We must undergo a hard winter training and not rush into things for which we haven't prepared.
I was in my bed. It was warm. It was comfortable. I didn’t see how having a cold shower was going to make existence better.
Unfortunately for my comfort, I’d been watching Wim Hof climbing Mount Everest in his pants. He was explaining the benefits of cold showers, and I wondered if you should argue with a naked man at 29-thousand feet.
“Cold water reduces stress and anxiety,” he said from his snowy peak. “It improves alertness, productivity, concentration and creativity.”
Part of me (the warm part) was mesmerised by the willpower which coursed through Wim Hof’s highly functioning immune system like some kind of otherworldly power supply. The other half (also warm) thought, fuck Wim Hoff.
Yet, the more I watched, the more I fell under his spell. The more I wanted to discover the health benefits of cold showers for myself. Wim Hof was like some kind of cold water therapy PR machine.
How does cold water accelerate healing?
Cold water accelerates healing by constricting blood vessels; when you warm up after a cold shower your blood vessels re-open, forcing out toxins and post-exercise lactic acid.
Just ask Cristiano Ronaldo. He piles ice-cubes on his chiselled torso and tells the world about it on Instagram. Or Lady Gaga, who takes an ice-bath everyday. She claims it helps manage the chronic pain, fatigue and poor sleep she has because of her fibromyalgia condition.
Cold water therapy was everywhere; dopamine hi-jacks and endocrine systems, immune systems and water systems. Minus 6 was the perfect temperature. The ideal environment for improved health and mental agility.
Don’t melt the polar ice-caps, they’re our only hope of mental and physical well-being.
If the world’s best athletes, singers and businessmen were using cold showers to bio-hack their existence; and if there was an inspirational half-naked Dutch man at the top of the world’s highest mountain telling me to take cold showers, how could I disagree? How could Apocalypse Daddy not start taking cold showers as part of my morning routine?
The idea of a cold shower is horrendous.
So here we are. Is cold water the biggest wellness and productivity hack of 2023? And if it is, what are the benefits of cold showers everyone is tapping into? How do you build the habit into your day? How cold does a cold shower need to be? It there science to back up the claims of the cold shower health and mindset panacea?
It was time to dig deeper.
And get colder.
I turned the tap to blue, thought about all the money I would be saving on electricity by eviscerating hot water from my life, and went in search of cold water.
Do cold showers increase energy and levels of alertness?
Cold showers are often described as ‘electrifying’. Mostly by those who haven’t been electrocuted.
This almost universal description is due to the cold receptors in our skin. There are heat receptors too, but they are deeper within the tissue (dermis). Cold receptors are near the surface (epidermis – from the Latin ‘epi‘, meaning over or above – epilogue, epicentre, episode, epitaph), waiting for any lapse in concentration, or winter. Or a cold shower.
When cold water meets your epidermis, your body goes ape-shit, dancing between the pleasure-pain threshold. All of those ‘cold receptors’ sing in unison, sending electrical signals streaming and screaming to your brain. Your pre-frontal cortex responds with its own version of the Ride of the Valkyries. The upshot is increased levels of alertness and energy.
Do cold showers reduce stress?
Stress is a feeling of physical or emotional distress: tension where there should be de-contraction; your body unable to cope with the physical or mental duress it is being put under.
The right stress at the right time raises your game. The flip-side of the productivity coin is chronic stress. It’s a killer and a lot of people suffer from it.
One of the principal benefits of cold showers is reduced stress.
I have my own theory on why. Cold showers free your mind. Racing thoughts slow down. Your focus moves, temporarily, from your life’s woes. You can’t worry about your bank balance, ex, future, past, family or illness when your head is being frozen by a three-degree jack-hammer.
The day-to-day compounding of this reduction in stress that cold showers can give you allows your subconscious mind to re-evaluate the causes of your stress. A cold shower feedback cycle working in your favour.
As far as the benefits of cold showers go, lowering stress has to be the one with the highest ROI.
“The more often you take cold showers and the more accustomed you get to that initial shock, the more you begin to crave the sensation."
Do cold showers reduce depression?
Even cold water gets murky. The reality is that conclusive proof not available on whether cold showers can reduce depression. There are many theories and cited studies which are inconclusive or use statistically insignificant numbers of people. Sometimes studies are carried out on people with no diagnosed depression.
