Taking cold showers for 3+ years

by John LaGue

Posted on October 6th, 2019 at 3:45pm EST PM

I love cold showers. Yes, I am crazy. I have been taking cold water showers for more than 3 years now. Why would I do that to myself?

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I started dabbling with cold showers as a freshman in college because I read an article (which I can no longer find) that stated a 2 minute cold shower could reverse the effects of sleep deprivation. As a young college kid I obviously didn't get enough sleep and would sometimes need a little boost. So, the idea of completely reversing my bad habits in 2 minutes sounded worth at least testing. Plus, I'm a pretty weird guy so if there's something weird I can try I usually will go for it.

Now, I didn't immediately fall in love with cold showers. They sucked. But, I would take them every now and then when I was really low on sleep ("running on fumes" as my mom would say). They really did wake me up, but again, they sucked... or at least I thought they did. I would always have to start with warm water and work it down to cold for that last minute or so.

Now, that was while living in the dorms Freshman year of college. Sophomore year came around and I found myself finding out about more benefits of cold showers. Many websites claimed cold showers were AMAZING for your skin. As a young guy who started balding at 17 and always had at least 3 pimples on his face I thought this weird trick, taking cold showers, might just be the hack that would fix my problems! (Spoiler: it wasn't). But fueled by promises of better looks, I started taking them a little bit more often. I was still starting a shower hot and finishing with a minute of cold water, but I was doing them consistently every week probably 4 times a week. My skin cleared up slightly, but I continued to bald. I wasn't really seeing the results I wanted. I kept at it for awhile though, sometimes stopping entirely for a couple weeks at a time.

Then jump to the next year. Junior year is when I start getting into weird stuff (read this post about living in a closet). By this time I had started to do a little bit more research on the benefits of cold showers. It didn't take long for Youtube to recommend some videos from this wild guy, Wim Hof The Iceman. He is seemingly inhuman and you can never tell if he's completely insane. He's hiked Everest in nothing more than shorts, he's set records for longest distance swam while submerged in arctic water, he lives and breathes cold. Not only does he do all of these ridiculous things in the cold, but he also claims anyone can do it! All you had to do was pay a few hundred dollars to get his 10 week long course where you learn how to withstand cold temperatures. Why would you want to withstand cold more? Well, it wasn't just about fending off cold temperatures, but also common colds. Wim Hof claimed his method, the "Wim Hof Method", could actually improve your immune system so much that you would NEVER get sick. He was definitely starting to sound a little crazy, a little cult like, and a little charlatany. But, he said he had proof! A study done by some university took practitioners of the Wim Hof Method and injected them with inflammatory substances which typically cause flu like symptoms. Almost all of the participants trained in the method showed significantly less symptoms.

When I first read about this study, I was still quite skeptical. First, I found the 'study' on Wim's website and there were lots of color pictures. It didn't seem super scholarly. Plus, no one had yet tried to replicate the results. I didn't write him off entirely though because of the plethora of fervent testimonials from practitioners of the method around the globe. So, I dug deeper.

It turns out, there's actually plenty of research out there on just cold exposure. I found that cold showers increase your white blood cell count, promote brown fat development (linked to white blood cell count and strong immune), and condition your body to better regulate its internal temperature. A lot of people get sick when the seasons change (Fall and Spring), I believe largely in part due to the temperature change, people tend to not wear the proper clothing -either waiting too long to put on a jacket in fall or taking the jacket off too early in spring. The body is usually not prepared for this change and becomes susceptible to attack. When I started to find these very real studies showing very real benefits of purposeful cold exposure I was finally convinced.

If you do a little research on the Wim Hof method today, 4 years later. You'll find there's much more research available. If you don't believe me you can start at Wim's site where he lists them all here and then try to find the actual studies listed. They are out there and they are real.

