I've been taking cold showers exclusively for 11 years now.
It doesn't get much easier but you'll get addicted to the great feeling after.
It's similar to running or exercise, it sucks to do but you do it anyway because the benefits far outweigh the temporary discomfort.
The trick for me was to never use warm shower again and never compromise ... only coldest water available counts. First thing in the morning.
It makes everything easier as once you experience that comfort of warmer water you'll have to fight with it again and again.
That's why I don't believe in James Bond showers and similar stuff.
Only last year I started to take warmer showers if I need to take one late at night and want to get a good sleep fast (I took about 4 so far) ... to build this habit, for me personally, it was paramount to leave no other option.
For the first 7 years I haven't been sick at all. At the same time, I don't think it's a miracle practice for your health. You will get sick if you expose yourself to risks of getting sick often enough - it's simple.
In the early days, I used to procrastinate in the bathroom ... a good trick was to start timing my showers. I would leave a timer set for 5 min and paper to log time, I tried to get in and out beating 5 min time-frame. In less than couple of weeks it became a habit that I enjoy for some 8 years now.
Other than health, energy and willpower, I suspect it has some solid psychological benefits ... you get out in the morning you feel like a superhuman, imagine starting your day in such way and how that compounds over the years.
If you lived where I live and did this you would be dead.
In winter the temperature of my water at the well-head is about 4 C, but if it's sitting in the pipes over night it can hit 0 C (which means no shower until it thaws, of course). The ambient air temperature in my bathroom is often below 10 C in the morning before I rouse the fire when it's -20 C or below outside, and that happens for weeks at a time. A 4 C shower followed by standing wet in 10 C air means a fairly quick excursion into hypothermialand.
I guess if you live in, say, an apartment in Saudi Arabia or Florida a "cold shower" might have a completely different meaning than if you live in a cabin in the Canadian back woods.
You won't die even in those temperatures if you take the time to build up tolerance. That's key. Wim Hof has trained his body to survive longer than one hour with his entire body submerged in ice. Similar feats have been replicated by people using his method of cold therapy to build resistance. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/science-explai...
I was waiting for someone to bring up Wim Hof. I think he's amazing and pioneering but I think there may also be a genetic component to his work since NW European DNA already gives him a headstart IMO plus probably has neanderthal DNA which was probably well-attenuated with extreme cold.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if there is a genetic component but that's why I mentioned that these attributes have been replicated in his students. But then again the fact that your body can acclimatize to cold or heat is not exactly groundbreaking news. We've known that for a long time.
Nope, where I live it gets -25 celsius in winter :) I wish I was in Florida though.
Yes the bathroom is cold and it sucks to get out of warm bed but what motivates me is once you're out of the cold shower it's all over. I prefer short term pain than getting out of warm shower back into cold bathroom and feeling demotivated.
You won't die. I fully immersed myself in the Arctic Ocean at Barrow, Alaska, which was about at 0 C, and the air temperature at the time was about 2 C.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkOVKu7Mvb4
my well water varies between 4C and 10C from the ground, and I don't full-cold shower, but I do finish my shower cold, with as cold as it can go. It is bracing, but as the parent says, mentally fantastic. I find that it works as a quick meditative reboot (I can't follow any thought threads while the cold water is full on, so it interrupts my main mental loops). It is easier to achieve a "new day" state where it feels like you have permission to begin again. Now, that's just an illusion, just as the particular day of a new year is an illusion, but the "new day" effect is very powerful for behavior modification.
Offtopic, but thats the first time I remember seeing an emoji on HN. Is that recent ? I assumed it was frivolous and judged kind of bad taste ; is it? (Real question in general, not talking about this specific comment!)
I went about seven years without ever getting more than my “annual cold”—about 12-36hrs of very light sniffles with no fever or sore throat, about once a year. I was was also trim and looked and felt awesome. It’s far and away the healthiest period of my life.
... for the whole time I took extremely long hot showers, lived on 3000+ calories of junk food per day, and probably averaged not more than 6hrs of sleep per night, with no regular schedule. What kept me super-healthy was “being a teenager”.
How cold is cold for you normally? Our water is about four degrees celcius never mind what season it is. It just hurts, never really managed to stay more than a few seconds.
Some people around here are hacking a hole in the ice and swimming for a while...
Edit: Seems the test assumed 10-12 degrees average temperature in Netherlands.
There is a world of difference between 4°C and say 14-18°C, at 4°C you just don't get used to it really!
A good method may be to use a fine spray and start with legs, then arms then working up from the bottom to top of the torso. That way the blood gets more time to withdraw from the limbs into the torso to maintain the core temperature.
