Why you should take cold showers
(≈7 min read)
If someone were to tell me to take a cold shower a few years ago, I probably would have burst out laughing; how could I ever replace my precious warm shower with pain and borderline intolerable discomfort?
It’s only when I started researching mindfulness and different techniques that might help to quell anxiety when I stumbled across the cold as a potential way of providing relief.
And honestly, I felt like I had nothing to lose. I’d try cold showers for a month, and if I saw a difference by the end of that month, I’d consider continuing. If not, then I’d simply revert back to the conventional warm shower. Simple stuff.
The results, which, given the title of this article, will probably come as a shock to you, were overwhelmingly positive, not just for my anxiety but also for my general sense of wellbeing.
My results were not an anomaly. As well as an increasingly large body of scientific research (which I’ll later discuss), there have been thousands of anecdotal reports on the positive impacts exposure to cold can have on both physical and psychological wellbeing.
In this article, I’m going to outline, from a scientific standpoint, how and why cold showers can help you. I’ll also be reflecting on my own personal experience.
The Wim Hof method
The Dutch extreme athlete, Wim Hof, has broken sixteen world records, almost all of which related to cold exposure.
He’s a strong believer that exposure to cold, combined with breathing techniques, can significantly benefit both our physical and mental health. He believes his methods can help to alleviate the symptoms of mental illnesses like anxiety and depression, as well as improving the body’s immune system so we can better ward off viruses and illness.
Wim’s motivation to help people and evoke real change in other’s lives came when his wife took her own life in 1995, leaving Wim with 4 children to raise alone. In a documentary with Vice, Wim said:
“Where I get peace was in these breathing exercises, swimming outside in the cold.”
His aim from then was to translate the methods he’d developed to the modern world to prevent as far as possible what happened to his wife happening to others.
To note just two of the insanely ridiculous things this man has done:
He’s spent 1hr 53min with full body contact with ice.
And he’s run a full marathon in the Arctic Circle in temperatures close to -20°C, wearing only a pair of shorts.
I know it might be tempting, but please don’t try to attempt these things yourself.
Wim firmly believes that he is not an anomaly. It’s his belief that we’re all capable of doing more and being more. Multiple scientific experiments have been conducted on Wim and others who follow his method and the results have been relatively conclusive.
There is strong evidence to suggest cold exposure can improve the immune system as well as help with mental illness.
Now let’s take a look at the research and what exactly cold showers can do for you.
What cold showers can bring – the science
Improved immune system
Multiple studies have suggested that cold showers can boost the body’s immune system. There’s evidence to believe that the number of white blood cells, responsible for protecting your body against disease, can actually increase just by taking cold showers.
Researchers suggest that the increased metabolic rate, due to the body’s attempt to warm itself up, activates the immune system leading to the release of more white blood cells in response.
A piece of research was conducted on Wim Hof where he trained a group of complete strangers with his method for four days. Then when injected with an endotoxin which made all the control participants ill, the ones who had undergone this training had far less symptoms and recovered much quicker.
The shock for many scientists came from the fact that Wim was able to voluntarily influence his autonomic nervous system – something which for many years was considered impossible.
Reduced stress
Cold showers have also been shown to contribute to the reduction of stress. Each time you have a cold shower, you are forcing your body to deal with a small amount of stress. This gradual process of encouraging your nervous system to deal with stress helps in situations beyond the shower. This process is known as ‘hardening’.
Humans evolved in much colder environments than the types we inhabit today. In the ‘old days’, we didn’t have the luxury of heating in every building or super insulated jackets to keep us warm; the cold was a force that simply had to be contended with, endured. Wim believes the introduction of heating has contributed to our desensitisation to the cold.
In a sense, we’ve lost an aspect of our environment which humans have adapted to live in. Society encourages us, through consumerism, to reduce the stress imposed on our body wherever possible. If there’s a way we can even minimally make life easier or more comfortable, there’ll no doubt be a product out there that serves that purpose.
We are always warm; we are always comfortable. And although there obviously many benefits to this, there’s a tendency for us to become so comfortable that when something stressful occurs we don’t know how to cope. Stress and the right kind of suffering in moderation can actually be super beneficial.
As I discuss in my article, ‘Does success require suffering?’, most good things in life require prior suffering. Author of ‘The Happiness Trap’, Russ Harris says:
“So here is the happiness trap in a nutshell: to find happiness, we try to avoid or get rid of bad feelings, but the harder we try, the more bad feelings we create.”
A natural progression from ‘I need to feel good’ is ‘I must not feel bad’. This leads to something known as experiential avoidance which is essentially the mentality of ‘I must avoid all painful feelings’. This mind-set however is extremely damaging and strips you not just of pain but also of joy.
Often, things that you’re initially anxious about, you end up actually really enjoying and you never would have experienced that joy, if you’d been completely discomfort avoidant. You can’t have love without fear of rejection. You can’t achieve great things without fear of failure.
Instead of living your life based on running away from anxiety and all these negative things that might arise, you should instead be looking to run towards the things you do want and learning to cope with those negative emotions along the way.
Cold showers can change your mind-set and get you used to enduring voluntary discomfort in the present in order to grow in the future.
