Insomnia is one of the common sleep disorders faced by people all across the world. A person who suffers from insomnia finds it difficult to fall asleep and even if sleep triggers, the insomnia victim often wakes up during the night. Now, a new study conducted by researchers at the University of Texas has found an effective way to combat sleep issues and it is nothing but taking a bath 90 minutes before going to sleep.
As per the study report published in the journal Sleep Medicine Reviews, bathing 1-2 hours before bedtime using water of about 104-109 degrees Fahrenheit can significantly improve the quality of sleep.
"When we looked through all known studies, we noticed significant disparities in terms of the approaches and findings. The only way to make an accurate determination of whether sleep can in fact be improved was to combine all the past data and look at it through a new lens," said Shahab Haghayegh, the lead author of the study in a recent statement.
Researchers conducted this study based on a concept that water-based passive body heating will help to improve the sleep of people. The study results indicated that taking a warm bath one or two hours before the bedtime will help to increase the speed of falling asleep by an average of 10 minutes.
Several previous studies have found that body temperature is involved in the regulation of sleep/wake cycle that is commonly called the circadian cycle. A person's circadian cycle is characterized by a reduction in core body temperature of about 0.5 to 1 F around an hour before daily sleep time. During the night time sleep, this temperature will reach its lowest, and when the time of waking up, the temperature will slowly start rising.
Having a warm bath helps to stimulate the body's thermoregulatory system, and it will also cause a decline in temperature. Therefore, if warm baths are taken at the right time, most effective when taken one or two hours before sleep will improve the quality of your night sleep, and thus people can combat issues like insomnia and sleep onset latency.
