The Effect of Cold Showering on Health and Work (2016)
journals.plos.org
journals.plos.org
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.
I stopped because I got sick, and never got the habit back.
Would switching from cold to warm water still have benefits?
Luckily, it becomes habit. Perhaps doing it unwillingly is part of the rush.
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.
You sir, are a person with more will power than .. Well anyone.
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.
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.
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.
If the water is not cold enough, it is disappointing.
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.
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:
https://impossiblehq.com/cold-shower-therapy-guide
(My notes on cold showers: http://joshuaspodek.com/cold-showers-rock)
Or kind of get wet quickly and step out of the stream, lather, rinse quickly, etc.
> 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.
1: https://www.academia.edu/20383485/Hot_Water_for_Handwashing_...
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.
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.
As cold as possible is best.
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".
... 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”.
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).
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.
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.
Edit: just tested, 🧐 is let through but others are not.
I can't even rinse the soap off with cold water in 5 minutes.
I've been doing that since I was a young lad, it's how my father taught me.
I grant that it might make it more difficult to establish the habit, but I wouldn't know. To my taste it's the best of both worlds.
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.
I don't do this consistently, but I should.
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...)
Saving some time, and energy.
It would be fun if all would cut heating tanks one day a week. A global GWh saving...
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)
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.
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.
What makes you so sure?
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wonder what effect this would have on a weight loss program?
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
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".
In other words, it does nothing. Maybe it gives you some kind of refreshing feeling afterwards but that’s it.
I’ll pass on this upcoming health fad.
Does that mean more people who were actually sick were tricked into a false feeling of health and went into work to spread their germs?
Or does it mean that healthy people that were just feeling a bit groggy were re-invigorated by a cold shower?
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.
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.
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.
So there are no actual results on health in the short time they studied.
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.
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.
Your body burns calories to keep its temperature - 36.6C. Another trick to force your body to burn calories is to drink cold water.
its 2-week of intensive workouts for free.
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.
Just saying, I have seen it happening as a tenant wanted to save on heating costs...
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.
"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.
like ... magic?
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=world%27s+stron...
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 have 1-2 incidents of sickness per year and I don’t live a particularly healthy lifestyle.
I'm sure I read somewhere that cold showers can be dangerous for people with per-existing heart conditions too.
I can't cite either right now but they should be easy to find with a Google search.
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.
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.
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].
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17993252
[2] https://www.lifehack.org/448180/how-cold-showers-can-change-...
So less people were sick but everyone still took just as many sick days. Hmm....
>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
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.
Before this event, I took cold showers for about 1 year (including in winter), then I stopped. Thinking of resuming, but not sure.
Would I go and swim again in the glacier lagoon or similar? Probably. It has this refrigerator serene like feeling.
So, cold shower is one thing, swimming in near freezing temperature is another thing.
I tend to go for the warm show to get clean and then go cold for the last 20 secs.
I've probably had 2 sick days in 3 years (data point: mid 50s, a nice hot bath with my toe stuck out of the bubbles, good book, cup of tea).
So no, doesn't seem like an overly high rate at all to me.
(4 sick days in 3 years would jump to 29%)
Up here in Minnesota I could imagine doing this in the summer, but right now, when it’s grey and 18F outside, um no.
As a bonus, cold showers likely bring on Hormesis, which in turn can also be beneficial for ones health.
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.
If you're waiting for science to put a number on everything before you consider it you'll be disappointed in the long run.
No? It might, but I wouldn't call it "obvious". There's plenty of things where exposure doesn't increase resilience.