There is a HubermanLab episode where he interviews Susanna Søberg. She’s a professor from Denmark who researches cold exposure during winter swimming.<p>It’s mostly about physiological responses but not only. Link to the publications they talk about are in the shownotes.
<a href="https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/dr-susanna-soberg-how-to-use-cold-and-heat-exposure-to-improve-your-health" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/dr-susanna-soberg-how-to...</a>
There doesn't seem to be any clear signal in the data. Maybe with a higher n than 10 a multimodal distribution might arise. At the very least I'd be interested to know if all the participants had done cold plunges before or if there is a mix of experienced practioners and newcomers in the cohort.
Every cold shower study is fundamentally flawed as it can only be done on healthy individuals. This skews the result. The subconscious selection is often done before the official selection, this makes it really hard to do right.
Cold plunges or cold showers activate that “I accomplished something hard today” side of happiness for me. Hard to start, but once you calm down your brain that’s yelling “no way, we don’t need that” and do it, I come out with an envigorating sense of control over my desires.
Wearing only underwear and socks, I had the opportunity last year to do a guided ice plunge following breathing exercises. One curious piece is we were instructed to keep our hands above the water, supposedly it helps your body something with hypothermia regulation.<p>It was stressful until I put my head under. The experience became amazing, I felt fantastic, and the entire event became a blast. I told everyone I'd start doing it weekly, which of course never happened. But I recommend more people give it a try.<p>A fun side fact for those knowing University of Wisconsin Madison -- the established outdoor activities club is called Hoofer's, but my friend named his ice plunge club "Hoffer's", appropriately named after Wim Hof. Hoofer's gave him a laughably hard time over affront, but he hasn't backed down.
I wonder if any study has been made regarding the diving reflex and 'cold plunges': could the extremely cold water and the following peripheral vasoconstriction lead to a central blood pressure rise to a degree that may be dangerous to the brain?
I have to admit, my response to the study was "BS. Trendy BS."
But then now reading these comments, I think I might need to try a cold shower...
I've recently been getting into cold plunges at the local sauna and it is crazy how energized you feel when you come out from one (especially after sauna.)<p>I now wish I had one at home, it is different from just taking a cold shower imo.
So TLDR - it depends?<p>I had the opportunity to do a cold plunge (twice over two days) recently and I really enjoyed it. I felt "better" for several hours afterward. All my little aches and pains were gone, felt more clearheaded somehow.
One of the latest trends in never ending search for the magical elixirs of health, youth, beauty, wisdom, etc. I have a few thoughts on these things:<p>If any of them would work you would have to see significant results in the real world and not just in papers. Like somebody living 120 years because they always drink antioxidant teas. Or a geographical area where psychological well being is incredible because meditation is a local custom. For saunas and cold baths as well, they are long traditions in some places. What can we observe in those populations that is clearly out of the ordinary? If nothing, then they can't be doing much, can they?<p>We already know elixirs that really boost our "stats". We have PEDs which have very clear effects. You don't need to calculate p-values to see that somebody has 3 times the muscle mass of a normal person or can focus to study uninterrupted for 48 hours after taking some pills. And we already know why the general population doesn't use PEDs on the regular. Because they have serious side effects. Why would you assume that we can find something with significant beneficial effects in one area that would have no drawbacks? It's like putting weights on one side of the scale to push it, but expect nothing to happen on the other side.