Did you know that eleven total minutes of cold exposure a week is enough to enjoy the benefits of cold plunges?
I hate cold water.
I used to think that people like Wim Hoff and Polar Bear club members were all crazy.
Maybe I was that way because I would get cramps easily when I was wet and cold. I was a swimmer in high school and seemed to suffer from cramps more than others. When I went fishing in winter, my hands would often get cramps after becoming wet and being exposed to the cold weather.
Give me a long hot shower or bath any day.
Why I Decided to Take Cold Showers and Baths
Over ten years ago, I started to get vitiligo. Vitiligo is an autoimmune disorder that causes a person to have patches of skin that lose color. Over the years, it has started to spread in various places, and this caused me to really think about my health.
I also came across several different proponents of cold baths stating that it was a way to challenge the monkey brain and get yourself to do hard things.
In addition, I started hearing about various health benefits such as boosted immunity, improved blood circulation, increased metabolism, and increased energy.
I decided to take the plunge.
I took it slowly and challenged myself to end my regular shower with a cold shower. After a while, I started taking only cold showers, and I found that I had slowly gotten used to them.
Finally, I filled my bathtub with cold water. I live in Japan, so there is no central heating or cooling. The water in the tub would average anywhere from about 11C/52F degrees in winter and up to 18C/65F in summer.
Not too cold, but cold enough for me. I would take a shower and then force myself to get in the bath. They always felt much colder than showers. Actually, I would shower off with cold water after getting out, and I always felt that the shower felt warm after being in the cold bath.
I started taking them every day to challenge myself and to improve my health and have continued taking them almost every day for close to a year.
Here are the benefits I discovered for myself.
- When taken at night, I found it was much easier to fall asleep.
For some reason, even in winter, I felt that I was more relaxed after taking them. When I got into bed, I found it easy to fall asleep. Maybe because it helped me to reduce stress and feel more relaxed, or maybe because it helped to set my core temperature to an optimal state for sleeping. All I know is that I felt very relaxed and sleepy once I settled into bed.
I did some research and there are opinions all over the place about this. Dr. Huberman says that they might be too stimulating for some people, so he recommends taking them earlier in the day.
- On the other hand, when taken in the morning, I felt more alert and awake, and this would carry over for several hours.
Whenever I took a bath in the morning, I would feel alert and awake. This would carry over several hours which helped me to focus on mental tasks such as writing. Moreover, my thinking seemed to be clearer, making it easier to organize my plans and to write.
Dr. Huberman says that cold baths cause the elevated release of neurochemicals like adrenaline, noradrenaline, and dopamine. These chemicals elevate our mood and help us to be more alert and more focused.
- I felt clear headed just after getting in the bath. My brain fog would suddenly disappear.
Because I felt clear headed, I would use that time to think about things I was working on. I often discovered breakthroughs and clarity about things I wanted to do. As I felt clearheaded and energized, I used the time to reaffirm and envision the identity I wanted to create for myself. The act of forcing myself to get into a cold bath also reaffirmed my identity of becoming mentally stronger.
- I learned not to fight the cold water and to let go and relax.
When I watch many people trying cold baths for the first time, they tense up. This tension causes them to feel the cold. As soon as I got in, I learned to tell myself to relax. This helped me to stay in the baths for a long time.
I found that this carried over into other areas of my life. Whenever I caught myself feeling tension, I willed myself to relax, which helped me to manage stress in a variety of situations.
- I discovered that I had been building the part of the brain associated with willpower.
Dr. Huberman says the Anterior Mid-Cingulate Cortex, aMCC, is the area of the brain associated with willpower. He says that it is larger in people who force themselves to do things that they don’t want to do, and he says that it becomes smaller in people who take the path of least resistance.
I started to look at my baths as a way of growing my willpower. Each time I forced myself to sit down in the water, I kept thinking about how I was growing the aMCC area of the brain.
Do I like taking cold plunges almost 1 year later?
No, I still don’t like them.
Summers are okay, but winters are hard, but I have come to like the benefits, so I will continue them, and I will recommend them to others.
Here is some good news for those that don’t like taking cold plunges.
According to Dr. Huberman, he says that cold showers also work. He adds that, as for the temperature, it should be “uncomfortably cold but safe.”
The most surprising to me was that he says a science-based protocol shows that cold exposure for a “total” of up to 11 minutes per week is enough to achieve the benefits of cold exposure and that the 11 minutes can be broken up over 2 to 4 sessions.
This is great news if you are like me and hate cold water.
If you want to get the benefits, then you only need to get a total of 11 total per week. Over time, you can build up and increase your grit and willpower.
If you do them, please let me know what benefits you have personally found in the comments!
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