The best way I've found (cold showering only for muscle recovery) is to get your face/head wet first. Every other way seems less comfortable to me. It's similar to jumping into a pool versus stepping in slowly.
That's a good point. I've lived in places where my "cold" water was likely ~20 degrees Celsius in the summer. Warm enough that I honestly wished it were a bit cooler at times after exercising. Other places it's been pretty close to freezing.
As cold as it gets. I am from Eastern Europe but now staying in south of France for couple months. When I am home it can be as cold as couple degrees above 0, especially in winter on the countryside.
Now in the south it's not so cold which bothers me, but I use the coldest possible out of the principle, as to keep the principle is the key.
One of my favorite things is to sauna, then cold shower, then brief sauna again, and my nerves get totally reset such that I can go sit in a -20C chair outside and will not be cold for a surprisingly long time. It feels great.
If the water is not cold enough, it is disappointing.
I've been doing reverse Bond showers for the past two weeks, where I start off with cold water and gradually switch to warm water. During the initial rush I can feel the "mammalian dive response" kick in as my eyes open wider and something in my brain goes, "Ohh shit, Dorothy! This ain't Kansas no more," then after ~20 seconds I switch over to warm water so I can wash.
Would switching from cold to warm water still have benefits?
I do warm-cold-as-possible-warm. It is my favorite thing mentally.
The best is sauna-cold-sauna-cold...etc, but the shower is a close second if the water is under 10C. If the water is warmer than that, it doesn't trigger the cold-water reset.
Thanks for sharing this! I'm addicted to ending with cold showers now, but your comment on not starting with hot water at all is very interesting. It took me a week before I realized that rather than being a chore, this was addictive! 15 minutes after a bath, I often find myself missing the buzz. Also, FYI to those reading: it helps you sleep sooner. I was under the impression that a nice, warm shower is best before bed, but a cold shower makes me drowsy like nothing else and you hit the pillow asleep.
By the way, where do you live? For me, in Hong Kong, cold showers are not really that difficult at 15 degrees celsius (59 degrees fahrenheit).
I take cold showers every 5th day, timed with my cardio workouts so I get in the cold shower after working up a sweat. I used to take them every 4th day. I agree on the benefits you describe, though not up for only cold showers.
I haven't been able to communicate the benefits to people who don't get it or won't try, but to people who get it, few things match the benefit, given zero cost in time, money, or other resource. Actually, more like negative cost in time, money, power, and emissions relative to
We're getting into the most difficult time of year. My record low cold shower temperature was 39.9F (4.4C), when I was taking them minimum 5 minutes.
I got into the habit through HN, in particular from Joel Runyon's video and page on cold showers, which I recommend, especially his TEDx talk, which is on this link:
This is what I have been doing for about a decade. It doesn't work as well if the water can't get below 15C.
Typically I count slowly to 60 while under the cold water, and try to focus on the count. It is easy to get lost at around 40s. Then I put the warm back on, and finish with ~20s hot/warm. I have come to think of it as a "cold water reboot" for my brain.
Something I learned from a Twitter thread, which would be impossible to find (sadly), is the following:
With the water cold, close your eyes, point your face at the water stream, and hold your breath as long as you can.
This apparently triggers some kind of mammalian response involving dive reflexes, that's good for cortisol levels. All I know is that I feel great afterwards.
Obviously you don't feel that using cold water negatively impacts how effectively you can clean yourself otherwise you wouldn't do this, but I was interested to know because I assumed hot water is better. So, I did some searching, and results appear inconclusive [1]:
> The impact of handwashing techniques on infectious diseases among the general public in community settings has not been extensively studied.Hot water for handwashing has not been proven to have an added anti-microbial effect.
It certainly discourages lingering in the shower. When I was doing it (cold tap open, no hot water at all, Michigan, winter) when that water hit you you definitely moved quickly. With hot showers 20 minutes isn't uncommon if I'm tired and enjoying the hot water in the winter. With cold showers...5 minutes from turning on the faucet to hopping out. I never noticed any reduction in my cleanliness, but what I absolutely noticed was an improvement in my skin. Hot showers in a dry environment like a Michigan winter leads to very dry and cracked skin. With cold showers my skin was in much better shape. No cracking, no flaking.
Yes, good to know as it's quite a usual counter-point I get. The differences are trivial in my opinion.
I take about two showers a day, mainly because I do sports, so I think I make up with the volume ... even training in sometimes dodgy gyms around the world or doing jiu-jitsu for a long time basically rolling on the ground with sweaty dudes, I was able to keep myself clean of any infections, fungal or viral ... I'm just taking regular shower clean myself properly, the the body should fend off easily.
