1) A tool for regulating blood sugar:

Acute and repeated cold exposure has been found to improve insulin sensitivity, which helps manage your blood sugar, a finding that's held true across many studies. The catch? It appears you need to shiver to get the most benefit. "You're activating your muscles through shivering and that will cause responses that are very similar to what you'd see during exercise," says Haman. Blondin says these changes may last for 24 to 48 hours after being in the cold, although it's not yet clear how this plays out in longer term studies. "Some of the improvements in insulin sensitivity appear to be even better than what you'd see with exercise, which is kind of the surprising part," he says. In this sense, the cold can be its own kind of workout. It can even bump up your metabolic rate as much as five times above your resting rate. Cold exposure on its own hasn't been shown to be effective for weight loss, but some small studies find it may be useful in treating Type 2 diabetes.

2) Increases Energy Levels:

Exposing your body to cold temperatures for short periods causes changes in hormone secretion. For example, studies have shown that the secretion of norepinephrine increases during cold exposure. (Norepinephrine is one of the hormones responsible for regulating attention, focus and energy.) I’ve been experimenting with taking a three-minute ice bath before intense CrossFit workouts. So far, the results have been promising.

3) Triggers Hormesis and Improves Resilience:

As explained in my article listing the key Infrared & Traditional sauna health benefits, exposing yourself to extreme temperatures makes your body more resilient. That’s because the initial shock of heat or cold exposure allows your body to adapt and become stronger through a process called hormesis. In many ways, your body adapts to frigid temperatures similarly to how it adapts to intense workouts: it’s uncomfortable initially, but as your body adapts, it becomes stronger. It took me about four or five ice baths until 39-degree water no longer felt terrible. As a result, I’ve been increasing the duration of my cold plunges, and my sensitivity to cold temperatures has decreased (even outside the tub).

4) Speeds Up Physical Recovery:

If you watch professional sports events or the annual CrossFit Games, you may have seen athletes take ice baths after or between intense workouts. That’s in part because studies have shown that cold exposure can increase oxygenated blood flow, thus speeding up muscle recovery and reducing delayed onset muscle soreness. Enabling your body to heal muscle damage quicker can promote muscle growth and lead to a reduced risk for injury. When you jump into ice-cold water, your central nervous system causes the blood vessels in your extremities to constrict to force the warm blood to your vital organs. As a result, circulation in your arms and legs gets temporarily restricted. However, once you get out of the cold water, your blood vessels dilate, thus triggering increased blood flow to the muscle tissue in your extremities and skin. I’ve been combining Sauna bathing with ice bathing to amplify those positive effects. Not only does that dramatically increase blood flow, but the constriction and dilation is also a great workout for my blood vessels. If you don’t have a Sauna, you can take a hot shower before or after your cold plunge. I like the combination of an ice bath followed by a hot shower as part of my pre-workout regimen. Note that you don’t have to be a professional athlete to benefit from ice bathing after workouts. I’m a hobby athlete and fitness enthusiast, but even I appreciate that cold plunging reduces muscle soreness and speeds up recovery.

5) Improves Your Discipline:

Making the conscious decision to submerge yourself in cold water requires discipline and mental strength — especially if the temperature outside the tub is in freezing territory. Let me tell you this: it’s a pure mind game to strip down to your underwear (or bathing suit) in freezing temperatures, knowing that you’re about to feel even colder as you enter the tub. It’s brutal. The good news is that if you manage to overcome your fear and hesitation, you’ll be mentally stronger from knowing that you have what it takes to succeed in even the toughest conditions.

6) Boosts Your Mood:

When I emerge from the cold water, I feel like I’ve won another battle against my mind. That feeling of having prevailed yet again sets the tone for the rest of my day and puts me in a better mood. In addition to that psychological boost, there’s also a biological aspect to cold plunging’s mood-altering benefits: the process triggers the release of endorphins and other neurotransmitters, including norepinephrine. A study published in 2021 demonstrated that low levels of norepinephrine (NE) are associated with depression and other mental disorders, and concluded that “therapeutic agents which specifically increase NE activity are effective antidepressants, and there is evidence that those acting simultaneously on 5-HT and NE neurotransmission may have an antidepressant action superior to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).”

