Dr. Matt Walker

It's called the warm bath effect.

And many people will say, look, I love to have a warm bath or a hot shower before bed.

And I think when I get out, I'm nice and toasty.

And it's because I'm nice and warm that I fall asleep and I stay asleep.

It's the exact opposite.

When you get out of the warm bath or the shower,

you have once again vasodilated at the surface of your skin you get out of the bath you get this huge thermal dump of heat away from the core what happens you fall asleep and you stay asleep more sadly now there are other reasons that that has a benefit it's relaxing you decompress you're staying away from technology etc but that is one of the the thermal benefits and in fact there were studies by a legend in my field who passed away just a few years ago um jim horn at loughborough university in the uk

And they did some of these pioneering studies.

They were able to improve the amount of deep sleep by almost 40 minutes in some individuals.

What was the protocol there?

As I recall, I think they were in the bath for somewhere around, or the bath duration time was somewhere around 30 minutes, but they were doing sort of segments where it was, maybe it was 40 minutes.

10 minutes in, and then you could sort of get out.

I think the temperature, because it was UK, was around about 40 degrees Celsius, somewhere in that region.

I may be getting those numbers wrong, because I know we like to protocolize some of this.

But they were able to show some really pleasant benefits to deep sleep.

It also helped people fall asleep, helped them fall asleep by about 25 minutes faster in those people who were really having a hard time with sleep.

Because you're reverse engineering the equation.

You're trapping the heat into the core of your body.

So I think sauna is great, but right before bed- I should try, I would love to, I don't have a sauna at home or an access to, I mean, there are saunas in and around where I live, but what I want to do is have it proximal to my bedtime and my bedtime, because I'm a neutral type, you know, sort of around 11-ish,

Nowhere is open and willing to allow me to sit in the... How long do you sit in there usually?