It's anecdotal but I think doing hygiene properly and regularly makes bigger impact than temperature of a water.
I wouldn't expect hot water to have a significant effect. In cooking, you need to hit 140F to kill bacteria, which would be extremely unpleasant. It's literally scalding; you can get second and even third degree burns in seconds. Pleasantly-hot shower temperature is in the "danger zone" for food handling, where bacteria grow faster.
Using soap will kill bacteria, and as long as the water is warm enough for the soap to foam up, that's going to do all of the work. Adding more heat will just make things easier on bacteria.
Interesting. Pure speculation but if the shower were very cold could that lead to shorter cleaning times too (not that I ever left "unwashed", but I recall when my boiler failed I was super-speedy showering!)
Heat means more energy which means more movement of particles. More movement of particles, especially where soap has decreased surface tension of water, means water touches and helps carry away more dirt and other removable particles.
I was doing this for several months. I remember the biggest drawback was that cold water does not dissolve soap and shampoo as well as warm does, so it takes more effort to wash yourself well.
I stopped because I got sick, and never got the habit back.
I do hot-cold-hot, so:
stage 1: hot, get clean (soaps)
stage 2: cold (focus, empty mind, ~1m)
stage3: hot (reset, new day feeling, sometimes I save hair conditioner for this step, ~2m)
My showers take ~10m.
I did the same for 3 years, but mostly for environmental reasons. It is a very effective strategy to shave off a fair amount of your personal carbon footprint (next to not flying).
As you say the rush after the shower is amazing! I stopped, because in winter (central European) there were days where I was cold all day and felt like I would never quite warm up again before going to bed. In summer, however, I still do it regularly and it really helped during the recent heat waves.
What sort of climate do you live in? Here we have very hot summers and I enjoy my cold showers then. However Winter is long and cold, we don’t like to run the heating too much (bit wasteful if you can just stick on a jumper and thick socks) and warm showers are invaluable to recharge before work after a cold morning walk with the dogs
> Other than health, energy and willpower, I suspect it has some solid psychological benefits
Wait, are we just supposed to take it for granted that there are any health benefits (submitted article provides none)? (As for willpower - that's kind of tautological...)
Not OP, but I finish every shower with 2-3 minutes of as cold as the faucet will go. I've been doing this every day for about a year. In the winter my water temp is in the mid-40 degrees F. I love this habit. It's always difficult, but I always feel great after doing it.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could measure this and find if there's a point where colder water doesn't provide a benefit, or rapidly diminishing returns?
Wouldn't it be nice if there was evidence that 14C water conferred the same benefits as 4C water?
I know it would be way easier for me to suggest this as a habit to family if I didn't tell them, "yeah you just use water as cold as it goes, even in winter when your pipes are about to freeze".
I regularly take cold showers. The trick for me is to stay under the cold water as much as possible. Swapping in and out means you have to experience the cold rush multiple times, which is the most unpleasant part. Deep, meditative breaths at the beginning help a lot too.
Related, may I ask in what climatic area are you living? Where I live it gets so cold in the winter that I almost can't even wash my hands with cold water.
On the other side I feel like in the summer I could take on such a habit. Maybe a solution would be to warm it just slightly in the winter.
Hands are also the hardest part of the body to cold-shock, all those little bones and large surface area. People who routinely go into ice baths often keep their hands above the water so they can stay in longer.
Alternative hypothesis: The 79% who were able to complete the trial had already selected for 'grit', or folks who wouldn't skip a day's work for a minor ailment. To check, instead of just comparing the test group to the control group you would need to compare the test group to itself, before and during the cold shower period.
I can compare that on myself - I was very often sick (with common colds and such) and it got slowly better after I started cold showering regularly.
Cold swimming (which should include showering with cold water if you follow guidelines) is not exceptional here and people do report improvements in immunity. That is common reason for starting it - you are often sick and this is last desperate attempt to make it better after more pleasant methods did not worked.
Maybe you just got mentally hardened. What you used to treat as a sick day now doesn't feel that bad. Not because you're less sick, but rather because a light cold doesn't seem so bad anymore.
It is also completely absurd to think that daily cold shower will mentally harden you so that you don't perceive sickness.
What I am confused about is the level of investment people have in idea that it can not possibly do something with body on physical level and absurdity people go to argue that.
>It is also completely absurd to think that daily cold shower will mentally harden you so that you don't perceive sickness.
I didn't say not perceive sickness. I said that you wouldn't judge some levels of sickness to be as debilitating. I know enough people that sneeze once and don't work for a week. While others will only not go to work if they have a fever.
