Ice Bath Benefits: Heart, Brain, Body

BYU Professor Benjamin Bikman, PhD describes the metabolic and endocrine benefits of cold plunge therapy. He recommends Morozko for whole-body cold-water immersion, which he practices every morning.

Summary

• Brown fat is essential to metabolic health. Cold plunge therapy will recruit new brown fat and beige white fat by adding mitochondria, changing some fat cells from fat storing to fat burning.

• Cold plunge is a systemic therapy that can improve every aspect of your health, including your cardio-vascular (heart), psychological (brain), and immune system (body) health.

• Drugs and allopathic medicine are targeted therapies, which is why their deleterious consequences are called side effects.

• Like exercise, sunshine, and sleep, a little bit of cold plunge therapy can result in big improvements in well-being.

Brown Fat for Metabolic Health

Deliberate cold exposure offers one type of benefit that exercise, sunshine, and diet cannot offer: brown fat (or brown adipose tissue, BAT). Brown fat is rich in mitochondria, which gives it a brown color and potential for high metabolic activity. When activated by cold, brown fat burns energy to generate heat instead of produce ATP, like mitochondria in other cells ordinarily do. Cold exposure can cause white fat to increase its mitochondrial content, a process called "beiging" that allows white fat to act more like brown fat by increasing its energy-burning capacity. A myriad of systemic metabolic benefits result from having active brown fat in the body, including healthier heart, better brain function, and improved immune function.

Heart Benefits of Cold Plunge Therapy

The metabolic benefits to the heart may be the most important, as every leading cause of death from chronic illness in the western industrialized countries originates in metabolic dysfunction.  In Ben Bikman Interview: Mitochondrial Health, I explain how heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer's dementia, and even cancer are all associated with a pathological phenomenon called insulin resistance, which is a disorder of glucose metabolism. Cold plunge therapy boosts insulin sensitivity and can resolve the metabolic dysfunction that underpins all of these chronic illnesses.

Although hypertension is one of the most important contraindications to cold plunge, a regular practice will improve circulation by promoting endothelial function. Because the endothelial cells are responsible for vasodilation, or expansion of the blood vessels to increase perfusion throughout the body, the boost to endothelium that results from cold plunge will reduce risk of heart attack, stroke, deep vein thrombosis, and other cardio-vascular diseases. As a bonus, cold plunge therapy can resolve erectile dysfunction by improving circulation of blood to the penis.

Brain Benefits of Cold Plunge Therapy

The psychological benefits have been documented in case studies and clinical trials that show a regular practice of cold water swimming will boost mood, increase energy and motivation, and can reverse major depression--even when medication and traditional talk therapy have failed.  For example, in a recent United Kingdom study, just five minutes of whole-body cold water immersion improved the mood of 39 participants (Massey et al. 2023). I wrote about the value of cold plunge therapy for treating mood disorders in Depression Cured by Cold Plunge and the immediate effects are due to the production of mood-lifting neurotransmitters when the body is stimulated by the cold. After less than a minute of exposure to cold water, the body produces massive quantities of feel-good neurotransmitters and hormones like dopamine, norepinephrine, vasopressin, and oxytocin that lift mood and create a sense of social connection.  Moreover, after a few weeks of regular cold plunge therapy, the body will recruit new brown fat that increases neuroprotective factors like FGF-21, RBM3 (Hu et al. 2022) and brain-derived neuroprotective factor (BDNPF) that boost brain function and promote healing of brain injury. You can read more about these protective mechanisms in Brown Fat & Brain Health.

Immunological Benefits of Cold Plunge Therapy

Cold plunge therapy has a surprising effect on immune function.  Despite the folk wisdom that cold exposure can increase risk of "catching cold," when the exposure is acute and brief, clinical studies show that it stimulates increased production of NK cells that help fight infection, and ameliorates the symptoms of certain autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and fibromyalgia.  That's probably how a study in the Netherlands reported that bank employees who regularly practiced cold showers were absent fewer days sick from work (Buijze et al. 2016).

Bonus Benefits

As if these three body systems weren't enough to convince you to give cold plunge therapy a try, there's one other factor that is reported by high achievers and elite performers.  Celebrities like Joe Rogan, scientists like Andrew Huberman, and athletes like Luke Donald or Nick Bosa have all reported to me that a regular practice of ice bath helps them hone their competitive edge.

References

• Buijze GA, Sierevelt IN, van der Heijden BC, Dijkgraaf MG, Frings-Dresen MH. The effect of cold showering on health and work: a randomized controlled trial. PLoS One. 2016 Sep 15;11(9):e0161749.

• Hu Y, Liu Y, Quan X, Fan W, Xu B, Li S. RBM3 is an outstanding cold shock protein with multiple physiological functions beyond hypothermia. Journal of Cellular Physiology. 2022 Oct;237(10):3788-802.

• Yankouskaya A, Williamson R, Stacey C, Totman JJ, Massey H. Short-Term Head-Out Whole-Body Cold-Water Immersion Facilitates Positive Affect and Increases Interaction between Large-Scale Brain Networks. Biology. 2023;12(2):211. doi:10.3390/biology12020211

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About the Author

Thomas P Seager, PhD is an Associate Professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering at Arizona State University. Seager co-founded the Morozko Forge ice bath company and is an expert in the use of ice baths for building metabolic and psychological resilience.

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