two hours before the usual time of going to sleep,” explained study author Shahab Haghayegh.
And a warm bath or shower can give that process a shove in the right direction, he explained, by boosting blood circulation from the inner body to the outer body. The result is a “very efficient removal of heat from the body, which causes a decline in body temperature,” he said.
The trick is to both time and heat that bath to perfection.
“Yes, the temperature matters,” stressed Haghayegh, a doctoral candidate in sleep research and bio-med engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.
“It should be warm. Not too hot or cold,” he noted. “Actually, a too cold or too hot bath can have an effect opposite than