Here is something even stranger, particularly if you live in the cold regions of Australia such as New South Wales or Victoria…our bodies love cold water. Brrrrrrr!! How so?
A cold water shower or a chilling ice bath has numerous health benefits. According to Ned Brophy, a sports scientist who advocates cold water therapy, immersion in cold water changes blood flow direction “from the peripheral to deep blood vessels, thereby limiting inflammation and swelling and improving venous return (the amount of blood returning to the heart).” With improved venous return, a person’s "metabolites and waste products built up during exercise can be efficiently removed by the body and nutrients quickly replenished to fatigued muscles.” In other words, cold water helps the body improve its detoxification process. A little aside: the famous actress, Katharine Hepburn, was quite the advocate of such hydrotherapy.
Because cold water helps the body detoxify itself, it can beef up your immunity and improve blood circulation. Cold water can be shock, especially early in the morning but that is what makes it therapy. As cold water hits your body, it shocks it into breathing deeply and jumpstarting your heart to rapid pumps. This causes one to take in more oxygen to feed muscles and tissues via better blood flow. The benefits accrue to lower blood pressure, better cardiovascular health, ramped up energy, and improved sense of well-being.
As the bonds of the body and brain are closely linked, better physical health oftentimes translates to better mental health as well. If cold showers and baths can do wonders for the body, these can do good for the mind, too.
Cold Showers Lower Depression
Ice cold baths and showers jolt the skin receptors which transmit an intense volume of electrical impulses from the skin’s nerves to the brain, driving it to produce beta-endorphins and noradrenaline. Beta-endorphins are pain suppressors. Noradrenaline or nor epinephrine is a feel-good neurotransmitter much like dopamine and serotonin as it lifts moods and has an antidepressive effect. In fact, noradrenaline is present in several antidepressant drugs. Cold water can simply call up these two brain chemicals to provide a quick pick-me-up without side effects of medication.The brain has a “blue spot,” the main production centre of the natural antidepressant, noradrenaline. Research at the Virginia University School of Medicine disclosed that short cold showers stimulate this spot toward noradrenaline production. A depressed person usually registers low amounts of noradrenaline so production stimulation of this hormone helps better his moods.
Cold Showers Increase Resilience to Stressors
We love comfort so much that many of us negate exercise for the comfort of the couch, opt for fast food takeouts instead of a home-cooked nutritious meal, or take the car instead of walking down a few blocks. In our quest for comfort, we weaken our bodies instead of strengthening it. What we need is to subject ourselves to stress gradually to help us develop our ability to adapt to it.An icy bath plunge or a freezing shower is a stressor. Although cold showers are definitely not on most people’s daily bucket list, subjecting one’s body to the cold bath stressor builds up its tolerance level, making it stronger in many aspects.
Cold Showers Reduce Anxiety
When one’s anxiety levels start to rise, for sure their cortisol levels are way off base as well. When this happens, our blood pressure goes up in response.Cortisol is a steroid hormone also known as hydrocortisone. It is part of the fight-or-flight reaction to stress as it shuts down what it deems as non-essential body functions such as reproduction and immune system actions in order to channel the body’s resources in dealing with the threat.
Research by the University of Osaka in Japan revealed that cold water therapy could decrease cortisol levels thereby helping relieve anxious people of their doom-and-gloom outlook, at least for some time.
Cold showers can toughen up a person’s nervous system and make him more tolerant of stress. As cold showers can double as oxidative stress, the body in time can be made to adapt to it. When the body becomes more resilient, the mind follows suit; so at length, anxiety levels may markedly decrease and moods may stabilize.
So, if you’ve been in doldrums lately, embrace the cold. There’s nothing as cheap, healthy, and side-effect-free as the bite of a nice cold shower to perk up your morning and your overall health.
