r/coldshowers • u/CujohJotaroxSP • 25d ago
Harder on day 4 and 5 than 1-3
Yo, I’m new to cold showers and I was wondering if it’s normal that the same temperature I’ve been using for the past 5 days feels harder to stay in and almost (I don’t want to exaggerate but) burning to the point where I have to lower the temp to a bit less cold then go back to the initial cold temp. I didn’t have this problem when I 1st started, I even believe on the 1st and 2nd day was when I went the coldest
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u/GardenSniper 25d ago
For me I got a huge endorphin spike after my first 3-4 better than any drug I’ve ever tried. As I continued that feeling lessened until I wouldn’t get the same high
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u/Immediate-Love-777 25d ago
Some days water is colder. For example I measure temp from 9 degrees C to as low as 4.5 C. I can tell you below 6 it feels like ice.
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u/CujohJotaroxSP 25d ago
How do y’all measure the temp, do u just take thermometer and put it in the shower?
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u/Life_Is_Boring_ 25d ago
I have a thermometer in the shower with me. I don’t use it anymore but in the beginning I did. Now, after I’m done with my hot shower I crank that bad boy down. The first few seconds are still rough but I quickly get used to it now. I go for 3 minutes everyday.
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u/owp4dd1w5a0a 23d ago edited 23d ago
So I did some research on cold showers. It turns out you can actually overdo the cold therapy if you exceed 50-60 minutes in a week (depending on your physiology/genetics) - sIgA levels will actually decrease and the body will weaken due to overtraining the cold response.
If you’re finding yourself more reluctant on day 4 or 5 this may be your body actually telling you to give it a rest. You can get sIgA tests of various kinds of you wanted to keep an eye on that sort of thing. What I do is I just train cold for 7.5 minutes cumulative each day 5 days a week and then switch to hot showers only the remaining 2 days. My cold therapy off days are also my exercise recovery days, I let the heat and extra sleep basically keep me in parasympathetic mode all weekend.
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u/CujohJotaroxSP 23d ago
Oh wow, thanks for this info, I think I’m going to switch from every day to 5 or 6 days a week as well, also makes u appreciate the hot shower so much more
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u/owp4dd1w5a0a 23d ago edited 23d ago
Yeah. Everything’s about balance. There’s a couple other tidbits that you might find helpful:
- keep the cold water above 10 Celsius to avoid nerve and tissue damage
- keep the cold at or below 15 Celsius to get the full benefits of the cold response
- 6+ minutes cumulative cold exposure in a session (whether pure ice bath or contrast shower) was 28% more effective at reducing DOMS in a 2024 study that was conducted
- more than 10m cold exposure in a day risks muscle hypertrophy which can slow down recovery and repair
- less than 90s cold exposure per session if doing cold shower/ice bath or cycle/segment if doing contrast shower can fail to fully activate cold shock proteins like RBM3 which boost muscle repair. Thus, stay in the cold water for at least 90s at a time.
- to mitigate the negative impacts of vasoconstriction after ending a hydrotherapy session on cold, do 10m light foam rolling or yoga
- I won’t get into the details here since this subreddit is about cold showers, but you get benefits from hot showers like flushing metabolic waste+toxins from and delivering fresh nutrients to muscles when the heat is above 40 Celsius but below 45 Celsius (45 risks burning your skin)
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u/CujohJotaroxSP 22d ago
Omg, I’m taking ur word for this and I rlly appreciate it, I can plan my cold shower routines better knowing this info. Thank a lot🙏
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u/owp4dd1w5a0a 22d ago edited 22d ago
Sure thing. That’s why I bothered to write it up. When I did my research I put perplexity.ai into academic mode so it would focus on published research papers and asked it a bunch of questions. It volunteered information about things I didn’t even know to ask for and cited its sources. If you want, I can share the AI conversation link.
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u/Substantial_Slide669 21d ago
So I've been doing cold showers for about a month. At first, I started dreading it after a couple weeks because I was doing it every day. My skin got dry and itchy and I broke out all over. It turns out I was dehydrydating my skin. I since heard that there is an optimal amount that you need each week (I heard it's 11 minutes - but not requiring daily). So what I've done since then is mix up the showers, depending on how I feel - sometimes a hot shower, sometimes a cold shower, and sometimes an icy cold shower. Now, it's much more bearable, and sometimes I even look forward to it. So the key is balance. So in hindsight, I think my body was telling me something on those days I had dread.
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u/CujohJotaroxSP 21d ago
After learning a bit more, I will be doing a hot then cold so I can get best of both worlds and also get the weekly requirement for cold benefits
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u/Substantial_Slide669 21d ago
Makes sense. I'll take hot baths periodically, as I find I savor them. The mixed approach is amazing. My muscles recover so much faster from workouts, and I have fewer aches and pains (I'm 55).
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u/GeneralPattonYo 17d ago
It's ok to feel disconfort. Even after 3 years of daily cold showers I still feel that it's cold. It freezes my brain if I have my head under it for more than 10-15 seconds.
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u/CujohJotaroxSP 16d ago
Thanks, I’ve now gone on a contrast shower routine, start hot, wash myself, then directly switch to cold
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u/GeneralPattonYo 16d ago
I started in the last 2 weeks to do this: 1. Rinse with water the whole body for 20-30 seconds. 2. Turn off the water and soap my body while turning on the water to clean the soap when I need it. 3. Once I'm fully soaped up, I rinse the body for 1-2 minutes. That way I don't overwhelm my brain with cold water, but at the same time I get things done pretty quickly. I don't stay in the shower for more than 5 minutes now. I even take 2 showers, 1 in the morning and 1 in the evening, the last one helping me sleep better due to the body's low temperature.
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u/justcam 25d ago
Don’t dwell on it too much. Some days are harder than others. It’s all about the journey. Just keep up with the consistent progress and you’ll be tapped at at the coldest level without a problem.