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James_Miller comments on December Monthly Bragging Thread - Less Wrong
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I fill my bathtub with cold water, add 40 pounds of ice, and stay in until the ice melts. (Don't try this yourself until you have built up cold resistance by first taking cold showers, then cold water baths, and then cold baths with a little bit of ice.)
As I age the winters are becoming less pleasant and this is in part an attempt to alter my winter set point happiness.
How well is it working to increase your cold tolerance?
It's certainly working with regards to my ability to tolerate cold baths and showers. It's too early to tell how it has influenced my mood towards the winter.
Does it make you feel less cold in general? I'm considering doing cold showers, but I'd like to know if the discomfort is worth it.
Purely anecdotal, but since I started taking cold showers, ~20 degrees C has gone from being switch to warm clothing territory, to fine in a t-shirt instead.
I think so, but it's hard to be sure in part because the winter hasn't yet brought really cold temperatures to my area.
You're not alone with the cold water fascination, ice hole swimming is a thing in Finland.
Besides increasing cold tolerance, there's anecdata that cold showers can help you fall asleep if taken in the evening (lower body temperature is a sleep onset trigger), and that they can help with depression.
I've personally tried this and can report truth, but will caveat that the expectation that I will force myself into a morning cold shower often causes oversleeping, which rather exacerbates depression.
Hmm... An interesting paper on the effect of cold exposure on lipid profiles and CVD consequences. Mostly on mice, but they took a look at a few humans, too.
As the paper notes, "We should emphasize that it was notoriously difficult to conduct the cold-exposure experiment in human subjects, and the majority of requested individuals were unwilling to collaborate on this project" :-D
Excellent, this gives me another comparative advantage. I wonder how much I can get paid for taking ice baths for science.
Wim Hof makes money doing extreme endurance, mostly related to cold.
He believes that some moderate cold training is good for people because changes of temperature make the blood vessels more flexible, though he pursues extreme endurance because he's fascinated by it..
You'd be introducing an extremely specific self selection bias into the experiment, and likely not one that the researchers would be expecting to have to deal with ;)
I wonder if this partly works by increasing brown adipose tissue, or if it's just autonomic acclimatization, or just your increasing ability to tolerate discomfort for that matter.
Wouldn't dressing more warmly work just as well for your purposes?
Even dressed warmly I still dislike the cold.
An interesting experiment. The Seasonal Affective Disorder is usually tied to the amount of sunlight, not to temperatures. But exposure to cold should rev up your metabolism noticeably.
I do somewhat similar things, but I alternate between hot and cold. The ideal situation is a sauna on the shore of an almost-frozen lake, but that's not always easy to arrange :-)
That's a narrow ideal you've set. Make a hole in the ice, or bathe in the snow.
Oh, I do roll in the snow. Again, when available...
There are anecdotes floating around the bodybuilding community that ice baths can work really well for promoting fat loss.
Tim Ferriss goes on about this in Four Hour Body. Cold showers every morning and evening.
That is pretty brutal! I know a lot of athletes do cold or contrast baths (ie cold, hot, cold, etc.) to aid in recovering from intense workouts. It wouldn't surprise me if this had other benefits than just temperature acclimation.