Both of those people feel worse with a blocked nose, but one of them doesn't judge it as debilitating (given they're not just scared of losing their jobs).
>What I am confused about is the level of investment people have in idea that it can not possibly do something with body on physical level and absurdity people go to argue that.
Why is it absurd to think of alternative explanations for the same phenomenon? I also never said it could not possibly be the case. I think you should take a look at it from different angles. It's unscientific to rule out something that's so well documented like mental effects (placebo).
Cause the difference between feeling better/being stronger and being able to overcome that is something I can evaluate. I know when throat hurts. You really can tell.
Also, the hardening effect is ridiculous, mostly because the actual hardening effect going on is that you stop perceiving cold water to be unpleasant. That is also not just psychological. You can stay longer and longer and longer without starting to tremble. For the record, trembling means you have overdone it and should go out asap.Hypotermia is real thing that happens to real people.
For that matter, with cold swimming, your resistance to cold will go up too and you will be able to stay much much longer then untrained people without trembling or being tired after.
All in all, if you follow guidelines and make water cold only gradually, you don't experience unpleasant feelings. With cold swimming (which tend to be natural progression once showers are boring), you experience high from endorphins it releases.
As in, it is the day in week you look forward, because it feels good.
> I know enough people that sneeze once and don't work for a week. While others will only not go to work if they have a fever.
Fewer is good immune system response.You can have no or low fewer and still feel pain or be weak. You described one person with good immune system and one with bad one.
> It's unscientific to rule out something that's so well documented like mental effects (placebo).
It is also unscientific to reject idea that something is not placebo.
I remember I've heard looooong time ago they used a similar method in Siberia to make primary school students stronger. Not sure if that's still practiced. But that cold exposure strengthens the body always stayed with me. (and now we have Wim Hof)
There's also a psychological boost and momentum to overcoming a challenge first thing in the morning, which makes subsequent challenges easier. Plus a cold shower and/or exercise gets the blood flowing.
The link is an interview with the study author, and excerpts are below.
This is the first high-level evidence showing that cold showers can benefit your health. People who took them for at least 30 seconds for one month called in sick 29% less than our control group — and 54% less if they also engaged in regular physical exercise.
Participants who took the cold showers actually reported feeling ill just as many days, on average, as the people who showered normally. But either their symptoms were less severe or they felt more energetic, so they were better able to push through the sickness and function anyway. The exact effect on the immune system is unclear, but we do have some knowledge of the pathway through which it works. Cold temperatures make you shiver — an autonomous response to keep your body temperature up. It involves a neuroendocrine effect and triggers our fight-or-flight response, causing hormones like cortisol to increase, shortly before we shift to a relaxation response. Moreover, cold temperatures activate the brown — or good — fat in the body.
Brown fat doesn’t have any proven connection to immunity, but it does affect the body’s thermoregulation. When activated, it keeps the body warm by burning calories. It may also increase your energy and metabolism and help control your blood sugar. That could reduce your risk of obesity and diabetes.
Sounds spurious to me. I imagine people that take regular cold showers are also more likely to push themselves at work. To make this really interesting, you'd need to have a blind control group of people who are paid to have cold showers, and see whether their absence rates go down when they start.
My bigger problem is too short time span of the experiment:
“The intervention period was 30 consecutive days from January 1st-30th 2015. During the following 60 days January 31st-March 31st 2015 participants of all three intervention groups were instructed to shower as preferred.”
We also don't know, but can highly suspect that the subjects in the cold shower group knew or could guess, what was wanted from them in this study. See, Prison Experiment by Zimbardo for the most extreme example, but people will behave in the way they "should" when you tell them the reason of your study.
The fact that the illness days didn't decline makes this study less viable. I'd like to see a followup, but it's hard to imagine a solid base to keep the participants in the dark. It should also be much longer than 30 days.
You couldn't have a true "blind" control group, as there is no way a person could not tell that they are being showered by cold water as opposed to warm water.
I agree to the spurious claim. To shower in the cold is willingly doing something unpleasant. That in itself feels like it is going to affect their attitude towards coming into work -- when doing so is unpleasant.
This seems almost more dangerous, so people who took cold showers feel just good engouth to become vector for more infections? that's pretty crazy and i would argue the overall effect is then very very negative.
That doesn't sound healthy at all. If the only difference is that they went to work sick, then I see little benefit. Except to the disease of course, it get spread around more effectively.
The takeaway I get is that it increases perseverance. So basically, "doing something physically unpleasant every day increases ability to push through/withstand other physically unpleasant events" is my big takeaway. Seems pretty straightforward. Not necessarily novel, especially when you add in the exercise portion.
