Are Cold Showers Good For You:- If you follow any productivity gurus, Then you’ve probably heard how you would like to require cold showers within the morning. After all, Not only can they wake you right up, but you’re also promised a myriad of health benefits and everybody loves an honest healthy life hack.
But whether these claims are true is still kind of a gray area. Also, I have to say, as someone who grew up in Florida and now lives in Montana, a cold shower is different depending on where you live. So before you jump in that agonizingly cold shower, let’s look at some research..
Most health claims are implied from studies of cryotherapy using cold water or air to treat a condition or from things like people who repeatedly go swimming in cold water. But cryotherapy is carefully controlled, and those swimmers often stay in the water for over an hour, So it’s hard to apply this to your quick rinse before work.
Still, that doesn’t mean there’s zero evidence for cold showers, because there is. It’s just not very strong. Like, take the claim people to make that those showers improve your immune system.
Are Cold Showers Good For You?
Since ancient times as far back as the day of Hippocrates the father of Medicine people have taken cold baths and beliefs that could both treat serious illness and maintain one’s good health.
In a 2016 study conducted by a team of Dutch researchers, a group of approximately 2,800 people was split into four groups, three of which were asked to take either a 30 60 or 90 second cold shower every day for a month.
While the last group avoided cold showers entirely and served as the control group for this experiment. Nearly 80% of the participants completed the study and amazingly 2/3 of that group continued to take cold showers after the 30-day commitment had ended.
outcome assessments revealed that those in the experimental groups experienced an increase in their quality of life.
as well as a 29% reduction in sick days taken from work that researchers didn’t observe in the control group.
some participants even noted that cold showers increase their energy like consuming a caffeinated beverage.
Of note, the results were consistent across all three groups suggesting that a 30-second cold shower was just as beneficial or effective as a 60 or 90-second cold shower was.
presently the authors of the study can only speculate on why the study participants benefited from the cold showers.
- some possible explanations include the shivering induced by cold showers increased hormones in the body that can affect the immune system thus preventing us from getting sick.
- Cold exposure creates some type of neurologic benefit.
- the participants the effect among the participants was psychological as they had volunteered for a study about how cold showers might improve their health.
- The researchers even speculate that routine cold showers may affect the body in the same manner as engaging in regular physical activity. thus improving the participant’s fitness levels. they concluded in the present trial reduction of sickness absence of a routine cold shower 29 percent less miss time from work was compared to the effect of regular physical activity where those people miss work 35% less frequently. Of course, more research is necessary to under law to understand why frequent cold exposure has been historically observed as having health benefits.
Benefits Of Hot And Cold Showers
In 2016, a study published in PLOS One wanted to see if taking a quick cold shower in the morning would reduce the number of sick days someone took from work.
For 30 straight days, more than 2300 subjects took either a warm shower, or a warm shower that turned cold for 30, 60, or 90 seconds in the end. On average, subjects in all three of the cold shower groups called into work 29% less than the warm shower group roughly the same as one less sick day per month. But we don’t know why since the research team didn’t measure any biological markers.
Many of the participants did say they felt an increase in energy and continued taking the cold showers after the experiment, but that’s not enough to close the case. It’s possible that their white blood cell count increased like what’s been shown to happen with cold water swimmers. But again, a 90-second rinse is a lot different from an hour in the water. Many people also swear that cold showers can boost mood.
Lukewarm Shower Meaning, Benefits, And Many More
But the results there are maybe even weaker. A 2008 study in Medical Hypothesis gets referenced a lot as evidence for cold showers as an antidepressant, but it’s not all that convincing. They hypothesized that cold water would activate your sympathetic nervous system the system that does things like increase your heart rate and stimulate the release of endorphins which would elevate your mood. But it only had three data points, one of which was the author of the paper, and none of them had symptoms that would diagnose them with depression.
Plus, the biological markers they expected to vary were never actually measured, so really we don’t have any results to travel off of. To be fair, the author did mention all that within the paper. But alas, the blogosphere still holds onto that antidepressant claim even though the article wasn’t that powerful. The thing here is, you can’t placebo a cold shower: you know if you’re getting one. So it seems like cold showers get a lot more credit than they deserve based on the evidence that exists.
