By subjecting yourself to the extremes of cold, you (the self) are immediately forced into a confrontation with your body’s automatic systems. Cold submersion means pitting your voluntary will against your body’s survival responses. Either the cold will bowl you over and overwhelm your ability to confront it, or you will exert your will over your body sensations and thoughts – and find an inner calm when others would be shouting and running away.

You put your body into the cold, and then you command it to remain calm. You put your awareness on how the body feels and force it to calm down through deep breathing techniques and intense focus of your attention. Take conscious command of your body and override the fight-or-flight response, or you lose control and you start to shiver and complain.

If the cold isn’t extreme enough to evoke this response, then the full benefits of cold therapy will never be appreciated. There’s no quicker way to bring yourself to the precipice of self over body and mind, except by taking it to the next extreme with the Wim Hof Method, listed separately in this Guide.

Most of us know athletes around the world have long used cold and ice after workouts or a hard game to reduce muscle inflammation, relieve pain and muscle soreness, and to speed recovery time. Sports medicine doctors and healthcare professionals the world over have recommended the direct application of ice for calming down the inflammatory response at the site of an injury for ages. And many professional sports players can be seen taking ice baths after a grueling game of football or hockey.

In fact, icing became standard treatment after Dr. Gabe Mirkin published his “Sportsmedicine Book” in 1978, back when he coined the term RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation). However, last year, Dr. Mirkin published an update on his website which says, “anything that reduces inflammation also delays healing,” and that “there is no reason to apply ice more than six hours after you have injured yourself.” (http://www.drmirkin.com/fitness/why-ice-delays-recovery.html).

If you’ve never experienced cold therapy, you should start with cold showers. The idea you’d start straight away with an ice bath is an absurd proposition for anyone not acclimated to the cold. You just don’t throw yourself to the wolves and expect to survive.

While ice baths may be recommended for certain situations, the concept of cold therapy doesn’t need to involve anything this extreme. Don’t just throw yourself into freezing ice water unless you want to freeze your genitals with pain you didn’t expect.

While the thought of an ice bath  might not sound appealing to anyone, there are many ways to treat yourself to cold therapy and gain the benefits without suffering such extreme exposure. And while subjecting oneself to -240°F sounds like an insane suggestion, dry cold doesn’t freeze your body. Three minutes in dry air at -240°F is probably easier to tolerate than 10 minutes submerged in 50°F water for most people.

Cold Plunge Pools

To experience a more extended, more penetrating version of cold therapy, find where you can visit a facility with cold plunge pools  near where you live and give it a try. Your reaction to cold water will always be subjective to your personal experience, but a cold tub with 50°F or 55°F water is about twenty degrees warmer than an ice bath.

Cryotherapy

Cold therapy is also known as Cryotherapy. This is not to be confused with Cryo-Surgery, which uses a liquid nitrogen cryoprobe  to destroy diseased tissue with intense cold. Cryosurgery, which is also known as cryoablation, is sometimes referred to by some doctors as cryotherapy. By Cryotherapy, we mean the stand-up cold chambers where you might pay upwards of $50 to freeze yourself for about three minutes at -240°F.

Refrigeration Spas

Even more tolerable than submersion in cold water, refrigeration spas  are facilities where you can hang out in a walk-in freezer for a less extreme approach to cold therapy. These will hopefully become more common as a safer, more practical, and less expensive alternative to nitrogen cryotherapy. uscryotherapy.com

Cold Showers  

at home are growing in popularity and more folks are doing them on a daily basis. The suggestion is to take an ordinary hot shower, then shut off the hot water for a cold therapy finish.  Allowing a shock of cold to hit you in the shower can instantly (but temporarily) ease or erase your pain for hours. A heavy blast of cold water is a simple pain eraser for both back pain and flu pain!

Ice Therapy Machines

are portable chilling systems with liquid-cooled cold therapy pads which can be rented, mainly for post-surgery recovery.

