To Fight Inflammation, Become a 'Walrus'

To Fight Inflammation, Become a 'Walrus'

In one of the coldest regions on the planet, thousands of people choose winter to go for a swim...

The young and old of Russia celebrate winter by taking icy plunges into the water or dropping buckets of ice water over their heads. Some Russians called "morzhi" ("walruses" in English) are part of clubs where they go for ice swims every week... All in normal bathing suits – no special equipment required.

While some Russians consider ice bathing a hobby, it's also an important part of Epiphany – a Russian Orthodox Christian feast day celebrated in January.

While it sounds like a quick way to give yourself a heart attack, or at the very least a cold, Russians claim there are health benefits to this cold plunge.

And it turns out, they're not wrong...

Cold therapy helps with inflammation, it makes your skin and body look good by promoting circulation and cell turnover, and it potentially boosts weight loss.

During exposure, your blood vessels constrict and blood flow to the chilled areas of your body is reduced. So cold water helps with controlling localized inflammation, swelling, and pain. That's why professional athletes use cold (even ice) water baths – it aids in faster recovery from strenuous exercise.

The cold also redirects blood flow from the blood vessels near the surface of your skin to the ones deep within your body. In doing so, internal inflammation and swelling in the body goes down and the amount of blood that travels back to your heart increases.

When more blood gets pumped back to your heart, the waste products in your blood are removed and are replaced by nutrients for your muscles much faster. This change is called improved venous return.

Improved venous return also means improved circulation. Not only do our recovering muscles get the benefit of oxygen and nutrient-rich blood – so does the rest of our body (our organs, for example).

One study tested the effects of cold-water immersion on muscle recovery after knee exercises. Researchers found that the participants who had a cold-water bath – as opposed to those who received no post-exercise bath – had less oxygen taken from their muscles after exercising (a normal process of recovery). Also, the cold-water group reported less soreness the day after exercising, likely due to improved venous blood return caused by the cold water.

Cold therapy also reduces our levels of a hormone called cortisol that directly contributes to our experience of stress.

Another study showed reduced levels of cortisol after cold-water immersion. They also had increased metabolic rates (the rate at which our bodies expend energy or burn calories) of 350%.

According to a recently published systematic review, cold-water immersion showed reduced stress for 12 hours after exposure. Participants also reported improved quality of life.

To try cold therapy yourself, no need to draw another bath or empty out your ice maker... And the water doesn't even have to be as cold as a Russian lake in winter. Just take a cold shower.

A cold shower also helps me concentrate on another of my favorite things to do... mindful breathing. When cold water shocks your body, it's typical for folks to forget to breathe. So I'm forced to focus on my breathing.

Mindful breathing also has been shown to fight the progression of autoimmune diseases. And regular rhythmic deep-breathing exercises increase the body's number of white blood cells, which destroy tumors and cells infected with a virus.

One word of caution if you're planning on giving cold therapy a shot: run it by your doctor if you have any health conditions related to your heart and/or blood vessels or if you're very sensitive to the cold.

Otherwise, if you want to try out the benefits for yourself, do what I do...

At the end of a hot shower, turn on the cold water for 20 to 40 seconds. It doesn't have to be all the way cold, but it should be quite cool...

I slowly rotate while I'm doing this so my forehead, then a shoulder, and then back, then the other shoulder, and so on all get the cold water.

Originally, I started with twice-weekly, 15-second cold showers. Then, in a couple of months, I could withstand the chill for three minutes, thanks to tempering. That's the term for the conditioning process that builds up your tolerance through small, incremental exposures to a stimulus (like cold water). Eventually, the initial shock of trying it will fade away as your body becomes used to the cold.

You can also alternate between hot and cold... UCLA athletic trainers recommend their players alternate taking a hot shower for three minutes, followed by a cold shower for one minute. Then repeat this pattern three more times, ending the series with a cold shower.

Go ahead and try incorporating cold water into your daily shower routine.

P.S. Let us know how it goes by e-mailing us at [email protected].

P.P.S. Cold exposure boosts the expression of genes related to the creation of special "organs" within our cells. And these microscopic alchemists are the key to transforming the food you eat into energy that keeps us alive. I wrote about it in last month's Retirement Millionaire. (Not a subscriber? Get a trial subscription.)

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Here's to our health, wealth, and a great retirement,

Dr. David Eifrig and the Health & Wealth Bulletin Research Team
February 6, 2025