Can Cold Showers Really Improve Your Health?: It's Not as Difficult as You Think

Thanks to Skill share for supporting our blog and this whole week of SciShow. If you follow any productivity gurus,then you’ve in all probability detected however you wish to require cold showers within the morning.

After all not only can they wake you right up,but you’re also promised a myriad of health benefitsand everybody loves a good healthy life hack.But whether these claims are actually true is still kind of a gray area.Also, I have to say

 as someone who grew up in Floridaand now lives in Montana,a cold shower is different depending on where you live.So before you jump in that agonizingly cold shower

let’s look at some research.One of the biggest problems with studying cold showers is that…well, people really haven’t.Instead, most health claims are implied from studies of 

cryotherapyusing cold water or air to treat a conditionor from things like people who repeatedly go swimming in cold water.But cryotherapy is really carefully controlled,and those swimmers often stay in the water for over an hour,so it’s hard to apply this to your quick rinse before work.Still

 that doesn’t mean there’s zero evidence for cold showers,because there is.It’s just not very strong.Like, take the claim people makethat those showers improve your immune system.

In 2016, a study revealed in PLOS Onewanted to examine if taking a fast cold shower within the morningwould scale back the number of sick days somebody took from work.For 30

straight days, quite 2300 subjects took either a heat showere one took from work.For 30 straight days, more than 2300 subjects took either a warm shower

or a warm shower that turned cold for 30, 60, or 90 seconds at the end.On average, subjects in all three of the cold shower groups called into work29% less than the warm shower grouproughly the same as one less sick day per month.But we don’t know why,since the research team didn’t measure any biological markers.

Many of the participants did say they felt an increase in energyand continued taking the cold showers after the experiment,but that’s not enough to close the case.It’s possible that their white blood cell count increasedlike what’s been shown to happen with cold water swimmers.

But again, a 90-second rinse is a lot different from an hour in the water.Many people also swear that cold showers can boost mood.But the results there are maybe even weaker.

A 2008 study in Medical Hypothesis gets referenced a lotas evidence for cold showers as an antidepressant,but it’s not really all that convincing.They hypothesized that cold waterwould activate your sympathetic nervous systemthe system that does things like increase your heart rateand stimulate the release of endorphins which would elevate your mood.But it only had three data points

one of which was the author of the paper,and none of them had symptoms that would diagnose them with depression.Plus, the biological markers they expected to changewere never actually measured, so really we don’t have any results to go off of.To be fair, the author did mention all that in the paper.But alas, the blogosphere still holds onto that antidepressant claimeven though the article wasn’t that powerful.

The thing here is, you can’t placebo a cold shower:you know if you’re getting one.So it seems like cold showers get a lot more credit than they deservebased on the evidence that exists.A short one probably won’t hurt you, but hey, let’s do more researchbefore we start making claims about reality and our bodies.Seriously

if you’re looking for a research project,this sounds like a good one to try out.Couldn’t be that expensive, it’s cold water.So, even though cold showers might not be the keyto making you more productive,the CEO and co-founder of Skillshare, Michael Karnjanaprakorn

is really productive and shares his systems for productivityin his class Real Productivity: Create Your Ideal Week.

He provides a simple framework to prioritizeand accomplish what’s important to you in the immediate and in the long term.

We’ll make sure to link to it in the description.All these week, we’ve been sharing Skillshare classeswe think SciShow viewers will appreciate,but even though the week is coming to an end,this offer from Skillshare is still available.