When's the Best Time to Shower: Morning or Night?
We all have our daily habits, from the
number of times we hit the snooze button to whether we shower in the morning or at
night. We’re not here to tell you how to live your life, but there is some
surprising science behind the time of day it's best to suds up and get squeaky
clean. Check it out and then choose the time that works for you—or shower
twice, because dang it if we can't have it all.
Morning Glory
If you’ve got a tough week ahead at work and
really want to perform at your creative best, showering in the morning is the
way to go, says Shelley
Carson, Ph.D., a psychology lecturer at Harvard
University. The logic traces back to something psychologists call the incubation period—the time between posing a problem and having that "aha"
moment.
“If you were to come up with a problem that
you wanted to solve creatively, and you were working and working on it and
couldn’t come up with a solution, then you could put it on the back burner
of your mind and allow it to stew there while unconscious processes
mull it over,” Carson says.
These processes work best in the
shower because it’s a place where you enter into a relaxed but
still alert alpha brain wave
state, Carson explains. That's the same kind of
state you enter while meditating or after aerobic activity. When you’re in
alpha (as opposed to beta, the state where you’re really focusing on a
question), your cognitive processes relax, renew, and regenerate—letting the
top-notch ideas effortlessly bubble to the surface.
And like a slow cooker meal at the end of the
day, those ideas are often just what you’ve been waiting for. Write down your
eurekas when they hit—yes, someone actually invented waterproof
notepads—and come into work firing on all
cylinders.
Showering in the morning has one other
benefit for self-accepting zombies who get a little clumsy with the razor: Our bodies have a surge of clot-forming platelets from 6 a.m. to
noon, which means that if you knick yourself, the bleeding should stop
soon.
Suds Yourself Sleepy
On the other hand, if you always find
yourself awake and full of energy past your bedtime, a nighttime shower is the
way to go, says Christopher
Winter, M.D., a fellow at the American Academy of Sleep
Medicine and medical director at the sleep center at Martha Jefferson Hospital.
It all has to do with your body temperature,
which rises with the warm water and then drops once you dry
off. “That rapid cooling after you get out of the shower or out of the
bath tends to be a natural sleep inducer," Winter says. "So
it’s a nice way to fool your body into thinking it’s time to go to bed.”
Plus relaxing showers tend to reduce
cortisol levels (good-bye stress), which makes is easier to catch some
zzzs, Winter says.
Even if you sleep like a baby, you might want
to opt for night showers to keep your skin clean, says Bethanee Schlosser, M.D., Ph.D, an
assistant professor of dermatology and director of the Women's Skin Health
Program for Northwestern Medicine. We're not just talking about on days you
sweat it out. The dirt and oil that come from environmental pollutants (like
the lovely grime you come in contact with on the subway) can clog your pores if
you don't shower before hitting the hay.
And since your face's oil
production hits its peak around 1 p.m., you could be more prone to
acne flare-ups if you don't wash off before
bed, Schlosser says. Oil production is usually minimal in the
middle of the night unless you're a sweaty sleeper—in which case, wash the
sweat off your face in the morning and start fresh.
The Takeaway
If you've got a brain-buster on your hands,
morning showers are the perfect time to work it out, assuming you can space out
long enough to let incubation happen. Have trouble with acne or in search
of an elusive snooze? Let the warm water wash away irritating
oils (with the help of a little soap), melt away your cortisol,
and ready you for a restful night's sleep.
But of course, things aren’t always so cut and dry (or damp, if you
catch our drift). Showers at any time can induce that defocused incubation
state, Carson says, so night showers (or even midday ones, if your office is
truly New Age) can also draw out your best ideas. Don’t have time for a
shower on your lunch break to get those ideas flowing? Take
a walk instead.
https://greatist.com/grow/best-time-to-shower
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