out how tired you are going to be.

I want you to check the thermostat before you blame anything else in the house. Your core temperature is meant to fall by about two degrees Fahrenheit across the night, and that drop begins roughly two hours before you sleep, alongside the release of melatonin.

You cannot drop your temperature in a room that will not let you drop it.

It's not age. It's these three.

I will give you three things the Sleep Foundation reports about heat, and one number for your thermostat tonight.

01 / The Number

The Sleep Foundation recommends a bedroom between 65 and 68 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 18.3 to 20 Celsius, and puts the ideal at 65. Most men reading this sleep four to seven degrees warmer than that, because the house was set for a living room at eight in the evening and nobody touched it again.

02 / What Heat Takes First

Excessively hot ambient temperatures appear to lessen the time spent in REM sleep. A higher core body temperature is linked to less slow-wave sleep, which is the deep, restorative stage you actually went to bed for. So a warm room does not merely make you uncomfortable. It taxes the two stages that were doing the repairs.

03 / Why You Wake At Three

A bigger gap between your core temperature and your hands and feet has been associated with decreased sleep efficiency and a higher likelihood of waking up after falling asleep. Cooling the room helps that gap close. The Sleep Foundation describes lowering the thermostat at night as working in tandem with your body's own temperature fall, rather than against it.

Take it back today

I owe you the caveat before you go and freeze your wife out of the bedroom. Sleep research runs on averages, and the right setting for you may sit a degree or two either side of that range. Your own mornings settle it, not a chart in an email.

You can test the whole thing for nothing at all. Set the bedroom to 65 for five nights, change nothing else about your evening, and write down what time your eyes open each morning. Five mornings is enough data to settle an argument you have been having with yourself for years.

I want you to deal with the light while you are at it, since Armstrong lost his night on the moon to a telescope. Cover every standby light you can see from the pillow, close the curtains properly, and put the phone somewhere that is not the nightstand.

You have been fighting your own thermostat for years and calling the result insomnia. Set it to 65 tonight and let the room do the work. Five nights will tell you everything.

— Travis

Insider Member's Corner

6 free habits that make the room work for you:

The room you sleep in deserves the thought you give the car you drive.

01 / Linen · A set of percale cotton sheets

Percale is a plain weave, and it sleeps cool and crisp in a way that sateen never manages. Look for long-staple cotton and ignore any thread count above about 400, which is largely a marketing number. One good set costs what a mediocre dinner for four costs, and you spend a third of your life in direct contact with it. Wash them hot and they get better for a decade.

02 / Watch · Sinn 556 I

Sinn builds in Frankfurt for pilots and police divers rather than for boutique windows. The 556 I is 38.5mm of brushed steel, sapphire front and back, an automatic movement, and no decoration whatsoever. It costs a fraction of the Swiss watches it outclasses on the wrist. Nobody at the table will recognise it, which is the entire appeal.

03 / Sky · A night in a dark sky park

You can drive to a certified International Dark Sky Park in most American states and across much of Europe, and see the Milky Way with the naked eye. Take a folding chair and a thermos, and give your eyes a full two hours to adjust. Armstrong went 240,000 miles for his view. Yours is a tank of petrol away.