Here’s What Taking A Cold Shower Every Day Really Does To Your Body

Most people do love a hot shower, when it’s available. But it hasn’t always been that way. Hot showers have in fact only been a part of our lives since 1810, when the crafty English came up with the invention. It wasn’t until 1850, though, that they figured out plumbing so that you didn’t have to shower in the same water every day!

But even then, the hot shower was a privilege of the rich, and the rest of us had to make do with chilly splashes out of a bucket or baths. That changed in the 1920s, when showers became commonly available in the United States. The British were a bit slow to the party, though, only embracing showers decades later.

Cold showers have a longer pedigree, appearing in public baths in a primitive form in ancient Greece. During the 1760s William Feetham came up with a more up-to-date version in England. For some reason, in the early days showers were often put on wheels. Perhaps the creators believed that it was hard to fit a proper wash into a busy day. 

Of course, not even the ancient Greeks invented washing the body. In the Bronze Age, the people who lived in what’s now Pakistan, called the Harappans, had advanced plumbing. While we don’t know whether they ever heated water, the Romans certainly did. Their bathhouses had complex hot-water systems. 

The Romans loved a bath, but that certainly wasn’t true of Europeans in Renaissance times. By the 17th century they’d become convinced that washing was actually bad for you! They thought that getting nice and dirty stopped the plague from getting into your body. So the upper crust pretty much never took a bath. 

So Europeans were just filthy beasts? Not entirely. They did change their clothes often. In particular they’d swap out the garments that they wore next to the skin. As these would pick up the toxins that you emitted, they’d be carried away when you changed. The clothes could then be boiled and kept stringently clean. 

The idea that washing your skin too often can do you harm hasn’t entirely died, in fact. Some people still don’t like to shower too often. They figure that showering off the skin’s germs and oils can sometimes damage it. And the more you use man-made goods to clean yourself, the more difficult your skin will find it to recover. 

Why would that be bad? Well, the germs that live on your skin include many helpful microbes. When they’re washed off, their replacements are often ones that make you smell more! So washing might temporarily reduce odor, but too much scrubbing can be counterproductive. And if you just give up the showers altogether, no-wash advocates claim, your skin returns to a natural, healthy state. 

Whether that’s true or not, it’s certainly helpful to cut the use of soap if you have a skin condition such as eczema or acne. And you can do some good for the environment, too. A typical shower uses 14 gallons of water during its seven-minute length. That’s a lot of drinking water being washed away. 

And that water could be extremely valuable as demands on our supplies continue to grow. Several U.S. states already suffer droughts in the summer, and water usage is turning into a more serious issue as the world’s climate changes. In many countries, clean, drinkable water is rare and becoming rarer. Consider the plastic in soap bottles as well, and the environment may thank us for not showering. 

Well, maybe, but it’s going to take a lot to persuade most of us not to enjoy a hot shower. After all, it does have plenty of benefits. For those of us who struggle to sleep, a nice warm shower can help us relax. This has a scientific basis, too: the hot water makes the parasympathetic nervous system work, and that causes weariness.  

Insomnia isn’t the only thing a hot shower can help with, either. No, it can function as a natural remedy in other circumstances, too. You can get some relief from a bad cold by having a warm shower. There’s a long history of using the steam to relieve the symptoms. 

The warmth and the steam can alleviate the blockages that a heavy cold brings. They broaden our bodies’ airways and help to unblock our noses. If your throat’s sore, a steamy shower may also ease the pain by breaking up the substances that contribute to the irritation. 

That isn’t all. A warm shower might be useful in widening your skin’s pores. That’ll allow a deeper cleanse. And being surrounded with all that heat is like having a hug from the water. The stress in you will melt away, which in turn may ease muscular tiredness. 

But it’s not all good. A hot shower might be bad for your skin, as we mentioned earlier. The heat may harm keratin cells, which sit in our skin’s surface. When this occurs, it makes the cells unable to retain water, and as a consequence the skin becomes dried out. So perversely, wetting your skin makes it dry in the long run. 

The drier skin can then exacerbate eczema. And if that isn’t sufficiently itchy for you, there’s another way that a hot shower can make you scratch. When you apply heat to mast cells, they can let the histamine inside them flood out into your skin. The chemical irritates the skin, bringing on more itching.  

Problems with your cardiovascular system may also result from hot showers as well. This is because they might cause spikes in blood pressure, which can be a particularly bad idea should yours already be high. And if you have heart complications, then the heat may not be doing you any good, either.

So hot showers have their pluses and minuses – but what about a cold one? Well, while a hot wash can help you get to sleep, a cold shower can get you going. The shock of the chilly water will get you drawing in more oxygen, raise your pulse and make you more perceptive.

If you’re feeling blue, a cold shower might be just what you need. It operates in the same way as electroshock treatment. When the water hits your skin, impulses are fired towards your cerebrum. This triggers the discharge of endorphins, the chemicals that some refer to as “happiness hormones.” More endorphins can in turn mean that your mood’s elevated.

