Cold shower is making me sick?

Probably something else.

 

I got fever the other day by taking cold shower or something. I am not sure but it might be the cause. Now I use lukewarm water for bathing. It's not a good time to be sick and go to hospital full with corona patient

 

Yes. I did cold showers a couple times a week for a month or so and was always sick and felt horrible because of it. It is known to cause your immune system to over-react which could be part of it.

I know lots of people love it, but I'm not convinced it's healthy for some people to do regularly.

I'm sure there's also a limited amount of stress your body can take. So when you total up exercise, daily stress, work stress, germs/disease, etc. and cold showers it might push you over the limit where you destroying yourself faster than you're recovering. I'm no scientist, I can only speak from my experience.

 

I do cold showers, but I only take them when feeling healthy overall. When I'm cold prior to taking a shower, I either work out, wait or take a hot shower.

If you're cold, chances are your body temperature is low to begin with - not a good moment to reduce it even more.

Also, try to reduce temperature gradually to a point where you still feel good afterwards. You can also play around with durations and changing from warm to cold and vice versa repeatedly.

What I do after a cold shower is I wrap myself in thick clothing. I want to provide a cold stimulus to my body, not provide a large amount of stress for long duration.

 

Some bodies are different and sometimes these can hurt certain people, take care!

 

I don't think it needs to be drastic or radical. It must be pleasant and you must feel the well-being coming gradually. Just to say, personally, I wash all my body under hot water for a total of 10 minutes before I put any cold. And then, when I decide to switch to cold water, it takes another 7-8 minutes to reach its full intensity.

So this way I don't feel any choc and it remains a pleasure to do it again.

 

Cold showers mess up your body. Wim Hoff is making good money from his business. His breathing starts a lot of fire in the body, it needs to be combined with the cold exposure. But the cold exposure really messes you up afterwards.

It's a stupid trend. Avoid these 'ideas'. This stuff ain't healthy. It's a stress everytime you do it.

Just because the cold circulates energy in your system, doesn't mean it's as healthy as real activity. COLD kills all of nature, just look around! It's a lie just like porn

 

Do you have any data backing this up? And I don't mean regarding Wim Hoff, but cold showers as that's what the thread is about.

Scientific data I have found suggest that quite the contrary true - cold showers reducing depressive symptoms, reducing inflammations, building fat-burning layers of brown fat. Overall, we as a species had to deal with cold throughout most of our evolution, it's build in our mind and body and only due to our modern way of living we're depriving our bodies of this stimulus, with sometimes negative effect.

That doesn't meant that cold showers in any form are good for everybody. As with everything, different bodies react differently.

 

Well naturally in the cold your body temperature will drop, you feel cold because its cold water, your skin is hot because your body is pumping blood faster and your body is working harder to keep your body temperature from plummeting, not sure on the drowsy bit but i can assure you everything you described is ok, nothing to stress about.

 

Thats ridiculous, if that was the case people who live in alaska or even russia would be dying off early, its proven that cold showers boost the immune system and martial artists have been using the cold for thousands of years to toughen the body and mind.

 

you didn't even read my post properly

It doesn't boost anything. It puts you in adrenaline. That's a stress. You think stress provides longevity?!!!!! You think cold showers lengthen lifespan? You are confused!

 

So does running, high intensity interval training, a hard work out lifting heavy weights - all of that is stress to the body. All bad?

Please buddy, think of your nick name and provide actual proof to your claims.

Here an interesting paper on how cold showers can fight depressive symptoms:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030698770700566X

Out of the article:
"The following evidence appears to support the hypothesis: Exposure to cold is known to activate the sympathetic nervous system and increase the blood level of beta-endorphin and noradrenaline and to increase synaptic release of noradrenaline in the brain as well. Additionally, due to the high density of cold receptors in the skin, a cold shower is expected to send an overwhelming amount of electrical impulses from peripheral nerve endings to the brain, which could result in an anti-depressive effect. Practical testing by a statistically insignificant number of people, who did not have sufficient symptoms to be diagnosed with depression, showed that the cold hydrotherapy can relieve depressive symptoms rather effectively. The therapy was also found to have a significant analgesic effect and it does not appear to have noticeable side effects or cause dependence. In conclusion, wider and more rigorous studies would be needed to test the validity of the hypothesis."


Just in regard to noradrenaline, one of it's functions is:

• In brown adipose tissue, an increase in calories burned to generate body heat (thermogenesis).[17]

• Multiple effects on the immune system. The sympathetic nervous system is the primary path of interaction between the immune system and the brain, and several components receive sympathetic inputs, including the thymus, spleen, and lymph nodes. However the effects are complex, with some immune processes activated while others are inhibited.[18]

• In adipose tissue (i.e., fat cells), an increase in lipolysis, that is, conversion of fat to substances that can be used directly as energy sources by muscles and other tissues.[20]
• It does also raise blood pressure, so this can be a risk for those who have an issue with high blood pressure to begin with

In regard to beta-endorphin, the effect is:

• The release of β-endorphin during exercise is associated with a phenomenon colloquially known in popular culture as a runner's high.[19]
• β-endorphin modulates pain perception both in the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system. When pain is perceived, pain receptors (nociceptors) send signals to the dorsal horn of the spinal cord and then up to the hypothalamus through the release of a neuropeptide called substance P.[6][4][14][15] In the peripheral nervous system, this signal causes the recruitment of T-lymphocytes, white blood cells of the immune system

So apart from strong indicators that cold showers do activate the immunie system, there's also further positive potential.

Looking forward to your factual indicators that cold showers are harmful.

 

again people living in cold places would be dying off early if that was remotely true.

 

There are not enough long term studies for me to draw any strong conclusions but I remain skeptical of the long term benefits and afraid of possible long term cumulative damage.

