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What cold showers and exercise have in common (2014)
- jetbeau 10y agoWim Hof people Wim Hof
- DennisP 10y agoI read his book and started practicing several months ago. The other week I played in the ocean for 20 minutes and it didn't bother me at all. Checked the water temperature afterwards and it was 56 degrees. I haven't started with his breathing exercise, just practice, attitude, and knowing what to expect count for a lot.
- proksoup 10y agoWim Hof is an individual case study that has done research in this area, and other related phenomena (breathing and autonomous response control)[1] Not sure it's any more or less "bro science" then this article, but it's interesting and relevant enough to be worth talking about here I think. [1] https://www.radboudumc.nl/Research/Pages/PNASIceman.aspx https://www.radboudumc.nl/Research/Pages/PNASIceman.aspx
- taneq 10y agoInteresting. The article reads a bit like bro-science but there are plenty of references to scientific studies... I'll be curious to see whether 'cold therapy' starts appearing as a buzz word in weight loss treatments.
- elevensies 10y agoIt's already happening: http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com/news/world/salon-worker-proclaims-benefits-of-cryotherapy-days-before-being-found-frozen-dead-in-treatment-chamber http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/blog.html?b=news.nationalpo...
- dwg 10y agoClose to it for sure... https://coolfatburner.com/ https://coolfatburner.com/ https://www.coldshouldervest.com/ https://www.coldshouldervest.com/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/01/does-global-warming-make-me-look-fat/383509/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/01/does-glo...
- logn 10y agoKevin Rose talks about cryotherapy. He's planning to release some PDF history of it.
- powera 10y agoArticle is from 2014. Also this guy thinks he has the solution to back pain and bad vision as well, so I would take all of his solutions with a "not verified by actual scientific studies" grain of salt.
- nkozyra 10y agoBut I already bought his Cold Water Magic Beans®!
- hensansi 10y agoThe "science" related with vision is pretty dogmatic and people aren't aware that glasses(minus) actually hurt your vision in the long run. I think I found about the vision a few years back and then I made a bit more of research and then found this. Ebooks free to download as pdf on the website. http://kaisuviikari.com/wordpress/en/ http://kaisuviikari.com/wordpress/en/
- 100ideas 10y agoAlso of interest may be the Mammalian Diving Reflex (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammalian_diving_reflex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammalian_diving_reflex) - Exposing your face to cold water and holding your breath can induce bradycardia (slowing of pulse), dropping it by 10-20 BPM. In my experience, it leaves me with a sense of calm and general body-relaxation similar to how I feel 30-60 minutes after cardio workouts.
- justinlardinois 10y agoIf you can manage to keep calm long enough for bradycardia to set in. I took a marine biology course in high school and we had an experiment to show braycardia that involved holding your breath and putting your face in a bowl of ice water. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't keep my body from panicking and pulling away.
- 100ideas 10y agoThis is the quintessential way to activate the Mammalian diving reflex at brunch, cocktail parties, the office, or the classroom. Unless you are inclined to panic, you and your more medically-minded friends will be fascinated by the significant and immediate effect it can induce on your PNS and heart rate.
- goda90 10y agoI listened to a podcast about free divers and how they use that reflex to get to amazing depths. Very interesting stuff.
- cloverich 10y agoThough I don't know how efficacious it is, it's listed as a treatment for acute episodes of specific kinds of tachycardia (like Wolf Parkinson white syndrome - http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/159222-overview#a1 http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/159222-overview#a1)
- AthleticNerd 10y agoI ran D1 track in college and our strength coach advised us to take cold showers before lifting as a way of warming up and calming down, but mostly calming down. He said it was a good idea before races too. The guy was absolutely ripped so I'd believe what he says, and he usually backed it up with studies.
- kevin_thibedeau 10y ago> The guy was absolutely ripped so I'd believe what he says, Because there's no way he was on steroids, HGH, or EPO to get himself that way?
- dredmorbius 10y agoOne word of caution: it's not a coach's own accomplishments or physique which are qualifications, but the results they promote among their athletes. I've known horribly bad coaches with excellent physiques. And excellent ones who were quite literally paralysed.
