This is another story. Everyone that I tell about this looks at me like I just lost the special olympics.
For the past several weeks, I've been taking frigidly cold showers.
I know, I know. I'm out of my mind. But just listen to what the studies have to say about it.
Cold showers (specifically cold water immersions, but who the fuck is going to just dunk themselves in cold water? showers make it millions of times easier) have been statistically proven to:
- improve the immune system (children in other counties, specifically Sweden and Siberia, that are exposed to the cold purposefully, usually by some ritual, are considerably more likely to pass healthily through cold or flu season without getting sick than a kid that did not participate)
- improves blood circulation (cold water immersions force your body to flow blood to the vital organs, which improves the circulation over time)
- improves thermogenesis (body heat production and temperature regulation improve considerably after using cold water immersions for a period of time)
- mood health (due to the large amount of temperature receptors in the skin, a cold water immersion sends a HUGE bunch of electrical impulses to the brain, which results in an anti-depressive effect)
- improve skin and hair (the cold water immersion shrinks pores in the skin, keeping it looking healthy and feeling smooth; it also doesn't dry out your hair the way hot water does; its been shown to make hair shinier as well)
- improve hormone balance (cold water baths correlate with high testosterone; you know how I feel about this)
- improve sexual health/fertility (those same hormones that improve keep your sexual bits functioning better; guys who take cold showers have a higher sperm count on average)
- improve energy levels (the many cold receptors in the skin all responding to the temperature change at once causes many of the body functions to move faster than normal, including heartbeat, which speeds you up a little bit)
- improves lymphatic movement (helps your body clean out your cells better)
- decreases inflammation (alleviates DOMS by constricting the veins throughout the body and removing toxins from the blood; this can lead to a superior pace of reparation of muscles and tendons after exercise)
- improve breathing (cold water immersions naturally open up the lungs to bring in more oxygen)
- improve sleep (the relaxed feeling after getting out of the cold shower, and also the improved thermogenesis cause a deeper and more restful sleep)
- improve stress tolerance (gives the body a higher tolerance for stress which over time leads to a strengthening of the body and hardening of the immune system)
- improves metabolism (here is the BIG ONE, speeds up the metabolism which directly improves fat burn and muscle production; HOOOAAAAH)
- also: reduces chronic pain and back aches, improves kidney function, regulates the nervous system AND helps fight fatigue.
That's quite a mouthful. If there was a pill that could do all of that, any person would take it. So why not cold showers then?
Because they're fucking cold.
Don't worry. You start to get used to it around the 3rd or 4th shower.
Also, just a sidenote, a quick cold shower a day will do no harm to you whatsoever, but some statistics show that prolonged exposure to cold water (several hours a day, like that's going to happen) will cause the body to store excess fat to warm itself, kind of like the same reason so many long distance runners have so little muscle and so much fat. But taking normal length showers (5-15 minutes a day) will not cause this to happen.
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