Cold showers

[Agent 008]

Cold showers are awesome.

Just had one this morning for the first time in about a year as the hot water supply was out, feels so good!

Do you have cold showers? Discuss.

[$hit.got.real]

I used to like contrast showers (hot and cold) when I gave a shit about sports and exercise. These days I occasionally run the shower cold just to keep up my tolerance to it. I remember the first time, years ago, it knocked the air out of me. Really cold water is extremely shocking, like it would probably give an old cunt a heart attack. But then you get used to it, which is useful. You never know when you're going to fall through the ice on your way to work.

[Agent 008]

Originally Posted by $hit.got.real

I used to like contrast showers (hot and cold) when I gave a shit about sports and exercise. These days I occasionally run the shower cold just to keep up my tolerance to it. I remember the first time, years ago, it knocked the air out of me. Really cold water is extremely shocking, like it would probably give an old cunt a heart attack. But then you get used to it, which is useful. You never know when you're going to fall through the ice on your way to work.

It's shocking at first, but after about 15 seconds it feels like your body starts generating more heat, so it doesn't feel cold anymore, per se.

But yeah, when you get out your body feels rock hard even though you haven't been doing anything.

[iMagiNation]

Cold showers are the shit for many reasons. I take them whenever I shower.

[Satyr]

Cold showers are awesome after a night of excessive drinking.

[The Duke]

I knew rizzo would post here. Cold showers are good to force yourself awake.

[helliotion]

I take a cold shower every morning. I find it gives me a chilly confidence and direction in life. Sometimes I take it while high and the mental effects are amplified.

[$hit.got.real]

Originally Posted by helliotion

I take a cold shower every morning. I find it gives me a chilly confidence and direction in life.

I never got that from cold showers, or from anything else.

[unstableasatable]

cold showers shock your mind into a state of readiness.

when you walk under a lightbulb you can feel the heat change, vision is clearer after. i saw awsome
(i can have on cold setting put cant yet stand the coldest for over a minute

[helliotion]

Originally Posted by $hit.got.real

I never got that from cold showers, or from anything else.

It just began happening recently. I think it's after you get used to it and start to get pleasure from it you would feel that feeling.

[felonious_monk]

i'm gonna try this...up untill I read this thread, I've been too much of a chicken to just jump in a cold shower...but I do it in snowmelt lakes every summer and it only sucks for a few seconds but after it feels great and healthy. like a nice long hike

[helliotion]

Originally Posted by felonious_monk

i'm gonna try this...up untill I read this thread, I've been too much of a chicken to just jump in a cold shower...but I do it in snowmelt lakes every summer and it only sucks for a few seconds but after it feels great and healthy. like a nice long hike

You won't regret it. I actually think this one thing made a difference in my life. It gave me a sort of "No bullshit." attitude for important occasions.

[GreatestGatsby4]

i usually start off hot to open up and clean out pores and then end with cold water to rinse and close pores.

feels good man

[Eridani]

Sometimes take a normal shower and then put it on the cold setting and it does feel pretty good. Too much of a pussy to take an entire cold shower though.

[DestroyedMatter]

i had no choice but to take cold showers in the philippines. but then again. you kinda want them. so humid they cool you off.

[Ripthatshit]

My theropist won't let me take cold showers anymore. Once I took a cold shower and I started getting all gittery and shit, went to school under the impression I was some type of god from India. But as the effects wore off I started getting paranoid like someone was following me and got hell itchy too. Needless to say I did twice as much work that day than I have done in my entire life.
Man cold showers are awesome.

[HLC]

Maybe if it's like 100 degrees F outdoors and I've been working or playing and sweating and I feel dizzy with near heat stroke, I'll use a mildly cold shower, but never super cold.
Just my preference.
All too often I have to shower with cold water to enter a swim pool, or after an ocean swim (using the beach-side showers).
If they have a hot water handle, I'll surely use it.

[BitterConflict]

What is this the 90's? lol

They do feel good on a hot summer day though.

[Agent 008]

Originally Posted by HLC

Maybe if it's like 100 degrees F outdoors and I've been working or playing and sweating and I feel dizzy with near heat stroke, I'll use a mildly cold shower, but never super cold.
Just my preference.
All too often I have to shower with cold water to enter a swim pool, or after an ocean swim (using the beach-side showers).
If they have a hot water handle, I'll surely use it.

Yeah, I normally go for super-hot showers myself, but I think I'll get myself to take cold showers more often from now on.

Almost glad I didn't have any hot water this morning.

[Blunderstar]

It's unhealthy to have just cold showers. Start off with hot and then change to cold. Gets your circulation going, better for pores, etc.

