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Comment by Fervicus | Hacker News Reader

What has people's experience with cold showers/ice baths been? Is it as positive as all the hype advertises?

Most folks on HN are going to go straight to the physiological benefits, and zip past the psychological ones.

I'm a former Green Beret and combat diver. You know what cold plunges are good for? Practicing will power, and bravery.

It sucks. It's the worst thing ever. But it won't kill you. So you do it for the shock and the pain and the fact that you can safely push yourself to do something you and your body realllllly hates, and you can do it without becoming David Goggins or Jocko or whatever.

Just run a cold bath, dump some ice in, and practice being brave.

Do your balls practically go up into your body at that temperature? I feel like an ice bath would just make them zoom up right inside you.

Too heavy, solid brass.

The benefits I keep hearing about in podcasts are physiological and building mental resilience, which does make a lot of sense on paper. I was curious if average HNers have had positive results putting it in practice.

Yes - making yourself do something unpleasant is a valuable thing to acclimatize to.

hard enough just running a cold water shower and then putting your back under it.

If you want to do something that requires bravery and is unpleasant, I'd like to suggest giving blood instead? You have to get stabbed at least twice (once to test your red blood count, the other to actually stick the needle in) and then sit still with a needle in you until a bag of your blood fills. It's overall pretty unpleasant. But also, you save lives, unlike jumping into a cold pool.

This was covered in a recent Plain English podcast: https://www.theringer.com/2023/4/4/23668556/myth-busting-wel...

The evidence for the health benefits is extremely weak. It can help accelerate “recovery” from exercise, but at a cost of diminishing the benefits of the exercise in the first place. Your body gets sore when you workout for a reason. The only reason you’d want to stop that process is you’re in a multi day competition, which you’re not.

Yes I found it helped train/improve my stress response along with wym hoff breathing. I found it makes me less likely to overreact and it apparently improves focus/attention.

The nordic countries have been doing polar plunges for a long time for similar reasons. They say it helps with depression too.

Chris Hemsworth, the actor who plays Thor did a mini series on National Geographic and one episode feature it.

I do a flash of cold water at the end of a hot shower for about a minute. It seems to kickstart my metabolism and wakes me up like a coffee.

Anecdotal but contrast therapy (using my pool as a cold plunge and my hot tub as the heated portion), alleviates the soreness of my muscles during my recovery days

it's just micro optimization. i shower cold every morning. it provides a little shock that get's me awake. but i have never found that this provides any noticeable health benefit. to me this obsession seems rather like an ersatz religion for people whose life is physically so comfortable that they seek ways to experience discomfort.

louis ck complained about it quite eloquently on joe rogan.

Yeah it's great. Wakes you up, dopamine boost. Good immune system boost. Do the breathing exercises too but never near water or while driving.

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