AUSTIN, Texas (KXAN) — Do you ever have trouble getting a full night of sleep? Biomedical engineers at the University of Texas at Austin may have discovered the perfect solution.
Researchers at the Cockrell School of Engineering have discovered that taking a hot bath about one to two hours before bed can significantly improve your sleep. Over 5,322 studies were reviewed detailing how warming a body could affect multiple sleep-related conditions including sleep latency, sleep time and sleep efficiency.
“When we looked through all known studies, we noticed significant disparities in terms of the approaches and findings,” said Shahab Haghayegh, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. “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.”
According to researchers, the optimal temperature for the bath is between 104° – 109° Fahrenheit. They also said the best time to take a bath is 90 minutes before going to bed.
The full paper explaining the findings was recently published in the journal “Sleep Medicine Review” and can be read on their website here.
(Information from KXAN.com)
