Energy · 4 min read ·
Start with thirty seconds at the end of your usual hot shower and build up to two or three minutes. Mornings work best.
If you have 30 seconds
- 1Brief cold releases adrenaline and dopamine: alertness and mood, more than weight loss.
- 2Start with thirty seconds to end a hot shower, then build to two or three minutes.
- 3Best in the morning, well away from weights and from bedtime.
You heard about cold shower benefits from a colleague over dinner: three minutes every morning, and it 'wakes you up better than coffee'. Next day you lasted four seconds and jumped out, swearing.
Meanwhile your phone shows people up to their necks in ice. That's where the usual mistake starts: treating it as an endurance contest. When people ask, I say start with the shower at home, and a few seconds.
Are cold showers good for you?
Yes, if you're in good health and keep the dose small. Brief cold releases adrenaline and dopamine, and for a while you usually feel sharper and brighter. It won't do much for your weight, and lasting longer adds nothing.
- Alertness. It arrives in seconds and stays a while.
- Mood. Many people feel clearer and lighter afterwards.
- Circulation. Alternating hot and cold may help it. That's the idea behind spa circuits.
What cold does to your body
A short alarm. Sensors in your skin alert your brain, which narrows the blood vessels near the surface to keep heat in and releases adrenaline and noradrenaline. It's the lift you get before speaking to a full room, and it holds while the stimulus is brief.
Dopamine that lingers. Dopamine can rise too, more than doubling in some studies, and comes down slowly. Coffee masks the tiredness signal. With cold your body makes its own lift, best in the morning.
It does little for weight. 'Brown' fat, the kind that burns to keep us warm, dwindles with age. Cold can wake it up, but the extra burn is small. The studies needed days in the cold, and a shower lasts a few minutes.
Ice is a different thing. Immersion drains heat from your body, and the reaction is far less predictable, so an ice bath needs your doctor's go-ahead and someone beside you. A shower stays under your control.
Cold is a dose. A small one, repeated through the week.
How to start, one step at a time
Hot first, cold to finish. Shower as usual and end on cold: thirty seconds in week one, to adapt, a minute in week two, two from week three. Two or three minutes is plenty.
Cold enough, no colder. Cold enough that you want to get out, but can stay in: between 10 and 15 degrees. A little warmer is fine at first.
A cold shower in the morning, a few times. Two to four a week is enough: about eleven minutes in total. If you enjoy it, go daily and keep it short. Under the water, breathe out slowly: that's your body's brake.
A cold shower after a workout? It depends. After weights, wait. Muscle grows partly thanks to the mild inflammation a session leaves, and cold may blunt it. At the gym, shower lukewarm; keep the cold for the morning or another day. After a run or a ride, it's fine.
In the evening, leave a gap. A cold shower before bed tends to switch you on when you should be winding down. Leave at least two or three hours. To get to sleep, a hot one helps: see the article on falling asleep.
Try this
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Test yourself
It's six in the evening, you've just finished weights and want to recover well. Which shower?
Start with thirty seconds, tomorrow: in three weeks you'll be at two minutes. If your mornings run better, keep it. If it isn't for you, drop it: sleep, food and movement come before cold.
