Recover quickly from your workouts, boost your mental health, support your immune system, be alert, brighten your skin, manage stress - these are a few of the phenomenal benefits of cold-water therapy, more on that later…
Have you watched BBC one’s Freeze the Fear? How about The Ice Dive or The Ponds on Netflix? What do these programmes have in common? Cold water. This seems to be the new health trend spreading, as people take to cold showers and open water swimming. But this is no new trend, cold water therapy has its roots in ancient medicine.
In 3500BC, cold water is first mentioned as being used for wellbeing. Then, Ancient Greek thinkers, Hippocrates and Plato endorsed the physiological benefits of cold water. The Ancient Romans even had frigidarias, cold pools. An Austrian farmer turned physician, Vincent Priessnitz, healed his own broken ribs using bandages soaked in cold water. Cold water therapy really hit the big time in 1842, when a Water Cure facility was set up in the UK, boasting patients, such as Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Florence Nightingale and Lord Tennyson. Both Georgians and Victorians flocked to our British seaside resorts to ‘take to the waters’ for their health.
Now, the man connecting the ancient to the modern is Wim Hof, also known as The Ice Man, and he has been on a mission to share the importance of this practice to transform individuals’ relationships with their minds and bodies.
So, should you be taking a cold shower every day? Or open water swimming in freezing temperatures? Let’s take a look at the science behind the benefits…
Circulatory system
The cold stimulates a response of the blood vessels, which causes them to narrow, this occurs to direct the blood to where it’s needed the most - the vital organs. Blood is forced to return to the heart, where it can be transported to the lungs to replenish and this oxygenated blood can then be pumped around the body, meaning you are getting fresh oxygen and nutrients in the right areas.
Lymphatic system
The lymphatic system is a network of vessels that run throughout the body, learning out waste, bacteria and microbes from your cells. Essentially, it helps your body cleanse itself. Your lymph doesn’t have a central pump, instead, it relies on muscle contractions to pump the lymph fluid through the vessels. Cold water causes your lymph vessels to contract, forcing your lymphatic system to pump lymph fluids throughout your body and flush waste out of the area.
Benefits
- Reduces inflammation that you might experience post workout, speeding up recovery and reducing your aches and pains. Potentially, cold water could slow the rate at which pain signals are transmitted to the brain. Evidence suggests that cold water reduces muscle soreness at 24, 48, 72 and even at 96 hours after exercise (1).
- Boost mental health: a cold shower, 20 degrees, for two to three minutes, once or twice a day, relieved depressive symptoms (2). The cold activates our sympathetic nervous system and sends lots of electrical impulses from peripheral nerve endings to the brain, which can result in an anti-depressive effect. A study with cold water swimmers, found that tension and fatigue decreased with the duration of the swimming period (3).
- Immune system: a clinical trial in the Netherlands found that cold showers led to a 29% reduction in people calling off sick from work (4).
- Alert: activation of sympathetic nervous system into ‘fight or flight’, results in feeling focused and alert. For example, winter swimmers felt more energetic active and brisk than controls (5).
- Hair and skin: reduces the size of your pores and tightens your skin. Cold water doesn’t encourage your pores to open up and release oils like warm water does, so you don’t have excess oil that can lead to greasy hair or breakouts. Instead, you will retain the oils to keep your hair and skin moisturised. The reduction in inflammation and boost of the immune response, work together to reduce the lifespan of spots.
Sources:
- https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD008262.pub2/pdf/full
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17993252/
- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3402/ijch.v63i2.17700?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5025014/
- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3402/ijch.v63i2.17700?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
