Scalable Human Blog

This post will detail my experience of integrating cold showers into my life over 5 years (and counting). To emphasise, this has been one of the best habits I have ever incorporated, now I want to share this with you.

⚠️ Disclaimer, I do not recommend undertaking cold water exposure, due to possible adverse effects for some whom may have heart conditions, forgoing pregnancy etc. Anything that it taken from this blog post is done at the readers risk.

Why I started?

Since delving into the rabbit hole of the Wim Hof Method, I discovered a labyrinth of benefits from practicing cold showers. During this time in my life, I was discovering new ways to enhance my own mental and physical performance and cold showers certainly provided this. Below I will be detailing the benefits backed up by my own years of experience.

🥶 Benefits of Cold Showers

⚔️🧠 More resilient mind

As stated by David Goggins Ex Navy SEAL, the act of choosing to put yourself into a stressful environments can create a stronger mindset to achieve or endure greater mental and physical goals. A key quote that he uses to describe this:

“Callous the mind”

David Goggins

Now I have found that this can be achieved with starting your day with a cold shower. As this exposes your body and mind and body to handle an extreme stressful situation on the central nervous system, which contrastingly makes the rest of my day feel less stressful as the bar has already been set high on physically and mentally on stress levels.

🦠 Enhanced immune system

Update: During this time of pandemic over 2020-2022 I am yet to experience Covid, this may or may not be evidence of cold showers aiding my immune system. 🤷‍♂️

Since undertaking cold showers, I have not succumbed to colds, and if I feel like I am starting a cold, these symptoms within a day or two will dissipate.

Supporting this, there is scientific research regarding cold shower impacts on immune system response. From the research papers it is found that cold showers can increase white blood cells in your body, which are the types of cells that protect you against diseases.

⚡️🧠 Increased focus

This requires mentioning, (although maybe obvious) the act of immersing cold water over your body will elevate your alertness levels. I can contest to this, as I use this each morning and without fail, I feel wired and ready to attack my day.

The science behind this is that the bodies reaction to the cold will stimulate deeper breathing, therefore decreasing the levels of CO2 levels in the body, which in turn helps you to concentrate.

💨🛡 Cold resistance

Since undertaking daily cold water exposure, my attitude has changed on how to handle the cold everyday, this has lead me de-layering clothes more when going out. This is with the intention of embracing the cold, as I now understand that this is training my body to adapt to cold environments. Just like going to the gym and training your muscles, you eventually adapt to what you train.

Again science explains why cold resistance may occur over time. This is due to thermoregulation, this a system in our body that uses the brown fat as an efficient source to regulate body heat, this can be developed from cold water exposure. Unfortunately, for many of us this decreases with age, due to our comfortably heated homes and hot water supply, interestingly this brown fat store is at its peak when we are a baby!

💪 Increased recovery after workout

In my years of being an athlete, I did find cold showers were able to aid my recovery on a muscle soreness level. As the cold reduces inflammation. This allowed me to adapt faster to training sessions and therefore enabled me to have more capacity to train more consistently.

Even til this day, with my current training schedule, I utilise cold showers to aid recovery on a muscle soreness levels, generally my technique is to focus the shower head on the muscles that are the most inflamed after a workout. This continues to be a method I use for post workout recovery.

🦉🌞 Turned me from a night owl to a lark

This is a bonus benefit from what I have discovered personally, that is unique and not something that I have found to be not documented.

I was always somebody who wanted to wake up early, although naturally I was more of a 8 o’clock riser. This had to change when I was at university as I needed to get my workout in for the morning (was a competitive track sprint cyclist), and my workouts generally were heavy weights sessions that required me to be 100% awake, or I risked injury.

In the using cold showers habitually before my workout, this enabled me to become a morning person, as often I would wake up at 5:00am without hesitation and then subject myself to cold shower shock. In the end my body and mind was able to wake up without using an alarm, as it knew it was time to wake up, and at that early time of the day I felt like I was at my peak mentally and physically, this also meant I reduced my waking period.

Summary

To reiterate, this has been the most impactful habit I have included in my life to date, I now anticipate I will be undertaking cold showers for a life time, since maintaining this for 5 years! This type of “life hack” I would call, is powerful. Although, this can require a lot of daily will power to hit the cold shower. (but eventually your will power blossoms)

My source of motivation I use daily is that I want to live fully and perform maximally mentally and physically with the intention to cultivate a life of happiness and fulfilment. If are already a cold shower enthusiast I commend you, or if you are on the edge of trying this… I can assure you, you are on the verge of unlocking some of the best benefits that life can give you naturally.

Thanks for reading.