The Benefits of Taking a Cold Shower

Some of you may freak out at even the thought of taking a cold shower. Most of us, including myself, find comfort in taking a hot, relaxing shower. It just feels right, after all, who wants to freeze themselves, specially first thing in the morning! Apart from comfort though, there isn’t much benefits to taking hot shower. The opposite, however, is true.

Taking cold showers has a number of health benefits and there’s a very good reason why a lot of professional athletes take ice baths, especially after training.

Improves Recovery

Various studies have shown that taking a cold shower or an ice bath after training can greatly reduce the time needed for muscle recovery and can also drastically reduce soreness. The good news is that the ideal temperature seems to be between 50-60F so you don’t need to dip yourself in ice water, a cold shower after the gym can be just as effective.

Burns Fat

If anything can convince you to take a cold shower, it’s this. Taking cold showers has been known to burn more fat! Brown fat to be more precise. You might know that the body has two kinds of fat, white and brown. White fat is created when we consume excess calories and is the hardest to burn. Brown fat, however, is burnt off when the body faces an extreme drop in temperature. It is burnt off to generate heat and to bring the body down to a normal temperature. Taking a cold shower can help to activate the burning of brown fat.

Relieves Stress and Fights Depression

This might be new to some, but taking cold showers improves your body’s response to stress and can even help to fight depression. The sudden change in temperature trains your body to better handle stress and also improves its natural antioxidant production.

It also acts as a natural anti-depressant because the sudden drop in temperature creates a (positive) shock like response from your nerve endings to the brain. This in turn, provides a boost in your mood.

Increases Testosterone

This is probably the biggest benefit of taking a cold shower for men. Testosterone is the male hormone responsible for various things ranging from muscle building and fat loss to a healthy brain.

Various studies have shown that during the colder months, sperm count and quality were higher than compared to the hotter months. This is because heat has a negative impact on the testicles’ production of testosterone, you might not think so because of the shrinking effect it has on your boys but the cold can actually improve your testosterone levels.

Therefore, to give your natural testosterone production a boost, aim for a cold shower daily.