Yes, cold shock is only one component of the benefit of cold showers, but there's still ways to do cold shock wrong--my impression is that it's a bad idea to dunk your head in cold water under most conditions, which rarely makes it into any recommendation for cold showers (and only sometimes makes it into discussions of saunas).
Also, I expect the "adaptive range" of humans with respect to environmental temperatures to be pretty huge :-)
That's not what he means by that; he means that specific person's range. If someone is unused to immersing themselves in 10 degree water, they probably shouldn't start there, but work to it gradually. What should an optimal ramp look like? That's the advice I want to see.
my impression is that it's a bad idea to dunk your head in cold water under most conditions
Hmm, any links? I could see this leading to headaches/migraines in susceptible people, but otherwise why not?
What should an optimal ramp look like?
What would you optimize for?
To the fun theory, hedonic treadmill sequences.
http://gettingstronger.org/hormesis/
TL;DR stoicism with science.
Key idea: OPT, Opponent Process Theory: http://gettingstronger.org/2010/05/opponent-process-theory/
Research, PDF: http://gettingstronger.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Solomon-Opponent-Process-1980.pdf
From the article:
"In hedonic reversal, a stimulus that initially causes a pleasant or unpleasant response does not just dissipate or fade away, as Irvine describes, but rather the initial feeling leads to an opposite secondary emotion or sensation. Remarkably, the secondary reaction is often deeper or longer lasting than the initial reaction. And what is more, when the stimulus is repeated many times, the initial response becomes weaker and the secondary response becomes stronger and lasts longer."