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Qiaochu_Yuan comments on Post ridiculous munchkin ideas! - LessWrong
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... that anecdotal evidence is not reliable?
I googled "cold shower rheumatism" and found a study suggesting that exposure to cold water (in this case, winter swimming) actually relieves the pain associated with existing rheumatism. A plausible explanation of your doctor's observation is that cold showers made people who already had rheumatism more likely to report it to doctors.
I would certainly be wary of making children do it, but I actually have noticed that my tolerance to cold weather has gotten slightly better after cold showers (and it's noticeably lower on the days where I don't take a cold shower). The effect may be mostly psychological but it's still an effect.
A very weak study in this context, for multiple reasons: Somewhat obscure journal (impact factor of 1.06), end point was the swimmers' mood, which may also influence pain reporting, intervention was winter swimming, which is much dfifferent from cold showers in many ways (shower != sports activity), the pool of participants was structurally non-overlapping (children versus people who go winter swimming!), the pain relief is confounded by also feeling "more energetic, active and brisk", compared to controls who did not do that sports activity, the list goes on.
Yea.
Anecdotal evidence... compared with a discussion of cold thermogenesis on a paleo website... well, that's a difficult choice. What exactly is the difference?
I didn't claim that my evidence was more reliable, just that it wasn't less reliable. Anyway, I'm not the one making a claim about how cold showers affect a large number of people, I'm only making a claim about how they affect me.
Also, I don't contradict your experience.
I assume that some things can have positive impact on many people, and at the same time a larger negative impact on a few people. In such case, many people would recommend it based on their personal experience, and yet the experts would not recommend it. Which, I assume, could be this case. And also case of many other recommendations promoted online, or even in this thread.
After reading the other comments, I am now pretty uncertain about the rheumatism. But even so... the benefits of this therapy seem rather small, so I don't see a reason to take even small risks.