Cold Showers

What's In Your Water?

Cold showers not only offer their own benefits, but help shield you from the deleterious effects of hot showers. It may sound like a paranoid concern, but experts unanimously agree: hot showers vaporize dangerous amounts of chlorine and other toxical chemicals into the air. This has been acknowledged by the presigious magazine, New Scientist, professor of Water Chemistry, J. Andelman, and the National Academy of Sciences.

“I tell my friends to take quick, cold showers”, said Jullian B. Andelman, Professor of Water Chemistry, University of Pittsburgh, who claimed that the longer and hotter the shower, the more chemicals build up in the air.” – San Jose Mercury News, September 11 1986

“Taking showers is a health risk, according to research presented last week in a meeting of the American Chemical Society. Showers – and to a lesser extent baths – lead to a greater exposure to toxic chemicals contained in water supplies than does drinking water. The chemicals evaporate out of the water and are inhaled. They can also spread through the house and be inhaled by others.” - New Scientist – 18 September 1986, Ian Anderson

“The National Academy of Sciences estimates that 200 to 1,000 people die in the United States each year from cancers caused by ingesting the contaminants in water. The major health threat posed by these pollutants is far more likely to be from their inhalation as air pollutants. The reason that emissions are high is because water droplets dispersed by the shower head have a larger surface-to-value ration than water streaming into the bath.” - Science News – Vol. 130, Janet Raloff

To summarize the above quotes, both the heat and the dispersion of water in a hot shower make carcinogens more likely to vaporize into the air than from a cold shower or bath. Note that while only 200 to 1,000 cancers (in the U.S.) are estimated to be caused directly by these chemicals, cancers usually arise from a combination of multiple offending elements and a weakened immune system. Even if you do not land in this small pool of unlucky victims, hot showers are probably not a healthy habit for overall health.

Also be wary of hot tubs or whirpool baths. Municipal tap water is required to have at least 0.2 ppm of chlorine (enough to kill some fish). Pools typically have between 2.0 and 4.0 ppm chlorine [1]. Hot tubs may be especially dangerous because they could mimic the “hot shower effect” with high chlorine concentrations, generating steam via the water turbulence. This seems like more than ample reason to avoid habitually soaking in hot tubs.

A better alternative to hot showers is combining infrared saunas with cold showers.

[1] American Chemistry, Chlorine Tips

A Key To Healing: Glutathione

Cold showers may increase one of the body’s most powerful endogenous antioxidants: glutathione. While the body can make its own glutathione from other nutrients, our bodies cannot seem to utilize glutathione pills or capsules. Encouragingly, a study of winter swimmers hints that cold water therapy can stimulate increases in glutathione levels.

In fact, many of the antioxidants we ingest orally work by helping the body produce glutathione.

Praise for Glutathione

David Perlmutter, M.D., author of The Better Brain Book writes “Glutathione is perhaps the most effective and beneficial antioxidant in the nervous system and has the added benefit of enhancing mitochondrial energy production.”

Ray Sahelian, a medical doctor and author, writes “Glutathione peroxidase plays a variety of roles in cells, including DNA synthesis and repair, metabolism of toxins and carcinogens, enhancement of the immune system, and prevention of fat oxidation… Brain glutathione levels have been found to be lower in patients with Parkinson’s disease.”

The Study

One study followed ten healthy subjects who swam regularly in cold water, and compared their glutathione levels to non-winter swimmers. They found two things:

1. Immmediately after swimming they had an inflated amount of oxidized glutathione to total glutathione.

2. At baseline, their “reduced glutathione” was greater while their oxidized glutathione was less than non-winter swimmers.

Explanation

What does this mean? This is good. If you will recall some high school chemistry, oxidation is a rusting-like process in which a cell gets an electron stolen from it, becoming damaged. Antioxidants sacrifice their own electrons for the benefit of the cells. Therefore, although immediately after a cold shower your antioxidant glutathione becomes “oxidized”, when you return to baseline the protective form will be more plentiful than it was.

Think of it as working out; your muscles are a bit weak immediately afterwards, but stronger when you recover. The researchers write “This can be viewed as an adaptation to repeated oxidative stress, and is postulated as mechanism for body hardening. Hardening is the exposure to a natural, e.g., thermal stimulus, resulting in an increased tolerance to stress, e.g., diseases. Exposure to repeated intensive short-term cold stimuli is often applied in hydrotherapy, which is used in physical medicine for hardening.”

Cold water therapy is more than just a folk cure for minor ailments. For hundreds of years, cold water therapy has seen prolific usage in mainstream medicine for treating a plethora of conditions. Controlled experiments show that it improves athletic performance, helps prevent disease, improves mood, decreases pain, and provides other benefits.

Several physicians have caused waves of enthusiasm with their particular cold water therapies. Starting in the early 1800s, doctors began to discovering the benefits of cold water and attracting thousands of patients to their programs, including royalty and other doctors and scientists. One notable figure, Charles Darwin, swore by the treatment.

Most of us have the means to adminster our own cold water therapy. A cold shower is an invigorating way to reap many of cold water’s benefits. Or, one can submerge oneself in cold bath water. A cold bath or tank is useful for targeting specific body parts; runners, for example, may find benefit in submerging their legs in cold bath water. Alternatively, a cold shower is convenient for promoting good circulation throughout the body and strengthening the immune system.

Furthermore, taking cold showers can prevent some significant drawbacks of taking hot showers. Hot water is damaging to the skin, and several scientists have warned that the steam from hot showers releases dangerous amounts of chlorine into the air.

I am in the process of sorting out a substantial pile of evidence on the health benefits of cold showers and what they can specifically help with. Subscribe to the RSS feed (upper right hand corner) for automatic updates in your feed reader.