The Bath Debate: Reasons You Should be Taking Baths and How to Prepare the Perfect One

There are some shower naysayers out there trying to undermine one of the oldest and best personal cleaning methods ever, the bath.  They slander the bath saying that it’s comparable to lying in your own filth and speak of countless horror stories of the “disgusting” bath.  This is where we debunk these fanciful and bogus claims.  It’s time to show you why you should be incorporating baths into your daily life and how to draw the perfect bath.

Let’s start with all the reasons you SHOULD enjoy a warm, wonderful bath:

Relaxation

Warm water relaxes your muscles by dilating blood vessels which promotes blood flow.  Bye-bye tension and sore muscles!  Soaking in a warm bath can relax the body into a deeper slumber for the evening.  Your body temperature will rise during your warm bath and once you step out of the bath, your body temperature falls quickly from the cool air.  You trick your body into thinking it is night time, helping you fall asleep much faster than normal.  Nighty-night and sweet dreams!

Improve your Skin

Pores of the skin are opened by warm bath water which helps the skin soak up moisture. This helps to keep your skin from aging prematurely and keeps your skin balanced, to decrease the likelihood of common skin problems.  Add in ingredients that will improve your skin like:

·         Milk!  It does a body good in more ways than one.  Pour a cup or 2 into your warm bath (you can even use the powdered kind).  The fats and proteins in the milk help smooth the skin and it also helps to exfoliate it.

·         Oatmeal & Honey.  You can even combine it in the milk bath from above.  Think of it as breakfast for your skin.  It’s a good treat when you have the winter skin of a crocodile, a sunburn, get into a patch of Poison Ivy, Nettles or suffer from eczema.  Oatmeal and honey can both calm itchy, patchy and inflamed skin. 

·         Sea Salt or Epsom salt. Salts will help detoxify your skin and body, pulling out all the nasty things you can live without.  They also have an anti-inflammatory property that can help reduce inflammation in your joints.

·         Essential Oils.  These little oils pack a potent punch!  Not only do they have antioxidants in them that can help improve firmness, skin tone and help reduce those crow’s feet and wrinkles, they also are believed to boost your mood.  So many more things that these little oils can do for you. 

Don’t forget to moisturize after you dry off to help benefit those open pores even more.

Bath Toys!!!!...I Mean, Bath Decorations

Who doesn’t want to entertain themselves with that friendly, rubber ducky from your childhood?  Or Mr. Bubbles????  Remember him?  Get creative.  Let go of the stressed-out adult who is taking a bath to relax and bring back the playful child within you.  And I’m totally okay if you call wine a toy.  You’re the boss in this bath.

Two Amazing Words:  BATH SALTS!

We touched on salts briefly, but they are so great, they needed their own heading.  Sea salt puts back in essential minerals and nutrients, like magnesium, into the skin without the bloat of digesting table salt.  No tight sock lines around your ankles!  Sea salt pulls out toxins and increases circulation.  The increased blood flow calms down the inflammation in your joints and the eases muscle pain.  Plus, they smell amazing!  At least ours do.  They totally stimulate your senses and rock your bath world just a little bit more.  And guess what ours is made of? Sea Salt!  If luxury beckons your name, feel free to find the scent that tantalizes your nose’s taste buds: https://www.soapmagic.com/bath-salts

Physical and Mental Health Benefits

Baths can lower your blood pressure and your blood sugar.  This is huge. You no longer need to work out!  Well, that’s not entirely true. Incorporating daily activity should still occur, but what’s not to love about those benefits (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6011066/)?! Not only can it help your physical body, but some studies are showing it helps you mentally, as well.  It has to do with your circadian rhythm.  That “Body Clock” or sleep/awake cycle that you learned about in grade school and completely forgot about until now.  And you probably still don’t really remember it.  Anyway, regular baths can help get it back into a rhythm which helps improve your mood. There was a small study on it that showed some big results.  (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27011361).   

If this information doesn’t sway you into being a full-on bath lover, you should re-read the article.  But in order to enjoy these wonderful benefits, you still need to know how to prepare the perfect bath for you to really enjoy.  We’ll keep it short and sweet so we can get you in the tub.

1.      Clean your tub.  While relaxing in the tub, you don’t want to see a rogue hair float by and wonder if it’s yours or someone else’s.  You want to relax, not freak out.

2.      Be prepared and gather your things.  You don’t want to jump out of the tub and freeze because you forgot one of your favorite things.  Round up your towel, mood lighting, “bath decorations”/rubber ducky, magazines, electronics (if you must), magazines, and beverage of choice.  Bring some water to sip on along with the wine.  Hydration, hydration, hydration!

3.      Make sure your bath is the perfect temp.  Warm up some water to pour in the tub or run the water warm before filling the tub.  And remember to close the door to keep the heat from escaping.  Keep it steamy and warm like your own personal sauna.

4.      Add your calming soaks.  Bath salts, milk, honey, essential oils, bath bombs.  Whatever floats your boat.  Seriously though, don’t forget the toy boat!

If you were a bath naysayer, we hope that you’ve become a bath yaysayer.  There are so many benefits to enjoying the perfect soak. You only have one vehicle in this thing called life, so treat it nicely.  Calm your nerves, lower your blood pressure and sugar levels, relax your muscles, inhale those scents and become a kid again.  Your body, mind and spirit will thank you for it.  Enjoy your bath.