...depression may be caused by the convergence of two factors: (A) A lifestyle that lacks certain physiological stressors that have been experienced by primates through millions of years of evolution, such as brief changes in body temperature (e.g. cold swim), and this lack of “thermal exercise” may cause inadequate functioning of the brain.
That quote, from this paper, points to a lack of physiological stressors as a possible cause of depression. Taking a cold shower certainly places mild stress on the body. Whether it is enough to thwart the unforgiving hands of evolution is another matter.
Curiously, the same cold receptors which play havoc with your energy levels, could play a role in reducing depression.
Due to the high density of cold receptors in the skin, a cold shower is expected to send an overwhelming amount of electrical impulses from peripheral nerve endings to the brain, which could result in an anti-depressive effect.
That’s from the same study by Nikolai A Shevchuk, available to view on the National Library of Medicine. He goes on to say,
Exposure to cold is known to activate the sympathetic nervous system and increase the blood level of beta-endorphin and noradrenaline and to increase synaptic release of noradrenaline in the brain as well.
The science is still out to lunch on this benefit of a cold shower, but the needle is tilting in your favour.
Do cold showers increase willpower?
David Goggins, Tony Robbins, Mark Manson, Brian Tracy. Every TED video on wellness and personal development. Half of the active accounts on Instagram. Every life coach in the universe. They all have one thing in common: they have said, ‘be comfortable being uncomfortable if you want to be better at life.’ Or words to that effect.
Telling people to be comfortable being uncomfortable is a billion dollar business. Highlighting your lack of willpower, an almost priceless commodity.
You like comfort. We all like comfort. It’s an evolutionary end-game and we are sitting at the helm of the goddamn sofa, a million cushions to soften every blow. Living a life of comfort shackles your willpower.
Faced with a decision between fast food or vegetables, water or another beer, exercise or binge watching Prison Break, you crack. Getting under a cold shower every morning re-wires your evolution; it takes your desire for comfort and sends it cartwheeling back to the Galapagos.
My favourite benefit of a cold shower skips every personal growth book from the last two decades.
Taking a cold shower forces you to be comfortable being uncomfortable.
Do cold showers increase your willpower?
Yes.
I just saved you 4-thousand dollars.
Do cold showers give you a better immune system?
Vitamin E, sleep, diet and exercise. Covid-19 has taught us about the importance of physical health and a good immune system. Number three in the benefits of cold showers is a timely boost to your internal protection processes.
Before explaining how cold showers boost the efficiency of your immune system, it’s worth an exploration into your immune system itself. And more specifically, white blood cells.
Unlike red blood cells which transport oxygen to your organs, white blood cells are the first line of attack against infections, disease and foreign bodies. They are the Michael Jordan of your immune system.
White blood cells are produced in the hematopoietic stem cells – these cells can also produce red blood cells and platelets, depending, one assumes, how they are feeling on the day – of bone marrow.
Yep, your body is fucking awesome.
You’re probably wondering how a cold shower can increase the production of white blood cells, and you’d be right to wonder. It was hard to pinpoint the answer to this. Most articles on the benefits of cold showers come up short on the why.
Digging deeper, research by Britain’s Thrombosis Research Institute suggested that it is down to the warming process your body goes through after a cold shower. As your body re-adjusts to room temperature it ‘activates’ your immune system by speeding up the metabolic rate.*
So many in the world today are consumed with artificial desires. We grasp at imaginary straws. We work harder and harder and stress ourselves out to achieve more and more, but to what end?
How do cold showers lower inflammation?
Cold showers lower inflammation. If you want to stay alive, that is good news. Chronic inflammatory diseases are responsible for over 50% of global deaths. It’s a shopping list of all the things you don’t want in your life: cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, kidney disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and autoimmune and neurodegenerative disorders.
The causes of inflammation are mostly man-made: physical inactivity, poor diet, environmental toxins and psychological stress.
And we are back in the land of viscous cycles and compounding ladies and gentlemen. You eat badly, do less exercise, sleep less, eat even more crap, get stressed, sleep deteriorates to fractured nightmares and uncomfortable insomnia… you know the drill.
Just as a collection of lifestyle choices leads to inflammation, so a series of lifestyle changes can get you out of your self-made mess. Whether taking a cold shower lowers your inflammation levels all by itself is neither here nor there. It increases willpower, and as we know, willpower and a diet laden with processed food and too much alcohol are diametrically opposed.