Cold Compression Therapy  

combines the benefits of cold therapy and compression to provide optimal results for pain and swelling relief over clumsy application of ice packs. powerplay.us

Targeted Cold

a highly localized intense cold treatment which uses a hand-held device for non-invasive and drug-free pain treatment.

The ioverao treatment works by applying targeted cold to a peripheral nerve. A precise cold zone is formed under the skin – cold enough to immediately prevent the nerve from sending pain signals without causing damage to surrounding structures. The effect on the nerve is temporary, providing pain relief until the nerve regenerates and function is restored. The effect of this treatment is immediate and can last beyond ninety (90) days.

Myoscience iovera° Method

There’s no faster way to jump-start your mindbody awareness system into fully awake mode  than to experience cold showers in the morning! Unfortunately, the effectiveness of a cold shower is useless if your cold water isn’t frigid  or if your water pressure isn’t blasting!

A casual search online will reward you with anecdotal lists of cold therapy benefits which include: strengthening your willpower, improving your emotional resilience, reducing stress, and increase alertness; improving your skin and hair, stimulating weight loss, increasing testosterone in men, boosting fertility for men, improving circulation, improving your immunity, and draining your lymphatic system (enhancing your body’s detoxification). (https://www.menprovement.com/benefits-of-cold-showers/).

Whether or not cold therapy will help you has as much to do with your feelings about it as anything. If you expect  relief from the heat, cold, or alternating heat and cold, then the chances are that you will experience it. While scientific evidence of cold therapy as having long-term therapeutic value remains elusive (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3766664/), the consensus among those who experience cold therapy is that they would severely miss it if it were somehow no longer available.

It’s entirely up to you to experiment with different forms of Therapeutic Cold to see if any work for your situation. There are many changes which occur inside our body, nervous system and brain when exposed to a sudden shock of cold water. The basic concept is that everything contracts and slows down: our muscle fibers contract, metabolism slows down, nerve impulses slow down, and circulation becomes restricted.

Cold makes us feel alive!

Cold therapy is still one of the most-often recommended treatments for injury and post-surgery swelling and pain. But the benefits of cold are there to be had by everyone, not just the injured, sick, or drunken.

If you can stand it, cold works well to get you into rapid communication with your body. Part of the appeal is the fact cold slaps us awake and really makes us sit up and pay attention. A dunk into a cold pool can grab you by the shoulders and put you back into command of that body of yours. Same with a cold shower!

Whole body cryotherapy was initially intended for use in a clinical setting to treat patients with conditions such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryotherapy).  For some folks, it can relieve tension, stress, chronic pain, and anxiety.

Deep breathing is about all you can do while sitting in an ice bath or standing in a cryotherapy chamber. Shivering might be part of the equation, but if you are intent on focusing your mind and breathing deeply, then you can get to a place where your body finally relaxes. 

Alternating heat therapy together with cold treatment is called “contrast hydrotherapy.” Cold is considered to reduce blood flow and slow healing, while heat is found to increase blood flow and speed healing. Repeating such widely contrasting temps provides a cardiovascular workout.

A few spas in large metropolitan areas often offer both hot tubs and cold plunge tubs for temperature-contrast water therapy. There are several places around Denver, Colorado, which offer both hot therapy and cold therapy (see list below). Alternating between rapid heating and cooling by hopping in a 104°F hot tub for ten minutes, followed by a 50°F cold tub for ten minutes, probably provides the best balance of extremes of both worlds. Contrast hydrotherapy will help ease tension, pain, and anxiety fast!

This combination of therapies is where you start to get the most traction towards both a body and mind connection and a release of tension and trigger points (pain-causing micro-spasms). If combining cold and heat works to facilitate autonomous injury recovery, then there’s no reason it can’t also be used to help promote your conscious self-healing.

Contrast hydrotherapy is something you should try at least once. When you do, chances are you’ll feel better after 60 minutes than you have felt all month! As long as you are there to heal yourself, and work out your kinks, you’ll be amazed at how well this classic combo makes your bodymind feel.