Ice Man

wim hof.jpg — The cold is merciless and it is righteous.

**Wim Hof - better known as “The Iceman”**

Make the cold your friend and unlock the fountain of youth!

It’s time to ditch the old adage that the cold will make you sick. When in fact, those who DON’T regularly expose themselves to cold, are more likely to get sick.

In this article, we are going to tell you exactly why you should get comfortable with the uncomfortable and get in the cold!

At ATH we firmly believe that every Homosapien on this Earth today should have some cold practice, whether that be a cold shower, cold tub, or cryotherapy that they do regularly.

Did you know that the Romans would go through a series of heated rooms while bathing and then finish with a cold plunge? Ever since humans have become civilized we have been constantly playing with water temperature and exposing ourselves to extreme cold and hot to elicit a physiological response.

If you’re like me, hearing that the Romans did it is enough convincing for me,. But if you still need a little more convincing (like Hailey absolutely did) before you go from the toe test to just jumping right into the cold, then let me bust out a little mo’ science on you.

1. Increased fat oxidation and increase Resting Energy Expenditure.

Yup, you heard me correctly, with increased cold exposure comes an increased metabolism and higher rates of fat burning.

I'm all over the place which is exactly where I want to be

In a simple study of repeated cold exposure, simply routinely exposing yourself to cold to the point of shivering, elicited a 31% resting energy expenditure!

That’s friggin crazy! They had an average of 400k/cals increase in energy expenditure per day just by getting in the cold.

If you didn’t know, it takes about 3500kcals to lose a pound of fat in a week, which equals a 500 calories deficit per day.

So with as little as two to three minutes of cold exposure each day, you can lose close to 400 extra calories a day. That’s almost a pound of fat per week without even changing your diet or exercise. Now just imagine picking up a little exercise and cold exposure. Without even changing your diet, you could be losing close to 1.5lbs of fat per week.

That sounds pretty amazeballs and pretty easy if you ask me.

2. Brown Adipose Tissue Activation

Ever heard of brown fat versus white fat?

Well long story short, brown is supposed to be the good kind of fat - the one that is more readily used for energy.

When you get into the cold you stimulate adaptive thermogenesis, which is the increased burning of brown fat. Brown fat was once only thought to be in animals and infants. However, now we know that people who are exposed to cold regularly have much more brown fat.

It is kind of like how your dog’s hair gets longer in the winter and doesn’t shed as much. We too have an adaptation to the cold.

The more we provoke this adaptive thermogenesis the less cold we will feel. Know someone who is ALWAYS cold? Tell them to stop complaining and start exposing themselves to more cold.

Discover & share this What GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

It may sound counterintuitive but in order to become less cold you have to become more cold…

Repeated cold exposure and the increase of brown fat activation results in increased heat production and less heat lost. That’s pretty damn cool.

3. Decreased Cortisol and increased balance of neurotransmitter serotonin.

One thing that we have picked up from Tony Robbins - the legendary guru of sorts, is what he does when he is feeling down in the dumps, lazy, or doesn’t want to get anything done. His go to method to snap out of the “funk” is to shock his physiology.

And the science actually supports his claim.

Chronic exposure to stress can elicit change in the central noradrenergic function.

When you get into the cold, you get a big dump of adrenaline. That change in homeostasis without increase in basal activity can do wonders for your mood. Not only that, while in the cold, your organs are essentially getting a fresh wash of blood and oxygen.

So now you have sparked up new metabolism and provided some much needed oxygen to your organs. Both of which can have a great regulation effect on your serotonin, which is your relaxing neurotransmitter.

Confused after all of those Harry Potter words? In simple terms: taking an ice bath can help pump out some of those feel good neurotransmitters that people get after exercising.

So if you’re feeling lethargic, down, don’t want to do anything kinda mood — hop into that invigorating cold tub. I can guarantee that your mood isn’t going to feel the same after!

4. Improved Heart Rate Variance

The science on whether or not cold dips actually have a statistical impact on improving heart rate variance isn’t proven.

But…

There are a lot of people out there anecdotally finding that the cold dramatically improves their heart rate variance. Not only that, it seems to be the ONLY thing that does have a dramatic effect on their heart rate variance among the various things they have tried.

It seems to be that a not overly cold dip for 3-5 minutes is the key. A temperature that you can get comfortable (not shivering) in towards the end. For most people, this seems to be between 50-60 degree water temperature. TOO cold doesn’t work as well either. If it is super icy, it can kick off too big of a sympathetic nervous system and not get you into a parasympathetic state as efficiently.

So what does this even mean? Well, increasing your heart rate variance is becoming a good indicator of how stressed your heart and CNS may be. When the system is under more stress, (whether from training or mental stress) it can make the heart have a very regular heart beat with little variance.

What the research points to is that increasing the variance in your heart rate seems to be a good indicator of how well rested your system is.

And it also seems that taking regular cold dips is the only thing you can do to actively improve your variance aside from eating well, hydrating well, sleeping well, and exercising regularly.

Here is a picture of my heart rate variance since starting cold dips regularly.

We use the WHOOP to track our heart rate variance. Click the image to check out their site! (No affiliation)

You see that I have three days in the red, which means bad. However these are the first days I’ve had in the red in the past month and it just so happens they were the only three days that I didn’t take my cold bath before going to bed.

If it does pan out to be true that a cold practice can improve your heart health, why not take advantage of that?

It is such a low hanging fruit that you would be an idiot to pass up on it.

From what I have seen from my consistent tracking of my heart rate variance, I am going to keep a cold practice for the rest of my life.

And hopefully by now you are mildly convinced.

With so many weird diets, cleanses, and supplements out there trying to be the next best thing for your health, you can’t go wrong with getting in the cold.

It’s free, it has numerous health benefits, it’s simple. Everyone should take advantage of.

We live in a world where people throw a jacket on if it’s in the 60’s or complain of the heat if it’s 85. You can break that trend. Train your body to be more resilient in the elements. You think your ancestors bitched about the temperature as much as we do? Doubtful. They were more worried about surviving than what temperature it was outside.

Our Sources

Jedema, H. P., & Grace, A. A. (2003). Chronic Exposure to Cold Stress Alters Electrophysiological Properties of Locus Coeruleus Neurons Recorded In Vitro. Neuropsychopharmacology, 28(1), 63-72. doi:10.1038/sj.npp.1300020

Buijze, G. A., Sierevelt, I. N., Bas C. J. M. Van Der Heijden, Dijkgraaf, M. G., & Frings-Dresen, M. H. (2016). The Effect of Cold Showering on Health and Work: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Plos One, 11(9). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0161749

Acosta, F. M., Martinez-Tellez, B., Sanchez-Delgado, G., Alcantara, J., Acosta-Manzano, P., Morales-Artacho, A. J., & Ruiz, J. R. (2018). Physiological responses to acute cold exposure in young lean men. PloS one, 13(5), e0196543. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0196543

Ruth, M. (2010). Cold-Activated Brown Adipose Tissue in Healthy Men. Yearbook of Medicine,2010, 533-535. doi:10.1016/s0084-3873(10)79820-5

Bongiorno, P., ND, LAc. (2014, July 6). A Cold Splash–Hydrotherapy for Depression and Anxiety. Psychology Today. doi:https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/inner-source/201407/cold-splash-hydrotherapy-depression-and-anxiety