Cold Plunge for optimal health

great to see this thread. I've been practicing the Wim Hof Method for almost seven years now and it is fantastic. I hit my pond often, but do cold showers daily coupled with the breathwork that Wim is known for practicing. Keeps me cold free (both temperature and sick).

Daniel Ray wrote:great to see this thread. I've been practicing the Wim Hof Method for almost seven years now and it is fantastic. I hit my pond often, but do cold showers daily coupled with the breathwork that Wim is known for practicing. Keeps me cold free (both temperature and sick).

I haven't looked into his breathing method yet.  Would you mind sharing details about the cold showers?  Curious how long you do it for, how many times a week when you started, how long it took you to get acclimated, those type of things.  

Would you mind sharing details about the cold showers?  Curious how long you do it for, how many times a week when you started, how long it took you to get acclimated, those type of things.  

Definitely. The cold showers are the way to go because you don't actually need to be that cold to reap the benefits. I love hot showers, so I start hot to relax then after a few minutes switch the taps to cold and stay there for at least 3 minutes. By that point, any increase in heart rate and feeling of dread is gone. It takes a good week of daily practice to get to the point where the cold water doesn't bother you too much anymore. It is an interesting thing, because your brain still says "no!", but the water ends up not feeling that bad any longer. A WHM instructor once told me that you don't get as many benefits if you finish on hot, but instead let your body warm itself up so I never finish with a hot shower.

When I soak in the pond I tend to stay in longer, about 5 to 10 minutes--just a different experience with the trees around you and not that rushed feeling of being inside.

So in summary I take short 3-5 minute showers 6-7 times a week, cold soaks in the pond 1-2 times a week, and the breathing exercises for about 20-30 minutes every morning when I wake up.

Daniel Ray wrote:

Would you mind sharing details about the cold showers?  Curious how long you do it for, how many times a week when you started, how long it took you to get acclimated, those type of things.  

Definitely. The cold showers are the way to go because you don't actually need to be that cold to reap the benefits. I love hot showers, so I start hot to relax then after a few minutes switch the taps to cold and stay there for at least 3 minutes. By that point, any increase in heart rate and feeling of dread is gone. It takes a good week of daily practice to get to the point where the cold water doesn't bother you too much anymore. It is an interesting thing, because your brain still says "no!", but the water ends up not feeling that bad any longer. A WHM instructor once told me that you don't get as many benefits if you finish on hot, but instead let your body warm itself up so I never finish with a hot shower.

When I soak in the pond I tend to stay in longer, about 5 to 10 minutes--just a different experience with the trees around you and not that rushed feeling of being inside.

So in summary I take short 3-5 minute showers 6-7 times a week, cold soaks in the pond 1-2 times a week, and the breathing exercises for about 20-30 minutes every morning when I wake up.

Thanks very much, that is really helpful.

I'm up to two minutes now.  I checked with the stop watch on my phone to make sure I'm not cheating :)  I have one of those big rain shower heads so I don't really need to move around in the shower, I get completely covered the whole time.  I'm sure I will be able to make three minutes next time.  It's still very much a mental game with me.  The last thing I want to do is stand in a freezing shower, but it definitely starts the day out right.

As far as changes to this point, the tendinitis in my bicep is almost entirely gone for the first time in a couple years.  I have been doing eccentric training for it as well, but I'm crediting the cold showers for some of the improvement.  I've been doing the eccentric training for it for a while now and it helped a great deal, but I think the cold showers really moved the bar up again.

Last night is also the first night in more than 20 years that I didn't have to get up to pee.  I usually have to get up 4 or 5 times a night and since starting the showers, I haven't had to get up more than once.  That alone has been worth freezing my butt off for a few minutes a day.

That's fantastic Trace! I'm surprised you've seen so many great results in just a few short days.

