It’s mid December and I just took a cold shower
Hey HN. I just wanted to share a change I made in my life recently. Yeah. The cold shower itself was actually pretty terrible but now I’m feeling pretty great. This is not my first time though; I've been taking cold showers for the past weeks. At first I started doing them to recover faster (soon I’ll be 30 and I’ve set the goal to get there in the best shape of my life). But now I've incorporated them in my longevity framework as part of my day to day. Anyone else is doing cold showers or ice baths? I’d love to know more people doing this and your experience with it.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 27.1 ms ] threadI recently started trying to take more cold showers, but they're never exclusively cold. I start cold for a minute, then take a regular hot shower for another 5-10, and then finish it off with another cold rinse for one last minute. This has been my drill for pretty much every evening in the past six months, also inspired by the "longevity framework" as you put it!
It doesn't feel as if my life has changed drastically by any means, apart from the mild ego stroke of "wow I sustained two whole minutes of cold!" That said, it might be because I'm not doing cold showers right.
If it adds any context I'm in my early 20s right now.
I also started doing the same. Start with a normal shower and then turn off the hot water. About the benefits, Huberman said you need at least 11 minutes per week. I do feel leas soar that normally. And about the time, in theory it’s better to not do the cold showers in the evenings because a cold shower will make your body to generate heat and for sleep you want the contrary effect.
I’m interested in what you mentioned about longevity framework. Do you have one? How you got interested in that?
I was first exposed to the idea of cold showers for better health in Veritasium's "How to Slow Aging (and even reverse it)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRt7LjqJ45k. The video isn't focused on cold showers exclusively, but he briefly touches upon it as a method of improving longevity. I figured that implementing cold showers into my daily routine should be a pretty easy task, because it doesn't add any extra work into my schedule--it's just replacing a small portion of my hot showers, which I should be minimizing anyway.
And yeah, you're probably right about cold showers being less of a good idea in the evening. How often do you shower then? I can't bring myself to go to bed at night without feeling clean, but showering twice in a day also feels a bit time-consuming and excessive.
Actually there is no need to do it every day as long as you stay under the cold for more than 11 minutes per week. For me, doing it every day seemed easier to ramp up. Once I get to 3-4 minutes under the cold water per shower I’ll think about doing it maybe 3 times per week.
My wife and I also enjoy cold water swimming. We can only do ten or fifteen minutes before our arms stop working entirely. We keep to areas that we can touch bottom that were very familiar with and aren't subject to tidal currents.
It's not a big life changing thing, but we do feel better for the next few hours after getting out of the water. In fact I think it's more of a head game than anything. I just feel like heartier person when I climb out of the water and there is snow on the ground.
Edit: grammar
Anyone can do it, it's nothing special, and I'm a pretty average person in all aspects of my life.