A good night’s sleep is the perfect foundation for the following day, it helps us concentrate on daily tasks, improves our cognitive function and improves our mood. Without sleep, all this becomes much more difficult and, in the long term, lack of sleep can cause more severe issues than feeling a bit grumpy.
In fact, continuous lack of sleep can lead to the development of sleep disorders, such as Insomnia.
In the UK, 16 million adults state they suffer from sleepless nights, with around 31% also saying they suffer from insomnia (Aviva, 2017). Long term insomnia can have a detrimental impact on our health, increasing our risk of physiological and psychological conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and depression.
The good news though is that the use of a Hydropool can help you get a better night sleep, even helping prevent or manage insomnia. So, if you needed an excuse for an evening dip. Read on!
Relaxation
Being relaxed when trying to sleep is crucial, when relaxed our heart rate slows, our blood pressure decreases and our anxiety is diminished, all of which allow us to drift peacefully to sleep.
Of course, for many of us being able to switch off at night after a physically or psychologically demanding day can be difficult, making it much harder for us to fall asleep quickly. However, spending some time in our heated hydropools before bed could provide a relaxing remedy to this issue.
Research has shown that when in warm water, our bodies muscles are able to completely relax. Subsequently, your body begins to feel much less tense, preparing you perfectly for a good night’s sleep. Sleep Foundation (2020) also report that anxiety is a common cause of sleepless nights. Fortunately, as our muscles relax, negative psychological factors such as anxiety and the feeling of restlessness being to decrease, allowing you to get into the bed in the optimum state for sleep.
And when you start those massaging water jets … heaven!
Body Temperature
Our core body temperature shares a close relationship with our ability to fall asleep. Our natural core body temperature hits its peak during the afternoon, and begins to decline to its lowest during the evening/night (Harding et al, 2020). This decline in body temperature plays a key part in our ‘sleep-wake circadian rhythm’, a cycle that enables the body to identify when its time for us to become sleepy.
As our body temperature decreases, we become sleepy. Research published in the journal ‘sleep medicine reviews’ has shown that submerging the body in warm water ‘one to two hours’ before sleep can greatly aid this process. Researchers Haghayegh et al (2019) found temperatures of between 40 to 42.5 C to be most effective. Once we step out of warm water, our bodies core temperature naturally begins to decrease, this decrease therefore influences our ‘sleep-wake cycle’, inducing the feeling of sleepiness.
Your Hydropool’s temperature can be pre-set, allowing you to step into a pool of water optimally heated to allow you to achieve the best night sleep.
Daily Activity
According to a variety of studies, those who are more active throughout the day are able to achieve a much greater quality of sleep than those who are less active (Sleep Foundation, 2020).
The same studies also report that ‘moderate to vigorous’ physical activity appears to be most effective when trying to achieve a higher quality of sleep. Exercise can provide us a with an array of sleep related benefits, including delayed sleep onset, meaning we are able to transition from ‘wakeful’ to asleep faster, more efficient sleep and longer overall sleep duration.
Due to their design, our hydropools create a safe and efficient environment for a wide range of exercise types, including cardio-vascular exercise, resistance and flexibility training. As a result, you are able to gain all of the usual benefits of physical activity, whilst also receiving all the additional sleep related hydropool benefits discussed within this blog.
Night Cramps
Your Hydropool can also help with a common cause of a disrupted sleep pattern, night cramps.
Night cramps are extremely common, affecting roughly one in three of adults (Medical News Today, 2020). If you suffer from night cramps, you will understand how much of a nuisance they are and how difficult they make drifting off to sleep.
Suffering from night cramps regularly can lead to an extremely disrupted sleeping pattern, whether that be them keeping us up at night, or waking us up during the early hours of the morning. Those who suffer from night cramps are at a higher risk of developing insomnia as a result of their poor sleeping patterns.
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The health benefits provided by our hydropools can help reduce your risk of night cramps, preventing you from waking up with sharp pains at unearthly hours. Cramps are caused by numerous factors, including muscle strains and lack of bloody supply (NHS Inform, 2021). When in warm water our blood vessels expand, allowing a higher volume of oxygen and nutrient rich blood to nourish our muscles, allowing them to recover properly after a busy day, therefore reducing your risk of night cramps.
To find out more about how an immersive, heated Hydropool could be your key to a good night’s sleep, call 0800 144 8827 or call into our showroom in Stapleford, Nottingham, close to J25 of the M1 motorway.
References
- Mayo Clinic (2021) Insomnia [Internet] available from: <https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/insomnia/symptoms-causes/syc-20355167#:~:text=Overview,tired%20when%20you%20wake%20up>
- Haghayegh, S, Khoshnevis, S, Smolensky, M, Diller, K, Castriotta, R (2019) Before-bedtime passive body heating by warm shower or bath to improve sleep: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Sleep Medicine Reviews. 46 .p. 124-135
- Harding, E, Franks, N, Wisden, W (2020) Sleep and thermoregulation. Current Opinion in Physiology. 15 .p. 7-13