- derefr 10y agoOne thing I know that cold, exercise, and loud noises all have in common is that the body responds to them by producing adrenaline. People are told by nutritionists to take compounds like tyrosine to make up for the essential nutrients (i.e. phenylalanine) that sustained adrenaline production uses up, if they work in an environment with frequent "shocks" of any of the above types. I do wonder if actually being in such a phenylalanine-depleted state (which is then also a tyrosine-depleted, phenylethylamine-depleted, L-DOPA-depleted, dopamine-depleted, adrenaline-depleted, and norepinephrine-depleted state) has any long-term effects on the body, which might even be positive. Goodness knows it certainly makes you want to sleep for a week. (Come to think of it, an interesting question would be whether people with phenylketonuria who grew up on a compensatory dietary-restriction regimen low in phenylalanine—thus causing such sustained deficiencies of all the above—have any physiological differences to people without phenylketonuria.)
- alatkins 10y agoCan you comment on whether chronic stress could be added to that list of factors contributing to phenylalanine depletion?
- torus 10y agoThe wikipedia page for Tyrosine suggests yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrosine#Medical_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrosine#Medical_use
- nefitty 10y agoInteresting point. Do you think straight phenylalanine supplementation is worthwhile? I've had a hard time figuring out if it is processed efficiently by the body when taken orally.
- sndean 10y agoThe writer's about page says: > Todd’s philosophy of Hormetism is the result of years of personal investigation into the role of moderate stress in adaptation, as applied to health, nutrition, rehabilitation and psychology. Hormetism is the idea that a low dose of a chemical can induce a response that's the opposite of the response seen at a high dose [1]. Hormetism is, to say the least, very controversial. It is at best a seldom observed, poorly understood phenomena that's important for the biological role of nitric oxide and a few other chemicals. At worst, it's like homeopathy: quacktacular pseudoscience. So take this article with a grain of salt. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis
- themartorana 10y agoIs this the same thing as regular exposure to small bits of a food keeping away catastrophic allergies, like with peanuts? Or is that a different thing?
- arkades 10y agoNo. The principle of hormesis is that the body's defensive response to a physiological insult is so sufficiently excessive that it produces a net positive to health. This would occur in response to something ordinarily harmful (and thus stimulating such a response), but at a dose low enough that its harm is insufficient to create a net negative. It's important to note that this is actually a characteristic of a dose-response relationship: anything more than a very slight dose is expected to still be harmful. Most examples of hormesis, well, aren't examples of hormesis. e.g., a quick glance at Google shows "exercise" being given as an example. Exercise, traditionally, is not something considered harmful at all but the tiniest doses. The peanut thing is just about ensuring that common antigens are presented while the body is still undergoing the creation of peripheral tolerance to foreign antigens. That is, while the body is still young and learning what is and isn't worth upsetting the immune system over, you should go ahead and introduce it to lots of things you don't want it to freak out on.
- nefitty 10y agoI've looked into cold showers several times, but always end up on some quack's website or a blog post with no convincing evidence. I did a cold shower the other day and it was amazingly refreshing, but it was more of a mental, "Hell yeah, I'm tough!" feeling than probably any metabolic process. Thanks for kicking up some skeptical dirt, a lot of the commenters seem totally convinced.
- 3pt14159 10y agoI started taking cold showers about 3 months ago when my cofounder challenged my statement of: "Why don't more people eat healthy and exercise? It sucks at the beginning but it just keeps getting better." With the statement of "for the same reason you don't take cold showers." I'd never heard that cold showers were good for you and after validating his claims, I gave myself two weeks to get used to as-cold-as-possible showers. After about ten days it started being less painful, and now I can barely imagine going back. Yes the 3 degree Celsius showers still kinda suck; but they wake you up and they make the towel afterwards so warm and inviting. They make you hardened to the outdoor cold and they make you not need that first coffee in the morning. If fixing diet and exercise are number 1 and number 2 to being a happier human. I'd put fixing the person you're dating at number 3, the people you're friends with at number 4, and the temperatures of the showers you take at number 5. A+ / 5 star - would have my cofounder challenge me again.
- uberdog 10y agoYou're a crazy motherfucker, but variety is the spice of life. Props for that. I'm going to stick with heat for my showers and leave cold for when I'm skiing.
- gh02t 10y agoI take cold showers every now and then (more often in winter actually) and like you said I kind of like it. However what I usually do is warm it up at the end, partly because I like the feeling of warming up from being cold but also because I feel cold the rest of the day otherwise.
- humbleMouse 10y agoI like taking cold showers after getting out of the sauna at the gym. Living in minneapolis though, there is no way in hell I would ever cold shower in the morning before work. The hot shower in the morning and my leather heated seats are the only salvation from the cold ass winter.