That sounds unlikely, right? Well, the effect’s real. A research project looked at whether cold showers really could help alleviate depression. Amazingly, a five-minute cold flush on a few occasions each week had a positive effect. This could be a useful tool for the one in ten Americans who suffer from the illness. 

But showering in cold water is good not just for the mind, but also for the body. It can relieve physical aches if you’ve been exercising. The water will help your body to loosen up and fix itself. This is the same effect as you get from icing a sprain.

Perhaps even more surprising is that a cold shower may assist you in losing weight. The chill will stimulate brown fat. If the amount of brown fat in your body is sound, then the volume of white fat should be, too. In broad terms, white fat’s the “bad” fat that can lead to ill health via cardiac conditions. 

Though the impact of cold showers on weight loss remains uncertain, having a few every week might boost your metabolic rate. Research has demonstrated that cold water itself may help some hormones balance and improve the health of our digestive organs. So there could be a link. But it can’t replace good diet and exercise. 

While it’s hopefully helping your fat melt away, your cold shower may also prevent itchiness. Doctor Adam Friedman told the Healthline website in March 2020 that a chilly shower can reduce the temptation to scratch in those who suffer from certain skin issues. 

Even if it does ease an itch, though, a cold shower can still cause some discomfort. But even that’s not all bad. When our bodies are warmer than the water, then they have to work a bit more to keep the temperature up. This effort gives our circulation extra efficiency, which can result in a valuable boost to our health.

With your cold skin in need of warming up, the blood shoots through your vessels. This can improve the weak circulation that’s typical of diabetes. And unlike a hot shower, a cold shower may be helpful if your blood pressure’s high. It might also aid recovery because it promotes the movement of blood that’s recently received oxygen. 

Some believe that all that blood rushing around has another side-benefit: it perks up your hair and skin. Scientists haven’t yet spent a lot of time studying this field, but there are plenty of informal accounts supporting the notion that a cold shower does those areas some good. 

Doctor Jacqueline Shaffer, who has a wealth of experience in the wellness sector, told Healthline that cold water can restrict the flow of blood. This in turn can improve your appearance. And website NaturallyCurly.com weighed in with its advice that frigid water will tighten up hair cuticles and make them more robust.

One thing that’s true of cold water that’s not true of hot is that it doesn’t make the sebum section of the skin dry. That’s the part that shields your body. Add together this with the strengthened cuticles, and you could be enjoying shinier hair. 

Cold water can provide a strong trigger for natural processes that fight disease. There are cells inside us called leukocytes that battle viruses. And these can gain a boost from cold-water shock. In fact, a research project found that cold showers may help you combat some forms of cancer. 

While that’s not quite the same as being a cure for cancer, there’s little doubt that a cold shower is good for your health. A Dutch research project found that taking one leads to having fewer days off work. And the potential boost to the immune system might make a course of cold showering valuable for those who are expecting lower immunity following an operation.

So if the cold’s so beneficial, how about just dunking yourself in a bath full of icy water? Well, fitness expert Nick Clayton told Men’s Health magazine in 2019, “Ice baths have been around for a while, and they’re picking up steam and popularity.” This is because they’re a way to rapidly reduce the aches you suffer after intense exercise. 

Taking an ice bath’s a type of cryotherapy. You need to give it about a quarter of an hour, and it doesn’t have to be freezing. About 50°F or so will do. Clayton told Men’s Health, “The first time you get in, it takes your breath away… but after five to ten minutes it gets easier, especially if you breathe and relax.”

But how can this help? Well, the icy water narrows the body’s blood vessels, and following your bath they reopen. Doing this rids you of the unwanted substances that build up when you’re working out. This is particularly valuable for your lymph system, which isn’t drained by the pumping of the heart. The constriction and release caused by the ice bath can help this system flush itself. 

So there’s some good to a cold shower, but is there any downside? Well, first of all, these effects aren’t substitutes for standard medical practices. So you shouldn’t throw away your antidepressants because you’ve begun taking cold showers. It may give you a boost in addition to the medication, but that’s all you should count on it for. 

You should also take care not to start on the freezing flushes straight after you’ve come out of hospital or if you have a severely impaired immune system. It might do you some good in the long term, but a cold shower isn’t something you’ll acclimatize to immediately. A weakened body likely won’t respond well to the sudden shock. 

One suggestion is not to go straight for cold, but to do it in stages. First, take a shower in water that’s just a bit too cold for you, causing uneasiness. Give it a couple of minutes. Next time, go a bit colder, and give it an extra minute or so. Once you’ve done this eight or nine times, you could be enjoying the chill.  

Or you could try the “contrast shower.” Though he wasn’t the first to discover it, Dr. Sebastian Kneipp did help popularize the procedure. The idea’s to run the water as cold as you can and then get under it for a minute. Once the minute’s up, give it a minute of water as warm as you can bear. 

This alternation will have the exact same effect as the ice bath. The cold makes your vessels contract, bringing the blood into your core. When you switch to hot, the blood vessels all dilate, and whoosh! The blood surges back into your extremities. That kind of action can be very beneficial for removing toxins from the body.