Round 2: Cold Water
There are many ways to wellbeing. And exposure to cold water is one of them.
Use the cold to reliably boost mood, energy levels, focus, mental and metabolic antifragility
There are various practices that I regularly and consistently use to manage my own wellbeing. Near the very top of that list is cold water.
For more than a year, I’ve been using exposure to cold water as a way to manage stress, anxiety, and to improve my own wellbeing. I admit that even after a year, I still find them challenging, yet very rewarding. Which highlights both the difficulty but also the consistent upside of exposure to the cold.
This post thus explores and explains the weird and wonderful world of cold water. We start with cold showers and then consider cold water swimming.
Cold Showers
When I take showers I do it like this: first, hot. And then cold. I try to always finish on cold, unless it's right before sleep time. If it is before sleeping, then I finish on hot. This pattern because heat induces relaxation and helps me ease into sleep, and cold does the opposite. Deliberate exposure to cold water releases useful chemical stressors (adrenaline and dopamine), but not overly negative stressors (like excess cortisol).
The release of these brain chemicals, what are called neurotransmitters, after a cold shower leads to the following effects: improved mood, alertness, focus, and builds mental antifragility. In essence, at first they make a person feel terrible - but then amazing. I find that it feels hard to get into a cold shower, but feels awesome to get out of one.
The formula is this:
First, action —> Then, feeling good, feeling motivated
Not:
First, feeling good, feeling motivated —> Then, action
If you want to have a cold shower, there will never be a good time to do one. Yes, they are hard, but you’ll probably feel better after having taken the action - at least I know that I do.
Now consider antifragility, which is the deeply important idea that we become stronger through exposure to things that cause us moderate stress in the short term, but that we benefit from in the long-term. Lifting weights in the gym is a classic example; so is the immune system.
Our muscles and immune systems simply cannot get stronger unless they are exposed to genuine challenge, though there are of course limits to this. The best way to develop a peanut allergy, for example, is to never try peanuts. The avoidance of peanuts at a young age means that the immune system never gets the opportunity to develop the necessary defences required to actually process the contents of said nut. And thus it is that the avoidance of peanuts creates fragility, while controlled exposure to them creates it’s opposite, antifragility. As for peanuts, so it is for muscles. To grow, they need to be pushed. In the absence of training our muscles, they atrophy, That is, if we don’t work our muscles in some manner, they get weaker.
Similarly, a blast of cold water, as well as the benefits to mood, alertness, and focus, helps to make us psychologically stronger in the face of stress. After all, a true cold shower is not easy, and withstanding the experience helps a person tolerate difficulty, challenge, and stress. Of course, this readily translates into other examples, like at a workplace.
I find that it's better than coffee - though I also like and drink coffee! - but with less downsides. It's also an ancient practice. Seneca, the Roman senator, wrote about cold water's benefits roughly 2,000 years ago. And then there's the positive benefits for metabolism. Much more than merely burning calories, metabolism is about the global cellular health in your body. It is therefore deeply intertwined with mental and brain health, which are ultimately both products of cellular health. It is easy to see why poorly functioning cells leads to a poorly functioning brain. And a poorly functioning brain cannot expect to be mentally healthy. This is especially true since the scientific consensus in the study of brains, bodies, and behaviour is this: the mind is what the brain does. Put differently, how we think and how we feel (our so-called mental health) is directly related to what our brain is physically doing (how our biological cells work).
So what happens to our cells after we get in the cold? After exposure to cold water that we find uncomfortable, a threshold which will be different for everyone but can easily be discovered through self-experimentation, some of our storage fat cells are converted into more thermochemically productive brown fat cells, which, among other things, produce energy, help to control blood sugar levels, and improve insulin sensitivity. Put simply, our cells are antifragile. They benefit from a little bit of stress, a little bit of cold. Let’s make it clear. Regular cold showers, although stressful, will help to make your fat cells much more productive, and may also help to protect against type 2 diabetes. And to maximise the benefits, try taking cold showers before eating and an hour or two after drinking caffeine (because both have neurochemical effects which enhance the neurological benefits of cold water).
Cold Water Swimming
I bring a hot drink and let it cool while I'm swimming. Cold showers are training for swimming outside. Wetsuits are welcome; so are neoprene gloves and shoes. This is because we lose heat fastest through glaborous skin on our feet and hands (and face). Being outdoors adds a connection to nature and depth to the whole experience. But without previous practice in cold water, swimming outdoors is dangerous. It's true that the benefits of cold exist only where a person has had gradual exposure. Without gradual exposure, it's unsafe.
As evidence of this, a quick Google search reveals an estimate that around 250 people die each year when swimming in cold water outdoors, and most of them likely because their systems were not exposed gradually. Instead, their systems were shocked, sometimes for the last time. Discussing these numbers, The Outdoor Swimming society reckons that around 90% of these deaths are related to accidents, alcohol or other drug use, rather than the water itself. Know that even though alcohol makes you feel warmer, the true effect is an objective reduction in your core body temperature, meaning you become more vulnerable to the risks of cold water after alcohol. Moreover, they argue that people can the reduce risk massively when conscious of what those risks are, much like driving a car. We know, for example, that driving a car is dangerous. And thus precautions are taken, at least by most people, most of the time. Something similar is true with exposure to cold water. Risks exist, but these can easily be reduced and managed. One final remark is that it's a good idea to swim outdoors with someone else, especially in winter and early spring when it really does get cold!
References and further education for cold water
All things cold are discussed by Huberman, accessed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq6WHJzOkno&ab_channel=AndrewHuberman
The essayist Nassim Nicholas Taleb has written a very valuable book, Antifragile (2012).
The mind is what the brain does, an idea discussed across neuroscience, but a quote taken directly from the cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker in How The Mind Works (1999).
The relationship between cellular and mental health has been best elucidated by Chris Palmer who has written an excellent book, Brain Energy (2022). These ideas are further discussed on a free podcast, The Metabolic Mind.
Cold water exposure is discussed in Seneca's work Letters from a Stoic, accessed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXq3N1rMEw0&ab_channel=AudiobookCodexat
Motivation follows action, a point which is discussed in James Clear's Atomic Habits (2018). It's a best seller and for good reason. I want to re-read this. Accessed at https://www.opportunitiesforyouth.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Atomic_Habits_by_James_Clear-1.pdf
The Outdoor Swimming Society discusses the numbers of deaths and the real risks at https://www.outdoorswimmingsociety.com/cold-incapacitation/ A more recent campaign urges swimmers to respect the water https://www.rlss.org.uk/news/public-urged-to-respect-the-water-as-latest-statistics-show-226-accidental-drownings-in-2022-with-more-dying-at-inland-water-than-at-the-coast
