I love hot showers. But I learned that cold showers can have their advantages too. If you are like me and you grew up with warm and hot showers – it is pretty hard to switch to cold showers. But why should you?
Some years ago I traveled through Australia only with a car. We were no backpacker but rather travelers living out of a car for a few months. Thankfully, Australia has a great infrastructure for campers with free showers every few hundred kilometers. However, these showers were usually cold ones. So we were forced to shower with cold water. What I learned back then was that cold showers make you pretty alert and awake. And after a few times showering with cold water, we got used to it and it wasn’t that hard anymore.
After I returned back home to Germany I switched back to hot showers. The feeling of a hot shower was simply too good.
A few days ago – thanks to a YouTube video – I decided to partly switch back to cold showers. I start my shower hot – as usual. But the last half of my shower is cold. This switch from hot to cold water has amazing effects on me.
First of all, after I had a cold shower in the morning I feel super focused and awake during the whole day. I feel more motivated and it is easier than ever to focus on the most important tasks. These effects are the prime reason why I decided to have a hot-cold shower now every morning. After some research, I found out that this hot-cold shower is indeed called a Scottish Shower. A hot-cold shower was part of James Bond’s bathing routine – how cool!
However, cold showers also seem to have other positive effects on our bodies. Scandinavian researchers found that exposure to cold temperatures – or a cold shower – increases the metabolic rate of brown fat by a factor of fifteen – which means it might be easier for you to lose fat and weight.
If you are an active person, some more good news for you: cold showers after training reduce the soreness of your muscles. This means that your muscles recover faster when you shock them with ice cold water. Other research also shows that cold showers strengthen the immune system by speeding up the metabolic rate. This means that a cold shower will release virus-fighting white blood cells. A cold shower will also boost your blood circulation – this avoids hypertension or hardening of arteries.
These are all effects which I didn’t even think of before having my first hot-cold shower. I learned that a hot-cold shower has positive effects on my mind and my body. I encourage you to at least try a hot-cold shower. If you love it let me know in the comments!
