Cold showers

[Patrea]

Yes hot is as challenging as cold - it is the stressor that matters. Ideally to the point of pronounced discomfort - not actual pain.
Interesting for me is the mental side too, the challenge each time.

Weight loss is about diet, so I would not expect progress in that area

[shadowfoot]

Patrea,

I agree with you about the mental challenge. I have been taking cold showers almost every day for close to eight months now and I still have to mentally prepare myself every time.

[costello]

I read shadowfoot's post about still having to mentally prepare every day after 8 months of cold showers, and it worried me a little. I wanted to say, though, that I've been taking cold showers every morning for 2 or 3 weeks now and I'm finding it much easier. Occasionally I still hesitate a bit, but most mornings I just jump in there and do it. I guess I don't think about it too hard. That helps. I've also noticed I grab my wash cloth and hold it in front of me as I step under the water. As if that's going to help!   

I don't know if it's getting easier, because I'm adjusting to the cold water more quickly or because I have enough experience now to know the first few seconds are the worst. You just have to wait it out.

[Todd Becker]

I read shadowfoot's post about still having to mentally prepare every day after 8 months of cold showers, and it worried me a little. I wanted to say, though, that I've been taking cold showers every morning for 2 or 3 weeks now and I'm finding it much easier. Occasionally I still hesitate a bit, but most mornings I just jump in there and do it. I guess I don't think about it too hard. That helps. I've also noticed I grab my wash cloth and hold it in front of me as I step under the water. As if that's going to help!  

I don't know if it's getting easier, because I'm adjusting to the cold water more quickly or because I have enough experience now to know the first few seconds are the worst. You just have to wait it out.

Hi Costello,

I'll chip in here that even after more than a year of cold showers, I still hesitate slightly befor stepping in, but I always tell myself to remember how good I always feel by the end of the shower. It's a bit like getting ready to pull off a Band-Aid, but actually better in that there is actually a good feeling after the cold shower, rather than a mere forgetting of the brief Band-Aid pulling pain.  

Now that we're heading into winter, my pre-shower hesitation is more pronounced, especially on cold, dark mornings. Sometimes I ask myself: "Are you sure you want to do this?"  But remarkably the post-shower afterglow and energizing effect is even better than usual!!  I think that is good confirmation of the opponent process theory.  I'd be interested to know if you or anyone else have had a similar reaction.

Todd

[costello]

I'm getting a little more nervous about the showers as colder weather approaches. As I said, I have no furnace and on really cold nights it's likely to get down in the 30's in my house. I assume that means some very cold showers ahead. How cold is too cold?

I've timed my showers at about 4 minutes. This morning I decided to push that a bit and stayed under the water somewhere between 5 and 6 minutes. It really is amazing how the water starts to feel ok as the shower progresses. The first couple of times it happened I thought the water had become warmer, but then I'd turn and hit my ear or hands and realized that it was still as cold as ever. That extra minute this morning was effortless. I was more concerned about wasting water than being too cold.   

[costello]

This morning's shower was 8 or 9 minutes long - forgot to check the time until I'd been under the water a little while. I washed my hair so it took longer. I usually only wash my hair every 5 to 7 days, so I miss out getting my whole head wet daily. I'll probably start washing it more frequently, but I have very long hair, so it's 1) a hassle and 2) hard on the hair to be exposed to soaps more frequently. Getting the whole head wet is definitely more intense.

[Nino]

I've experimented with cold showers twice a day, everyday for the past 2 months and have had some pretty interesting results.

1. My recovery time from intense workouts has shortened significantly. Before I started these showers I was running roughly 25 miles a week. Now I'm at 40 and have had fewer injuries and less muscle soreness than ever before. I've read some articles about cold showers increasing testosterone (which would account for the rapid recovery) but I haven't found any verifiable evidence of this.
       My Strength, size and definition have all increased noticeably as well

2. My body's ability to tolerate cold temperatures has also increased dramatically. Even with winter coming and making the water from my faucet near freezing, I still can stay in for roughly 15 miins before getting cold. Often times I have to chug Ice water prior to a shower to make it more time efficient. (At the beggining of this experiment I was only able to stand 5 minutes tops.)

