Time to relax with a new Goodnight Bath Bomb and fix yourself a warm bath, for science, of course.
Forget the idea of baths only being allowed on lazy Sunday mornings. A new study from Sleep Medicine Reviews Journal has found a warm bath before bed will not only get you sleeping better, but also falling asleep faster. And the timing couldn’t be more perfect with our brand new Goodnight Bath Bombs now available!
Let us explain.
Biomedical engineers from The University of Texas in Austin analysed 5,322 studies and found water-based body heating between 40°C to 42°C in a passive form (AKA a nice soak in the tub) before bed improved overall sleep quality and sleep-related conditions, including the length of time it takes to fall asleep, to your total sleep time and sleep efficiency.
“When we looked through all known studies, we noticed significant disparities in terms of the approaches and findings,” Shahab Haghayegh, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and lead author on the paper, said in a media statement.
“The only way to make an accurate determination of whether sleep can in fact be improved [by a bath] was to combine all the past data and look at it through a new lens.”
But that’s not all! Researchers also found when a bath was scheduled at least 90 minutes before bedtime, it sped up the time it takes to fall asleep by at least 10 minutes.
So why does a warm bath work wonders?
It’s all got to do with your circadian clock – more commonly known as your sleep cycle.
Researchers found warm baths stimulate the human body’s thermoregulatory system, which is how we maintain our body temperature. This stimulation leads to an increase in blood circulation which assists the natural circadian process and can make you fall asleep faster.
At night our body temperature drops a little when we’re sleeping, before dropping to its lowest level between the middle and later part of our sleep cycle. Then, it begins to rise again, which is your biological body clock waking you up in the morning. It makes sense that a bathtime soak before bed speeds up the temperature cycle which then affects your sleep cycle.
So, now is the perfect time to test the science and stock up on new bath bombs ahead of making a bedtime soak an essential part of your evening routine for a solid night’s sleep.
