Oh no! I’m sorry to report that cold plunges are great
In a basement, past a weight room, at the end of a fluorescent-lit hallway sits a portal to human potential, a gateway to peak physical performance and mental mastery. It’s a tub filled with cold water.
“It’s probably at about 47F [8.3C],” says Carmen Sturniolo, the owner of Ambitious Athletics, a gym and training center in Washington DC that has one of the only publicly available cold plunges in the city. He drops a small rubber ducky equipped with a thermometer into the water to monitor the temperature. Across the room, a framed picture of a cartoon diplodocus swimming says: “The important thing is that I believe in myself.”
I wonder whether I believe in myself enough to subject my soft, fragile body to the icy depths – and decide I do when Sturniolo tells me that his four- and seven-year-old daughters have both done it.
What’s a cold plunge?
Cold plunging, also known as cold therapy or cold-water immersion, is the act of fully submerging your body in cold water – be it in a lake, ocean, tank, pool or, in this case, a large rectangular tub that could comfortably fit two NFL linebackers sitting head to foot.
The practice is not new: references to the benefits of cold therapy date as far back as 3500BC. The Roman physician Claudius Galen reportedly used cold-water immersion to help treat fevers. Athletes have long been dunking themselves in ice baths to speed their recoveries. And since 1903, members of the Coney Island Polar Bear Club have gathered every winter to dive into the icy waters of the Atlantic.
Why is everyone talking about cold plunges?
Recently, there’s been something of a plunging renaissance. Lizzo is doing it. Hailey Bieber claims it helps with her anxiety. Harry Styles posted a photo of himself submerged in an ice bath on tour last year. Joe Rogan is a seasoned and memed cold plunger.
But perhaps no one is more responsible for the rising interest in cold exposure than Andrew Huberman, the Stanford neuroscientist whose wildly popular podcast, Huberman Lab, is gospel among the biohacking crowd. According to Sturniolo, the clients who come to his facility to use the cold plunge – “Mostly guys,” he says – almost inevitably mention Huberman, who did an episode on cold exposure in 2022.
What is cold plunging supposed to be good for?
The benefits of cold therapy, per its adherents, are myriad. Huberman argued that 11 minutes of cold-water immersion a week can potentially “be used to safely stress the body to improve attention, mood and cog
nitive focus and boost metabolism and reduce inflammation”. An article on UCLA Health says that taking cold showers may do everything from improving your mood to boosting your immunity to common colds (though it is careful to add: “Cold showers are not the primary treatment for any condition”). The Ambitious Athletics website claims that plunging can help improve my energy, resilience and physical recovery. “A quick cold plunge every day can push the limits of your mind!” the site crows.
The actual scientific evidence of the benefits of cold plunging is murky. “The question is: is that beneficial to your health or not? We don’t know,” said James Mercer, a professor emeritus at the institute of health sciences at UiT, the Arctic University of Norway. In 2022, Mercer and his colleagues published a review paper in the International Journal of Circumpolar Health that looked at the health effects of voluntary exposure to cold water. The group examined more than 100 studies and found there were certain trends in the findings that suggested cold-water immersion could have beneficial health effects, such as strengthening the immune system and improving insulin sensitivity and mental health. Mercer underscored this last point in particular.
“The feel-good effect is also important,” he said. Overcoming the “Will I? Won’t I?” factor, Mercer said, leaves many people feeling euphoric and accomplished.
Does a cold plunge have side effects?
There can be downsides to coldwater immersion, Mercer warned. It can be dangerous for people who have a history of heart problems; some studies have found that cold-water swimming increases the level of troponin in the blood, a protein that’s released into the bloodstream during heart attacks. Cold plunging or swimming in deep water should only be undertaken in groups, as the body’s cold-shock response can be so powerful that it puts one at risk of drowning.
While the results of the review were promising overall, Mercer cautioned that the studies were too disparate in how they were conducted – the number of participants they used, how long participants spent in the water, and the temperature of the water itself – to draw meaningful conclusions. “It is clear that there is a need for new controlled-research studies that are specifically focused on the topic,” the paper concluded.
