Some people swear by a soothing, hot shower to relieve stress and ease muscle soreness, but you could be missing out on every ice bath benefit, ranging from helping with muscle recovery to boosting your immune system. If you’re a bit skeptical, which is completely understandable considering a freezing bath doesn’t sound enjoyable to most, there is science behind every perk this practice has.

Helps With Muscle Recovery’

This is the reason cold therapy has become so popular in sports medicine.

Why Recovery After Working Out Is Necessary

Believe it or not, you do microscopic damage to your muscles whenever you exercise. From both cardio workouts and strength training, you stress the fibers in your muscles. It’s even possible for you to tear those fibers when exercising. This, however, doesn’t mean the fibers are permanently damaged.

Firstly, swelling may happen from this stress, which is your body’s way of helping the injury heal. Moreover, your body sends specialized stem cells to the area to repair the muscle tissue, among other mechanisms of action that help with the healing process.

In addition, your body releases lactic acid whenever you’re exercising and not receiving enough oxygen, such as when you sprint or weight lift. Your body needs that oxygen to break down glucose. Without this gas, lactic acid accumulates in the body, causing muscle fatigue and soreness.

While you may not always be aware this is happening, you might have other times when you’re feeling sore after your workout, especially if you push yourself beyond your limits or exercise the same muscle groups multiple days in a row.

Ultimately, if you regularly partake in cold water therapy, either in the form of cold showers or an ice bath, you can ease pain and muscle soreness because you’ll help with recovery.

The science behind this?

What Happens During Recovery With Cold Water Immersion

When you take an ice bath, the cold water constricts the blood vessels. Since this reduces swelling and lactic acid build-up, it also reduces pain. Not to mention, the real ice bath benefit here is when the blood vessels dilate, which allows more oxygen-rich blood, consisting of nutrients, to reach the tissue. Your body also flushes out lactic acid when this happens.

Taking a cold plunge after you work out may speed up your recovery time so you can return to exercising sooner.

Reduces Stress

The use of hot tubs, saunas, and even steaming-hot showers all point to heat as the more relaxing temperature. However, cold water immersion has its health benefits on stress.

This may sound like it contradicts everything you know about body temperature and stress response, but here’s a simple explanation:

Your body has the parasympathetic nervous system — a part of your autonomic nervous system that controls your digestion, heart rate, and respiration. The frigid temperature of the water triggers a cold shock response that stimulates your body’s fight or flight reaction, which is how your sympathetic nervous system reacts. After that subsides, your parasympathetic system initiates as a way for your body to settle down, lowering your blood pressure and heart rate while encouraging relaxation.

Along with that shock response, it’s not just your sympathetic nervous system kicking into gear to compensate; your body is releasing endorphins (your body’s natural feel-good hormones) to compensate for the discomfort. These hormones will help ease any pain while providing you with a feeling of euphoria. They also travel better throughout the entire body once blood flow increases.

You’ll improve your mental health for this reason.

Bolster Your Immune System’

Your body’s number one defense against germs is your immune system. Every day, it’s taking a beating, though, if you’re not getting enough sleep or aren’t fueling it properly. As a result, you may find yourself sick frequently, or when illness does get you, you may take longer to recover.

One of the benefits of ice baths related to cold water is that it gives your immune system a push in the right direction. Your immune system sees the cold as harmful. In return, it produces more white blood cells (defenders against germs) to ward off the threat. You’re ultimately priming your immune system to fight when true threats emerge, especially when you take an ice bath regularly.

And after it increases blood flow, more of those fighters are flowing throughout the body.

Improve Your Mental Clarity

You may not feel mentally alert daily because your sleep and mood impact your mental sharpness directly. While implementing positive lifestyle habits helps, you take it one step further with cold water immersion. This goes along with the body’s fight or flight response ramping up; as this happens, your body increases adrenaline — a hormone that improves your mental clarity and alertness and focus.

More circulation also happens once your blood vessels dilate, which leads to more oxygen and nutrients reaching the brain. You may then notice a boost in mental clarity as a result.

Get a Better Night’s Sleep

Being snuggly warm in the middle of winter and just a bit chilled in the summer is fairly standard for somebody to get a good night’s sleep. However, a cold body temperature, like that achieved during an ice bath, may help you get a good night’s sleep long after you exit.

You might wonder how that’s even possible, considering ice baths put your body in a state of hyper-alertness. Well, the potential health benefits of ice baths on your sleep happen once you remove yourself from the chilly water.

While your body’s tissues are getting cold, your core temperature is dropping at the same time. While it helps ease sore muscles, which can make it easier for you to sleep at night, it improves your sleep by affecting your circadian rhythm because of the rapid temperature change that occurs as your body returns to normal.

You’re also shifting your body into relax mode as it’s returning from its heightened state of alertness when it triggers a cold shock response. Moreover, several studies suggest that ice baths stimulate your body to release melatonin, a hormone responsible for your wake-and-sleep cycle.

Improve Your Cardiovascular Health

Inflammation places a great deal of stress on your heart, and it can be present even when you’re not engaging in intense exercise. Inflammation can damage your arteries and lead to high blood pressure.

Like how ice baths decrease inflammation in the muscles after a workout, these also can reduce inflammation throughout the body.

If you’re curious how the cold exposure reaches your heart, it’s exactly how it works for muscles. Primarily, it causes the blood vessels to dilate so that less inflammatory substances can pass through freely.

Your metabolism also slows from the cold, causing your body to produce fewer pro-inflammatory molecules.

Your heart may benefit from cold temperatures in another way because this therapy may stimulate red blood cell production. When you have more red blood cells flowing throughout your body, you boost your body’s ability to carry oxygen.

Ultimately, all your tissues can receive more oxygen, and your cardiovascular system will be more efficient. You’ll also have better endurance during physical activity.

Promotes Healthier Skin

Besides all the other health benefits of whole-body cryotherapy, your skin will also reap the rewards. The initial shock of frigid showers or baths reduces circulation initially, but once your body returns to the desired temperature and your blood vessels expand again, more blood will flow throughout the body, including to the skin. Your skin then receives more of the nutrients it needs to remain healthy.

The science behind this benefit also relies on the fact that ice baths work to constrict the blood vessels and reduce inflammation, including to the skin. As a result, your skin may look less puffy.

Your skin could even look more youthful from cold immersion. The extreme cold also stimulates the fibroblasts in the dermis to produce more collagen — the protein necessary for all the following:

Making skin feel firm
Giving skin elasticity
Having a role in skin repair

As you age, your body produces less of it, and that’s when wrinkles begin to form.

Facilitating Weight Loss

Although ice baths have other mental health benefits, cold temperatures improve mental health whenever you lose weight and elevate your self-esteem. The water temperature kicks your brown fat into gear.

This type of fat is known for burning fat, making it so the cold from an ice bath increases how many calories you burn. Especially when you’re being exposed to cold water regularly, it can help with weight loss.

That doesn’t count that it also does the following:

Allows you to exercise more
Reduces inflammation associated with obesity
Increases metabolism

Regular cold water baths provide you with various health benefits, with soothing your muscles being the most well-known. However, even your heart and skin will feel the effects.

The Science Behind Every Ice Bath Benefit