3. I've noticed a strong increase in the amount of food I can eat without increasing my body fat %. I was already fairly skinny when I started this shower regement, but I've been able to increase my daily caloric intake by about 400 calories. (On top of what my workouts burn)

As someone who is very active, it has been a worthwhile endeavour. I've also noticed improvement in my sleep and energy levels.

On top of the cold showers I also make it a point to chug 500ml-1L of ice water twice a day. I've found that this invokes the same cold shock of a shower while slightly decreasing my apppetite. It also seems that the ritual of chugging ice water twice a day has a pyschological advantage of reminding me that I'm trying to stay in shape, and allows me to stay focused on having a healthy lunch or dinner.
(I usually chug ice water an hour prior to lunch, and an hour prior to dinner)

All in all, I highly reccomend it.

A question I want to pose to this discussion board is whether or not my increased tolerance for cold showers means it's affecting my metabolism less? I haven't physically noticed any differences that would illustrate such, but I'm curious if there's any science out there regarding cold tolerance.

[Todd Becker]

Nino,

These are very interesting findings!

I have a few thoughts in response:

1.  The reduction in muscle soreness and improved recovery could be due to induced testosterone, but it could also be explained by other factors.  One very simple and likely explanation is that cold water reduces inflammation, which is why cold compresses are often used by athletes.  There may be additional effects, and if could be a combination of factors.

2.  I've experienced the same cold tolerance effect that you describe.  The more cold exposure, the greater the tolerance.  There is evidence that cold exposure increases adiponectin levels and stimulates the growth of brown fat (BAT), which helps with thermoregulation and cold tolerance.  [See the earlier discussion in this post]. Other explanatory factors could be neurological adaptation (receptor and neurotransmitter rebalancing) along the lines of the opponent-process theory of emotional/sensory adaptation.  Without controlled experiments, its hard to know the relative importance of these different potential causal explanations.  But we can at least acknowledge that tolerizing adaptation to cold does occur, even if we can't say for sure what drives it.

3.  The ice water chugging idea is something that Tim Ferriss advocates in the Four-Hour-Body.  (Perhaps that inspired you to try it?).  I haven't tried that myself yet -- perhaps I'll try.  I do drink quite a bit of water, either as plain water or in dilute herb teas, but it is generally room temperature, warm or hot.  I'm wondering whether the appetite suppressing effect you experience requires that the water be quickly chugged down -- or whether you could sip it over 5 or 10 minutes and get a similar effect.   I'm a bit hesitant to do a lot of rapid chugging, unless that is important.

Thanks,

Todd

[Nino]

Thanks Todd,

I assumed that it was probably a mixture of factors from the cold showers that contributed to a reduction in my recovery time.

I did learn about ice water chugging from the 4 Hour Body, since I drink a lot of water throughout the day as well, I figured I'd experiment with only drinking ice water.

To expand on my experience so far, ice water chugging has induced the same cold feeling as cold showers (without the necessity of getting in a shower) If I chug 500ml-1L of Ice water while I'm sitting at my desk at work, after 3-5 mins I'll start to shiver and the same refreshing cold feeling I get from showers will last anywhere from 20-90mins.

However I believe ice water chugging  is less effective than cold showers in some cases becuase if you're body temperature is even slightly warmer than normal (whether from physical exertion or being in a warm enviroment) it's much more difficult to induce shivering. The room temperature at my office is roughly 68-70F so its pretty cool.

For maximum cold effect, I recommend chugging as quickly as possible. As far as supressing your appetite, I've found slowly sipping ice water just effective as chugging it.  (I also reccomend not chugging ice water after large meals and only after smaller ones. The simple reason is that with all that food in your stomach you'll feel like a blimp after drinking all that water.)