Apparently spending time in your bath burns calories?
By Oluwakemi
Short cuts to losing weight is a welcome development any day, anytime, however, it just got better with the latest finding that all your need to burn some calories is to relax in your bath.
So, forget, sweating it away at the gym, doing the Saturday morning run on the popular Lekki bridge or simply going on a long brisk walk as a sure fire way to burn heaps of calories. Just relax.
It’s sounds too good to be true right? Well, its true, as experts from Loughborough University recently found that simply lying in a 40 degree bath can be more effective than a brisk walk for calorie burning and lowering blood sugar.
In the study, Steve Faulkner from Loughborough University in the UK followed 2,300 middle-aged male participants for 20 years on average who were fitted with monitors and found that a hot bath increased blood flow and burnt energy.
Supposedly the magic is in heat shock proteins, which are released when your body temperature is raised significantly and in turn lowers your blood sugar levels. So an hour long bath is actually the equivalent to a 20 -30 minute walk and can burn around 126 calories.
Now, this isn’t to say that we can all go out and consume whatever we want, so long as we have an hour long bath everyday, but it does mean that you should start embracing your tub as part of your daily health routine. Question is, will you last in a 40 degree bath for an hour? We’re not sure we could handle it.
