I know it’s not just me… I’ve spoken with some folks who also feel like if their sense of awareness is heightened after taking a shower… they feel more alert, more awake. Why? Is it the shock (however slight it may be) of the water temperature difference? Does it depend on the soap scent? Does it harken back to anything embryonic?
Thanks in Advance!
Hmm, just some personal testimony, I can barely get going in the morning without my shower. And all my best ideas come in there, too. I’d live in there like Kramer, if it wasn’t too costly.
I once heard something about shower water (i.e. water sprayed out of a nossle) having some kind of ‘positive ionic charge’ as opposed to (stagnant) bathwater, which is supposed to make you feel drowsy.
But I haven’t a scooby whether this is urban legend/hippy claptrap or actually has some kind of scientific basis.
Anyone?
It’s not the soap, as sometimes I just ‘rinse off’ (but take a long time) and no difference. It may be the massage of the water, the tempature of hte water (and rise of body temp). It could be that you have to be more aleart so you don’t burn yourself. Maybe something back to the hunter/gather days to where being immersed in water was not a good thing.
I don’t know but it works, and drug free too.
Here’s a link supporting the negative ion theory. All sounds a bit happy-clappy to me, but still:
I noticed the same effect, but also I’ve found that washing my face produces it, no shower needed. Give it a good scrub.
Personal crackpot theory: perhaps we use our facial skin as a crude infrared camera in order to detect other warm human bodies nearby. (From ‘aquatic ape’ theory, a facial IR thermal sense would be extremely useful for locating fellow member of the colony in the night time ocean.) Perhaps skin-oils block the IR. Scrub them off and you restore sensitivity to the detector, as if you’ve just opened your eyes to an entire “thermal world” which had been invisible before you washed.
More crackpot theorizing: http://www.amasci.com/weird/humanIR.html
Biologically speaking, the warm/hot water gets the blood in your body to flow faster… maybe then, it gets to your brain faster (hence the “fresh” feeling). The answer is somewhere along these lines…
Are you all sure it’s hot water that envigorates you? For me, taking a shower with cool water gives me pep, especially in the summer. Taking a really hot shower in the summer strikes me odd, but i guess in the winter it has a positive effect. I always thought warmer temperatures tend to make people tired, while the cold snaps one into alertness. anyways…
I believe your first impression is correct–the linked article appears to be a load of B.S.
Notwithstanding the complete lack of evidence for the article’s main premise, one big indication of this is the author’s evident lack of knowledge of the number of air molecules around us.
The author states: “the air circulating in the mountains and the beach is said to contain tens of thousands of negative ions – Much more than the average home or office building, which contain dozens or hundreds, and many register a flat zero.”
First of all: “said to” by whom, exactly?
Second of all, a mere one liter of air contains a number of air molecules in the range of Avagadro’s number: 6.02 x 10[sup]23[/sup]. At room temperature, some fraction of these air molecules are going to be ionized. Even if only a small fraction are ionized, the resulting number of ions are going to be far greater than dozens, hundreds, or even tens of thousands.
Finally, an excellent way to ionize air arises from sources of high potential, such as are found in TV sets, computer monitors, and office copiers. I’m certain that the number of air molecules ionized from an average copier is far greater than the “hundreds” supposedly present in an average office building, and while the distinctive acrid odor of ozone may invigorate some people, I personally have never been particularly invigorated when I copy my TPS reports. :rolleyes:
Yes, most of the other references I found to the phenomenon were accompanied by pictures of men in beards and anoracks standing on snow-peaked mountains, always citing ‘researchers’ and scientists’ with additional links to websites with names like ‘wholeworld.com’ and banner ads for aromatherapy products or little pastel-coloured electrical devices that sit on your window sill and hum for no obvious reason.
Also, this site which is actually desperate to SELL you a shower, makes no mention of it…
Whoops! Yes it does. How the hell did I miss that?
As a Pagan, may I present the idea that it is the interaction with the Element of Water which charges you up? I also notice this after standing out in a big storm, which also involves the Elements of Air (wind) and Fire (lightning).
