Yes, cold shock is only one component of the benefit of cold showers, but there’s still ways to do cold shock wrong—my impression is that it’s a bad idea to dunk your head in cold water under most conditions, which rarely makes it into any recommendation for cold showers (and only sometimes makes it into discussions of saunas).
Also, I expect the “adaptive range” of humans with respect to environmental temperatures to be pretty huge :-)
That’s not what he means by that; he means that specific person’s range. If someone is unused to immersing themselves in 10 degree water, they probably shouldn’t start there, but work to it gradually. What should an optimal ramp look like? That’s the advice I want to see.
Hmm, any links? I could see this leading to headaches/migraines in susceptible people, but otherwise why not?
...otherwise? If it’s giving you a headache, that seems like a good reason to suspect damage. I have mostly seen anecdotal reports; headaches for showering, and this person claims that their Finnish friends recommend against submerging their head during a jump into the lake during the sauna. (Perhaps some Finns here could chime in?)
Otherwise in the sense of if you know you’re susceptible, don’t do it, but otherwise—if you know you don’t get headaches from that—are there any other reasons to avoid?
Beneficial health impact?
Quantified as what? When you are optimizing things, it’s useful to have a numeric value that you’re trying to maximize (or minimize).
Quantified as what? When you are optimizing things, it’s useful to have a numeric value that you’re trying to maximize (or minimize).
Sure, but I doubt that the optimal ramp for brown adipose tissue activation is that much different from the optimal ramp for mood / energy adjustment, or the optimal ramp for immune strength, or so on, and by optimizing for one of those things rather than none of those things you give yourself enough of a feedback loop to prevent ramps that are harmful overall.
I would find it difficult to optimize in the short-term for mood due to noise and confounders, and pretty much impossible to optimize for immune strength since I have no easy way to measure it.
In my experience ramps are not needed at all, so I would expect that even for people who would like one it would take time on the order of a couple of weeks which is way too short to optimize for something that you can’t easily measure directly.
Yes, cold shock is only one component of the benefit of cold showers, but there’s still ways to do cold shock wrong—my impression is that it’s a bad idea to dunk your head in cold water under most conditions, which rarely makes it into any recommendation for cold showers (and only sometimes makes it into discussions of saunas).
That’s not what he means by that; he means that specific person’s range. If someone is unused to immersing themselves in 10 degree water, they probably shouldn’t start there, but work to it gradually. What should an optimal ramp look like? That’s the advice I want to see.
Hmm, any links? I could see this leading to headaches/migraines in susceptible people, but otherwise why not?
What would you optimize for?
...otherwise? If it’s giving you a headache, that seems like a good reason to suspect damage. I have mostly seen anecdotal reports; headaches for showering, and this person claims that their Finnish friends recommend against submerging their head during a jump into the lake during the sauna. (Perhaps some Finns here could chime in?)
Beneficial health impact?
Otherwise in the sense of if you know you’re susceptible, don’t do it, but otherwise—if you know you don’t get headaches from that—are there any other reasons to avoid?
Quantified as what? When you are optimizing things, it’s useful to have a numeric value that you’re trying to maximize (or minimize).
Sure, but I doubt that the optimal ramp for brown adipose tissue activation is that much different from the optimal ramp for mood / energy adjustment, or the optimal ramp for immune strength, or so on, and by optimizing for one of those things rather than none of those things you give yourself enough of a feedback loop to prevent ramps that are harmful overall.
I would find it difficult to optimize in the short-term for mood due to noise and confounders, and pretty much impossible to optimize for immune strength since I have no easy way to measure it.
In my experience ramps are not needed at all, so I would expect that even for people who would like one it would take time on the order of a couple of weeks which is way too short to optimize for something that you can’t easily measure directly.