Sleep Well - Ep 4: Warm up to cool down
Just One Thing - with Michael Mosley
00:00
How to Fall Asleep Quickly With a Hot Bath or Shower
Anna and her team have shown that you can hack this complex process. And paradoxically, by warming your hands and feet, you are more likely to fall asleep. Warming the hands and feet causes something called phasodilation. The blood vessels on the surface of your skin widen, expand and heat is quickly lost. This in turn leads to a drop in core temperature. What we're doing when we have a hot bath in the evening before sleep or use bed socks or a hot water bottle is supporting the biological clock in its preparatory efforts to help us fall asleep.
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