- RogtamBar 10y agoThe thing is cold showers warm you up by booting up the metabolism. 3 mins after stepping out of a cold shower I'm usually feeling all warm and fuzzy inside, as if I had just kicked some disgusting dog off my porch. (/s)
- xyzzy4 10y agoI would certainly take a lot of cold showers if I didn't have to be conscious during the shower.
- andrewvc 10y agoWhile this may or may not be true hacker news is particularly susceptible to exercise fads with unconventional scientific explanations. I think it'd be easier to convince the readership of HN to lose weight and get fit by eating live maggots whilst suspended upside down in a vat of soylent than to just show up to the gym 3x a week. The most important way to get fit is to show up and do work. The virtues of a programmer (laziness, impatience, hubris), are the opposite of what you need to succeed at physical fitness.
- themartorana 10y agoOk but when I'm showering up at the gym - is a cold shower better? Will I see better/faster/more lasting results? Seriously. I shower at the gym pre-work, so I'm usually taking a cool shower as it is, but I hadn't heard of cold showers being a thing before this.
- RogtamBar 10y agoLook it up, but it's possible that cold showers are not good post-exercise due to them hindering blood flow and preventing removal of waste materials from muscles.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- cylinder 10y agoCold showers will not leave you as clean. There's a reason you wash your dishes,hands, and underwear on hot water cycles.
- makeset 10y agoDue to the anti-inflammatory effect of low temperature, cold showers soon after resistance exercise may be attenuating muscle hypertrophy response. Of course, as with most factors other than sleep and nutrition, the magnitude of that effect will likely be unnoticeable to all but elite athletes striving for that 0.5% edge over the competition.
- Hondor 10y agoSimple physics analysis Almost all of the energy we get from food is used to heat our bodies, mostly indirectly via our liver, spleen and brain. [ https://www.boundless.com/physics/textbooks/624/work-and-energy-6/power-65/humans-work-energy-and-power-287-6037/ https://www.boundless.com/physics/textbooks/624/work-and-ene... ] A 40 degC person exposed to 0 degC air would lose heat at twice the rate of normal (40 degC person in 20 degC air). That's because convective heat flow rate is roughly proportional to temperature difference. All that heat has to be made up for by the body's metabolism. So you would burn calories at nearly twice the rate you would normally. It doesn't matter if it comes from brown fat, shivering, waste heat from your brain, or some other process, as long as it's internal to your body, it's taking energy that would otherwise not have been used. A shower in 0 degC water could be on the order of 100 times more effective than 0 degC air, so you could get the same value from a shorter exposure. [ http://www.engineersedge.com/heat_transfer/convective_heat_transfer_coefficients__13378.htm http://www.engineersedge.com/heat_transfer/convective_heat_t... ] A cold shower for a couple of minutes a day (0.1 % of your life) would be equivalent to cold air for a couple of hours (10% of your life). That's about 10% more energy used than otherwise. So it sounds like even from a simple heat transfer perspective, cold showers must be effective at losing weight, as long as you don't compensate for that some other way like feeling more hungry afterwards :P
- konceptz 10y agoAnd I always wondered if drinking a glass (16oz) of 0 degrees water was burning the calories required to heat it where you could drink enough water to offset a donut in a morning. (Forgive the lack of math here, I'm about to pass out in bed.)
- ahelwer 10y agoQuite simple math, since a calorie is the amount of energy required to heat a mL of water by 1°C. Thus a food Calorie (1000 calories) is the amount of energy necessary to heat a liter of water by 1°C. Human body temperature is 37°C, so you burn 37 calories for every liter of 0°C water ingested. The average donut has 195 Calories. Thus you must drink 5.27 liters of 0°C water to cancel out the calories gained from eating a donut. Not very realistic.
- atomical 10y agoThere is a lot of controversy surrounding Irisin. http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/?s=Irisin http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/?s=Irisin Quotes Peter Attia? He isn't a researcher.
- deepGem 10y agoI have been on cold showers for almost a year now. Can't imagine going back to warm showers, even in the dead of the winter. The coldest shower I took was perhaps in Switzerland in December - I lasted for a couple of minutes or so in the shower. It was a fabulous experience nonetheless. Why take a cold shower ? I was spending way too much time in hot showers, almost 20-30 minutes. Criminal waste of time and water. Am not sure about the benefits, haven't noticed anything change in my body, but it's a great feeling to come out of an icy cold shower. Suddenly, the world feels warmer :)
- bitL 10y agoJust make sure you don't catch deep sinus infection from having your head exposed to cold too much/often, like it happened to me (1+ year of cold showers). You don't want to be knocked out for a month.