[HLC]

Originally Posted by Blunderful Returns

It's unhealthy to have just cold showers. Start off with hot and then change to cold. Gets your circulation going, better for pores, etc.

sounds reasonable

though water is not normally found heated in nature

[Blunderstar]

Originally Posted by HLC

sounds reasonable

though water is not normally found heated in nature

Not trying to be a dick, but what about hot springs? Or do they have some man-made influence? I see them on TV - they're just like, normal pools of water randomly placed in cold scenery.

[HLC]

yeah, hot springs are found in nature.
though, not too often.
pretty far apart, generally.
enjoy them if you can find them, is my advice

[felonious_monk]

I did it! I just took a cold shower and man I could barely even breathe my body just like wanted to escape at all costs, but little did it know it was just a shower. man i feel great tho. thanx op!

[iMagiNation]

ANTIPYRETIC EFFECT OF MODERATE COOLING

One of the first scientific reports of cold water treatments of fever was written by Scottish botanist and military physician William Wright (1735-1819) at the end of the 18th century [60], which was a departure from the then prevailing paradigm according to which fever should be assisted and promoted in order to allow agents of disease to come out of the body with sweat [14]. This is what he wrote about one of his first experiments during a febrile illness that he caught on a boat near Jamaica in 1777:

“September 9th, having given the necessary directions, about three o’clock in the afternoon I stripped off all my cloaths, and threw a sea cloak loosely about me till I got upon deck, when the cloak also was laid aside: three buckets full of cold salt water were then thrown at once on me; the shock was great, but I felt immediate relief. The head-ach and other pains instantly abated, and a fine glow and diaphoresis succeeded. Towards evening, however, the febrile symptoms threatened a return, and I had recourse again to the same method, as before, with the same good effect. I now took food with an appetite, and, for the first time, had a sound night’s rest” [60].

He continued the cold affusions twice a day for two additional days, to prevent a relapse [14,60]. The method was later promoted by another Scottish physician James Currie (1756-1805), who went on to test this approach on scarlet fever, smallpox, measles, influenza, as well as shipboard fevers and tropical fevers (malaria) and reported beneficial effects from experiments on himself and on his children as well as from various correspondents [14]. Unfortunately, James Currie published most of his findings in his books rather than peer-reviewed journals [10].
Cold water treatments were met with initial enthusiasm, especially in Germany and were used rather widely in Central Europe and in the United States in the late 18th/early 19th century [10]. The interest gradually abated by the 1830s, and cold water treatments of fever were virtually abandoned afterwards [14]. The biographers of James Currie cite several reasons:
1) Cold affusions were too stressful and frightening for patients, and were often vehemently opposed by a patient’s family [14]. Patients often preferred the less stressful tepid washings (the equivalent of modern sponging [1]) or tepid baths instead of cold water affusions [14].
2) Reports of success with febrile infections lead to indiscriminate use for other non-febrile conditions and resulted in patient discomfort and disappointing results when used in inappropriate circumstances [14]. This situation was aggravated by the fact that body temperature of patients was rarely measured at the time [10,14].
3) There were other, less stressful treatments of fever, which were often preferred by patients and doctors. Some of these other antipyretic treatments, such as James Currie’s favorite bloodletting, had no actual effect on core body temperature as we know today, but they replaced cold water treatments all the same [14].

More recently, in the 1970-80s, the use of cold affusions was popularized to some extent by P. K. Ivanov in Russia [36]. A cold water treatment can be designed in such a way that it may be effective, yet minimally stressful, such as a gradual cold shower at 20 degrees C as described eslewhere [47]. It should be noted that controlled clinical trials of cold hydrotherapy for the management of fever are lacking.
It is worth mentioning that physical cooling methods such as cold water immersion or cold water spraying/evaporation are a quickest and most reliable way of lowering core body temperature known today [18,57]. Some reports show that a cooling speed of up to 0.3°C per minute can be achieved [22,24]. In modern clinical practice, cold baths are not normally used for reducing fever (antipyretic drugs are usually prescribed [7]), although sponging with tepid water is sometimes used instead of antipyretic drugs [1]. Sponging with tepid water (around 30°C) can reduce fever within 1.5 hours and was found to be less effective than acetaminophen [1]. Cold water treatments on the other hand, are routinely used in the management of heatstroke and severe hyperthermia and can quickly reduce body temperature [18,57]. Despite the rapid cooling effect in the case of elevated body temperature [14,22,24], immersion in 16-23°C water cannot normally cause hypothermia (core body temperature of 35°C or lower) in humans, even if the immersion lasts for several hours [54]. This suggests that cold showers or cold baths at 16-20°C could be used to achieve virtually complete elimination of fever within minutes with minimal risk of hypothermia. The procedure may have to be repeated several times per day in order to maintain near-normal temperature [14,60], and, interestingly, there is evidence that exposure to cold can abolish febrile responses to endogenous pyrogens [51], suggesting that the antipyretic effect of cold exposure is mediated not only by physical cooling but also by neuroendocrine changes.
Reducing or eliminating fever appears to be desirable (e.g. during influenza illness) because, theoretically, pyrexia is not expected to provide any known therapeutic advantage at least in viral infections, as opposed to bacterial infections where fever may be beneficial [35,46]. While antipyretic therapy such as acetaminophen has no effect on the development of an immune response [21], one study showed that acetaminophen can prolong influenza illness to some extent in experimental animals through an unknown mechanism [42].