I think there's some value to pushing yourself harder than the minimum to be comfortable and survive. But I don't think that's a eureka.
There are some parallels to Stoic philosophy there. Ancient stoics would exercise regularly but state the health effect as a secondary benefit, the primary benefit being the virtuous exercise of discipline.
Anyone who had to do military draft will confirm it. Even after 9-12 months of mandatory service you don't come back buffed like a body builder - but the daily exercise and regime puts you in a different state of mind.
Navy SEAL training involves extended cold water exercise specifically designed to build perseverance. The ones that succeed are experts at not quitting anything
> The takeaway I get is that it increases perseverance. So basically, "doing something physically unpleasant every day increases ability to push through/withstand other physically unpleasant events" is my big takeaway.
Yeah, that's the hypothesis I need to see falsified before I start taking cold showers. I reckon my 'perserverance' muscles get enough of a workout from fasting.
So basically, "doing something physically unpleasant every day increases ability to push through/withstand other physically unpleasant events" is my big takeaway.
Meh, that would require an independent confirmation too. It is harder for me to believe that doing one somewhat uncomfortable thing a day will make you more likely to push through multiple other more uncomfortable things.
I wonder if mouthwash is similar, if to a lesser degree? Every morning I use mouthwash until I've "felt" all the pain of it, which is when I am done. And I always hate it, and it never gets easier, but I always feel better afterwards because I accepted the pain.
I'd imagine the symptoms were also reduced. Cold showers reduce inflammation, so I'd imagine people who practice them would feel less miserable once the 'fight it off' portion of the infection is over.
My doctor also recommended cold showers (or at least ending with a minute of cold) as a means of stress management. Apparently it stimulates some nerves and reduces the stress damage somewhat. Possibly related to lower inflammation too. Anecdotally I do feel better when I do it and miss it when I don’t.
The problem you're describing sounds more like a societal/work-culture problem that's completely orthogonal to the study.
Cold showering improved individual health: the fact that those experiencing said improved health made unwise decisions that may increase the spread of disease doesn't change the fact.
Perhaps what we have here is a concrete example of the principle put forward by Mark Twain - “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”
> Brown fat doesn’t have any proven connection to immunity, but it does affect the body’s thermoregulation. When activated, it keeps the body warm by burning calories. It may also increase your energy and metabolism and help control your blood sugar. That could reduce your risk of obesity and diabetes
Wonder what effect this would have on a weight loss program?
It makes sense to me that our body would behave as conservatively as possible with nutrient stores in normal conditions. Plunging them into a crisis state, like a cold shower, would then trigger some kind of “use it all we are in trouble” type response.
It says old showering reduced self-reported sick leaves but not illness days. So it's not conclusive it has real benefits.
I guess lots of HNers shower cold, they like hearing it having potential benefit so they can feel good about themselves. Lots of confirmation bias here. The top voted comment doesn't discuss TFA, but just how great cold showering is.
In the study, a 90-seconds subject died, most likely not because of cold shower, but you never know, without the the experiment, he/she probably would have lived. His/her family members probably blamed cold-shower for it.
Dr. David Sinclair advocates cold-showering, said it increase brown fat. But the evidence he cited[1] (Lifespan page 110), the short term cold exposure is 4 hours, the temperature is probably lot colder than cold shower, so it's doubtful a 30/90 second cold shower help growing brown fat.
Just feels like sampling bias. As someone who likes to take cold showers (typically with 60-64F water), the thing that usually stops me is feeling sick.
I think it's likely that a significant portion of attrition (19% after 90 days) was due to people feeling too sick to suffer a cold shower, which should pretty closely track with people feeling too sick to go to work.
A cold show temporarily jacks your heart rate up just enough to get you out the door. It doesn’t make people less sick, just less likely to take a sick day. The article even says subjects that were sick just felt slightly more energetic and not less sick. I’ve still seen no evidence that cold showers have any real health benefits.
I have been taking cold showers for a couple of years now. Although I wouldn't claim any health benefits since none have been proven, I will claim some other obvious benefits that everyone should consider.
Cold showers are unheated. Cheaper and better for the environment.
Cold showers seldom last longer than a few minutes, whereas hot showers are so comfortable that many people make them last way too long. Cheaper, better for the environment and for your time management.
Cold showers wake you up, whereas hot showers are more like extended snooze time.
Cold showers make you feel like a bad ass.
Secret tip: eat some breakfast before the shower, to crank up your engine.
I do it most mornings for (anecdotal) "waking up the mind" when I'm tired. Sometimes it feels like the world goes from SD to HD. I don't do it 90 seconds though more like 30 tops and I don't believe that I'm less sick because of it. For me it's also a psychological test of "can I chose to do something that is tangibly uncomfortable when it's super easy to just stay nice and cosy".
