You are probably not one of those people who would extremely love the feeling of showering in the cold water? But did you know that having a cold shower over hot ones can be actually really beneficial to your body, and you can do a lot of good for your overall health with choosing the cold one over hot one? There are many benefits to this kind of showering like you can speed up the recovery time after a hard exercise and you will be able to reduce the pain and soreness the next day, you will be able to lower down stress and be able to avoid diseases much easier. There are also studies that had shown that taking regular cold showers can help you to remove some extra pounds by boosting your metabolism.
In this article, I will talk about why having cold showers is better than having warm ones and if you want to know which are the good sides to the freeze in the morning, you are in the right place, and you should continue reading.
WHY TAKE A COLD SHOWER AFTER EXERCISE?
You are probably used to jumping into the hot shower after you have finished your workout, but that is actually not good for your body, your muscles and other tissues in the body. Why is cold shower such a good thing? When you are working out, your tissues and muscles operate with higher temperature, and that means you need to cool them down. If you take a hot shower, you won’t lower the temperature, and that is why warm showers are not the best thing to do. If you are suffering from an injury, the best thing to do something good for the damaged tissue is on put something cold on it like an ice pack, and that will help to prevent bruises and swelling. With putting that cold ice pack on the injury place, you will be able to localize pain relief because that will numb the ends of the nerves.
We were talking about cold showers doing well to your overall health, and you are now probably asking yourself what can actually a cold shower do good when you are totally shocked when you are showering with cold water? That shock is the key to a healthy body! When your body feels cold, your heart starts to race and beating faster which promotes your blood circulation. That is great because on overall look because of those heart races, your heart rate will be lower and that lowers down possibilities of connected heart diseases.
COLD WATER MIGHT INCREASE YOUR BODY’S TOLERANCE TO STRESS AND DISEASE
Cold showers or swimming in the cold sea can be extremely beneficial, and by that, I mean that you will be able to lower down the amount of stress and you will also be able to be more resistant to different diseases. Many studies confirm that people who regularly shower with cold water experience less stress through the day!
And why that happens when you are showering with cold water and not when you are showering in hot water? When your body gets that shock of the cold water that is the trigger for “hardening” and that is exposure to a natural stimulus, and cold water is one of them. When you are exposed to cold water, for instance, the tolerance for stress and disease will increase rapidly.
If your body has high levels of uric acid you are probably suffering from high blood pressure, maybe kidney disease, you are overweight, etc. There are amounts of this acid which are in normal ranges but when they are higher than 5, 5 mg per deciliter you need to start to be cautious because now you are in the group where the possibility of having a heart disease, fatty liver, diabetes, hyperextension, etc. are very common. When you are regularly showering in the cold water, you are able to lower down the amounts of uric acid, and you will be able to avoid all those conditions.
With exposing to cold water, you will also be able to increase glutathione which is one of the most powerful antioxidants in your body, and it is great for maintaining great health.
CAN COLD WATER HELP YOU BURN FAT?
Next important question is it is true that cold showers can help us lose some weight? They can be helpful because when your body is confronted with a cold shower, the metabolism has to start working faster and that will help the body to boost up his fat-burning abilities. The effects are not visible if you can bare 2 minutes of showering in the cold water but you would actually have to spend 20 minutes in a tub filled with cold water or ice, and that is a think not all people could bare. It is actually a cheap investment because ice is not expensive and neither cold water is but you will have to have a strong mind even to get in there and to bare the cold freezing and sometimes hurting feeling.
If you want to burn more calories and more fat you can also add some cooling to the diet and exercise plan. And what does that mean? You need to find a way how to cool down your body because when the body feels cold, it starts working on re-heating and when it is doing that it is struggling and using the stored fat for fuel. Which are the ways to cold down your body? You can place and ice pack to your upper back and to the chest and try to take the cold feeling for 30 minutes each day. You can also try drinking cold water in the morning, take cold showers or slip into the ice bath if you have the choice. You can also immerse yourself in ice water to your waist for around 10 minutes every 2 days.
Now that you know that best showers for your body are cold ones, mind and overall health you are probably going to practice them more regularly. Whenever you are feeling stressed, or you feel that you could be sore after a hard workout, you only jump into a cold shower instead of relaxing in the hot one, and you will be able to see a huge difference.
I hope this article was helpful and you have learned something new and you will now know to use this new knowledge to keep your body and mind in a healthy place.
