Cold showers have been proven to reduce stress levels. By regularly having cold showers you impose a small amount of stress to your body, known as hardening. This means that your body gradually gets used to handling levels of stress. Exposing your body to this level of stress has been shown to help people keep a cool head - pardon the pun! -when in stressful situations.
Not only are there physical benefits, cold water can have an incredible impact on mental wellbeing. Immersing yourself in cold water releases mood boosting hormones and exposes our bodies to a form of ‘healthy stress’. Some describe it as a sensory experience that takes
you out of your head and into your body.
The good news is that you don’t need to swim for long periods of time, or jump into a plunge pool. Research by one of the leading scientists in this field Dr Susanna Søberg, revealed from a study of more than 3,000 volunteers, those who ended a warm shower with a 30-90 second cold shower every day for a month, were 30% less likely to take time off work for sickness than those who just took regular warm showers.
For those shivering at the very thought of this, the
good news is that Susanna concluded that those who took just a 30 second cold shower at the end, reaped the same benefits as those taking a 90 second shower to finish.
Are you up for ‘freezing the fear’? Follow Wim Hoff’s guided video’s before taking the plunge and listen to Dr Sunsannah's conversation on cold water therapy with Dr Chaterjee below.