The sentence "routinely showering (hot-to-) cold resulted in a 29% reduction of self-reported sick leave from work but not illness days" raises some alarms. Also the fact that so many participants discontinued the intervention "because of its burden or a sickness" (much fewer discontinuers in the control group).
> A routine (hot-to-) cold shower resulted in a statistical reduction of self-reported sickness absence but not illness days in adults without severe comorbidity.
In other words, it does nothing. Maybe it gives you some kind of refreshing feeling afterwards but that’s it.
Do cryotherapy or cold showers increase the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease in the long term?
"Tau phosphorylation is exquisitely sensitive to temperature, increasing by 80% for each degree below 37°C, due to exponential decrease in PP2A activity during direct hypothermia, or anesthesia-induced hypothermia."
This means that one might expect a significant increase in tau phosphorylation from modest decreases in body temperature, possibly leading to increased risk of Alzheimer's in the long run.
Not an expert, and I don't think this is a factor at all, but the cold showers are in part meant to help you tap into a natural ability to stay warm (without shivering), so you're not get an appreciable dip in core body temperature in the first place if you do it right.
I believe it is thought that long term Tau accumulation in the brain is what worsens or accelerates alzheimers in patients, but a healthy person is clearing Tau build-up all the time, primarily during sleep. Any behaviour that improves sleep quality is therefore likely to be a boost in preventing and decelerating the development of alzheimers and cold showers promote good sleep and help keep our circadian rhythms aligned in a way that encourages good quality sleep.
One of the reasons why a hot bath before bed is good for sleep is because it decreases body temperature.
Just read the summary. For me personally a hot to cold shower isn't nice. But a cold shower although initially repulsive becomes very enjoyable. And when it ends the thaw feeling is magic. When you are freezing, even cold feels warm.
Some days I get so cold in my bones I feel a hot bath or hot shower is the only way to sort me out. If I'm proper dirty, a cold shower doesn't do.
Exactly. Assuming they took a cold shower in the morning, sounds like this would wake them up in an aggressive way, probably raise their adrenaline level which made them less likely to call in sick. Once at work and levels wore off, you were already at work so you'll push through. Once you need to write things up, you have same day of sick days but more days when you were at work.
If there was a long term (day long) effect in reducing "feeling sick" there should be less sick days as people who are borderline sick start to feel fine and don't report being sick. But if your feeling is temporary, let's say 2 hours then you can get to work and after the fact report that you were sick.
During winter I never heat my home above 18C, so I never use any heating. My computer and I are the only sources of heat and it's enough (not to mention the fridge, etc). If it goes below 16 I do some pushups and dress accordingly. If the bed is really cold, I just use a hot-water bag.
I like the cold.
To be honest, I'm also wondering if getting used to the cold might result in some form of slight weight loss, since your body would naturally burn additional calories to maintain a normal body temperature, but it's just a guess.
Depending on where you live this can ruin your apt/house and accelerate growth of mold because the humidity will be so high. At least you have to vent regulary (which might be challenging as you can't heat up fast if you don't do any extra heating).
Just saying, I have seen it happening as a tenant wanted to save on heating costs...
I can confirm, I live in a very humid city but I really like to sleep in a cold bedroom. However when indoor temperature dropped to below 17°C I had to heat it up back to 18-19°C because mold started growing near the windows. Unfortunately the house is very badly isolated so the temperature near the windows is always way lower than in the rest of the room.
That's fine, except that the humidity in your house must be insane. I see it a lot in some British houses, where people either don't have heating on or run it very rarely - everything has this damp, musky smell of mildew. It's gross frankly. And the only way to fix it is to either run a powerful dehumidifier almost non-stop(not cheap, but at least you can keep the house cold if you want to), or....put the heating on. Opening the windows does nothing if the humidity outside is also pretty high.
We keep our house at 17C/62F. I also have wood instruments, some quite expensive, for which I track humidity with a slight bit of obsession. I say “slight bit” because in the Seattle area the indoor humidity of our house rarely exceeds 50%, usually 35-45% in winter. That’s about perfect for wood instruments, and it rarely varies much, so no need to get too obsessive about it. And our house doesn’t have a mold problem.
Point is, depends on where one lives, I guess. It’s odd that you call out Britain, as that’s about the same latitude and same rainy winter weather as Seattle, but our humidity stays within a reasonable range.
Well, in my British home I have one unheated(but closed, with proper double glazed windows) room - without heating, humidity is pretty much constantly at 85-90% and windows are constantly fogged up. It needs constant heating every day to stay at that usual 40-50% humidity.