ANALGESIC EFFECT

Numerous experiments show that laboratory animals subjected to a brief cold water swim experience substantial analgesia for 1-2 hours with respect to tonic pain and for 5-10 minutes in the case of phasic pain [6,27,37,41,55]. This effect is in part mediated by a dramatic increase in the plasma level of beta-endorphin after exposure to cold [17,45,56] (also reported in humans [16,19,53]), which is an opioid peptide and an endogenous painkiller [56]. The other component of this systemic analgesic effect is non-opioid in nature and appears to be mediated by noradrenergic pathways in the spinal cord and the locus ceruleus in the brain [5,32,44]. While the non-opioid component of analgesia appears to be attenuated with repeated cold swimming [23,33], the opioid component was shown to be augmented [8,33]. An additional possible component of cold swim-induced analgesia is the gate control effect of local sensory stimulation [39], which basically means that pain in the foot, for example, can be relieved by stimulating sensory receptors in the foot through vibration or immersion in cold or hot water, etc [12].

EFFECTS ON INFLAMMATION

Exposure to cold has been known to have an inhibitory effect on all cardinal signs of inflammation for quite some time [20,34,39]. In addition to reducing heat and pain, exposure to moderate cold also reduces redness (erythema) [40,43,50] and swelling (edema) [13,52]. While most of the available evidence relates to the effects of cold on local inflammation, moderate exposure to cold appears to inhibit physiological manifestations of systemic inflammation as well by reducing fever and causing systemic analgesia as described above.
It should be noted that the relationship between cold and inflammation is not a simple one, as exposure to extreme cold appears to induce inflammation [28]. Cooling of the skin to near-freezing temperatures causes pain [31,38] and redness [59] and cryotherapy of warts with liquid nitrogen is known to induce local inflammation [15]. Another interesting aspect of this relationship is that while repeated systemic exposure to moderate cold reduces physiological manifestations of inflammation [51,57], it also appears to cause a modest pro-inflammatory shift in serological factors, namely, it slightly increases the plasma levels of interleukin-6 [9,29,30], tumor necrosis factor alpha [30], haptoglobin [30], hemopexin [30], and slightly decreases the plasma level of α1-antitrypsin [30] and testosterone [29]. As explained in the next section, repeated exposure to moderate cold does not appear to be immunosuppressive [30,49], in contrast to other anti-inflammatory treatments such as corticosteroids [4,11].

IMMUNOSTIMULATORY EFFECTS

Cell-mediated immunity is thought to play an important role in the host defense against viruses and tumors [25]. The most intriguing property of repeated exposure to cold is that it appears to stimulate both innate and adaptive cell-mediated immunity [30,49]. Studies show that both single and repeated brief exposure to cold can increase the numbers and cytolytic activity of peripheral natural killer (NK) cells [9,49,58]. Repeated brief exposure to cold has been reported to increase the total number of peripheral lymphocytes [30] as well as the number of peripheral activated (HLA DR+ and CD25+) CD4+ T lymphocytes and CD8+ T lymphocytes [30,49] and to enhance proliferative responsiveness and cytokine production of splenocytes [2,29]. These observations are consistent with non-specific activation of cell-mediated immunity and a possible mechanism of this effect may involve the numerous neuroendocrine changes resulting from transient activation of the sympathetic nervous system, hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal and hypothalamic-pituitary thyroid axes by brief exposure to cold as described in more detail elsewhere [48]. The non-specific activation of lymphocytes by repeated cold treatments does not appear to cause autoimmunity [26,29,30,37,49], but, interestingly, repeated cold exposure was shown to reduce spontaneous incidence of tumors [26] and to increase survival of mice infected with intracellular parasite Toxoplasma gondii [3], the observations that may be consistent with enhanced cell-mediated immunity. To date, there have been no controlled trials demonstrating a beneficial clinical effect of cold hydrotherapy in human subjects, for example in patients with cancer or with a viral infection. Exposure to cold may also have adverse effects on health (e.g. in Raynaud’s syndrome) as described in detail elsewhere [48].

