For better sleep, we are often ready to try new habits or new rituals. After infusions, meditation applications or military techniques, an unexpected method is talked about: rubbing or reheating your feet before going to bed.
Why the feet play a key role
According to an article from Washington Post Who evokes this trend, this simple gesture could facilitate sleep and promote deeper sleep. According to Professor William Wisden, sleep specialist at Imperial College in London, quoted by the newspaper, the answer is clear: “It’s a natural sleeping pill”he sums up. Nothing less.
According to him, reheating your feet leads to a dilation of the blood vessels, which facilitates the decrease in the internal temperature of the body. However, this drop in temperature is one of the biological signals that trigger the transition to sleep. In practice, this means that having the warm feet at bedtime can send a strong message to the brain: it’s time to sleep.
A fragile balance
The researcher stresses, however, that the environment remains decisive. A too hot room can cancel the desired effect (it must remain between 16 and 19 ° C to promote good sleep). Other factors can also interfere: certain drugs, such as anti-inflammatory drugs (ibuprofen, aspirin), contract blood vessels and disrupt the production of melatonin. They can therefore neutralize the benefits of this tip.
A technique that will not inverse insomnia
However, not everyone gives the same credit to this practice. Contacted on this subject, Dr. Jonathan Taieb, sleep doctor and director of the Sleep Medical Institute, calls for caution:
“Unfortunately, there is no serious scientific base to say that rubbing your feet would act like a sleeping pill. It is at most a relaxing ritual, which can appease by placebo effect or by muscle relaxation, but certainly not a treatment of insomnia.”
So, certainly, rubbing your feet gently is not likely to cause you wrong. But according to the expert, the real issue is elsewhere, as it recalls:
“If we suffer from chronic insomnia, it is neither this kind of” remedy “nor even a long-term sleeping pill that solves the problem. The reference treatment, validated by all international recommendations, remains cognitive-behavioral therapy of insomnia (TCC-I).”
And to conclude with a bit of humor: “This story makes you smile and feeds the media debate, but you have to be clear: it is not a serious therapeutic track, and you should not expect more than a small relaxation ritual.”
So keep heating your feet by rubbing them or sticking them in the back of your neighbor if that sings you. But if your nights are chopped, it will take more feet and hands to overcome it and find rest.