-------- Fat Loss?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3726172/

Ok, so cold increases activity levels of brown fat. But that doesn't tell us anything about fat loss in the long run, or long term effects because it's just changing one variable in a machine that's rebalances itself (homeostasis) with things like increasing appetite.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20798665/

Indeed research shows that cold spikes up appetite. So you're potentially just accelerating your metabolism, which could be accelerating aging, increasing your food bill, and increasing your stress levels.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110427091949.htm#:~:text=Summary:,may accelerate aging in humans.
https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/physrev.00047.2006
https://www.discoverymedicine.com/S...rmines-longevity-metabolic-rate-or-stability/
http://genesdev.cshlp.org/content/19/20/2399.full



--------- Cold showers spike beta-endorphin

beta-endorphin is an opiod. Orgasm also increases beta-endorphins. And as Fapstronauts we know that spiking the reward system is not nessarily good long term, as the body adjusts to maintain homeostasis and the long term "feel good" benefits subside.
The brain produces opiods often to modulate behavior.

https://sexaholicsanonymous.eu/neuropeptides

But Beta-Endorphins are primarily used in the body to reduce stress and maintain homeo stasis, along with being associated with reward cognition, and sexual behavior.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta-Endorphin

In this particular case, it would seem the only reason for beta-endorphins is to reduce the stress caused by the cold.

-------- Immune system

I'm just going to accept the premise that cold showers upregulate the immune system. An over-reactive immune system is just as damaging to your body as one that's not reacting.

As some one that damaged my brain with nootropics that were widely believed to be "safe" (I think I recovered mostly after many years) because I was upregulating processes, because the studies (of less than a few months in duration) all looked good, I am now cautious about manually upregulating any metabolic process in my body (a homeostatic system); not to mention the dangers of all the tradeoffs the body is making that we don't know about.

https://health.clevelandclinic.org/can-immune-system-go-haywire-falter/

--------- Stress (Noradrenalin)

Stress is adaptive with sufficient recovery time. But this depends on what else you're doing with your life. Too much stress breaks down the body faster than it can repair. My personal experience with this is that I gain more muscle the shorter my workouts, and the less frequent they are.

But with workouts you can easily measure strength to know if you need more recovery time.

With cold showers, I don't know of a precise enough variable to measure to know if I'm over doing it or not. Which to me, means it's unnecessarily risky, except perhaps very infrequently. All I know is a tried it for a few weeks and was sick all the time.

All the things I do: fasting, working outs, normal day to day cold exposure, my insomnia, is already challenge my bodies recovery, so I'm cautious about adding new things; Especially with the bad experiences I've had from cold showers. And for me personally, cold makes me unable to sleep.

----------

This is interesting. Maybe you guys will have a different interpretation than me.

https://tim.blog/2013/01/22/is-the-4-hour-body-a-scam-tracking-3500-people-to-find-out/

Here (above) is an experiment where Tim Ferris Tracked 3500 people for fat loss. What I found interesting is that people that started cold showers and then stopped were more likely to give up on their fat loss goals than people who didn't even bother starting cold showers in the first place.

This is a small piece of evidence that goes with my hypothesis that cold showers may act like drugs, porn, or anti-depressants on the brain; specifically that it could cause upregulation and dependence so that when you give it up, or when you haven't have a cold shower in a while, you go into a depression. But it could also just be an example of the winner-effect in biology.

I wish there was more data on the long term fat loss of the cold shower subjects versus the controls.

---------

When I personally think about the benefits of health practices, I like to have a clearer picture of the biological trade-offs taking place. There are always trade offs (Ex: Survival vs reproduction, fight-flight vs repair, etc.) and once you understand them, you can make an informed decision... but I just don't know what they are here. (for cold showers).


EDIT/UPDATE/CONCLUSION

I thought about it some more, and I think when I experimented with cold showers it was in the middle of winter and I would walk to and from work everyday in the cold without a coat as well because I was convinced of the benefits of cold exposure.

So I think cold showers may be worth experimenting with in moderation to see how you feel if you're not already getting cold exposure in your regular day to day activities. But discontinuing if you feel worse overall health. And maybe if you're in a cold climate and cold all the time, regular heat exposure may be a better option for you to experiment with.

 

huge differences between cold atmosphere and water directly on the skin!

 

No it's not its rather the exposure to cold water is way too long for you,you have to build it gradually without too much of the push or reduce it if your health got worse.I used to bathe in the icy lakes and rivers and never caught a cold because of it,but now I live in the city and got to use cold shower.Although i've started again recently when I felt sick I put it on hold temporary....and wim hofs method is relativly new but the practice of using cold water is an ancient way of improving health.

 

If it makes you feel bad then do not do it. If you like it carry on.

 

The idea of cold showers is terrible in general, whenever you lose heat, you lose life, our body is constantly fighting the thermodynamic law, and in order to reproduce the heat again, the body has to spoil itself. A dead body is cold, a living body is hot.

So avoid anything that makes you lose heat, do hot showers and hot baths, ALWAYS DRINK HOT WATER.

If you live in a cold environment, cover youself well, DONT LOSE THE HEAT

Do this experiment, drink hot water all the time for 6 months.

Then after 6 months try to drink freezing water. You will feel immediately sick and in order to feel good again you will need to drink hot water again!

Our body is meant to be HOT not COLD, whatever stresses the body heavily SPOILS the body

I'm not ok with overeating, taking cold showers, doing weightlifting, oversleeping, those put tremendous stress to the body

 

Yes, wim hoff is making alot of money of this, spoiling the body of everyone, just like porn, if you lose heat you lose life, if you lose semen that gives life you lose life. Vallalar the immortal and onniscient siddhar recommended TO NOT LOSE HEAT, and clearly said cold water is poison for the body, one has to raise body heat not decrease it!