Cold showers can provide numerous benefits to people who perform them regularly. Cold showers can be as simple as just using cold water whenever you take a shower or you can alternate between hot and cold water when taking a shower. Using either of these ways will provide benefits, however alternating maybe easier to deal with when you’re are starting out.
What are the benefits of cold showers?
There are actually both physical and mental benefits of taking cold showers. Lets start with the mental benefits:
Mental Benefits
Cold showers are generally an unpleasant experience, the water is much colder than your body temperature and takes you out of homeostasis. They are for the most part a mental challenge, as the experience is relatively brief and with end shortly. Mental benefits can come from controlling your fear of small discomforts and overcoming them. If you are able to overcome this small discomforts you will be stronger at facing your bigger fears in other parts of your life. It can also be thought of as a small win, which can domino into bigger wins throughout your day. You will also build resilience to any small discomforts you experience in life and you know you can shoulder them and move on.
Physical Benefits
Cold showers provide a shock to your system as they take your body out of homeostasis and your body has to fight to get back to the status quo. This gets your heart racing and boost your metabolism a small amount. But this also has the effect of building your brown adipose tissue (BAT), which is a special type of fat. Cold exposure has been shown to boost the development of this brown adipose tissue over the standard white adipose tissue, normal fat. Having more brown adipose tissue is beneficial in many ways – longevity, improving insulin sensitivity, bone health and much more. It will also make you more resilient to cold weather and situations you might find yourself in.
So whether you go just cold showers or do some alternation between hot and cold water you should be seeing some benefits, both mental and physical. Start your day with a small win, and snowball that into a great day. And also think how you are building your resilience to cold and your brown adipose tissue, your superfat! Let us know if you have any questions or comments below.