The energy crisis of the last year made me reflect on how I consume energy, mainly ‘harmful’ energy like gas. My appartment is heated using gas and due to the insane prices of the past year, I too lowered my heating. I spent a big part of december with the heating turned off but once it got to 8 degrees Celsius in my appartment I figured that I should turn on the heating. It was set to 13-15 degrees Celsius throughout the winter. It made me realize that I don’t mind living in these temperatures. With a sweater on and underneath a blanket, it was actually quite comfortable. I also slept better in these temperatures than winters with the heating on.
So now that it’s getting warmer again, I felt like I might as well have cold showers. To save on gas (note: it’s not like I’m living in extreme poverty or anything, I just like finding ways to consume less), but also to see if the claimed health benefits are true. People like Wim Hof made a fortune selling books and courses on how to make your body adapt to cold temperatures and ice baths, making sometimes outrageous claims about its health benefits.
While I do know there are studies on the topic, I am also curious to see if you guys have any experiences taking cold showers and what effects it had for you.
I live in an area where daytime temperature can reach 40 degree. Cold shower is a necessity.
My family in the Philippines uses a tabo and bucket - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabo_(hygiene) - it takes a bit of practice but you fet used to it. A handy way to conserve water. They leave a garden hose coiled out in the sun with water in it, and if they want warm water they just turn the faucet on for rhe hose and push all the sun-heated water into the bucket.
As for plain old cold showers, I can’t stand them but I do think they’re healthy. The colder it is, the more calories your body has to burn to raise your body temp back up.
There’s supposedly some health benefits to cold showers and I have a friend that exclusively takes cold showers.
I, however, take hot showers. It’s like, one of the few very relaxing things I do every day and I refuse to suffer with a cold shower. Maybe not the best reasoning but I honestly don’t care. I shower in the evenings and I want a hot, relaxing shower right before I end my day and get ready for bed.
Fair enough, nothing wrong with hot showers.
I don’t like them very much because I have very little good memories associated with cold and cold showers. But it is necessary at times, I suppose.
I used to take cold showers in the summers before (I live in India) but this year I’m opting for hot showers because it helps clean up the mucous congestion which has plagued me since I caught a cold earlier this year.
Do you nasal rinse? I live in an area with some of the worst natural air quality in the US. It’s very hot and humid and thus our air is full of mold and all kinds of other shit. It turns your mucus into half dry paste and it’s awful the crap that just gets in there and never leaves. Like it someone is both super humid and gross yet causes you sinuses to be cruddy and dry at the same time. Like it’s impressive how it can be SO awful in every way… So I started nasal rinsing every couple days and it’s like, 1000 times better. I can’t even explain how nice it feels to run a quart of hot saline water through your nose and watch all the crud and shit come out. Then my sinuses just feel clean and hydrated for the next few days.
So yeah, I would suggest trying that out if you don’t already. Total game changer for me and I don’t even have seasonal allergies. I have a friend that does this every single day because he’s allergic to basically everything and just couldn’t breath otherwise.
No but I’ll check it out. Hadn’t considered it before. Thanks.
Most likely the persistent cough that probably happened to you as well, since Omicron and viral flu did that to me this winter. Or is it something else?
I don’t have a cough. Just stuffy nose.
I pretty much always take cold showers in the summer. Not like ice cold, but nice and cool I find refreshing especially mid day. No chance that I’m getting into a cold shower at 6am in the winter when it’s pitch black and -35 C outside tho
Yeah I figured that I would take warmer showers again in the winter
Yeah cool showers in the summer lower your skin temperature. I like to progressively lower the temperature of the shower until it gets very very cold.
I sometimes lower the temperature after the gym too year-round, for the same reason.
I do the same… By the end, I usually speed up trying to get out faster because it’s cold lol.
I think some of the health benefits of cold showers don’t require you to stay cold for too long.
Same for me. After the gym, shower as usual, then slowly turn off the hot water and stand in the cold water for as long as possible, with the water aimed directly at the day’s muscle group. I find that my legs, especially, get red hot for hours after training them. A cold shower definitely helps to stay cool and comfortable afterwards. Seems to help recovery, too, although this may be anecdotal.
An actual cold shower is horrific, but I can stand cold water on one or two body parts for a surprisingly long time. (Still only talking a minute or two, but I couldn’t stand 20 seconds under cold water unless it’s 30°+ outside.)
I’m not even doing it for any health benefits haha, it’s just that my skin gets really hot after the gym or in summer and it helps bring the temp down. I don’t even feel the water as being cold if I bring it down gradually. Then I get out of the shower and the air feels much crisper than before when it was suffocating.
They trigger some part of my lizard brain to go into fight or flight mode
That’s supposed to be the thing according to some of these so called experts. If you do this, you put yourself in a stress situation and by staying calm you can condition yourself to be more calm in general.
They’re decent, but I think the benefits are overhyped by right leaning cranks. It is true that it easy to get ‘addicted’ to the comforts that electric heat can bring. I’ve watched winter survivalist shows where the guy survived without using a fire until the deepest cold of winter, and one can train onself to adapt but the unpleasantness imo isn’t always worth the trade off.
It’s sort of a balance you can find for yourself I guess. I don’t see the point in sitting in an 8 degree Celsius room just for shits and giggles or to show how manly I’m supposed to be. But after last winter I’ve found out that the standard 18-20 degree rooms make me feel uncomfortable as well.
Many health things, including fitness, seem to be taken over by right wing weirdos sadly.
I’ve taken cold showers almost every day for the past 3 and a half years. I highly recommend if you can get into the habit. When you get out, it feels like when you come in from cold rain and put on dry clothes that have been on the heater. And it’s sort of like a factory reset on your body; I feel all the lethargy and aches go away.
It’s hard to convince yourself to go in, but when you do it a few times, your body kind of figures out it’s a good thing and it’s not as difficult. These days, I can get in and immediately turn the cold water on myself, and it’s always a little shocking, but not too bad. I usually don’t need to ease myself into it. I do live in a subtropical climate though.
Wim Hof has some pretty impressive feats when it comes to handling cold weather. I don’t really follow him, but if he can handle extremely cold temperatures, he probably has interesting things to say. I like his breathing technique, but I don’t use it all that often. It feels like meditation for me in the sense that it has great benefits for me, but I don’t need to do it often.
Edit: Cold temperature, like exercise, releases endorphins which are a natural pain reliever. Hot temperature suppresses endorphins. But your body can get acclimated to some level of endorphins so it’s actually not a bad thing to take a hot shower every once in a while.
Very based in winters if you can do it. In winters I try to keep water as cold as 16°C, where outside temperature is 12-15°C. As an Indian, being a tropical country, cold showers are harder than me than for Westerners in Northern Hemisphere, for example. This makes it even more beneficial for me, and for those living in tropical or equatorial countries.
Last winters that went by, I could not keep the water as cold (22°C) compared to the past 4 years before it, most likely due to contracting Omicron twice that affected my great immunity against cold weather. However I developed it back again, by discovering my love for soup and noodles in winters. I purposely avoided medication for the most part, and relied heavily on soups, warm milk and noodles to let my body fight by itself.
Cold showers have insane effects, and I learnt it from NoFap (one of the only good advices there) when I was in that community 6-7 years ago. It is no pseudoscience, and cold showers really make you superhuman-like.
I have the curliest hair, I do my hair stuff in cold water because it reduces frizzing and then warm it up for my body washing.