When both my emotional and logical circuits were convinced I started doing the full Wim Hof method. If you search enough online, read enough testimonials, watch enough Youtube videos, and piece them all together you can get the entire Wim Hof method for free. It can be broken down into three parts:

I won't go into detail about the entire method here, but I will touch on it briefly. The breathing is the base of the entire method. To do the breathing technique you lay on a bed or sit on the ground/couch. Then you begin taking rapid and deep breathes. Deep breath in and quickly expelling ALL the air in your lungs. Then quickly inhale as much as you can, then exhale again. You do this for 30 breathes (that's 30 inhales and 30 exhales). On your last breath you exhale your lungs completely, pushing out as much air as you can. And then you hold your breath. Do not inhale. Hold your breath for as long as possible. You will find yourself being able to hold your breath for 1.5 - 2 minutes without any air in your lungs! Then, exhale again (your body will have produced CO2 for you to exhale) and take one large inhale. Then hold again for as long as you can. Then exhale and repeat the entire process. You will do 3 to 4 sets of these. In the actual Method, Wim will have you do exercises while you hold your breath. His go to exercise is push ups (I did it with pull ups though). You'll find that even with no air in your lungs you will be able to do more push ups in a row than you have ever been able to do. It is really quite amazing. After all the breathing you can meditate for a bit or go into a series of yoga-like stretches that will help your body "open up".

I'll note that his breathing technique is very similar to (and is derived from) certain types of tantric breathing which have been around for hundreds of years and you can find tons of examples of those online as well.

After doing the breathing and stretching then you proceed to the cold exposure. You start with brief 30 second cold water blasts after a warm shower in week 1 and work your way up to eventually taking 10 minute long pure cold water showers in week 10.

I did all of this. I wasn't perfectly consistent with the breathing, but I made sure to do the cold showers every day. I wore a water proof watch or listened to songs of certain length to track my time in the shower (music definitely helps). I started to feel really good after each shower. I would have a surge of energy and confidence. I noticed I was getting sick less often. I used to get sick a minimum of 2-3 times per year and that dropped to about 1 time. Even when I was sick it was usually a very brief cold. Normally those colds would linger as coughs for a week and a half, but not anymore.

So, I kept at it. I kept taking cold showers until I was rocking the 10 minute long cold showers (and shivering in the cold San Francisco fog for an hour after). After doing the 10 weeks, I stopped the breathing technique almost entirely and cut the cold showers to about 6-7 minutes because it was taking up a big chunk of my mornings. I kept at the cold though.

There were still a few times when I would fall into a weak week of hot showers. It wasn't until the summer of 2017 that I started to do cold showers abosultely. Every single day, no matter what, I would take a cold shower for a year straight. I have continued taking cold showers everyday since then. At this point I prefer them.

But, to be fair, I do occasionally take long hot showers if I am exceptionally dirty or have just cut my hair (cold water makes the loose hair stick to my body), but never more than once month and I never did during that first year either.

It's been a long time since I was last really sick. The last time I remember being truly sick was June of 2018 and it happened after I had driven straight across the country from San Francisco to Boston in about 5 days. I was sleep deprived and my diet had consisted of mostly McDonald's, Ritalin, and Pop Tarts. Then I was also sick for about 1 day again in April, 2019. But, that only came after multiple nights of heavy drinking and switching to partial hot showers because I would shave my head in the shower and needed the beginning portion of the shower to be hot.

I'm actually disappointed when I get into a shower and the water can only get down to lukewarm. It's invigorating, confidence building, and healthy taking cold showers.

My showers are pretty quick at this point though. I don't really have hair to clean and I'm not really pushing myself for cold exposure so they are usually about 3 minutes long. Which is another benefit of cold showers. It saves on gas bills and prep time in the morning.

I recommend cold showers to everyone. Only one person has actually taken it up, but I think everyone can benefit. You don't have to go hard core 10 minute cold showers either. Start slow. 10 second blasts of cold water at the end of a hot shower will wake you up. As you introduce it more you'll start to see the benefits.