Perhaps each of us knows a few people who always end their showers with a stream of cold water, believing it to be refreshing and beneficial to health. These days, there is much more scientific knowledge to back up this view of cold and health. It improves character of life and energy levels and has a positive effect on the immune scheme. It can also be the first step to floating in open waters.
A cure for physical and mental illness
At the beginning of the 19th century, doctors developed the first shower devices designed to treat the mentally ill. The corresponding measures were popular as early as the middle of the seventeenth century. For example, once a mentally ill man was chained to a cart standing in the sea. He freed himself and jumped into the cold water, where he lost consciousness. They pulled him out, and when he came to, he already seemed normal and lived without further bouts of insanity.
After that, cold water became considered a magic cure for mental illness, and doctors began using it to heal patients.
Take a 30-second cold shower for 30 days
Decide how many seconds you want to stand under the cold shower at the beginning, and increase the time as you see fit, for example by 5 seconds. Prepare yourself mentally: relax your shoulders and let the feeling of cold in.
Now do THIS! Turn off the hot water and move under the shower so the water spreads all over your body. Breathe and count the seconds! Relax and enjoy. Then grab a towel and dry yourself off. Notice a slight tingling sensation, as if you have champagne spilled under your skin.
Adapting to the cold under a cold shower
Increasingly, people are wondering if cold showers offer the same benefits as winter swimming. Studies provide a twofold answer. One, conducted in 2005, examined whether regular showers helped people develop a cold water habit. The researchers used the relationship between changes in skin temperature and breathing rate as an indicator of habituation.
Regular showers with a water temperature of 10°C did not result in a decrease in breathing rate when participants climbed into a cold bath with water of the same temperature. But the group who took a warmer shower (15°C) also did not have a decrease in respiratory rate when immersed in a bath with cold water (10°C). And if the temperature of the shower water is the same as the water in the sea, you can accustom your body to the cold beforehand. But if the shower water is only 5 ° C warmer, you will experience cold shock.
Water temperature in the shower
You may also have problems controlling and adjusting the temperature of the water in the shower. For example, in rural Denmark the water temperature in the pipes can drop as low as 7 °C in winter because most of the time it is in a quiescent state in pipes laid in the cold ground. In cities, where water consumption is higher, it is much warmer. In summer in the city at all, it is very difficult to find a shower with a water temperature below 16°C.
Cool showers can be used to get used to cold water in general, but it is not easy to make the water in them have the same temperature as in the reservoirs.
Cold showers and winter swimming
There are two reasons why cold showers cannot compare to winter swimming. Getting used to the temperature in the open water occurs gradually and in parallel with the change of seasons. Just when you think you are used to the water, its temperature and air temperature change and you get cold shock again. In this sense, winter swimming in Scandinavia, where nature and weather are unpredictable, is never boring. Taking a shower, you won't encounter such surprises.
Another reason has to do with physiology. In the shower, water falls on the body in droplets. They come into contact mostly with the upper part of the body and have time to warm up a little while they flow down to your feet. As a result, the brain gets mixed signals.
Winter swimming involves immersing the whole body in cold water, which triggers both the sympathetic neural system and the diving response. Because of this, the heart velocity and blood stress decrease, and with them the levels of cortisol and serotonin are normalized, which partly explains the benefits of winter swimming. There is no reaction to diving in the shower, and the benefits may be less.
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