I wish people who told stories like this gave a little more context. Like where do you live? How chold does it get? Would you say your home is well insulated? Do you live in an apartment?
Top post in this thread is someone claiming they used only the coldest water to shower for 11 years. Where I live, in the winter, the water is barely above freezing, it hurts. I've read that 70f showers are cold enough for health benefits. 70f does not hurt.
Note that "burn calories" in this context equates to a pretty negligable number, iirc it's ~25 calories per litre of ice water. You can make the same number with a long stair journey or 3 minutes on your bike.
lets say you drink a liter of 16.6C water per day. your body will heat 365 litres of water to 36.6C. Energy needed is (36.6 - 16.6) * 4200 * 365 = 30 660 000 joules ~= 7328kcal
Afaik, you will store fat faster and you will be be hungry. So despite burning more calories, cold swimming is supposed to make you more likely to gain weight.
For me, one of the important elements in the results is the reduction in influenza with 60 and 90 sec. cold shower group. On the other hand seeing this adverse effect also made me nervous:
"One participant in the 90 seconds intervention group died unexpectedly of occult chronic pulmonary embolism at 56 days follow-up."
I know it is not because of the trial but it is unfortunate.
IMHO it's not so much about the numbing or pain reduction, but the increased blood flow afterwards. I ice almost all injuries for about 3 days after they happen. I also tend to find heat to be a waste of time or that it actually exacerbates injuries. But, alternating hot and cold MIGHT be effective (I haven't done it enough to know). In general though, I'd worry that icing after every workout would train the body to require it as a crutch, which means that missing an ice bath could lead to injury, so I won't do it.
Also, I'd hate to miss out on the comfort of warm showers. I'm just not that stoic!
i wonder if there are studies about hot bath. Onsen are extremely popular in japan, and i'm absolutely certain the relaxation you get from hot water is beneficial to health as well
> cold showers can be dangerous for people with per-existing heart conditions
I think cold showers trigger the diving reflex[0] ("most noticeable effects are on the cardiovascular system, which displays ... in humans, heart rhythm irregularities"). I don't have a real source for that, but I tried cold showers a few times and found it impossible to breathe when I had cold water spraying on my face, like I could feel my airway closing involuntarily. Warm/hot water doesn't do that.
I know I have a heart condition (atrial fibrillation) and extreme cold, just like extreme heat, triggers my heart in ways I surely want to avoid at all times.
I've only heard about them (I think from Dr. Rhonda Patric) but I believe that there are studies showing that extreme temperatures in either direction have positive effects.
I haven't been to doctors, or taken any type of medication in 25 years. Rarely do I sick, and it's basically the sniffles that I can sleep off. I take long hot showers.
Back in 1994, my Grandfather started off his day as always with taking a shower. Now, he suffered from high blood pressure and was in his 60s and he liked cold showers.
Anyways, he ended up getting stroke/brain hemorrhage and died. Whether it was a co-relationship or not, as kids we were told from that point on not to take pure cold showers (at least let it be lukewarm).
I personally want to take cold shower but this one event from my history keeps me from taking it.
Most probably the high blood pressure had already caused the changes that lead to the stroke. If it was going to happen the time of highest physical stress was the most probable. You can make the same argument against exercise, but then it sounds even more false. Everything is a trade-off.
Floridian here! I've been taking cold showers as well for the past few years and I can certainly say it makes a difference in the way you feel afterwards compared to a normal hot shower and regardless of the weather of the day as well, obviously it's more enjoyable when it is a warmer day or after some physical activity and exercise.
As some mentioned I think it has more to do with the shock put on your body which releases endorphins and other chemicals beneficial for brain function, it has shown to also be beneficial for some suffering from depression and such [1][2].
If this is the only bathing you do, I would think all the fatty and oily residue particularly on the face, neck and chest would be harder to wash off. That's kind of the point of a hot shower, IMO. Still, I do experience the aftereffects of a cold shower and I think it's useful to do from time to time. But every day? Ew!
True but it's more scrubby. Soap usually has an emulsifying agent that breaks up fat molecules but there's still a physical component to it. If you want your cold showers you can keep your cold showers!
Your skins natural oils are healthy. I wonder if some of the health benefits of cold showers come from not scouring all your bodies natural oils off everyday.
In Russia, there are groups of swimmers who practice swimming in cold water. They are called "walruses" and they swim even at minus 10-20 centigrade. It's insane. I once watched a very old looking, skinny gentleman coming out of water. He still had his t-shirt on. He then took off his wet t-shirt, squeezed out the water couple of times, and then put (still wet t-shirt) back on, then grabbed his belongings and walked away. He wasn't even shaking. It was around late November. There was snow. I understand that the temperature of the river was maybe slightly even warmer than the air's, but damn, he put his cold, wet t-shirt on, and walked like it was July in Jamaica.
