why is a hot shower refreshing?

Factual Questions
1

Any scientific explanation as to why a hot shower is refreshing, feels good, wakes you up?

2

There’s an awful lot of stimulation going on in a good shower: the water beating against the skin, the physical actions of shampooing the hair and soaping up the rest of your bits, the smells of the various unguents. The sound of it all too, come to think of it.

3

I’m not so sure that a hot shower “wakes you up”. I’d more expect a cold shower to do that. A hot shower is more likely to put you to sleep.

When you are cold, a natural response is shivering, causing the muscles to burn fuel and generate heat.

When you are hot, the opposite response happens. The muscles relax, generating less heat. That’s why hot showers or saunas tend to make you feel relaxed.

4

I imagine if you habitually take a hot shower upon waking, it will help you feel ready for the day. And if you take a hot shower before bed every night, it will help you relax and feel sleepy.

There’s also the upright/supine thing. There’s a reason people usually shower in the morning or bathe in the evening.

5

Hot water just feels good; I think that would be about 90% of the explanation there.

6

I sometimes take hot showers even if I’m clean… just because they feel good.

7

Sorry to nitpick Baron but you forgot to put “soaping up” in quotation marks.

8

Agreed, but I’m trying to understand why that’s true.

9

I think a lot of it has to do with the hot and humid air. It feels soothing against the body, and helps clear sinuses as you breathe.

I’m pretty sure the hot water expands blood vessels near the surface of the skin. Does that have a positive effect on the body?

10

Heh, the majority of my hot showers are taken when I’m clean.

11

Hot water needling over your skin, which is after all your largest organ, causes increased blood flow out to the extremities and out of the body’s core. Increased blood flow over your entire body is going to wake you up, it’s a huge bump in body process over the quiet of sleep. When you get out of the shower and the cooler air hits your skin, blood flow decreases and flows back into the body core. It’s the energy difference of the rushing stream vs the still pond.