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http://ownyourhealth.wordpress.com/2...-the-evidence/

[iMagiNation]

Originally Posted by Blunderful Returns

It's unhealthy to have just cold showers. Start off with hot and then change to cold. Gets your circulation going, better for pores, etc.

That's nonsense. It's not unhealthy in any way, shape, or form...unless you go for so long and so cold you get hypothermia.

[Agent 008]

"Studies have proven that cold water showers increase testosterone levels in men, heighten the libido, and build energy and strength." - haven't seen the sources, can't tell.

"Get quick relief for depression. Recent research at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine indicates that “a short, cold shower can stimulate the brain’s blue spot” by actually increasing production of a chemical called noradrenaline that can work quickly to help you overcome the debilitating effects of depression." - I can vouch for that.

[testerman]

trick is to control your breath and no gasp. once past that you are ok. i once had no hot water for 6 months due to no money to pay the gas bill

[iMagiNation]

It's also apparently a fair treatment against toxoplasma gondii.

[GreatestGatsby4]

Another interesting aspect of this relationship is that while repeated systemic exposure to moderate cold reduces physiological manifestations of inflammation [51,57], it also appears to cause a modest pro-inflammatory shift in serological factors, namely, it slightly increases the plasma levels of interleukin-6 [9,29,30], tumor necrosis factor alpha [30], haptoglobin [30], hemopexin [30], and slightly decreases the plasma level of α1-antitrypsin [30] and testosterone [29].

that makes it sound like moderately cold showers lowers testosterone is that right?

[iMagiNation]

Originally Posted by GeometricGyarados4

Another interesting aspect of this relationship is that while repeated systemic exposure to moderate cold reduces physiological manifestations of inflammation [51,57], it also appears to cause a modest pro-inflammatory shift in serological factors, namely, it slightly increases the plasma levels of interleukin-6 [9,29,30], tumor necrosis factor alpha [30], haptoglobin [30], hemopexin [30], and slightly decreases the plasma level of α1-antitrypsin [30] and testosterone [29].

that makes it sound like moderately cold showers lowers testosterone is that right?

this is the study they're talking about:

This study extends previous observations of the conditions under which enhancement of lymphocyte activity occurs following cold swim stress and presents a possible explanation for the enhancement observed. Eight- to twelve-week old male Sprague-Dawley rats swam for 10 minutes daily for one, three, or five days in cold water at 15 degrees C and were killed 0, 30, or 240 minutes following the last swim. Apparatus control animals were placed into an empty swim tank for 10 minutes and then returned to their home cages. Home cage control animals were not manipulated experimentally at all. Splenocyte but not thymocyte responses to concanavalim A were significantly enhanced after one, three, and five days of stress. This enhancement was seen after 0, 30, and 240 minutes of recovery and also in the apparatus controls! The number of splenocytes did not change significantly, but thymocyte number declined following the swims. The blood displayed no changes in leukocyte percents. Serum corticosterone levels were significantly higher and serum testosterone levels were significantly lower after one, three, and five days of stress. The drop in testosterone levels may have released the lymphocytes from inhibition by this hormone, resulting in increased responsiveness. There were significant elevations in levels of blood glucose and protein following one, three, and five days of stress sessions, correlated with the increases in serum corticosterone.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8699931

[GreatestGatsby4]

so they drowned mice in cold water?

[arleybob]

okay i'm gonna do it tomorrow.

never in my life have i ever tried a cold shower except for before swimming, and that's only for a few seconds.

wish me luck, guys.

[Godzilla]

I like to take cold baths after being out on a humid Summer day. But not cold showers.

[Rainycity]

i like to play dj with my faucet, hot and cold, then mild.

[Nolte]

Hot water, cold beer. Gotta shower like a real champion.

[iMagiNation]

Originally Posted by GeometricGyarados4

so they drowned mice in cold water?

lol pretty much. I don't think that study is the most accurate for making conclusions about the effects a cold shower has on humans. If anything I could see it raising testosterone levels merely because you're rising up to a challenge.

[GreatestGatsby4]

ya i can imagine swimming in freezing cold water until you died would be much more stressful than a cold shower

[crazzyass]

Originally Posted by Satyr

Cold showers are awesome after a night of excessive drinking.

This.

[Mullen]

I decided to try a cold shower this morning. I got naked, turned the knob to the coldest setting, and hopped in. Needless to say, my balls disappeared and I had shortness of breath.

It wasn't too bad when I warmed it up a bit then gradually made it colder.