Take a bath instead of exercise – that sounds great to me!
Okay, so that’s not quite what experimental TV journalist Michael Mosely is telling us to do with his latest investigation, but I’m going to interpret it that way!
The television presenter has been trying to find out if we can achieve the benefits of exercise without having to do any exercise.
His experiment found surprising results – that taking a hot bath can give your body many (not all) of the benefits of going for a run.
The science behind this – if I can manage to simplify it – is that you achieve an 80% more energy expenditure from sitting in a bath, burning around 140 calories which is the equivalent of going for a 30-minute walk.
You would still burn a lot more calories going for an hour’s cycle ride (around 630) but still, pretty good news.
Sitting in a hot bath also stimulates your body into producing something called heat shock proteins which help to lower your body’s glucose levels (unless you sit in the bath eating a chocolate and drinking a big glass of wine!)
Mosley’s study also looked into the idea that you can improve your muscles just by thinking about exercise. His results found that in a group of volunteers, muscles were an average 8.1% stronger after a month of thinking about exercise.
Apparently, you get better at using the muscles so you then use the muscles better when you actually do the physical exercise.
I’m loving this study! I’m off to lie in the bath, think about exercise and get fit!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-36744906