Daniel Ray wrote:great to see this thread. I've been practicing the Wim Hof Method for almost seven years now and it is fantastic. I hit my pond often, but do cold showers daily coupled with the breathwork that Wim is known for practicing. Keeps me cold free (both temperature and sick).

Suka and Caska are beautiful,they look like sweet guardians watching over you Daniel!

I've been skimming through the WimHof book and I found this tip to be helpful so far

For me, the cold showers are definitely worth it any time I do it.  mostly I do it.  It's primarily a psychological game, and I must trick my mind into the reality of it.  

I find that the first couple minutes of a cold shower are the hardest, after you pass three minutes you are aware of numbness and tingling, and it is much the same sensation of being exposed to too much heat, and sometimes I try to think about it in reversal and tell my brain that what I am experiencing is hot, not cold.  Sometimes I get into the coldness and tell my brain that it is cold, but that cold is not so bad, and in fact it is very good.  I try to remind my brain about how great I will feel when I am done and the cold will be a thing of the past the my body is going to conquer.  

After about 2.5 minutes, if I am feeling restless, this is when I really focus on breathing, or I do some yoga in the shower.  I find the alternating cat and cow postures, as well as variations where I am shifting my weight on my palms or knees, and try to do hip rotations, or shoulder rotations.  I find this to be effective, and it allows me to have penetrating intense cold into these overworked zones.  

When I come out of the shower, 4 to 6 minutes later, my skin is red from the blood rushing back in.  The way I see it, the body's cellular structures in the skin, veins, arteries, the blood cells, the muscles, bones, tendons, ligaments, and lymphatics, are all trying to gain their equilibrium by raising to the proper temperature, and are kick-started into high functioning.

I skipped over 3 minutes and went straight to 5.  My experience with it is a lot different than some I have read, including Roberto's previous post.  At the 3 minute mark I start shivering pretty uncontrollably.  I can breathe through it and stop the shivering for 10 or 15 seconds at a time, but it keeps coming back.  The last 2 minutes are just a mental fight to the finish line.  I'm not sure how people can do this for 10 minutes or more.  When I get out at 5 minutes, which I've done twice now, I'm pretty blue :)  I get dressed pretty slowly and it takes me a while to warm up.  One1 of the days I did it, I did a short workout to warm back up and that worked pretty well.  The other day I just dressed warmly and relaxed.  I'm still working out some of the bugs in the process to see what works best for me.

I missed one day of doing the cold shower, and my sleep paid for it.  I got up 4 or 5 times that night and got out of bed exhausted.  The days I do the showers, I sleep through, either not getting up at all, or getting up once.  I take blood pressure meds and my BP usually hovers around high 130s over 94 or so.  Yesterday I did the cold shower for 5 minutes.  This morning I had a dentist appointment and they checked my blood pressure.  121/81.  I'm not sure if it was the cold shower of course, but it seems promising enough that I'm going to continue in spite of the fact that I really hate doing it so far.

Trace, that is some great results. Great job sticking to the cold--it is a pain sometimes for sure but I swear it is worth it just for the mental exercise.

WHM practitioners call those shakes "after drop". Try a mental visualization afterward of breathing in hot air and exhaling cold air. This kind a visualization is akin to placebo, using your mind to make adjustments to the physical. The times I get after drop are after cold exposure when I'm not sufficiently concentrated enough on heating myself up, but go on to the humdrum of my normal routine like doing dishes or thinking about house improvements.

Daniel Ray wrote:Trace, that is some great results. Great job sticking to the cold--it is a pain sometimes for sure but I swear it is worth it just for the mental exercise.

WHM practitioners call those shakes "after drop". Try a mental visualization afterward of breathing in hot air and exhaling cold air. This kind a visualization is akin to placebo, using your mind to make adjustments to the physical. The times I get after drop are after cold exposure when I'm not sufficiently concentrated enough on heating myself up, but go on to the humdrum of my normal routine like doing dishes or thinking about house improvements.

