Health Benefits of Cold Immersion
If you follow our Instagram, you know that we just installed a Cold Plunge or cold immersion tub in our Sewickley location. To many, the idea of wading into a cold bath can send chills up and down the spine. To others, a certain amount of curiosity.
The reality of it is we couldn’t help ourselves. We have been experimenting with cold immersion ourselves for about a year, and through our own practice as well as a number of well back scientific studies, there are a tremendous amount of health benefits that come from a regular cold exposure practice. Some are almost unbelievable, to be honest, but again have been proven by science.
So, let’s wade into this one starting with the benefits of cold exposure…
Energy & Mood
As noted in a report by Dr. Rhonda Patrick, plunging into cold water triggers the production of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine, a critical chemical in the body that helps regulate attention, focus, and energy! A daily cold plunge can help increase your levels of norepinephrine, simultaneously increasing your energy.
The colder the water and/or the longer the exposure, the more dramatic the increase in norepinephrine and dopamine. Studies have shown a 540% increase in norepinephrine a 300% increase in dopamine.
If you’re unfamiliar, dopamine is the chemical in our brains that makes us feel motivation, pleasure, and overall contentment and well being.
Physical Recovery
Have you ever experienced muscle soreness? Yeah, we’ve been there too. Cold water has been used for years to effectively mitigate DOMS, or delayed onset muscle soreness that comes from training.
As an example, I just started running again. Now, keep in mind, a mile for me is plenty at a bodyweight of 230lbs. So, to avoid that heavy leg soreness that I would normally experience for days, I finished my run and jumped right into the cold plunge. I was able to run a mile for 3 consecutive days with no soreness after not running since last fall. Pretty cool stuff, pun intended.
Weight Loss
This one is pretty wild, so strap in. We came from the fitness community that had some bad actors toting weight loss claims left and right with no substantiated evidence. So we really dug into this one to understand if cold immersion can really help people lose weight.
It turns out, it can, really effectively in fact. One study showed…
Young men were immersed up to their necks in cold water of various temperatures – 32°C (89° F), 20℃ (68°F), and 14°C (57°F) – for one hour. Afterwards, various biomarkers were measured.
The results? Under the cold conditions, the young men’s resting metabolism increased by 93% in the 68°F water and 350% in the 57°F water. Under the warm condition, though, no metabolic change was observed.
One hour can be a long time, but other studies have shown similar or better results with colder water and shorter exposure times. How? The important mechanism here is shivering…
Shivering thermogenesis is one way your body maintains its core temperature in frigid environments. Shivering generates heat (that’s the thermogenesis part), and this increase in heat means a boost to your metabolism. Although shivering thermogenesis accounts for some of the metabolic benefits of cold exposure, the more lasting benefits come from another adaptive mechanism: non-shivering thermogenesis.
What is non-shivering thermogenesis? This is where the body gets really amazing. If you are not aware, our bodies have white fat, beige fat, and brown fat. We’ll touch on the details in a follow up blog, but the short of it is
Brown fat has mitochondria in it and when your body gets really cold, it activates this brown fat by burning fat and sugar to keep your body warm. There are some really cool facts about brown fat, how your body loses it over time, can create it through cold exposure, and why baby’s don’t shiver. But this one is so good, we’ll save all the details for later.
Just know that cold exposure forces your body to increase it’s metabolism to stay warm through shivering. And additionally creates longer lasting increases in metabolism through the activation of brown fat.
Immune System Resilience
Finally, jumping into some frigid water activates your sympathetic nervous system - fight or flight. We know through other studies that acute activation of fight or flight creates a more robust response over time, allowing you to fight off foreign bodies that may enter your system. In the same that going to the gym builds muscle, jumping into cold water builds a stronger immune response.
We realize in retrospect that this was a lot to digest. So we’d like to follow this blog with a “How to Cold Plunge” as well as some follow up on the weight loss claims of cold immersion. Stay tuned!
