In great news for anyone who loves to relax, having a bath could be as good for you as exercising!
A study found that taking an hour-long bath can actually burn as many calories as a thirty minute walk.
Researchers measured the ways that heat affects blood sugar control and found that people who bathed for an hour burned as many calories as they would from a walk! Blood sugar control is an important measure of metabolic fitness and burning calories.
"We recruited 14 men to take part in the study. They were assigned to an hour-long soak in a hot bath (40 degrees celsius) or an hour of cycling. The activities were designed to cause a 1-degree rise in core body temperature over the course of an hour," Steve Faulkiner told Discovery Magazine. "Cycling resulted in more calories being burned compared with a hot bath, but bathing resulted in about as many calories being burned as a half-hour walk!"
Now we definitely wouldn't advise to completely stop exercising - but why not add regular baths into your fitness regimen!
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