Now admittedly I’ve been winter swimming in icy waters in Scandinavia since I was 3 years old (voluntarily following my mom in the ocean, mind you). I’ve always been keen on the benefits of cold-and-heat alternating therapies and how it can tone our vagus nerve and thereby help alleviate stress and build resilience.
However, right now this cold therapy trend is getting out of control.
This trend is being pushed by influencers with no health education or people without an understanding of the nervous system - yes, even researches focusing on one aspect only i.e. how cold therapy can change our fat tissue. However, this is ONLY one aspect of how cold therapy is affecting us. We need to understand the bigger picture of how something is affecting us LONG-TERM and our body as a whole, before we dive in. Most importantly we need to understand how our own nervous system is wired and what therapies is best matched to that. Too many lack the understanding of doing things in short bursts or in moderation to stress the body short-term in order to build resilience long-term - instead they are pushing the body beyond capacity, staying in ice water for 5-20 minutes with the mantra “more is better” or just being solely focused on changing fat tissue without understanding what large doses of adrenaline release does to the nervous system.
Most of us are chronically stressed.
We are stuck in sympathetic overdrive (fight-or-flight). We DO NOT want to engage in activities that cause a large release of adrenaline over a prolonged amount of time, as we have already used up our stress hormones from our stressed out lifestyle. This is basic common sense and basic understanding of the central nervous system.
Rather what we want is to activate the vagus nerve (nerve responsible for shifting us in and out of relax-and-digest nervous system (parasympathetic) vs. flight-or-flight nervous system (sympathetic) by SHORT BURSTS (30 seconds-2 minutes) of cold therapy followed by heat therapy (sauna/movement). This helps to get our body out of sympathetic overdrive mode (stress) by waking up the vagus nerve, yet it doesn’t deplete our stress hormones (aging and deteriorating us rather than building us up).
Health tools should be matched to our own nervous system state and health needs - otherwise it is counterproductive for our own journey towards optimal performance and wellbeing.
Your own body is by far the most accurate way to measure if something is good for you - which is why we need to learn how to trust our body’s signals again rather than rely on gadgets and rules that only focus on one aspect of health - I am not saying a gadget cannot be helpful at times but we are becoming too disconnected from our body’s innate intelligence by solely relying on outside measurement tools.
Overly simplified: if a new trend leaves you tired, weak and depleted, this is a clear sign, that you are overriding your body’s stress tolerance level and doing more harm than good. Listen and adapt accordingly - do not just push through, unless there is a clear reason for it and all aspects of your health has truly been taken into account.