I realize this is not-so-scientific, but rather taken on faith in nature, so feel free to dismiss.
Perhaps it’s a combination of the water as a stimulus (both in sensation and temperature) as well as the associations you may have with showering. This is especially the case if you’re one of those shower-in-the-morning types.
I only feel more alert after a shower if it’s in the morning, before I do much of anything else. I’ve always assumed that it is a combination of the warmth and the tactile stimulation of the spraying water, plus all the moving around to wash myself, that simply accelerated my bodies metabolism from “sleep” to “awake.” If for whatever reason I put off showering until I’m already awake and have been going for a while I don’t notice any change in my alertness after showering. If anything it relaxes me and I feel like taking a nap afterwards.
If you’re going to fight pseudoscience, it’s better to use verified facts rather than theoretical speculations. Less embarassing mistakes that way! As I understand it, the number of randomly (thermally) generated ions you’re speculating about is insignificant, and the air-ions are created by natural sources of ionizing radiation: by cosmic rays and the decay of radon gas.
A Google search on air ions finds research papers with typical outdoor air-ion measurements in the hundreds of ions per cubic centimeter.
In the weird papers about ion health, they claim that only the small, high-mobility ions have health effects. Other papers I’ve seen say that in an indoor city environment with plenty of air pollution aerosols, the small ions are rapidly scavanged up by suspended particles. They have a short lifetime, so the number of small ions per cubic centimeter drops by several orders of magnitude when compared to cleaner “country air.”
The stuff about ions and health might be bogus, but the stuff they say about ions is more correct than you think, even though the ion-machine sellers don’t quote their sources. It’s distorted somewhat. In quoting numbers like tens and hundreds, they’re talking about small ion concentration per cc of air, not total ions per liter.
Here’s a counter-speculation based on experiment rather than theory: in a simple Wilson cloud chamber under supersaturated conditions, the presence of ions triggers the condensation of liquid droplets, making visible the tracks of ionized air molecules left by high energy particles. If you were right; if a large number of randomly (thermally) generated ions were present, then the liquid droplets would condense even when there was no ionizing radiation present, and any ion-trails would be washed out by the thermal background noise. If we actually watch a cloud chamber in operation, we’ll note that once the air pollution has been allowed to “rain out,” the volume of supersaturated vapor is fairly dark and droplet free, but with glaring white droplet patterns showing the trajectories of ionizing radiation particles from “background radiation.” Wilson cloud chambers offer an existence proof that the number of ions per cc of air is quite small, and is mostly (or perhaps entirely) caused by ionizing radiation and not by random thermal ionization.
OK, that seems to prove it. When I have my shower running, the area is filled with water droplets, so there must be a high level of ionization. 
I just thought of something-- how much of it is conditioning (not the stuff you put in your hair) ie. parents that constantly tell their kids, “Take a shower and you’ll feel refreshed”?
Actually, it depends what I’m **doing **in the shower. Sometimes I just want to go back to sleep (I don’t smoke).
I’m a great believer in thinking in the shower. I think it’s good for thought because there’s no television or SDMB or anything to distract you in there.
But that’s not really the OP. I can think of a few possible reasons for the effect. First thing in the morning, showering is one of the few things you actually have to stand up to do, which is bound to make you a little more awake (although my sister’s been known to fall asleep in the shower), requiring concentration and balance to not fall over. Also if you’re wet it makes it harder to just crawl back into bed again: especially if you wash your hair you’re committed to remaining up for a while. Going in the shower is therefore psychologically a big step in your journey to wakefulness.
The variety of sensations you experience are likely to wake you up. It’s an old cliche to throw a bucket of water over someone to get them out of bed. In a shower you normally get something of a breeze from the flow of water. Also steam can clear out the sinuses and may have an effect on the lungs. I think washing off the stickiness and sweat from your night of sleep also has a psychological effect. And many shampoos and cleansers have deliberately stimulating scents like menthol, orange and lime.