Adrienne Jezick's story sits at the intersection of two things the wellness world rarely puts together: autoimmune disease and cold exposure. Her claim isn't that cold water cured her. It's subtler than that. She's arguing that cold plunge therapy gave her a tool to regulate her nervous system, reduce chronic inflammation, and ultimately create the internal conditions her body needed to heal. The cold was the catalyst. The mindset was the medicine.
That distinction matters. A lot of people come to cold therapy looking for a dramatic intervention. Adrienne came to it desperate and skeptical, and her first session lasted nine seconds. Nine seconds. And a decade of chronic leg pain dissolved. That's not a protocol optimization story. That's a story about threshold — about the body needing just enough signal to begin shifting.
The autoimmune angle is where things get genuinely interesting. We have good evidence that cold exposure suppresses pro-inflammatory cytokines and activates the sympathetic nervous system in ways that modulate immune activity. The 2014 Kox study — where trained practitioners using cyclic hyperventilation could voluntarily suppress their inflammatory response to E. coli endotoxin — showed that the nervous system has far more influence over immune function than we previously believed. Adrienne's case fits that framework. Hashimoto's, urticaria, eosinophilic esophagitis — all inflammatory in nature. All potentially responsive to the kind of systemic shift that cold exposure can trigger.
Where the research is less settled is causality. We don't have randomized controlled trials on cold plunge therapy as a primary intervention for autoimmune conditions. Adrienne also made dietary changes simultaneously, which she acknowledges. The honest read is: cold therapy was one significant variable in a multi-variable intervention. That doesn't diminish it. It contextualizes it.
Most cold exposure coaches emphasize duration and temperature as the key variables. Adrienne goes a different direction. Her method prioritizes psychological surrender over physical endurance. She's not timing you. She's watching how you breathe. This puts her at odds with the performance-oriented cold therapy culture — the "two minutes, max discomfort, build mental toughness" crowd. Her insight is that if you're fighting the cold, you're triggering a stress response that may undercut the very benefits you're seeking. Relaxing into the cold is the skill. That's a meaningful distinction.
Start shorter than you think you need to. Nine seconds changed Adrienne's life. You don't need heroic duration. You need consistent exposure, intentional breathing, and the willingness to notice what your nervous system does when it's uncomfortable. If you have an autoimmune condition, work with your physician — not instead of them. Cold is a signal to your biology, not a replacement for medical care. But if you're already managing your condition and looking for adjunctive tools, this is worth serious consideration.
Here's what doesn't get discussed enough: the Morasco Method is essentially a trauma-informed approach to hormetic stress. The reason so many people fail at cold exposure isn't physical — it's that they go in with a combative mindset and activate a threat response rather than an adaptive one. Adrienne's framework teaches you to distinguish between danger and discomfort. That skill — recognizing that you are safe inside an uncomfortable sensation — transfers. It transfers to chronic pain management, to anxiety regulation, to every situation in life where your nervous system is trying to run the show. The ice bath is the classroom. Resilience is the curriculum.