Thanks Daniel.  I'll give that a try.  It's nice having someone that has been doing WHM for a while to talk things through.  I haven't started the WHM breathing exercises yet, but I plan on adding that soon as well.

Man, so excited to see it’s not just me. I have been dealing with a debilitating neck & back injury that got progressively worse the last 6+ months to the point I had to be bedridden for 4 days just to be able to function again.

I put all the energy I could into this build; it cost about $355 + free pallets and scraps (and the lights I already had… I’m confident this is the reason I’m able to be upright each day.

Also: I added two small pumps for circulation I keep on a timer (so ice doesn’t build up) and have managed to keep it between 32.9 - 34.8 degrees Fahrenheit…

(when fully submerged) I notice an even larger dopamine hit if I keep my palms in the water for 45+ seconds at a time and remove them for 30 seconds at a time (almost dangerous amounts of dopamine I swear). This also seems to make staying in for 4 minutes psychologically easier.

Adding upward of 300 mg of caffein into my system an hour and a half also increases dopamine receptor response.

cheers!

A cold plunge would feel really great here in Texas with triple-digit tempts right now.

Nice build Chris.

Funny story here, although at the time it was scary.  
I heard about this a couple of years ago, tried it, and I was converted!  First showers finishing with cold water, then cold-as-possible showers.  I felt great all around: lees inflamed, more alert, more relaxed, etc!

Jump to April of this year.  I went to Nashville with my husband (business trip), and on the morning we left for home I decided to take a cold shower;  I hadn't taken while we were there.  The water was ice cold.  

About 10 minutes after the shower, I felt an odd feeling in my head and everything snapped into hyper focus.  I remembered I was in Nashville but couldn't remember why.  I knew who I was and who everyone else was,  what I had for dinner the night before, but didn't remember my daughter was in the midst of a divorce.  Absolutely no physical symptoms.  No numbness, tingling, no other signs of stroke, which is what we thought I was having. It passed after 10 minutes.

Went to the Dr. the day after I got home, who asked about what I did that morning before the event and said, "It's probably Transient Global  Amnesia" and sent me to a specialist or two, and after a careful workup, they all agreed .

"Doctors do know that TGA episodes usually have a trigger: a sudden plunge into hot or cold water; extreme physical exertion; a severe emotional jolt; sexual intercourse."

AlthoughTGA is completely benign and 80% of people who experience it never have another event, I've backed off the cold thing, because it was scary.
 
I miss it.

First— Thanks Anne! I’m very happy with it (for being my first build)

Susan Mené wrote:Funny story here, although at the time it was scary.  
I heard about this a couple of years ago, tried it, and I was converted!  First showers finishing with cold water, then cold-as-possible showers.  I felt great all around: lees inflamed, more alert, more relaxed, etc!

Jump to April of this year.  I went to Nashville with my husband (business trip), and on the morning we left for home I decided to take a cold shower;  I hadn't taken while we were there.  The water was ice cold.  

About 10 minutes after the shower, I felt an odd feeling in my head and everything snapped into hyper focus.  I remembered I was in Nashville but couldn't remember why.  I knew who I was and who everyone else was,  what I had for dinner the night before, but didn't remember my daughter was in the midst of a divorce.  Absolutely no physical symptoms.  No numbness, tingling, no other signs of stroke, which is what we thought I was having. It passed after 10 minutes.

Went to the Dr. the day after I got home, who asked about what I did that morning before the event and said, "It's probably Transient Global  Amnesia" and sent me to a specialist or two, and after a careful workup, they all agreed .

"Doctors do know that TGA episodes usually have a trigger: a sudden plunge into hot or cold water; extreme physical exertion; a severe emotional jolt; sexual intercourse."

AlthoughTGA is completely benign and 80% of people who experience it never have another event, I've backed off the cold thing, because it was scary.
 
I miss it.

