The Transformative Benefits of Cold Showers: A Path to Enhanced Well-Being - Full Transcript

0:02 You may be asking yourself why on God's green earth would I jump into a freezing cold shower voluntarily. Well stick with me, we're going to go through a lot of health benefits that you may not know about with cold showers or ice cold baths and how they can improve your well-being. I think you might just change your mind, so stay tuned.

0:30 So number one, let's start with the most obvious — it increases alertness. So when you jump into that nice freezing cold shower, of course you're zapped into a state of shock and awe, of complete utter panic and terror as you jump around in circles. At least that's what I do. It really puts you in your body and wakes you up. It's great to start the morning with.

1:01 So yes, that in itself causes you to be alert, but it's more than just that — it lasts throughout the day. You have more energy and you feel more alert. Give it a try and see what I mean.

1:13 Cold showers improve your hair and skin. One of the reasons, in particular that we discuss in a video where we discuss 24 skincare tips for healthy flawless skin that you can check out — hot showers, very hot showers in particular, dry out the skin and are very bad for your skin. So taking cold showers just from that standpoint is very healthy, but it also enhances circulation and does some other things. You'll notice a difference right when you get out of the shower.

1:48 Cold showers and ice baths have been shown to increase your circulation. You'll notice a difference when you get out of the shower. They also boost your immune system. This one I probably should have started off with as number one, because most people would be interested to know that it is great for weight loss.

2:01 It helps stimulate brown fat cells. Why is that good? So there's white fat cells — those are the bad ones, I guess — they are the ones that grow and accumulate when we eat too much. They tend to aggregate around our midsection and lower back and up by our neck. Brown fat cells on the other hand are our healthy fat cells and they're thermogenic.

2:35 When we are introduced to a cold stimulus — such as being out in the cold or being in a freezing cold shower — we need to warm up. So these activate the brown fat cells that are thermogenic. They start revving up and creating heat. This boosts our metabolism and promotes weight loss.

3:00 In terms of sports medicine, it's been shown to relieve muscle soreness and also decrease the time of recovery. This has become more and more popular within professional athletes. Trainers are having them sit in ice baths for long periods of time after their games or training sessions. So it's pretty clear that this is something that works — it's being used within circles of professional athletes. There's studies that are available on that too. All of these will have a lot of studies that I'll link to in the description, so feel free — you don't have to believe me — you can check out the studies themselves and fact-check everything that I say.

3:43 Cold showers help you adapt to stress. Sometimes when we're introduced to a small toxin or a small stress, or a decent amount of stress, that can be good for the body. It adapts to it and it's able to then become stronger as a result of it. This is called hormesis.

4:01 Cold showers is a shock to the body, right? It's a stressor, but it's one that's on a low enough level that our body adapts. And it has all these different physiological things that are going on, and changes that are going on, that allow us to become stronger and more adaptable to other stressors.

4:31 So what are some of the ways that this helps us adapt to stress? Number one, it's been shown that prolonged ice baths or cold showers decrease uric acid levels tremendously. Uric acid buildup is what causes gout. So if you have gout, you should be taking some ice baths because this is going to decrease your uric acid levels without having to take any of your other pharmaceuticals that you may be taking.

4:59 Number two, it increases glutathione, which is your body's most powerful antioxidant. That also is going to help the other antioxidants in your body function at high speed and do their thing more efficiently.

5:12 Cold showers and ice baths help relieve depression. They also help reduce pain almost as effectively as an NSAID like aspirin. They have an effect on our nerve endings and reduce pain. This is an interesting phenomenon — they've shown that the pain-lowering effects also have a positive effect on depression. So the body and the mind kind of mirror each other. You help provide pain relief for the body, and sometimes you also receive relief from the mind. It has been shown in studies to relieve depression.

5:57 So this is great for your hair, your skin, this is great for your circulation, your immune system. Everything regarding your heart is going to be improved upon. It helps increase your alertness and energy throughout the day. It helps increase important antioxidants like glutathione. It decreases uric acid levels. It decreases instances of depression. All these things — a number of amazing benefits of doing this. So highly recommended. If I haven't sold you, then I don't know what will.

6:32 I would recommend one tip though — if you are starting this off, I find that it's easier to incorporate this into a morning ritual. I'll tell you what mine is briefly. You don't want to wake up right before you need to go somewhere. Try to wake up 2 hours before you got to go to work or you got to be anywhere else. Give yourself some time to get some things done, to get your body up and moving and in a relaxed, alert state.

7:02 Number one, how can you do that? Wake up, take a short little jog — nothing special, just get the blood moving. Then jump into that freezing cold shower. Then I would meditate, that's what I do. Do some reading, and then continue on tackling some of the things that you want to get done before you really start your day. And you'll notice that has a huge impact on your life — you're going to get a lot more done, you're going to feel a lot better, you're going to feel like you can tackle a lot more things throughout the day.

7:40 So hopefully I sold you on the idea of taking ice cold showers, despite the initial drawback of it being freezing. At this point I guess I would ask you if you could give me a thumbs up down below if you thought this was helpful, useful, entertaining — any of those or all of those.

8:02 And let me give you a heads up on what we have coming. In a previous video we looked at eight harmful chemicals that are in your toothpaste. And so people are probably asking — well, Dr. Scott, what am I supposed to brush my teeth with if you say that everything that is out there is toxic? Well, there are natural toothpastes that do a pretty good job, and I investigated the top four and I'm going to be using those myself, and have a number of volunteers that have said that they would be willing to volunteer their dirty mouth and teeth to these cleaning products.

9:02 We have Desert Essence, we have Jason's Sea Fresh, we have Uncle Harry's Natural Toothpaste, and then we have Earthpaste. Odd man out — Colgate toothpaste. Don't use that stuff, check out that video. Also, we got a book review coming up — this is a great new book that just came out, it's called "Eat Fat, Get Thin" and it's by Dr. Mark Hyman. He is a New York Times bestseller, very smart guy on the cutting edge of what's new in the scientific community. One of the topics we haven't talked about here on the channel yet is good fats and how much those can actually help us lose weight and get thin.

10:01 This is a great book and I'm going to be doing a review and also kind of going over some of the best take-home points that you can get from it. So stay tuned and subscribe if you haven't already. If you got questions or comments, leave those down below and I'll see you next time. All right, bye.

10 PROVEN Benefits of Cold Showers