Do you know if you snore or not? Maybe you had a partner or family member deliver the surprising (or not) news, or perhaps you have had sleepless nights listening to someone else’s snores. Snoring can often be a sign of obstructive sleep apnea, the most common sleep-related breathing disorder estimated to impact over 25 million U.S. adults. It causes people to repeatedly stop and start breathing while they sleep, when the throat muscles relax and block the airway, according to the Mayo Clinic.

A seemingly unrelated phenomenon could be worsening this potentially dangerous sleep disorder, according to recent research: climate change. A new study published in Nature Communications found that warmer temperatures caused participants to have a 45% higher probability of having obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) on a given night.

“Overall, we were surprised by the magnitude of the association between ambient temperature and OSA severity,” said lead author Bastien Lechat at Flinders University Health and Medical Research Institute in Australia in the press release.

That can have worrying implications not only for health, but also the economy: OSA is associated with significant decreases in workplace productivity and absenteeism, and as it becomes more prevalent with rising temperatures, that could cost the global economy $30 billion in lost productivity, and another $68 billion from worsened well-being.

Researchers analyzed sleep data of 116,620 participants across 29 countries over 3.5 years, using an OSA monitor cleared by the Food and Drug Administration to establish the link between daily ambient temperature and nightly OSA status.

“Higher rates of diagnosis and treatment will help us to manage and reduce the adverse health and productivity issues caused by climate related OSA,” coauthor Danny Eckert said in the press release.

The health toll of obstructive sleep apnea and climate change

As OSA is exacerbated by warming temperatures, that can lead to detrimental health impacts. Untreated or severe cases of OSA can increase the risk of dementia, Parkinson’s disease, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, anxiety and depression, and even a shorten your life span. People with OSA may also suffer from frequent fatigue and mood swings, caused by continually disrupted sleep from breathing interruptions that inhibits settling into a deep, restorative sleep.

Poor sleep is also linked to faster brain aging, decreased cognitive functioning, worsened mental health, inflammation, cardiovascular disease, and a suppressed immune system.

Higher ambient temperatures also have well-established negative effects on health, including worsened mental well-being and overall worsened sleep quality and duration. Previous research shows that warmer temperatures overall magnify the impacts of OSA, as warmer temperatures lead to lighter sleep stages and more frequent disruptions and awakenings.

The economic burden of OSA

In the study, researchers estimated that the global warming-related increases in OSA prevalence in 2023 was associated with a loss of 788,198 healthy life years in 29 countries.

Given how OSA impacts mood and energy levels caused by disrupted sleep, it’s common that people experience lower productivity and more frequent missed days at work. But if OSA frequency and severity continues to increase, that could be catastrophic for the global economy. In 2023, researchers observed that the increase in OSA led to an additional 25 million absenteeism days across the 29 studied countries, leading to an economic cost of $30 billion from the lost labor.

Researchers caution that the study population likely underestimates the potential health and economic burden: All participants owned a sleep tracking device and resided in highly developed countries with greater access to heat-mitigating tools like air conditioning, leaving lower socioeconomic groups with the greatest heat burden underrepresented.

With the mean global temperatures projected to increase by 2.1°C to 3.4°C, the impacts of heat are likely to worsen.

“Our findings highlight that without greater policy action to slow global warming, OSA burden may double by 2100 due to rising temperatures,” Lechat said.

“Going forward, we want to design intervention studies that explore strategies to reduce the impact of ambient temperatures on sleep apnea severity as well as investigate the underlying physiological mechanisms that connect temperature fluctuations to OSA severity,” Eckert added.

For more on sleep:

• Make this one diet change during the day to sleep better at night
• Good news for night owls: When you need sleep is determined not by laziness, but chronotype. Here’s what that means
• 3 things driving the global sleep deficit—which is turning into a health crisis and costing companies

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Getty Images

Sleep is commonly elusive. Whether you’re one of the roughly 18% of Americans who struggles with insomnia or often wake up tired from poor-quality sleep, you may be familiar with common recommendations to improve sleep: Limit screen time before bed, keep your room cold and dark, and create a wind-down routine. While those tips can be helpful, it turns out what you do during the day—specifically what you eat, and not just before bed—could play a pivotal role in boosting your sleep quality.

A small new study led by researchers at UChicago Medicine and Columbia University found that eating more fruits and vegetables during the day was associated with better sleep at night.

“Dietary modifications could be a new, natural, and cost-effective approach to achieve better sleep,” said co-senior author Esra Tasali, MD, director of the UChicago Sleep Center in a UChicago write-up on the study.

While research already shows that sleep can impact what you eat, with poor sleep causing people to reach for unhealthier foods higher in fat and sugar, the relationship appears to go both ways. Previous research has associated high fruit and vegetable intakes with better overall sleep quality—but this new study is the first to establish a connection between daytime dietary choices and sleep quality that same night.

The study looked at self-reported food consumption and sleep data from a wrist monitor of 34 healthy U.S. adults ages 21 to 35 who regularly sleep seven to nine hours a night. They were specifically looking at “sleep fragmentation,” which refers to how often someone wakes up or shifts from deep to light sleep throughout the night.

Researchers found that increasing dietary intake of fruits and vegetables from zero to five cups per day—the Centers for Disease Control’s recommendation—was associated with 16% better sleep quality, with participants experiencing deeper, less interrupted sleep that same night. A similar association was found for eating more complex carbohydrates like whole grains as well. Those who ate higher intakes of red and processed meat, however, had more disrupted sleep. 

“People are always asking me if there are things they can eat that will help them sleep better,” coauthor Marie-Pierre St-Onge, PhD, director of the Center of Excellence for Sleep & Circadian Research at Columbia, told UChicago. “Small changes can impact sleep. That is empowering—better rest is within your control.”

How to increase your fruit and vegetable intake

The CDC estimates that only 12% of U.S. adults meet the recommended 1.5 to 2 cups of fruits per day, and only 10% are hitting the recommended 2 to 3 cups of vegetables per day. But it can be tricky to visualize what exactly that might look like if you’re not measuring out a cup of berries.

The Department of Agriculture says the following are all equivalent to one cup (so double it for fruits and double or triple it for vegetables):

• 1 large banana
• ½ cup of dried fruit
• 32 red seedless grapes
• 1 cup of 100% juice
• 12 baby carrots
• 1 large sweet potato
• 2 cups of raw spinach
• 1 cup of cooked black beans

If you’re struggling to up your fruit, veggie, and complex carbohydrate intake, here are tips nutrition experts shared with Fortune:

• Swap out animal proteins for plant-based ones, such as chickpeas, lentils, or beans, in meals like curries or stews.
• Put more beans and corn into your favorite chili.
• Fill half your plate with vegetables, or try to add one extra serving of vegetables to every meal.
• Swap whole grains for refined carbohydrates, like bulgur or barley in place of white rice, or whole-grain bread for white bread, for example.

For more on sleep:

• Here’s why more Americans are opting for a ‘sleep divorce’
• This workout mistake could hurt your sleep and make you feel worse
• Night owls tend to have more health risks than early birds—including cognitive decline, new study finds
• Meet ‘cognitive shuffling,’ the emerging strategy for better sleep

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Getty Images