Improved circulation
You’ll notice that when you first step into a cold shower, your body will struggle for air. You are forced to breathe deep. This encourages reduction of CO2 levels as well as increased oxygen levels, helping to bring you more focus and concentration.
Cold water also causes your blood to move to your organs to keep them warm. As cold water hits your skin, it constricts circulation on the surface of your body. So in order to maintain the ideal body temperature, blood in your tissues is circulated at faster rates. Increased circulation is one of the main reasons scientists suggest cold showers.
What cold showers can bring – anecdotal
As well as discussing the relevant scientific research, I also thought it’d be useful to outline the benefits I personally received from cold showers. It’s important to note that most of the benefits I mention are not solely limited to me – they are also included in a considerable number of other anecdotal reports.
Improved willpower
Before making the decision to take cold showers, I noticed ‘improved motivation’ was purported in almost every anecdotal account available. I was, of course, dubious.
But as time progressed, I began to realise why this increased motivation was actually occurring.
Each and every time I prepared myself to step into those icy jets of water, I could hear a mental voice screaming at me to turn the water to hot (can’t exactly blame the voice). But by acknowledging that voice and stepping into that cold shower anyway, I was saying to my brain:
“You can give me thoughts but these thoughts don’t control my actions. I can do whatever I want, irrespective of whatever thoughts you give me.”
Your brain is designed to gravitate towards the things that provide the most pleasure for the least discomfort. If you’ve ever taken one, you’ll probably agree that a cold shower falls into the ‘uncomfortable’ category, meaning your brain will do everything in its power to prevent you from having one. But the more you can train yourself to do uncomfortable things that’ll develop you, the better prepared you’ll be for life itself.
As I’ve mentioned earlier, almost all of the best things in life require suffering and hard work. That’s why we procrastinate. When there are two options, an easy option that requires no stress or a harder option that might result in long term benefits, we have a tendency to gravitate towards the easier option.
We’re biologically adapted to be like this – we evolved in what’s called an immediate return environment. This means actions and behaviour would immediately give results. But now society has evolved into a delayed return environment where it can take months, even years, to reap the rewards of hard work.
Think about when you go to the gym. You’re saying before you go into the gym: “Look, I’m going to voluntarily endure discomfort but that discomfort is justified.”
You endure the short term discomfort for the long term gains. You make a sacrifice.
Cold showers help you to become more ready to make that sacrifice, to be ok with enduring short term suffering in order for long term benefits. That short term suffering could be revising for an exam or going to the gym or working on that project; anything that’s painful in the present but worth it later down the line.
Connection to the present moment
A somewhat unexpected benefit of cold showers was how much they helped connect me to the present moment.
With a traditional warm shower, your mind is always active – ruminating about that presentation tomorrow or that awkward conversation you had yesterday. There is no time to simply stop and experience the present moment just as it is, to direct all your attention to the here and now.
Cold showers, in a sense, force you to do this.
When you first go into a cold shower, the first thing you’ll notice is that you’re gasping for air. And so to counteract this, you are forced to breathe deep.
You’ll also notice your mind starts becoming vacant and when this happens you should try and simply experience the raw sensations of cold on your skin and notice how it feels for you to breathe deeply in and out.
Your brain should revert to a kind of survival mode where intrusive thoughts about the past and future almost disappear entirely.
That’s why for me, cold showers act as a kind of meditative experience. To counter the pain, you shouldn’t try and fight it. You should just acknowledge its existence and learn to breathe through it, become at one with the present moment in order to endure the cold.
Instead of thinking ‘this is so cold, I want to get out’, pretend you’re a curious scientist who’s interested in how the cold makes your body and skin feel. What physical sensations can you feel on your skin? What do various parts of your body feel like?
Once you learn to detach the thought ‘this is so painful’ from the experience and instead simply acknowledge the raw sensations on your skin, it can help you to connect better with the present moment.
One rule with cold showers is to never force. If you feel like you have to get out, then get out. Listen to your body.
Risks
It goes without saying that cold showers will sadly not cure all the physical and mental problems you have. They should not replace any treatments you are currently undergoing – they are just an extra, supplementary thing that may help you out.
The benefits I’ve listed in this article have a large body of evidence behind them, but because every human being is unique, you might not experience the same benefits as others.
The only real way for you to know is to try cold showers yourself, for a month say, and see how things pan out.
Generally, cold showers are extremely safe but if you have heart disease or other heart conditions, high blood pressure, or are ill or feverish then it would be best to avoid.
According to Dr. Helene Glassberg, an associate professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania: “People with known heart disease or a risk of heart disease should not chance the potential consequences”
Don’t just read and forget
Even with this huge pile of evidence, I know the likelihood is that a lot of you will probably just continue with your daily life and pretend this article was a mere figment of your imagination.
And look, I can’t say I blame you. Why endure discomfort?
But you’ll never know just how much cold showers could improve your life unless you’ve given them a try. You don’t even need to give up your warm showers; you could just spend ten to twenty seconds at the end of your normal shower experiencing the cold. That’s it; twenty seconds.
If you don’t try, you’ll never know!
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