Susan— “TGA” reminds me of an old quote from “The Social Transformation of American Medicine” by Paul Starr;

The quote is actually from Samuel Thomson; “Many doctors have learned just enough to know how to deceive people, and keep them in ignorance, by covering their doings under a language unknown to their patients.” (p 52)

I am definetly not a doctor, so take this however you like:

What happened is that you had such a massive dopamine dump into your brain/body that in nature your brain went into a supreme fight or flight mode where your capacities were hyper-focused into the present moment.

I have to assume you’re not an adrenaline junkie and you have healthy/standard dopamine experiences in your daily life— to give you an idea, the amount of dopamine that hit you was likely more than if you had taken a large dose of adderall+cocain at the same time (likely close to twice the amount)

Again, not a doctor; but I would really not avoid it if it was helping your health on the daily previously… maybe ease yourself to such a cold over a 3-4 week period so you don’t go into a state of shock again. Either way, I’m glad you’re okay

I definitely LOVE a good immersive warm soak in a hot bath (or hot sauna wet or dry). And such is shown to improve health / circulation.

The Cold plunge therapy also has research with positive effects for mental health and inflammation.

What interesting about the Cold therapy is there are studies that show much of the beneficial
Effects can be gained in as short as 1 min…. And with nothing more than the submersion of your face (for some people)!

I believe the science for the heat is the warmth increasing blood flow so longer or full body heat is more important …. But much of the cold therapy benefits is a hormonal reaction similar to Fight or Flight so it’s more about triggering the cold shock reaction on your brain.


Anyhow, I use the hottub and sauna at the local YMCA … and do cold shower after.

Seems like even at home just going straight from Hot shower to full cold is enough to take my breath away.  It’s been amazing how immediate the benefit to my feelings and mind set are after the cold.

I generally shower at night, but often will splash my face with cold water in the morning for a similar quick effect / alertness.


Anyhow, there are dangers to cold submersion… (hypothermia), and since the metabolic paths for its benefit don’t seem to require submersion 🤷🏼‍♂️ …

And since you can experience the same sort of cold shock from going from a 90 degree shower to a 60 degree shower…. That is much safer.
It takes 2 hours submerged in 60 degree water for hypothermia , but it takes under 5 min in water 40 degree water.

My 20 year nephew died this past spring on a lake that was 45 degrees. He was with his brother trying to fix a jet ski to sale. It died and they drifted from shore. The winds got rough and he fell off. He tried to swim to shore but didn’t last long. His younger brother broke a mirror off the watercraft and rowed to shore. If he had a life jacket , I expect he still would have passed from the cold.

Anyhow, there is sort of a “look how tough I am” mentality in the fad of jumping in icy water. People can do what they want, I just say be safe and aware of the dangers, and if health is your main motivation then there are easier ways to achieve the cold shock reaction.

Saw the posts about breathing too…

So, the cold/hot therapy is something I only got into this past year…

But breathing techniques is something I started probably 6-7 years ago. I hurt my rotator cuff and stopped doing heavy weight lifting. I decided to give yoga a shot. I felt like being big and strong wasn’t useful for me as I got older: I rather be more lean, flexible, and work on my balance.

Anyhow, deep meditative breathing (ujjayi pranayama) is something I still use (even though I don’t do yoga) when my mind is racing and have trouble sleeping.

I’m sure there are online sources that teach it better but here is how I would describe my method:

First, with your mouth closed you have to pull your tongue down and try to create as big as possible space in your mouth . Physiologically, I’m not sure what this does…. But it seems to open up the airway and sinus. I can take much larger breaths through my nose. It also creates a very audible breath while breathing in.
Second, you inhale through your nose as deep as you can.
Third, you exhale very slowly (probably 10+ seconds)

That’s it!  Just concentrating and bringing focus on your breathing! And it does take focus to maintain the mouth position and speed of your breath.

There is also the yoga “savasana” (deadman’s pose) which I believe others describe her already or laying down and trying to be relax and release all the tension from your body and muscles …. Taking a deep breath and then making an audible sigh as you release your breath out your mouth. It’s amazing how just adding the sound to it relieves stress.

