How to take an evening shower to sleep better

By mak­ing a few changes to your evening habits and activ­i­ties, you can improve your sleep and abil­i­ty to fall asleep. The right deci­sions are to take an evening show­er and main­tain a com­fort­able tem­per­a­ture in the room. What are the ben­e­fits of evening water pro­ce­dures? And what relax­ation tech­niques will help you fall asleep faster?

Temperature changes for good sleep

Body tem­per­a­ture and room tem­per­a­ture are impor­tant com­po­nents that affect sleep. Dur­ing sleep, the body’s nat­ur­al tem­per­a­ture decreas­es. This hap­pens about four hours after falling asleep. But even when a per­son feels tired and sleepy, his body begins to freeze a lit­tle. If you can’t fall asleep for a long time, your body tem­per­a­ture may be a lit­tle high­er than usu­al.

Accord­ing to research, for com­fort­able falling asleep, the tem­per­a­ture in the bed­room should be between 19–20 ° C. A cool room cre­ates a good atmos­phere for qual­i­ty sleep through­out the night. At the same time, a relax­ing warm show­er at least 1.5 hours before bed­time can increase the slow, deep sleep phas­es, which will allow a per­son to feel more rest­ed in the morn­ing.

A warm evening show­er or relax­ing bath rais­es your body tem­per­a­ture. It is high­er than in the room, so grad­u­al­ly it begins to drop, calm­ing the body and set­ting it up for sleep. The tem­per­a­ture dif­fer­ence con­tin­ues in the first hours of sleep and has a pos­i­tive effect on its depth and dura­tion. If there is no habit of tak­ing a show­er or a warm bath in the evening, or there is not enough time for them, you can get by with a warm foot bath instead. This will help you fall asleep faster and get a rest­ful, healthy sleep through­out the night.

Other benefits of showering before bed

If you don’t go to bed after your body tem­per­a­ture starts to drop, you may have trou­ble falling asleep. In the evening, as soon as a per­son, along with fatigue and yawn­ing, feels a slight chill of the body, it is bet­ter for him to go to sleep. Then his sleep will be of high qual­i­ty and strong. In addi­tion to the fact that a warm show­er relax­es and soothes well after a hard day’s work, it pro­longs the cool­ing process of the body and allows you to bet­ter tune in to sleep.

In addi­tion, reg­u­lar water treat­ments before bed help keep bed­ding clean, which reduces the occur­rence of aller­gic reac­tions. After all, a third of a person’s life pass­es in bed, and sweat par­ti­cles, dust mites and dead cells col­lect on its sur­face, which neg­a­tive­ly affect the skin con­di­tion and cause aller­gies. It is advis­able to change bed linen at least once a week.

Reg­u­lar wash­ing and cleans­ing of the face before bed­time pro­tects against major skin prob­lems (from rash­es, acne, microwrin­kles) and from eye infec­tions (if cos­met­ics get in). Mois­tur­iz­ing cream and masks that can be left on all night are bet­ter for clean skin.

Tak­ing a show­er in the evening will elim­i­nate the need to wash in the morn­ing. Wak­ing up, you can only rinse your face and wash your hands. So there will be an addi­tion­al 15–20 min­utes in order to soak in bed, cook break­fast or start healthy morn­ing habits: med­i­ta­tion, walk­ing, light warm-up. An evening show­er at the end of the day is great for calm­ing down, reduc­ing anx­i­ety and relax­ing mus­cles.

Quality sleep and health

Stress and increased lev­els of anx­i­ety are a seri­ous prob­lem that neg­a­tive­ly affects health, increas­ing the risk of devel­op­ing dis­eases of the heart, ner­vous and immune sys­tems. In order to sleep bet­ter, in the evening you need to be able to relax and calm down well, using var­i­ous relax­ation meth­ods. This will reduce the neg­a­tive impact of stress on the body.

A healthy night’s sleep helps reduce the amount of cor­ti­sol pro­duced by the adren­al glands dur­ing stress­ful sit­u­a­tions through­out the day. Sleep helps the body repair the “dam­age” caused by the chron­ic stress that most urban dwellers suf­fer from today. With prop­er rest, mood, mem­o­ry improve, cre­ativ­i­ty and the abil­i­ty to con­cen­trate increase.

