Do you have to shower in the morning or at night?

Throughout history, people have timed their baths for a number of important purposes. Some cultures showered in the morning to purify the Spirit in front of prayer, while others prefer the evening bath as an opportunity to socialize their grim bodies and clean them before bedtime.

Shahab Haghayegh just wanted to get a better night’s sleep. “I have tried different methods, including melatonin pills to relocate my bedtime,” he says. “Nothing worked.”

What finally did the trick? Switch his shower from the morning in the evening. “When we take a night shower at the right time and temperature, it helps us to fall asleep,” says Haghayegh, an instructor at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. His experience inspired him to study how warm nocturnal showers support sleep.

So what’s the best? That depends on your goals. Here you can read how you can time your shower for the largest mental and physical benefits.

Nocturnal

Haghayegh points to research, including hisWhat suggests that nocturnal showers can optimize sleep by tuning the body temperature to circadian rhythm, or the biological 24-hour cycle of the body.

Your body has to be every night cool down Sleep well. This makes sense when you think of evolution. Old people lived outside, where it got colder at night and the body temperature fell – and so we have evolved to sleep in cool environments. But nowadays our controlled indoor climates keep us untrusted at night. The extra degrees of comfort can be counterproductive by undermining sleep.

A hot shower – counter -counter enough – can help. The hot water indicates a hot environment for your body, and it responds by send warm blood From your core to the skin. The heat escapes. You cool down, synchronize with your circadian clock.

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The result is that you can fall asleep faster and rest deeper through the night. “Research has shown that it reduces sleeping and sleep quality improves,” says Matthew Ebben, associate professor of psychology in clinical neurology at Cornell University and diplomat of the American Board of Sleep Medicine. “It is thought that you can manipulate your ability to sleep through body temperature.”

There is a correct way and the wrong way to do this, according to Haghayegh. He discovered that the ideal length of the night shower is at least 10 minutes and the best timing is 1-2 hours before bedtime. If you take a closer shower to sleep, you don’t give the body enough time to cool before you hit the bag. Strive for comfortable hot water, about 104 ° F, says Haghayegh.

It takes a few days of the night to shower for your circadian rhythm to adjust. “The body clock is not changing that easily,” says Haghayegh. To reform his own ways of the night owl, he was showered for several nights and gradually moved his bedtime earlier by 30 minutes every evening.

It doesn’t work for everyone, warns Ebben. “When you read sleep advice on the internet, it helps about half of the people, and it damages the other half,” he says. “It’s about finding the right fit for the individual.” He thinks that when it comes to sleep -supporting behaviorKeeping a consistent bedtime is the most important.

If you try it for a week, call it a victory if you feel more rested in the morning and suggests a better sleep.

Creativity

Taking showers at night can improve creativity.

Different studies to suggest These showers offer fertile soil for relaxation and free association – keys for creativity. In comparison, many people are more open to spontaneous thinking in the evening when the brain is less focused and inhibited.

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For creative insight, nocturnal showers can be like fishing at dawn: you are more likely to catch something unexpected and valuable if the circumstances are naturally right. Just as the fish rise to the surface when the water is calm, your best ideas can come up if your mind is calm and wanders during an evening shower.

Purity

Evening baths can also benefit personal hygiene. “Nighttime showers ensure cleaning the dirt of the day,” says Dr. Ranella Hirsch, a dermatologist in Boston. That includes dust, allergens, sweat and pollution. Go to bed without rinsing them, and they can irritate the skin and transfer to your sheets.

Hirsch notes the scarcity of studies that are compared to morning showers for hygiene; There is no scientific opinion. But she points to potential electricity effects of nocturnal showers and at least intriguing. Theoretically it can give the skin cells the chance to repair at night, she says.

She adds that nocturnal showers can work best if you have very oily skin, which does not go well at night when dirty. But to keep your morning shower, you can just do some skin cleaning before bed, says Hirsch.

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In the meantime, “Morning has the apparent advantage of doing the dishes of every nightly,” she says. People over 200 million skin cells Every hour. This activity comes up at night during sleep and a morning shower can help wash the dead skin cells away.

For hygiene, just like with sleep quality, other factors exceed the importance of when you shower, Hirsch adds. “Even if you regularly shower in the morning, but sleep on filthy sheets, you would lose a lot of the potential advantage.”

Ebben has mainly become a morning grid because he wants to smell good at work. But he notes that some of these preferences amount to how dirty you get during the day. He grew up in a working -class household where everyone showered after returning home from practical, blue jobs. “Time of showering is more about your profession than on something else,” says Ebben.

Usability

Of course, sleep and cleanliness are fun. But that also applies to efficiency. Many people prefer morning showers because their hair without them is a wreck that the public display is unworthy.

“Some people would rather have their hair in the morning, so that they can style it more easily,” says clinical psychologist Dr. Shelby Harris.

Morning alertness

Morning showers can also make you alert. Harris notes that the Grote Markt for shower steam boats with energetic scents that help people wake up. Lavender and Rosemary can mainly Increase alertness. (Keep in mind that it is potentially unhealthy chemicals In some of these products.)

The effect of morning showers on alertness synchronizes with your natural wakeup. Haghayegh even thinks that they can strengthen your early day circadian rhythm-network if help with pre-bed-and they are approached in a certain way at night.

Think of our ancestors who live in the wild. When they came up with the sunrise, the temperature began to warm. For example, the human body evolved to wake up while warming up. Indeed, just as our body temperature naturally drops and stays low at night, raised In the early morning.

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Your shower can stimulate this process. “Now we do the opposite of what we did at night,” explains Haghayegh. “We take a cold shower, so the body thinks it’s in a cold environment.” The body tries to maintain heat. Post-shower, you warm up, and at least in theory you will feel more energetic. Small studies to suggest People feel more active with better moods after cold baths.