My husband and I currently have no air condtioning and are having a disagreement about whether it’s better to take a cool shower or a hot shower in our (mostly vain) attempts to cool off before bed.
He maintains it’s better to take a hot shower, because it acclimates your body to a higher temperature, so then when you come out of the bathroom the house feels cooler.
I think it’s better to take a cool shower to bring down your core body temperature. This has the advantage of not making me sweat like an old sow hog while I’m standing in the shower, which is just gross.
He’s either nuts or a reptile: us warm-blooded creatures don’t “acclimate” to different temperatures.
A cool shower won’t lower your “core body temperature” either (same logic), but what it does is make you feel cold for a little while, which is the best you’re going to get.
Frankly, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about feeling cooler later. I wanted to stop being hot now, dammit. We go to bed after we shower and we sleep in a fan-cooled bedroom anyway. There must be something in my SO’s head that makes him think his post-shower cool comfort is the result of his hot shower and not that big spinning thing on the ceiling.
Now it goes without saying that the best way to be cool is to take any kind of shower and go to bed under a ceiling fan while still damp. That’s how sweating works, after all.
Unless you’re actually in the shower for a LONG time, and it’s VERY cold, then you aren’t going to lower your core body temperature enough for this to matter.
This reminds me of the "is it better to drink a hot or cold beverage’ debate. It’s basically the same thing…yes, in theory my body has to burn calories to get back the heat lost to the cold shower/drink, but in practicality this amount in trivial.
The simple thing to realize is you feel cooler /drink from a cold shower, whereas you don’t from a hot shower/drink. I know that if I drink a hot beverage or take a hot shower on a hot day, I feel hot from the beverage/shower, and then I feel like I was before. If it’s a cold beverage/shower, I feel cool for a brief period of time, then back to what I was. There’s no period of coolness after the hot, and there’s no period of hotness after the cold.
What Zoe said. A tepid shower is reputed to be the best cooler-downer, especially if you let the drips evaporate naturally off the body rather than towelling down.
A hot shower will dilate your capillaries and bring more blood close to the surface of your skin, which, when you step out, will release just an extra bit of heat until they narrow again. Not enough to lower your core temp or anything, just to feel a bit cooler.
I start out cold, for the instant Ahhhhh! effect, then warm it up near the end until I am a nice shade of pink. Then out and under a fan!
When I was growing up, we’d take cold showers in our nightgowns and go to bed like that. During the summer, I take a lot of very cold showers. Whether it’s better in the long run, I can’t say. I just know that, when my head is killing me from the heat and I think I’m going to die, the cold water helps tremendously. Only way I survive the heat.
I usually like very hot showers, but when it’s nasty hot out I take a tepid one (just barely warm) and then crank it over to cold for the final rinse, especially my head. I find if I do this right before going to bed with a fan blowing in the bedroom, I can handle the hot night better. I usually leave my hair pretty wet, too, so that the evaporation can cool me off for a couple hours.
My fiance hates this though, since he hates being wet- hisses at me like a cat if I touch him while I’m clammy. He does the hot shower to cool down thing, and he’s gotten me to try it, but I’ll only do it if I’m not already sweaty and overly hot, just anticipating a hot night. I still finish off with a cold blast, though.
Before we had air conditioning installed in this house, I would soak my thin nylon nightgown in warm water, wring it dry, then put it on when still warm. It cools almost immediately, but it’s easier to put a wet garment on when it’s warm. I’d turn on a fan to blow over the bed. Much easier to sleep. Way better than just a shower. As for the shower temperature, I’d go with tepid.
We didn’t get our AC unit until after the big heat spell hit last weekend, and I found a tepid shower and a body-temp bath did wonders. The bath was my favorite. I threw in an Avocado bath bomb, set the water so it was JUST warm to my touch, and after getting in I really never wanted to leave. It was incredibly refreshing.
The best way to stay cool is to rig something up so that a thin wet sheet hangs over your bed kind of like a tent- I draped it over my mosquito net, but I be you don’t have one of those. When a fan blows on it, it feels like air conditioning.
Also, try freezing some water in a big water bottle and snuggling with it at night.
when I was having big hot flashes I’d freeze a damp washcloth in a baggie, wrap it lightly in some fabric (pillowcase, towel whatever) and slip it under my head to sleep. kept me cool and the pillow dry
