How to get your summer sleep schedule right

With long days comes sleepless nights and even one less hour of slumber can have an effect on our wellbeing. Here, sleep expert, Miranda Levy, delves into the science and explains what you can do to tackle a summer sleep drought...

The heat is on: in sweltering summers, though it may be hard, the dream sleep can be attained (Getty)

A sleepless summer night is its own special kind of torture. The light, bright evenings and early mornings you craved in the winter suddenly exist only to taunt you. That’s before you mention the heat, causing you to toss and turn until your sheets resemble a stick of chewed Wrigley’s as you incessantly turn the pillow over, desperate to find a cool spot.

And it’s not just the heat either, light from longer days can also affect our ability to sleep. American clinical psychologist Dr Michael Breus describes the summer mood as “reverse SAD [seasonal affective disorder]”. Our circadian rhythms are regulated by a part of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SCN, located at the intersection of our optic nerves: light and darkness signal the processes that wake us up and make us sleepy.

“The early sunrises and late sunsets mean the body gets less of the darkness it needs to make melatonin, the hormone which promotes sleep,” says Dr Breus. This is not a warning to keep out of the fresh air – which in itself is important for sleep – but might be one of the reasons it can be hard to drop off after a day out in the sun.