Cold Water Dousing
/A handful of years ago, I was introduced to a concept called cold water dousing by a good buddy of mine. It’s a simple chore, really. Ice in a bucket, fill it with water, ice melts down a bit, pour it over your body. When I started this practice, it was winter time so we saved money on ice. I thought the guy was crazy when he threw the idea my way, but I went with it.
In the beginning, there were plenty of dramatics. I needed to hype myself up to get it going. I wanted a squad around to cheer me on. I wanted to record every douse. Etc. Etc. Etc. “Damn boy, could you have been anymore insecure?”
I poured buckets of water over my head for two years before I realized why the hell I was pouring buckets of water over my head. It was years later and Spring time when I realized the whole deal wasn’t even about the cold. It was about a practice. It was about feeling the water. It was about becoming the water (I hope Bruce Lee would be proud.)
I made that Instagram post for a reason. It’s true, the douse is about much more than the cold, but the cold plays its role. I’m here to talk, specifically, about that role. You see, when extreme temperatures hit the superficial layers of the body, the capillaries in the skin constrict. This pushes blood to the center of your being. This is a survival mechanism and the reason why people get frostbite when exposed to extreme temperatures for extended periods of time. You can live without your fingertips. You can’t live without your organs.
Because your exposure during dousing is short lived, 20-30 seconds after the stimulus is gone, the constricted capillaries dilate and the blood that was pushed to your center, comes rushing back. When it does, the skin becomes flush and warm. The feeling is incredible. You feel like you’re on fire. If there are splotchy, pale areas, this could mean a lack of blood flow in the pale area. Don’t fret, just douse more. Treat it like a muscle. Train the capillaries to dilate and constrict. Better blood flow to the skin means healthier skin.
From what I understand, most bacteria is killed off around 106 degrees Fahrenheit. Word has it that if this cold stimulus is just right, the blood comes back around 108 degrees Fahrenheit. Imagine this as a reinforcement for the immune system. If the immune system has a little back up, it can focus on more important matters as it won’t be spread so thin. Think about the concept of overtraining. You won’t know that you’re overtrained until your overtrained. It shows up in the form of illness, injury, depressed mental state, etc. The stimulus has been too high for too long and the immune system becomes suppressed. Taking precautionary measures in the form of a solid recovery routine helps to mitigate all of that.
Another benefit of cold water therapy is the purported effects it has on metabolism. This could make for about 16 blog posts, so I’ll keep it simple for now. We all carry two types of fat, white fat, the fat we’re all familiar with and brown fat, the fat the helps keep us warm. Babies don’t shiver like adults. They have a higher level of brown fat to keep them warm. The amount of brown fat seems to be reduced as we climb out of infancy and start developing other systems to keep us warm. Even as adults, we still maintain a level of brown fat though. When exposed to cold, apparently, brown fat is activated. It burns through lots of calories to keep us warm. Along with that, leptin, a hormone that regulates body mass, tells the brain we need fuel when fat stores are low. When they are high, leptin tells the brain we’re good with the energy we have stored. If we become leptin resistant, meaning our body isn’t responding to the leptin signal, we have a problem. There is evidence that cold exposure could help correct leptin insensitivity. Imagine your body being in a state where it’s not telling you to consume fuel when you don’t need it. Body composition would be of lesser concern. If you’re seeking weight loss, understand that these are not the answers to all of your problems. This information is, merely, another tool for the tool box. Clean nutrition, movement, and a healthy mind, body, and spirit are still just as important. No shortcuts here…just tools.
When people ask me why we do ice baths, cold water dousing, swim in cold lakes and rivers, etc, I give them a real simple answer. “Because you don’t want to.” That’s where we start. We start there because the question almost always comes from a place of fear. We have to get passed the mental blocks long before considering physiology. If you’re not willing to participate, what good is the information? Address the fear first and then move forward. Some people can get right in, no problem. Most people need to get their minds right first. That’s where breath work comes in. Breath work sets the tone for the task ahead. It helps to remove any fear and stress. There is a level of focus that needs to be maintained for a beginner diving into the cold. That focus is found through the breath. What this does for a person’s mental state is incredible. Once this fear is overcome, a domino effect begins through the person’s life and they are better able to attack fears that would typically cripple them.
Do something good for your immune system today.
Be well,
Jason