Still, Mercer said he’s rarely met a cold-plunge detractor. “They all think it’s the most wonderful thing in the world,” he said. “So then you have to ask yourself: can hundreds of thousands of people be wrong?”
Can you DIY cold-plunge at home?
Given the potential dangers, it’s best for first-timers not to DIY cold-plunge alone at home, but you can still dabble in cold immersion with a frigid shower. In the weeks leading up to my own attempt, I subjected myself to cold showers in the morning, just like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson once tweeted that he does. The actor said the frigid deluge “has a great ‘morning bite’ to wake me up”.
At first, the 30 seconds I spent shivering in the cold spray (that’s what UCLA Health recommended starting with) after my usual hot shower were miserable and leeched all joy from my soul. Also, in my first week of DIY attempts, I got both a chest cold and a UTI, and though they were totally unrelated, I petulantly resented the whole experiment for not helping.
After a week, I decided that I had endured enough icy showers. But when I reached out to turn off the warm water, I found I actually wanted to do my cold shower. The Rock was right: those 30 chilly seconds did have a great “morning bite”. As my anger towards the cold rinse had subsided, I realized it had left me feeling alert and energized in a way that I suspect would make me over-chatty and kind of annoying if I were around anyone besides my dog.
By the time I was face to face with the cold plunge in the gym, I was taking a cold shower every morning, and wondering what kind of person I was becoming.
Does cold-plunging feel as terrible as it sounds?
When it came time for a more extended session, Sturniolo walked me through the process: I had to shower before and after, and enter and exit the water calmly – no excessive splashing (more out of politeness than anything). For beginners, he suggests two plunges of two to four minutes each, with a sit in the infrared sauna in between for “thinking about the experience you just had”. He asked whether I wanted him to stay to coach me through my session. I declined, because I didn’t want anyone there to witness any embarrassing noises I might make. “See you on the other side!” Sturniolo said as he exited.
I set the timer on my phone to four minutes and left it on a small table. I lowered myself into the water, and though the cold was a shock, I managed to stay silent. The icy water prickled along my fingers, toes and shoulders, but was otherwise manageable. After four minutes, I got out and felt alert and peppy, just as I did after my morning showers.
I did not spend the time between plunges in the sauna thinking about the experience I just had. Instead, I spent it taking selfies of myself next to the tub and texting my friends about how easy it was. “I thought it would be,” one replied, and I was disappointed they weren’t more impressed.
After the second plunge, I felt fantastic, so I did a third. I felt I could spend a whole day like this, climbing in and out of the frigid tub, getting progressively more energized until, presumably, I thrummed into another dimension. But I wasn’t sure that was medically advisable, and also I had only paid for a 45-minute session.
When I returned to the lobby, Sturniolo congratulated me the way you might congratulate someone who had just run a triathlon. I was feeling so amped and self-satisfied that this felt like an appropriate level of praise for having sat unmoving in a tub for 12 minutes total.
Any conclusions?
Burdened as I am with the power of observation, I feel confident that hundreds of thousands of people can be wrong about any number of things. How else do you explain the popularity of The Big Bang Theory? In this instance, though, I found myself siding with the plungers.
I can’t say for sure whether my immune system or mental health have improved after this experiment. I can say for sure that I’ve gotten more annoying at parties, because I’m now one of those people who talks about how great cold showers are.
Unfortunately, research hasn’t yet shown whether regular cold-water immersion makes your friends stop inviting you to stuff. As Mercer said: “We need more studies.”
BOTTOM LINE
How much did it cost? $45 for 45 minutes; prices may vary.
How long does it take? Experts warn to go slow. Start with 30 seconds and build up from there.
How cold, exactly? It depends on what you can safely tolerate. (As Huberman put it, the temperature should evoke the thought: “This is really cold, and I want to get out, but I can safely stay in.”) Experts generally recommend between 45F (7C) and 65F (18C).
Would I do it again? Absolutely. I’m a plunge-head now.
Did it fix me? No, but I did like how energized it made me feel.
Overall rating: Four out of five ice cubes.