The Ice Sages: Americans are Warming Up to the Ancient Practice of Cold-Water Therapy
Wim Hof
When I was a youngster growing up in Stone Harbor, every once in a while the bay would freeze over. Not very often, but it did happen. I remember one especially frigid day, walking over to my friend Ryan’s house. I found him with a rope tied around his waist, the other end tied around a piling, standing out on the frozen bay with an ax, hacking away at the ice under his feet. I remember thinking, “This is one of the dumbest things I have ever seen.” Luckily, he didn’t make it through and end up in the ice-cold water.
Fast-forward decades later, and my wife is plunging off our friend’s dock into that same icy bay water for health reasons. The cold dip has become a pretty popular staple in the lifestyle of health and fitness enthusiasts in the United States. Honestly, it took us long enough.
People around the world have been cold dippin’ from at least the fifth century BC. According to the European Journal of Applied Physiology, “Ancient Greeks utilized cold-water for therapies as well as relaxation and socialization; Hippocrates in fourth century BC documented the use of cold for medicinal purposes and analgesic benefits.” Scandinavians have been using post-sauna cold plunges for a long time. Rapid temperature changes like this can be dangerous for some, but for the majority of the healthy demographic the benefits can be many. With its rich history, there has to be something to it, right?
About five years ago, Shape Fitness hosted our first Wim Hof seminar. Hof, also known as The Iceman, is a big reason for the increase in popularity of the cold plunge in the United States. He is a motivational speaker, extreme athlete, and creator of the Wim Hof Method. He has previously held Guinness World Records in swimming under ice and prolonged full-body contact with ice. I heard that his eyelids froze shut while swimming under the Arctic shelf. He espouses his method of cold therapy and breathing techniques as ways to keep your body and mind in its optimal natural state.
Since this seminar, I have done the cold baths several times and my wife, as I said, goes to our friend’s house on the bay and plunges off the dock in the dead of winter. (We also have a sauna in our basement.) After my own experience and the increased popularity of the cold-water therapy, I decided to do a little more research into the benefits and risks. It turns out there are well-researched benefits to the cold but also some reasons you may want to avoid it. It is going to depend on your goals.
A controlled clinical trial in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise investigated the influence of localized muscle cooling on postexercise vascular, metabolic, and mitochondrial-related gene expression. It concluded “acute postexercise cooling intervention enhances the gene expression of PGC-1α and may therefore provide a valuable strategy to enhance exercise-induced mitochondrial biogenesis.” CliffsNotes version: It may greatly aid in exercise recovery. The more I looked, the more research I found supporting the ability of post-exercise cold-water therapy to aid in recovery. However, the more I searched, the more I also found some possible negative aspects of cold-water therapy in relation to exercise.
A randomized controlled trial in the Journal of Physiology investigated functional, morphological and molecular adaptations to strength-training exercise and cold-water immersion. Its data suggests that cold-water immersion “attenuates the acute changes in satellite cell numbers and activity of kinases that regulate muscle hypertrophy, which may translate to smaller long-term training gains in muscle strength and hypertrophy. CliffsNotes: It may lessen your strength and muscle gains.
Sooo … it aids in recovery yet attenuates muscle growth? What do I do? It depends on your goals. If you are an athlete who needs help with recovery to be ready for an upcoming competition, maybe jump in the ice and speed that recovery. When you see professional athletes in an ice bath post-training or post-competition, it is because they need all the recovery they can get before their next competition which may, in many cases, be the very next day. So, they may be sacrificing strength and muscle building, but it’s because they need to be ready to compete. If your main goal is strength and hypertrophy (muscle growth), maybe avoid the ice and let your body do its thing for its own recovery, no shortcuts.
Beyond exercise recovery, cold-water therapy has been shown to be good for treating chronic autoimmune inflammation, reducing hypercholesterolaemia by brown fat activation, and regulating stress. A lot of these proposed benefits are supported by correlational data, so I think some more research may be warranted.
If you want to give cold-water immersion a try, I say go for it. People with heart, blood pressure, and circulatory issues may want to consult with a doctor before taking the plunge. Many people have reported psychological benefits. If you want to feel the benefits of cold exposure under the supervision of a professional, you can go to icecoldleader.com, the home page for Errol Doebler, a Navy SEAL and leadership consultant. (That’s who ran our Wim Hof seminar.)
I wouldn’t recommend hacking through the ice with an ax, but maybe Ryan was just ahead of his time.