Conclusion:
"A routine (hot-to-) cold shower resulted in a statistical reduction of self-reported sickness absence but not illness days in adults without severe comorbidity."
So less people were sick but everyone still took just as many sick days. Hmm....
I think you got that backwards.
Just as many people reporting being ill (illness days), but the cold shower group went to work anyway more often (sickness absence).
>Outcomes
>All outcomes were self-reported using web-based surveys.
>Conclusion
>A routine (hot-to-) cold shower resulted in a statistical reduction of self-reported sickness absence but not illness days in adults without severe comorbidity.
I'm always a tad skeptical of self-reported data. In this case, seeing as the more objective measure shows a much smaller effect, I am inclined to think this is more a placebo effect than anything else.
Still, a placebo effect that makes you feel better seems like a good thing, so I might just start taking some cold showers now
Not sure, seems like the ones that did it already were self-determined enough to work. You would need to compare intra group before and after.
From a metabolic viewpoint cold showers might have some short term energy boost from the stress hormones it releases. However highly dubious whether that is healthy or sustainable long-term. 10-years down the line my bet is you would look like a marathon runner, all wrinkled and with bad skin. Hot showers can increase prolactin so I guess, moderation in both would be the way to go.
As a side note, if you ever do a Vipassana 10-day retreat (dhamma.org) try taking a cold shower during the course. It's a nice challenge, and an application of the "non-reaction" practice. (Personally I found myself far, far more tolerant of the cold water, to the extent I was kind of amazed that my previous self was so averse to it).
They lumped together morning and evening showering, which I suspect to have significant differences. But common sense thought is that cold shower will excite metabolism and result of that will be most likely quite different for normal waking hours versus sleep.
If I'm doing my math right, and your two sick days aren't correlated with each other, I think you would have had a 16% chance of one or both of them occurring during a random 90-day period. Multiply out a few hundred of you, and that 30% in the study would be about 16%.
So no, doesn't seem like an overly high rate at all to me.
I have two kids and I have been sick six times in the past four months. I thank my lucky stars that my employer does not limit sick days. 30% amongst parents doesn't seem that strange to me.
I was a stay at home dad, so I understand the dangers of continuous stream of snot. Still seems very high. I can't find if they say what time of year the study was carried out.
Related, being really cold is one of the reasons surfing (at least in Northern California) feels so great. The rest of the day afterwards nothing hurts, assuming you didn't hurt yourself ;)
From what I understand (Matthew Walker - Why we Sleep), you will have a better nights sleep if you take a cold shower before bed. According to the information I read, you want to bring your body temperature down for a more restful sleep.
As a bonus, cold showers likely bring on Hormesis, which in turn can also be beneficial for ones health.
> According to the information I read, you want to bring your body temperature down for a more restful sleep.
I've heard the same thing, except the suggestion was for a hot shower, because supposedly the heat makes your body work less to stay warm and the end result is actually lower core temperature.
Isn't it obvious that cold showers will make you more resilient to cold? Even if we assume there aren't any health benefits - which would be foolish IMO, being resilient to cold is a benefit in itself.
If you're waiting for science to put a number on everything before you consider it you'll be disappointed in the long run.
It doesn't get much easier but you'll get addicted to the great feeling after.
It's similar to running or exercise, it sucks to do but you do it anyway because the benefits far outweigh the temporary discomfort.
The trick for me was to never use warm shower again and never compromise ... only coldest water available counts. First thing in the morning.
It makes everything easier as once you experience that comfort of warmer water you'll have to fight with it again and again.
That's why I don't believe in James Bond showers and similar stuff.
Only last year I started to take warmer showers if I need to take one late at night and want to get a good sleep fast (I took about 4 so far) ... to build this habit, for me personally, it was paramount to leave no other option.
For the first 7 years I haven't been sick at all. At the same time, I don't think it's a miracle practice for your health. You will get sick if you expose yourself to risks of getting sick often enough - it's simple.
In the early days, I used to procrastinate in the bathroom ... a good trick was to start timing my showers. I would leave a timer set for 5 min and paper to log time, I tried to get in and out beating 5 min time-frame. In less than couple of weeks it became a habit that I enjoy for some 8 years now.
Other than health, energy and willpower, I suspect it has some solid psychological benefits ... you get out in the morning you feel like a superhuman, imagine starting your day in such way and how that compounds over the years.
It's great habit to start.