Sleep is impor­tant for fix­ing events in long-term mem­o­ry, bet­ter under­stand­ing of events and learn­ing. The brain after sound sleep works more reg­u­lar­ly, which allows you to bet­ter remem­ber and learn new mate­r­i­al. With a lack of sleep, a per­son becomes dis­tract­ed and poor­ly trained.

In addi­tion, unhealthy sleep can increase the risk of heart dis­ease and stroke, gas­troin­testi­nal dis­or­ders, obe­si­ty, type 2 dia­betes, and Alzheimer’s dis­ease. Thus, sleep is one of the fun­da­men­tal pos­tu­lates of health and well-being.

Ways to relax the body before bed

Tak­ing a relax­ing bath or show­er, foot baths are not the only ways to relax and unwind before bed. Deep breath­ing, mas­sage, and relax­ing yoga pos­es can also help you calm down and relieve stress.

It’s impor­tant to dis­con­nect from things that cause stress, such as email, phone calls, or a trou­bled rela­tion­ship with some­one. For relax­ation, some peo­ple pre­fer to indulge in qui­et vari­eties of hob­bies in the evenings: paint­ing, poet­ry, cook­ing, or long walks in nature. It is best to com­plete your dai­ly activ­i­ties with evening water treat­ments. While tak­ing a bath, it is use­ful to use scent­ed can­dles instead of elec­tric light, read a good book, lis­ten to pleas­ant music.

Simple tips and habits for better sleep

Along with a warm bath or show­er, the fol­low­ing tips and habits will help you fall asleep faster and enjoy rest­ful and healthy sleep:

• Enhance bed­room com­fort

The bed­room is a place for sleep­ing and com­fort­able rest. This is impor­tant to con­sid­er when con­sid­er­ing its design. It is worth aban­don­ing too bright col­ors and col­or­ful images in the decor. Instead, it is bet­ter to choose a neu­tral, pas­tel col­or scheme that does not irri­tate the eyes. Thick cur­tains will pro­tect from the light of lanterns, the sun and the moon dur­ing sleep.

• Elim­i­nate dis­trac­tions

Work­ing at a com­put­er, social net­works, watch­ing TV and oth­er inter­ac­tions with elec­tron­ic gad­gets reduce the qual­i­ty of sleep. There­fore, it is advis­able to exclude them before bed­time. Pets can also inter­fere with sleep. It is bet­ter to remove them from the bed­room. In order not to wake up from harsh sounds from the street, you can use white back­ground noise. Read­ing books, pleas­ant music and inti­mate rela­tion­ships con­tribute to good sleep.

• Fol­low the dai­ly rou­tine

If you go to bed and wake up at the same time, your body gets used to this reg­i­men. This will help reg­u­late your bio­log­i­cal clock, allow­ing you to fall asleep soon­er and sleep sound­ly through the night. Keep­ing this habit is impor­tant even on week­ends.

• Use sub­dued light

Nor­mal­ly, the brain pro­duces mela­tonin in the evening between nine and ten o’clock. And elec­tri­cal appli­ances that give bright light can block this nat­ur­al process in the body. After sun­set, it is rec­om­mend­ed to switch to low con­sump­tion lamps that shine in red, yel­low or orange. Using a salt lamp that is lit by a five-watt light bulb would be ide­al as it won’t inter­fere with mela­tonin pro­duc­tion.

• Dai­ly Exer­cise

Phys­i­cal exer­cise burns ener­gy and helps you fall asleep eas­i­er. How­ev­er, dur­ing exer­cise, the body releas­es cor­ti­sol, which can decrease mela­tonin secre­tion. There­fore, exer­cis­es should be done three hours before bed­time.

• Wear min­i­mal cloth­ing while sleep­ing

The use of a min­i­mum amount of cloth­ing dur­ing sleep pro­vides the body with the nec­es­sary cool­ness and free­dom. This allows you to feel more com­fort­able and sleep bet­ter.

• Check mat­tress and pil­low

It is very impor­tant for a good sleep that the bed, along with the mat­tress and pil­low, are com­fort­able and of high qual­i­ty. It is rec­om­mend­ed to change the mat­tress after about 8–10 years, the pil­low — after 3 years, and the duvet — after 7 years.