Once your cold plunge is up, following it up with hot therapy-like a sauna or steam-can feel great and provide even more of that beneficial hormesis. Your breath can be an ally as you brave the cold, and incorporating breathwork techniques like the Wim Hof method might help you out. Most ice bath protocols recommend submerging your body from the neck down, in water that is approximately 50-59 degrees Fahrenheit. ![]() ", focus on the ability to maintain parasympathetic tone" (a state of relaxation) "and lastly, the willpower to remain for a few more breaths after your brain tells you to get out." "Start with the commitment to get in, then with the act of calming the physiological response to the cold," he says. To prepare, Tabone suggests leaning into that mental game, and viewing it as such, with barriers to overcome. When gearing up for your first ice bath (whether in a studio, a cold lake, your bathtub, or an at-home cold plunge tub), it's important to remember that, physical discomfort aside, it's largely a mental obstacle. By intentionally exposing ourselves to these hormones, Huberman explains on his podcast, "we can learn to maintain mental clarity and calm while we are in a state of stress, and that can be immensely useful when encountering stressors in other parts of life." This happens because when we dip into a cold environment (or just think about dipping into a cold environment), our bodies release "fight-or-flight" hormones like norepinephrine and epinephrine 4 -sometimes at levels up to five times over our baseline. Taking regular ice baths can also activate cellular mechanisms and signaling pathways that shift the way you react to stress and make you more mentally resilient moving forward. " A study 3 published in the journal JMIR Formative Research found that cold temperatures during an immersion bath can stimulate your vagus nerve," Laura DeCesaris, a functional medicine expert, tells mbg, adding that "stimulation of this nerve has been shown to help you relax and de-stress." Taking a deliberate dip in an ice bath can also help you cope with taxing emotions like stress and anxiety. "An ideal scenario would be that you do a quick cold soak, hop in a hot tub or hot shower for a few minutes to get blood flow going, and then go hit your workout." "Paradoxically, if you get in the cold before you work out, the sympathetic nervous system response means it can actually be a pre-workout booster," he says. This gives your body enough time to build new mitochondria 2 after the stress of exercise. However, as exercise physiologist Ben Greenfield explains on the mindbodygreen podcast, ideally you'll wait at least two hours after exercising to take your plunge. "People are using deliberate cold exposure to reduce inflammation post-exercise and reduce inflammation generally, and people are also using cold to enhance performance in the context of strength training and endurance training," Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, Ph.D. Lalitha McSorley, P.T., a physical therapist at Brentwood Physio not involved in the study, explains that the research presented in the analysis showed positive results "for muscle strength, perceived recovery, and reduced muscle soreness," as the drop in temperature reduces creatine kinases (enzymes released when muscle cells are damaged), reducing the effects of an injury. As shown in a 2022 meta-analysis 1 published in the journal Sports Medicine, cold water exposure is beneficial for muscle recovery. Professional athletes who jump into ice baths post-workout are onto something.
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