“What is your practice on cold shower or cold plunge?”
My practice is to take a hot shower or plunge into a warm spa.
My practice is not to do things I don’t like or cause pain.
I’m ~84 and in excellent shape.
But then again, some people are closet masochists and like to feel pain every day.
I did it for around 6 mos. It was thrilling and extremely uncomfortable. It didn’t ease my ailments. I haven’t done it in about a year and may not again, but will think about it and watch for any new evidence of its benefits.
I stumbled across one of Wim Hof’s books and read enough to get to his recommendation of ending each shower by turning the water to the coldest setting for thirty seconds. He says that ten days of this will have big effects, making the blood vessels more flexible. I just finished the ten days and may or may not be better for it.
He has two or three books and a conditioning program. I saw that he has completed a number of extreme hot, cold and breathing related feats, including a half-marathon above the Arctic Circle, barefoot, wearing only running shorts.
My cold shower thing was done out of curiosity and I have no opinion about that or him. His name wasn’t mentioned anywhere that I saw in this thread, but it seems some of the extremists here would be familiar with him and his programs.
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I think he was the first, or one of the first ones, who popularized cold exposure (CE). He held the records on CE. Now there are people compared to which Wim Hof, aka the Iceman, is a total wimp.
I think that there are many factors influencing our CE capability or tolerance. One of them is perhaps culture and habit. I started reading about the benefit of cold exposure when I was 15 and since I was that kind of challenging mentality with a strong willpower I liked it. I started with cold air then switched to cold showers. Only recently I switched to cold plunges. It is a normal thing to me and to say the truth, it has become a habit, almost an addiction, in wintertime.
Some cultures include cold plunges within their religious or recreational practices. Russia, Eastern Europe, the Orthodox Christian culture, practice purifying plunging into frozen waters at the end of January. They do it even in Siberia. They maintain holes in frozen rivers and lakes.
Some people develop a practically unreachable imperviousness to cold. The present holder of the Guiness record for immersion in ice stayed within ice cubes, up to his neck, for 4+ hours. This sounds barely possible and testifies the adaptation capabilities of the human body and mind and the strength of applied willpower. Of course such extreme feats of CE are not advised for healthspan and longevity.
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Ok, many confounding effects, but if it was that beneficial to longevity, why do they never feature on the lists of long lived people.
RPS, We know that in those cultures the consumption of healthy, fiber and polyphenols-rich foods like vegetables, fruit, nuts, seed, legumes and so on is very subordinate. For example, the Mongols. They eat prevalently meat. The Siberians. They eat prevalently meat and fish. The Eastern Europeans. Their cuisine relies heavily on meats.
I hypothesize that this is an important additional, anti-longevity factor.
But here I think we are not assigning to CE significant anti-longevity properties. I believe that, if the dose is adequate, the benefits underlined in a previous post can be reaped to some extent. If the dose is too little, the benefits will be trivial, if the dose is too large for a specific individual, there will be no benefit, rather detriment.
I listened to the podcast this morning, new concepts, sometimes not easy to grasp at once, but the rationale is clear, let’s subject ourselves to as many stressors as possible, but in a reasoned and progressive way. That sounds reasonable, plus the challenge probably will make us feel more alive !
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Yes, this is the key takeaway. Thanks.
I’m add a few thoughts:
The idea of progressive overload allows for avoiding too much stress while functionality is being built. Everything we do is a stress so don’t do too much all at the same time. We need time to adapt. It’s similar to why we separate anabolic (growth) from catabolic (pruning) efforts to avoid eliminating the benefits of both.
Another way to think about it is like the gut microbiome. The more diverse the biome the more stable it is. That doesn’t mean there aren’t changes all the time but the changes don’t allow for a bloom of bad bugs because there are plenty of good bug types to fill any gaps that another good bug left behind when something we ate / drug we took damage it. Our body’s ability to handle stresses declines over time is like the gut microbiome becoming less diverse. I don’t exercise because I am preparing to run from a lion (since there aren’t any lions where I live). I exercise because being ready to run from a lion makes my body and brain function better in many ways. Similarly making my body better at handling cold/hot, low O2/ high CO2, switching fuels quickly, tolerating acidic conditions from hydrogen ions made during anaerobic exercise, etc….will make me better at running from a lion as well as being more healthy and ready for all sorts of life stresses. It’s like a diverse ecology network effect; the more ways I am ready to handle stress the better I am at handling whatever comes (illness, injury, work stress, etc); and, the younger I will feel.
This is the hypothesis I am pursuing.
Thoughts?
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Does anyone here use an ice/cooling vest for cold exposure? How often, and does it work well for you?
Any suggestions for a good/small fitting vest - also for females with a child sized upper/lower body frame 
. If it’s too wide/big I assume it wouldn’t have the anticipated effect.