10 Health Benefits of Cold Showers

The practice of cold showers is still very much in the traditions of several nations today: Finland, Russia, Thailand, Korea, Japan and many others have a history of cold showering for good health. Read onto find out why maybe you should start feeling the chill of cold water!

Through thorough scientific research, many health benefits have been identified for exposing your body to regular bursts of coldness. This is best achieved bytaking a cold shower each morningor 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 best advised. However, many people (myself included) decide to “throw themselves in at the deep end” of cold showering and start by simply throwing themselves under as cold water as they can get their hands on! This is of course a much quicker way of reaping the health benefits of cold exposure 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: see “Benefits of Hot Showers” for the alternative health boosting bathing method!

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 chance of getting things like:

• Cancer
• Colds
• Flu’s
• Haemorrhoids
• 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 naturallystimulates the production of thesebrown 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.

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, regulating the amount of sweat you produce in doing so.

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.

On the other end of the spectrum, the regular bursts of cold water will ready you for any time you’re out in the cold – this means less sniffles and mucus running down your face when you’re out with your significant other!

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.

You will notice that after having a cold shower, you will feel very happy – sometimes referred to as euphoria. This feeling can be compared to the happiness you feel after exercise because of the endorphinsreleased.

As a result of the increased brown fat levels, blood pressure and body temperature, chemical reactions in your body will happen faster (heightened metabolism) than they would have without regular cold showers. An increased metabolism is what a lot of people seek out because it means that any process in the body will become more efficient.

This means more weight loss because more calories are being burned to supply energy for more reactions. It also means faster growth/repair of muscles and other cells so any exercise you do will result in better results leaving a fitter, leaner 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 hairlook 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.

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