7) Helps You Better Manage Stress:

As mentioned above, jumping into a tub filled with cold water stresses your body because it causes the activation of your sympathetic nervous system — the one that triggers the “fight or flight” response. When I took my first cold plunge, I wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. But because there were other people watching (and recording) me, I felt like I had no choice but to calm down by focusing on my breathing. To this day, I shift all my attention to controlling my breathing when I get into the tub. By doing so, I enable my body to better respond to my overactive sympathetic nervous system and allow my parasympathetic nervous system — the one responsible for resting and digesting — to get back in control. Being able to down-regulate your sympathetic nervous system means you’re better equipped to manage stress. Over time, that will likely reflect in your heart rate variability (HRV) — a proxy metric that reflects how balanced your autonomic nervous system is. To learn more about the significance of heart rate variability, you can read the article outlining the biohacks being used to "Improve your HRV"

8) Improves Your Sleep:

Many people have trouble falling asleep (or going back to sleep if they wake up in the middle of the night) as a result of elevated cortisol levels caused by stress. By learning how to better manage stress (as discussed above), you also get better at relaxing. And being in a relaxed state of mind, especially before bedtime, increases your chances of falling asleep quickly and staying asleep. Since I began leveraging ice bathing, I’ve noticed a dramatic improvement in an important sleep metric that most people don’t pay much attention to: wake after sleep onset (WASO), which is the time I spend awake after falling asleep. My WASO used to be in the 45 to 60-minute range, but it has decreased to between 18 and 35 minutes. As a result, my sleep has become much more efficient because I spend less time awake in bed.

9) Helps Burn Fat and Improve Insulin Sensitivity:

Exposing your body to cold water activates your brown adipose tissue, also known as brown fat (BAT). This energy-consuming tissue can upregulate your metabolism, clear blood glucose and increase insulin sensitivity, as outlined in this study. Researchers have also discovered that intense shivering (e.g., after prolonged cold exposure) increases dependence on muscle glycogen. While it’s counter-productive for athletic performance if that happens right before a competition, it’s good news if you’re trying to improve your insulin sensitivity. As a result, cold plunging can be an excellent tool for weight loss if combined with a healthy lifestyle that includes an appropriate diet, quality sleep and regular exercise.

10) Boosts Your Immune System:

Exposing your whole body to cold water increases the plasma concentration of glutathione. This antioxidant plays a key role in the proper function of t-cell lymphocytes. Additionally, glutathione activates your natural killer (NK) cells. But that’s not all. Scientists in Italy have discovered that cold water swimming induces a significant variation in the blood cell fraction composition. Specifically, the researchers observed a significant increase in red blood cells, white blood cells (neutrophil granulocytes, lymphocytes and monocytes) and platelet count. As a result, ice bathing is one way to boost your immune system and better equip it to fight pathogens, including viruses and bacteria.

11) Offers Neurocognitive Benefits:

Observational studies on hibernating animals have shown that cold shock proteins, such as those triggered during an ice bath, reinvigorate and replace synapses in the brain that were lost during extended periods of sleep (i.e., hibernation). Scientists have discovered cold shock proteins which prevent cell death in mice that suffer from neurodegenerative diseases. Considering that the same cold shock proteins that protect the brains of mice also have neuroprotective properties in humans, researchers believe that they can be used to prevent or treat neurological diseases, such as dementia or Alzheimer’s.

12) Improves Your Cardiovascular Health:

Cold water immersion causes a constriction of your blood vessels, which leads to a temporary increase in blood pressure and reduced blood flow to your extremities, but increased blood flow to your vital organs (including your heart). Once you get out of the cold water and start warming up, your blood vessels dilate and blood flow to your extremities increases. All that back and forth between constriction and dilation is like a workout for your blood vessels, which helps improve cardiovascular health. If you’ve been diagnosed with high blood pressure or take blood pressure medication, I’d recommend consulting a knowledgeable healthcare professional before making cold plunging a part of your wellness routine.