TLDR; 3000 participants study that asked them to do cold showers for 30-90 seconds each day for 1 month. Main difference shown was ~30% reduction in sick days they took.
On a side note, has anyone here tried wim hof method?
On a side note, has anyone here tried wim hof method?
I am a very physical person and his method was the first one to put my mind into a meditative state. You actually feel it in your body and shock it which silences your regular thoughts. You only focus on your breathing and how you feel in that moment. It gives me a really quick reprieve when working on a difficult problem.
You have people that take his method to extremes though, I remember one guy at the seminar literally pissed himself from holding in too long. It can make it all seem like pseudoscience. I can confirm that it has a very physical effect on my body and helps me meditate a lot easier.
A side effect of the ice training is that I sweat in really cold weather. I live in Seattle and people look at me funny cause I'm rocking a t-shirt and shorts but if I wear a jacket I'm boiling.
But in fact, while I don't particularly like crowds, I learned very young that if you don't particularly want to interact with people, crowds are great. I can sit down in the middle of a party and spent 3 hours just observing people mindfully and be content, and most of the time people will ignore it.
But you can also act totally outrageous in a crowd, and people will tend to try to ignore you, not pay attention to you until/unless what you do personally affects them.
A useful exercise in that respect is to go a day and try to keep a mental count of how often you notice yourself thinking about your own actions vs. how often you notice yourself paying attention to someone elses action, and then at the end of it, try to recall those other peoples actions. Not only will most people find they spend far more time worrying about their own appearance or actions, but that they will have forgotten most of the interactions the noticed with other people even when trying to keep mental tabs of them.
Most things that most people do simply isn't that interesting to other people. Heck, most things that most people do isn't that interesting to themselves other than in the moment.
I wonder if his methods would help people with depression.
Funny.
Also makes me feel warm in cold weather.
This is really interesting, it sounds like exposure to cold has up-regulated your metabolism or something.
My genetics are from warm countries but I grew up in a cold country, and when I go home people are always terrified that I'm going to die of cold because of how little I'm wearing.
It's interesting to see that the body can undergo changes like this even in adulthood: I guess humans are adapted to moving around!
Also: Freediving is amazing for forcing a meditative state.
> Main difference shown was ~30% reduction in sick days they took.
> Repetitive cold showering can modulate the physiological
> response.[3] Our findings show that routinely showering
> (hot-to-) cold for at least 30 days resulted in a reduction
> of self-reported sick leave from work but not illness days
> in adults without severe comorbidity.
> 79% of participants in the interventions groups completed
> the 30 consecutive days protocol.
So, one explanation might be that the group able to successfully complete the study is a self-selecting group that may have stronger resistance to physical discomfort that they would also take fewer sick leave days despite feeling sick.
Whereas, individuals unable to complete the study are not as tolerant of physical discomfort and, so, are more likely to take sick days when feeling sick.
I really would like to know what constitutes a control group for this study.
To my mind, cold showers and sick days seem likely to be loosely correlated. This study does not seemed designed to determine whether people who take cold showers actually get sick less often than those who take hot showers.
EDIT: spelling
“The contrast between the results of both primary outcome parameters is suggestive of the fact that the intensity rather than the duration of symptoms is modulated by the intervention.”
My conjecture is this is consistent with a placebo effect. Placebos can make your symptoms feel less severe.
I also handle cold much better. I need less warm cloth to feel good. Where I was shivering and needed something warm before, I wear t-shirt now and feel good.
If it works for you, great. Doesn't matter if it's a placebo effect or not in that case.
But, my primary point was meant to be that the results of the study don't imply placebo, through many comments here throw it around a lot. (I am not sure what kind of effect they would want to see through.)
They do imply that effects are bound to be very small.
Is it? The entire point of a placebo is that it does lead to measurable change that can be very significant.
> The change is real, even if it would be caused by something else.
... such as a placebo effect. Placebo can lead to real, significant change. To the extent that there has been serious discussion about harnessing the placebo effect (the primary issue being the ethics of lying to a patient).
> But, my primary point was meant to be that the results of the study don't imply placebo, through many comments here throw it around a lot. (I am not sure what kind of effect they would want to see through.)
The study doesn't imply placebo, but the issue is whether or not it rules it out. Part of the problem here is that designing a good placebo for cold showers is not straightforward. You could try to convince people of the positive health benefits of cold showers and try to convince a different group of the positive health benefits of a pill, but you'd still then not have blinded study, and you'd have a hard time demonstrating that any difference in effect isn't simply down to people finding the cold showers more convincing.
Note that this is not saying you shouldn't do cold showers if it works for you. If it works for you, it doesn't matter if it's a placebo effect or not. The issue of whether or not it is a placebo is more about mechanism. In other words: Is it actually something about the showers? Or is it something about the way you were convinced to think the showers had an effect? It matters because it may affect how this treatment works for others, and how consistently it works, and because a placebo mediated effect can change over time as cultural expectations change (e.g. placebo effect of sugar pills have gone up as people have become accustomed to using pills to solve medical problems).
But if the effect is there for you, that ought to be secondary to you. If it works without causing any harm, then awesome.
I've trie the wim hof method. It's a pretty incredible feeling but I'm afraid of collapsing and knocking myself out.
TLDR: he put his ass on a water fountain in the middle of a public park to flush his bowel but the pressure was so high that he ended up in the hospital with perforated intestines and nearly died.
Even without wrecking your intestines, the bacteria and probable pollutants in a public fountain would be disastrous for your intestinal flora. So, even without the risk of traumatic injury, it'd be really stupid to treat a public fountain as a mega-bidet. Not to mention you're putting others at risk. Kids and pets often play in fountains, even if they aren't supposed to.
I really can't even with this dude. And, lots of people, including nerds, take him seriously. It makes no sense.
> In The Netherlands, there has been an increasing trend for cold bathing over the past few years. Part of this growing popularity is owed to the scientific approach of a health and mindset technique hallmarked by cold-exposure as created by an individual named Wim Hof, nicknamed the Iceman for his ability to remain constant body temperature in extreme cold conditions.[25] These methods involving concentration, breathing and cold-exposure have shown to modulate the immune response.[26] These findings served as inspiration to design the present trial and its popularity facilitated recruitment of over three thousand participants in just one month time.
I tried, but honestly I half-assed it because it was both difficult to set up and uncomfortable, so I was unsuccessful in implementing any Wim Hof-like protocol.
> 79% of participants in the interventions groups completed the 30 consecutive days protocol.