- deepGem 10y agoI did catch an infection and was knocked out for a couple of weeks. Haven't had any issues after that. I'll watch out though. Thank you.
- keypress 10y agoI get very lazy in a hot shower, and just want to lap up as much heat as I can get. I'll happily stand there and keep nudging up the hot tap. My skin probably suffers a lot for it. Whereas a cold shower, I'm probably in and out in less than 5 mins.
- keiferski 10y agoCold showers remind me of my experience in a Japanese bathhouse in Kyoto. At first, the hot baths are way too hot and the cold bath is absolutely freezing. But, if you power through it, the results are amazing. The process of (rinse > hot bath > cold bath) repeated over and over again was incredibly calming. It ended up being one of my favorite things about Japan, and I spent 2-3 hours there everyday during my week in Kyoto.
- _98fj 10y agoI started to shower cold (actually first warm, then cold, then "neutral") every day when I was 9. I'm 30 now, so 21 years of that :). I almost never feel cold, when I do i'm sick or very tired. I do martial arts and I gain muscles very very easily, so maybe that's because of that? And all my blood values have always been in the optimal range, except cholesterol which is always a bit too high (runs in the family).
- maga 10y agoI wrote about my experience with cold showers here before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8808859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8808859 490 days later, I'm still using cold water only. Except for ears: switched to using warm water when experienced some buzzing in one ear during last winter. I've upped my game by adding snow/ice baths during the winter. Since last autumn I have added daily HIIT - 10-15 mins of advanced body-weight exercises with 20 sec. rest intervals. Now, how it affects my weight. Since the last time I wrote about it, I've actually begun to follow my weight numbers. Back at the time I was about 84kg. Cold showers alone, with some gym here and there didn't do much for weight: it went down to 83 sometimes, but bounced back to 84 later. Yet, I must say, I was well into the practice by that time, and few years before I could weight as high as 88 kgs. So, perhaps, cold showers did lower my weight somewhat without my notice. Adding HIIT gave a steady weight loss, albeit a slow one: three months into I lost only 2-3kgs. It is possible that HIIT burned more fat yet balanced weight by adding lean mass: some muscles are bigger now. Mind you, all that time weight was of no concern to me: followed it just out of curiosity. Last January though, my old trauma reminded about itself and I needed to lose weight. Since I was already doing most of the recommended stuff, I just cut on calories by completely removing sugar and keeping 12 hour window for eating. In one month I lost about 6kgs going to 76-77kgs and decided to keep it their by increasing calories. TL;DR: Cutting calories is the fastest way to lose weight, neither cold-showers, nor HIIT can compete with it in short term. On the upside, both cold showers and HIIT are downright pleasure to do once you get addicted to them. I do HIIT after the work before evening meal, at about 5 - 6PM, follow it with a cold shower and feel full and energetic as if I've just waken up in the morning.
- maxencecornet 10y agoHow cold should be cold showers ?
- RogtamBar 10y agoPractically, you can't do anything else but use the cold water from the shower. However, even in summer it is usually quite invigorating, even though it might be 15-20°C. It can be a good deal colder in winter though.
- rituch 10y agoPlease refrain from using abusive terms here on this forum.
- Hondor 10y agoThat expression can indicate respect. That's how it appears to me in this context, not as abuse.
- obstacle1 10y agoOh good, it's the language police. What would this forum be, after all, without folks like you telling us what to say and how to say it!
- rituch 10y agoNot sure what is that, but I guess it's okay for a male dominated forum to disrespect females and still think that no one should complain about it.
- bitJericho 10y agoWhat makes you so sure anybody thought about the sex of the op? You seem like the sexist one here.
- user_0001 10y agoto the post below. The term "mother" fucker, may not insinuate fucking ones mother to you - perhaps you are desensitised to it, but to others from different cultures, countries it can be more / less offensive. If you think about certain words which are all but banned for some colours of society to say, they too used to be all prevalent and not thought of as a problem to say. Perhaps in 100 years from now, to suggest some one fucks their mother would be considered the same
- AJRF 10y agoWow, get real rituch.
