One family holiday on the east coast of England, bored of shivering in a beach hut over a newspaper being whipped by the wind, I decided to run into the North Sea. As I picked my way over the shingles towards the brown water, families were packing up and stumbling in the opposite direction, towards town. It was the second day of summer, but with Arctic winds. People were in beanies and full-length puffer jackets. They looked more like bouncers than beachgoers.
I made myself swim around for five minutes before getting out. It was five minutes well spent because the high lasted hours. And my draw towards cold water is ongoing.
Wim Hof Method
There’s no denying that Dutch outlier Wim Hof, who has been the centre of many studies and created the world-famous Wim Hof Method of cold-water immersion and breathwork, is responsible for much of the interest. Just join any number of cold-water Facebook groups and you’ll witness Hof groupies having pissing contests about how long they can stay in an ice bath. In this era of ‘raw-dogging’ and testing one’s endurance, ice baths have become almost mainstream. I’ve got one myself, made out of an old chest freezer.
Cold Water Immersion Benefits
Cold water boosts your immune system, improves your cardiovascular system, helps you burn fat, improves insulin sensitivity, improves your sleep. Athletes love using cold therapy (cold plunge pools, cryogenic chambers, ice baths) to reduce inflammation after a hard workout. Chuck “cold water recovery centre” into Google and you’ll find all kinds of places you can use too, such as P3 Recovery and Inner Studio in Melbourne.
You might have even heard the soundbite from neuroscientist TJ Power on Instagram that cold water immersion causes a dopamine spike similar to the potency of cocaine. Whereas your dopamine levels peak around nine minutes after snorting a line and then crash quickly, cold water’s dopamine increase is more gradual, lasting over two-and-a-half hours (and – bonus – you don’t get that mood crash afterwards). I also found a study about rats who had been immersed in cold water and then given access to cocaine. They liked cocaine even more after their little ice bath. Wait… is that a good thing? Let’s just take from it that having an ice bath leaves you feeling pumped.
Mental Resilience
Cold water immersion is also great for discipline and mental toughness. For my podcast Spirit Levels, we interviewed Dr Marc Cohen about using cold water therapy for mental resilience. Mark is a university professor, medical doctor, biohacker and extreme wellness expert. He is also the director of medicine, science and education at Peninsula Hot Springs in Victoria, Australia. You’ll often see him wandering around in his white robe, and he designed the four degrees cold plunge pool I like to get in.
“Hormonic stress is when you stress your body, so the next time that stress comes, you just set your willpower in your mind and get on with it,” he says, “and cold actually helps with that. It activates your fight and flight, so you get the adrenaline response, and the whole sympathetic nervous system comes into action.”
Over time, your body and mind become accustomed to this discomfort, teaching you that you can adapt to situations better than you might have originally thought. “And you can actually learn to make better decisions,” says Marc, “because when you’re under stress, you can’t think straight.”
How To Begin
There are many ways to ease yourself into the benefits of cold-water immersion, starting with a cold shower for a minute, then building up to three. If you live near the coast, swimming in rock pools at cold tide is an experience of more beauty.
A week after that trip to England, I flew to Iceland for a holiday. It was summer there, but the lagoons were around two degrees, so it seemed churlish not to get in. And out again – pretty fast, it has to be said. Don’t try that at home.
