Do you know how hot or cold your showers are? And that they could be impacting your resilience to stress? Here’s my little experiment and initial results.
I’ve heard for quite some time about the amazing benefits of ice baths. They reduce inflammation, speed up recovery, boost the immune system, and even turn white fat cells to brown. (Brown fat, it turns out, is the good kind. I thought ice cream was the good kind…)
Yet, it never occured to me to try one, because I hate feeling cold.
Hate it.
Yet, a random rabbithole dive on social media led me to a thread where a bunch of women swore by cold therapy. They reported better hair and skin, and what caught my attention – more energy, and improved mood. One women said, “Cold showers saved my life!”
Interesting!
Turns out they didn’t take ice baths (brrr….) In fact, they took normal hot showers. What they did, is turn down the heat at the end of the shower for a couple of minutes. They did this gradually. Over some days or weeks, they increased the duration and reduced water temperature. Start small, and stick to it.
Some useful tips:
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Don’t let your breath get shallow as a response to the cold. Continue breathing deeply.
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If it helps, shout or sing to loosen the breath.
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Jumping around or dancing (don’t slip!) also make the cold more manageable.
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Do this only in the morning, because it will wake you up!
The effort sounded modest enough for me to try it. I was also interested in how cold I could go.
I know that most people turn their faucet to the coldest setting and that’s it. But we have a water heater that displays the temprature. My oldest kid likes a toasty 42C/108F, my youngest a chill 36C/97F. I’m somewhere in the middle, prefering 38.5C/101F.
On Day 1, I could stand 34C/93F for about 20 seconds. By Day 4, I was doing 32C/90F for about a minute! Our water goes as low as 24C/75C, but I’m far from going that cold. Still, the effects were so cool (pun!) that I wanted to write.
If you want to try this, be ready for some suffering at first. The tips about breathing deeply and jumping around are solid! Do them! Cursing is also helpful, if you’re into it. 😉
Also, the thread recommnded the Wim Hof breathing method. I haven’t tried it, the benefits of just breathing deeply under the water were good enough.
I had two neat discoveries:
- If you have long/ish hair and you’ve just washed it, then it will “hold” warm water. Running the cold water on the top of your head will actually make the warmer water heat up your body for a while. It’s a gradual transition that feels nice.
- Getting out of the shower is much easier since you’re already cold. Once I’ve dried myself off completely, I felt much warmer than after a warm shower! This was a nice surprise.
To sum up…
Haven’t noticed any massive improvements to my hair or skin yet, but the change in energy level following the shower was dramatic. I had a good week in other aspects, so I’m not sure whether it affected my mood or not, but I’ll keep tracking and report back.
All in all, this looks like a great new habit that is easy to incorporate with excellent benefits.
If you decide to check it out or have previous experience with cold showers, ice baths or cold therapy – do share! Hit reply or comment.
I’m also offering a few FREE coaching calls. Sign up here to chat about how to reduce stress beyond the shower… 🙂
PS – My new article was just posted on Medium. It discusses how women leaders in the online world are creating a sub-economy that empowers other women, like never before. Check it out, and if you like it, please share or clap! (You can clap 50 times…) Thank you!!
Photo credit: Seth Doyle on Unsplash
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