What happened is that you had such a massive dopamine dump into your brain/body that in nature your brain went into a supreme fight or flight mode where your capacities were hyper-focused into the present moment.

That's almost word for word how my Dr. explained it to me.

I have to assume you’re not an adrenaline junkie and you have healthy/standard dopamine experiences in your daily life— to give you an idea, the amount of dopamine that hit you was likely more than if you had taken a large dose of adderall+cocain at the same time (likely close to twice the amount)

I think you're right about that.  Although I've been known to do this https://thestrat.com/attractions/skyjump
hike glaciers, zip line, and rock climb on a beginners level, and I'm currently going through severe withdrawal after being a nurse for 34 years, I don't use any drugs or alcohol.  Found out very young that we don't have a good relationship. So my daily dopamine hits are not high.

I must admit to diving into a cold pool several times this summer and loving it.

Well, did something wrong with those quotations, but y'all get the idea.

I do the lazy man's cold plunge and simply hop in the shower immediately after turning it on. Works pretty well until the water heats up!

Thanks all for the reminders.  I had cold shower yesterday.  Was going to do it at night too… had done some very dirty work that day.  Then I decided I needed soap and hot water, and discovered the water heater had gone out, so I had a cool shower.
This morning cold shower again, and I lit the water heater, so I will be on the honor system tonight.

And thanks for the inspiration, especially to Chris Vee for this beautiful creature :

An interesting NPR article.  Some good information that might be useful to people in this thread.  NPR Cold Plung Article

My comment, based on personal experimentation with cold plunges, is listen to your body before the data of what is scientifically proven to be effective for such n such amount of time. Every person is different. Do it within what you feel you are capable of. If you go beyond your limits it could be contraindicated to your health and maybe not. I ended up taking psychotropic medications because of bad choices I made in my life. Thankfully I was able to successfully come off of them but those medications had detrimental effects as well (just like a non-alcoholic or former drug addict after years of using/abuse). The lowest I was able to tolerate was in the low 50's deg. but I still found that it added benefit as opposed to not doing it.
It's also true with regard to diet, you just have to listen to your body before the diet you follow.
Peace

Jon Hanzen wrote:
My comment, based on personal experimentation with cold plunges, is listen to your body before the data of what is scientifically proven to be effective for such n such amount of time. Every person is different. Do it within what you feel you are capable of. If you go beyond your limits it could be contraindicated to your health and maybe not.

I think this comment is definitely true.  This is particularly true since much of the data is lacking.  Most studies that have been done have not had very good controls or have not been repeated as the NPR article indicates.  Most of the data has been gathered by observing healthy strong young men.  That said, there is some good data that can be gleaned from the article that I posted yesterday and from the sources that have been given in this thread.  As Jon Hanzen indicates, you always need to listen to your body, as all people are different.  These sources and data points should be looked at however, in my opinion, so that you can get an idea of what human potential generally is in this regard so that you can set targets to potentially aim for.  

Part of the point of cold plunges, however, is to push yourself into a place of discomfort and find a place mentally, emotionally, and physically that is comfortable in that zone.  This can be overdone, like anything in life, but I don’t think that we should be simply ‘listening to our body’ since our body will naturally resist and reject cold plunges at almost any cold temperature.   We need to get over that to a certain extent.  Part of this process is mind over matter.

Now I have a feeling that that is not what Jon meant by saying listen to your body.  Jon has given this a try and is able to do it, but there is a wall of resistance that he is feeling at a certain temperature and he is not really interested in going beyond because he is not able to be comfortable there.  If Jon is feeling that he can And Will do cold plunges at a certain temperature range but not at another lower temperature, then he should definitely stay in the higher ranges, especially if he is gaining benefit from it.  That is listening to not only the body, but also the rest of his being.  By respecting ourselves, we move forward in healthy ways.