- buserror 10y agoI've been taking cold showers for years, it gives such a good kick in the morning it's MUCH more efficient than coffee to get you from that lethargic state you can get in the morning to full-speed. Oh and if you had a heavy evening the night before, it's also a good way to remove the potential lingering headache you woke up with :-) It does take a little willpower to get in, but the 'cold' effect lasts about a second; I no longer even have the unrestrained strong shiver I use to have due to the thermal shock. Oh, and even in really cold water, I can stay there for quite a while, wash my hair etc. The sign that I've been there too long is when the top of my feet start to hurt a little. Once you get out, metabolism is at full speed and you'll pretty quickly feel very, very warm (while staying outwardly cold for a while). Only downside I know of is that I'll sometime feel too warm when I get in the office, as the metabolism goes overboard a bit. My wife doesn't understand how I do it, she calls me 'glaconman' (french version of iceman) since I'm definitely not getting any cuddles for the next 20 minutes or so -- but well, it does work very well for me...
- maga 10y ago>Only downside I know of is that I'll sometime feel too warm when I get in the office, as the metabolism goes overboard a bit. This and picking the right shampoos and soaps at the beginning. It's hard to them "foamy" in cold water, especially during winters when tap water gets even colder. My usual 10 min baths went to 20 with cold water simply because of it.
- Hockenbrizzle 10y agoThis is why I start my showers luke-warm and then go cold. My hair is medium-long and really thick and I just cant seem to make any progress washing it if the water is too cold.
- keypress 10y agoYou don't have to have cold showers everyday. I default to cold, and when grimy go for hot. You only really need to soap the places where the sun doesn't shine. And your hair doesn't need shampooing everyday. But each to their own.
- sambe 10y agoThe homepage of this website is currently encouraging "natural" correction of myopia via slightly incorrect prescription and intentional straining. Most of the evidence I'm aware of (see references in e.g. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140513-do-glasses-weaken-your-eyesight http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140513-do-glasses-weaken-y...) concludes that this makes things worse. My reaction to such things (especially when focussed on natural methods) tends to be distrusting objectivity.
- keypress 10y agoI like cold showers, and hot ones. I can never have a shower hot enough though, and getting out always is chilling. Whereas once you get out a cold shower, you only feel warmer. Preferably you don't want to leave the cold for freezing. I swam in a mountain stream late autumn last year (in the UK). It was so icy entering the stream, I thought it was never going to happen. After a few attempts and acclimatisation I was happily immersed. A little sun on the skin afterwards left me totally re-energised and awake. So just stick with it if you want to give it a go. Much like a cold shower, it's initially shocking, but becomes pleasurable. The human body is quite odd!
- chenster 10y agoI did it for over year. It's still uncomfortable as I remembered that I always need to mentally get ready. My upper arms, especially triceps, are the most painful, coldest body parts when showered in cold water. I'm not sure why. During winter, I literally had to jump up and down, screaming to withstand the absolutely torturing coldness for the first five seconds. It gets a little better after that. I couldn't never take cold shower too long before the freezing water penetrating the skin and shivering the bone. That's when I know it's time to finish and get out.
- RogtamBar 10y agoWater is colder in winter.... Best thing would be having a thermometer and showering with same temp water all year round.
- blubb-fish 10y agoI'm exclusively showering cold now for more than a year. If I recall correctly one of the reasons was a VICE documentary on Wim Hof - that quite impressed me - though after a while I came to the conclusion that he is mostly well marketed (by his son - who he refers to as the biggest asshole he knows - https://youtu.be/VaMjhwFE1Zw?t=1311 https://youtu.be/VaMjhwFE1Zw?t=1311) and that most claims are rather blown out of proportion. For example his scientific research on suppressing immune response to an infection is sold as a medical revolution while it has absolutely no practical value - if you think about it - quite the opposite as an immune response is usually something rather useful. Anyway - I think it is worth it for several obvious reasons: - it's definitely very refreshing! - it helps waking up a lot - it is a simple way to train discipline - it's less stressful to skin than hot water - it's nice to know that I am not depending on hot water
- spiraldancing 10y agoI'm into my second year of extreme Scottish showers -- first 5 minutes as hot as I can stand (and keep turning it up as I get used to the temp) ... last 5 minutes as cold as it goes. I expect there are legitimate physical health benefits; however, for me, the main benefit is the challenge & discipline of it, of stepping out of the shower thinking that the hardest thing I'll do today may already be behind me.
- throwaway7767 10y agoAn alternative for people in colder climates: just wear less clothing day-to-day. I generally wear one layer fewer than people around me. It really doesn't take long for the body to acclimate to it to the point it's no longer uncomfortable. I love my hot showers too much to give them up, so this seems preferable.