12th January – warm bath at bedtime

🛁 Have a soak in a warm bath before bedtime.

This is one of my favourite healthy habits, and it’s so simple, yet so effective.

There a several benefits to a warm bath. 🛀🏼Firstly, for me it is just “me time”, the kids are in bed and it’s quiet and if I’m in the tub I literally can’t be doing anything else. In contrast, if I was trying to sit to have a quiet few minutes anywhere else I’d be tempted to go and just do whatever chore I had remembered needed doing that moment…

A warm bath at bedtime can help you get a good night sleep in a number of ways:
⭐️having a wind down routine before bed helps your brain calm down and prepare to sleep.
⭐️By being in the bath you are away from screens (tv / phone / tablet etc) which emit stimulating bright light and keep you awake. I guess that in theory you could take your phone with you into the bath, but for me, I’d be way too worried about dropping it in the water!
⭐️The warmth of the water encourages cutaneous vasodilation, which is blood flow to the skin – the warm redness of the skin that you see when you are warm when you get out of the bath or shower. This in turn, cools the core body temperature. At night during sleep the body’s core temperature is supposed to drop, so provoking this to happen by having a bath helps make the body changes towards the sleep state.
⭐️You can combine a soak in the tub with some relaxing music or mindfulness.

🛁Lastly, for me, I just like bubbles. Don’t ask me why, but there is just something about bubbles in bubble baths that just makes me happy for no particular reason.