Embrace the cold
You may have read some of my previous posts about my daily routine (here) or about suffering (here). One of the things mentioned was taking cold showers and I wanted to touch on this subject in a little more detail here.
Why should you embrace the cold
Every morning, I take my shower with warm water as do most people, however unlike most people, once I’m done with washing, I brace myself and turn the temperature to lowest setting my shower has. Then I count to 60. I make sure that I get every part of my body. I love it. It’s now so much a part of my daily ritual that even if I don’t want to do it, I still end up doing it anyway since it feels strange to get out the shower having not done it.
There are many reasons why I do this. The first of which is just to drive me out of my comfort zone. It’s a small mental test to start of the day. It’s a bit of self-imposed fear (or torture) and gives me the opportunity to pop that fear bubble and overcome it. That’s great on many levels because facing fear and overcoming it is essential in life. Fear can be debilitating. It can literally stop us in our tracks. It can hold us back. And learning how to deal with fear, recognise it and overcome it is a life skill. Practising that daily, even if just with one small action will build up resilience over time.
This isn’t a new practice by any means. If fact the stoic philosopher Seneca as well as Epictetus used to encourage voluntary discomfort. (you can read my post on stoicism here).
But neither a bull nor a noble-spirited man comes to be what he is all at once; he must undertake hard winter training, and prepare himself, and not propel himself rashly into what is not appropriate to him’
– Epictetus
The idea of voluntarily subjecting yourself to discomfort several times a month is meant to change your relationship with comfort. Once you’re able to overcome the need for comfort, your life becomes easier. Eventually shit will hit the fan at some stage during your life. You want to have to mental and physical fortitude to weather the storm.
A further example can be taken from the great stoic book by Irvine: A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy.
Musonius takes this technique one step further: He thinks that besides living as if bad things had happened to us, we should sometimes cause them to happen. In particular, we should periodically cause ourselves to experience discomfort that we could easily have avoided. We might accomplish this by underdressing for cold weather or going shoeless. Or we might periodically allow ourselves to become thirsty or hungry, even though water and food are at hand, and we might sleep on a hard bed, even though a soft one is available.
Besides periodically engaging in acts of voluntary discomfort, we should say the Stoics, periodically forgo opportunities to experience pleasure. This is because pleasure has a dark side. Indeed, pursuing pleasure, Seneca warns, is like pursuing a wild beast: On being captured, it can turn on us and tear us to pieces. Or, changing the metaphor a bit, he tells us that intense pleasures, when captured by us, become our captors, meaning that the more pleasures a man captures, “the more masters will he have to serve.”
Health benefits
But building resilience and mental fortitude is not the sole reason for embracing the cold. There are actually proven health benefits for this too.
This isn’t a science blog so I won’t reference any academic papers but do believe me that I use only reputable sources and of course use my own body as a guinea pig.
The health benefits range from fairly basic and obvious ones such as that a cold shower definitely wakes you up and gives you a surge of energy. Further benefits include helping you control your emotions. Due to the temperature putting oxidative stress on your body, which is beneficial in small doses and allows you to better control your nervous system. Similar to what I’ve spoken about above, by exposing your body to regular small doses of stress, you learn to better handle other stressful situations which life throws at you.
Furthermore, a cold shower will increase the Glutathione in your bloodstream while lowering the levels of uric acid. Glutathione is a hormone that controls the amount of stress you feel. You won’t find outside forces as problematic on your stress levels.
Meanwhile, cold showers will also help to boost the levels of noradrenaline in the body. This is because the temperature of the water stimulates the part of the brain called “the blue spot.” By getting more noradrenaline, your brain releases more happy hormones into the body.
There are a few scientific reasons for a cold shower boosting your weight loss efforts. The first is that your body needs to burn more calories to get you warm again. Your metabolism gets a boost, so you will find it easier to create a calorie deficit.
While boosting your metabolism, your brown fat is activated. This is the good fat that helps to generate heat. Of course, by generating it to warm your body up, the calories within it are used. You end up losing more of it throughout the day.
Commonly overlooked when it comes to your immune system is your lymphatic system. The lymphatic system is directly affected by a cold shower, but why is this so important?
Well, the lymphatic system helps to remove cellular waste. It helps to protect your body from infections, but regularly becomes blocked by toxins, chemicals, and environmental effects. When your lymphatic system is blocked, dead cells and cell waste build up in the body. The immune system can’t work effectively, and you’re more likely to suffer from a common cold.
Your blood will get around your body easier and quicker. Remember that cold water will boost your alertness. Not only does your breathing speed up in the cold water, but so does your heart rate. This is partially linked to the increased oxidative stress in your body. Your heart rate must increase to handle the slight increase in stress hormones.
By your heart rate increasing, the blood can spread around the body quicker. Of course, you start taking in more oxygen, so the boosted circulation will help to spread more oxygen around your whole body.
Not only do you get that sense of alertness, but your whole-body benefits. Every single organ gets more oxygen, meaning your whole health benefits from that blast of icy water.
Cold showers will also help to speed up the recovery process within the muscles.
The benefit is the boost to your circulation. The muscles get more oxygen and more blood so that the cells can repair quicker and more effectively. You get rid of the lactic acid build-up within the body, helping the muscles to relax and repair.
Conclusion
Embrace the cold, embrace the fear. Just 30–60 seconds of discomfort will produce results and pay dividends both for your mind and body. Being able to endure the stress and jump into it headfirst is a learned skill and will come in handy at difficult times in your life. Try it today. The hardest part is thinking about it.
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This article was written by Stuart Munnich. If you’d like to know more or receive notifications for future articles, please head over to the Agoge Project Website or subscribe to updates right here!