Less processed food = less inflammation. Cold showers help you sleep. More sleep = lower levels of inflammation.
The benefits of cold showers infiltrate other parts of your life. It is more than the sum of its parts. It is this bleed through which makes it such an enticing addition to your daily routine. It’s the physical and mental health hack of 2023.
Do cold showers increase productivity and concentration?
If you’re looking for work and productivity benefits of a cold shower then you’re in luck. As I have already said, taking a cold shower every morning forces you to do something you don’t want to do. But what has that got to do with productivity Apocalypse Daddy?
Here’s a thought experiment. Two people sit in an office about to start work. They are identical in every way. They are creative, ambitious, talented, educated. But only one is remotely productive. Only one has appeared on the front cover of the Harvard Business Review. The BBC is only stalking one of them. Which one? The one who knows how to deal with distraction.
Distraction is the single biggest productivity fuck up ever.
Resisting distraction is a mixture of willpower and habit.
Ah willpower. My old friend. As we have ascertained, having a cold shower every morning increases your willpower. Increased willpower allows you to resist the temptation of notifications. It gives you the strength to put your goddamn phone in a box and forget about it whilst you work. That my friend, is increased productivity. Combine it with the Pomodoro technique and you will be unstoppable.
Habit is the other pillar of productivity and distraction removal. It’s hard to create Atomic habits. One of the benefits of a cold shower every day is an increased ability to create and stick to new habits. You then use this skill to put more productivity habits into your working day: time management, breathing exercises, exercise etc…
CLEARER, BETTER CONDITIONED SKIN
Getting under that cold shower will make you better looking. You don’t need Nivea to make your skin glow.
You know those cold receptors I mentioned? They are at play again here. Cold water increases blood flow to the epidermis, flooding the outer layers of the skin with youth giving blood. This flow of blood causes the pores to tighten up, giving your skin that ‘just from the plastic surgeon clinic’ feel, without the ugly side-effects.
Closed pores can’t produce all that oil which makes your face and skin look shiny.
Ditch the skin cream. Stop using hot water. Look younger. Look healthier. Feel better. Turn heads. You’re a walking, talking L’Oréal advert.
Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day. Unless you have a cold shower.
HOW TO TAKE A COLD SHOWER
Do you remember back at the beginning of this I said I was up at 6 a.m. to study the benefits of a cold shower? I learned a lot that morning. My mind was made up.
The next day, as the sun rose above the hazy dawn sky and my children slept the deepest of sleeps, I rolled out of bed, my eyes barely able to focus, my energy levels fluctuating between catatonic and suspended animation. I sleep walked into the bathroom and got under a cold shower. I didn’t think. I Just did it. I didn’t dwell. I just turned on the cold water.
And that is what you must do. If you take the decision to experience the benefits of a cold shower yourself then the hardest part is day one and day two. It’s so much easier to not stand under the cold water. It’s so much easier to have a warm, relaxing… comfortable shower.
That is the whole point. The most powerful benefit of a cold shower is action. Action over thoughts. Pushing yourself to go beyond your comfort zone. Choosing short term discomfort over long-term pain.
One moment I was scarcely conscious, the next my body erupted in a frenzy of activity and sensation I hadn’t experienced before.
I’d never felt so… awake.
Three minutes later I stood – goose bumps on my skin – as my brain tried to get its head around what the hell it had just done to my body. Voluntarily.
My skin was radiating, my mind functioning on a level worthy of NASA. I wanted to run. Instead I went to the kitchen, made a coffee and sat in quiet, wondrous shock. I’d just had a cold shower and I already wanted another one.
THE BENEFITS OF A COLD SHOWER: FINAL THOUGHTS
Of course taking a cold shower is not going to make your life instantly better. You won’t wake up one morning, stand under water at 5 degrees and suddenly be richer and happier and more productive and healthier. But what you will be doing is taking a decision which will have long term positive effects in other parts of your life.
You will have more energy and be in a better mood. This will make you more focused. This focus will lead to more productivity. This productivity will make you happier. You will eat better and do more exercise. This will give you motivation to repeat the habits. And so it goes. A flywheel of positive, productive, healthier habits.
And you will save money on your electricity bill. So you can go on a nice holiday. To the Caribbean, for example. Where the sky is blue and the sea is… warm.