10 Health Benefits of Cold Showers

The practice of cold showers is still very much in the traditions of several nations today. It is present in Finland, Russia, Thailand, Korea, Japan and many others, and is so because of the many health benefits accompanied by the chill of cold water!

Through thorough scientific research, many health benefits have been attributed to regular bursts of coldness to the body. This is best achieved by simply taking a cold shower each morning or evening at a temperature that you can just about put up with.

Method
If you decide to start taking cold showers, slowly adjusting the temperature is advised. However, many people (myself included) decide to "throw themselves in at the deep end" of coldness and start by simply throwing themselves under as cold water as they can get their hands on. This is of course a quicker process but carries the downfall of much more discomfort and risk to your health. For those with potentially weak hearts, the gradual 'easing' method is strongly advised.

With that said, here are just 10 benefits of taking regular cold showers.

To help you decide: for the benefits of hot showers, see "Benefits of Hot Showers."

The most established benefit of cold showers is that overall, they simply increase your chances of fighting off disease and infection. People who take regular cold showers have been shown to have less chances of getting things like:

• Cancer
• Colds
• Flu's
• Hemorrhoids
• Varicose veins

Blood circulation is simply the flow of blood around the body.

Exposing yourself to the cold means that your body does something called "vasoconstriction" referring to the constriction (tightening) of your arteries and veins. This tightening helps blood to flow at a higher pressure as now there is less space for the blood to flow. This means that blood circulation will improve.

Vasodilation, the opposite effect, occurs when we are exposed to heat, and makes our blood flow nearer to our skin so that we lose heat to the outside of our bodies more. This however reduces the general blood pressure that we normally have and can be seen as a negative point to taking regular hot showers.

Our bodies tend to maintain a blood pressure that is dependent on how hot or cold we generally are. A shocking experience such as a cold shower will increase the efficiency of vasoconstriction and its included blood pressure-benefits like higher fertility in men!

Brown fat, as opposed to white fat is heavily involved in burning energy. Exposure to cold naturally stimulates the production of these brown fats. These cells burn glucose (the calories you eat and the white fat that you store) to try and produces as much heat energy as possible. Having a higher amount of brown fat leads to more energy being burned per second and therefore, more weight is lost.

In the video at the end, we see that brown fat:

• Protects us from aging,
• Fights obesity,
• Fights diabetes,
• Fights heart disease.

Another great reason to start having cold showers is that for some reason or another, it aids sleeping. Insomniacs are advised to try this - the physical stress and shock of a cold shower before bedtime really helps you to calm down after the exhilarating feeling of being extra alive under the water. Like coffee?

Taking cold showers has been shown to help normalise a healthy human temperature. This means that if you suffer from chronically cold hands and feet, or feel that you sweat an abnormal amount, cold showers will help you.

Depression is yet another thing that cold showers help and prevent. It is caused by the stimulating effect the cold has on the brains "blue spot", the main source of noradrenaline for our bodies, a chemical that might be used to help alleviate depression.

As a result of the increased brown fats levels, and the increased blood pressure and body temperature, chemical reactions in your body will happen faster than they would have without regular cold showers. An increased metabolism is what a lot of people seek for because it means that any process in the body will become more efficient. This means more weight loss through the extra burned calories and faster growth/repair of muscles and other cells meaning an all round fitter body.

The lymphatic system is a system of tubing separate to your blood vessels (arteries, veins & capillaries) that is responsible for carrying away waste from your cells as well as help fight pathogens (disease).

Unlike blood vessels, the lymphatic system does not contain blood. Instead it has lymph, which carries away waste products and white blood cells which handle infection. Also different from blood vessels is that the heart does not pump lymph around the body like it does the blood.

The lymph relies on the contraction of muscles. This contraction squeezes the lymph up to the thoracic duct so that the lymph can mix with the blood and then be dealt with by our organs.

Cold showers cause whole-body contraction and this works excellently with the lymph system, squeezing the fluid up through the body, so try cold showers today!

If the lymphatic system is compromised and inefficient, then the fluid pools at far away places (usually the feet). This results in what is known as lymphedema (type of edema). The pooling of lymph can result in serious health detriments.

Another result of the whole body contraction is that it results in the squeezing of toxins and waste products out of the skin. This means that they do not stay inside the body and cause infection or put extra strain on the organs responsible for breaking them down into manageable pieces.

This detoxification can make you feel better and more 'fresh'. It also has a good effect on the skin which appears cleaner and younger. Hair follicles contracting also makes hair look better and younger.

What you will notice as an effect of cold showers is that you begin inhaling very deeply. This is to try and combat the stress of the shock, the vasoconstriction and the overall need for oxygen to respire and keep yourself warm.

This process opens up the lungs much like strenuous physical exercise does and results in a higher average intake of oxygen, which is good for many things like not feeling tired during the day and doing better at sport or other exercises.

Perhaps not a health benefit, but taking cold showers also means using no energy whilst washing yourself - which means less CO₂ and other greenhouse gases are emitted into the atmosphere. This results in less global warming and a lower electricity bill!

Therefore, on top of knowing that you're helping yourself, you can shower in the knowledge that you're doing your bit for the environment too!

For information on why CO₂ and other greenhouses gases are bad, see Greenhouse Gases.

All in all, I hope I have convinced you that taking showers has a large variety of health benefits, ranging from important ones like boosted immunity to less important ones like better skin. It may seem as though I have tried to sell you cold showers, and that is because I have.

All of these benefits are not easy to reap because taking cold showers is not the easiest of things to get yourself to do! Especially regularly. I find myself sometimes shying away from cold showers to go for a more pleasant warm one.

The very psychology of a human being is to stay away from such strain and pressure. In the modern day however, we do not get the moderate cold stimulation and natural stress that kept us fit and healthy that we used to.

Nowadays, it is possible to eliminate almost all physiological pressure, and many people live their lives without putting any physical stress on their bodies at all! Since our bodies are actually designed to react to stimulus, this can be very dangerous indeed.

Many diseases like oedema, bad skin, and generally weaker immune systems can arise from living a too comfortable life and can spell being susceptible to possibly fatal diseases.

So like a lot of things in life, cold showers are a no pain, no gain-situation. If you feel like you suffer from many of the problems that cold showers would help, or were just wondering how to improve on yourself as a person without losing time, then cold showers are definitely for you!