Ice bathing has become a media trend, but can dipping your body in ridiculously cold water improve your mental health?
Plenty have talked about the health benefits of ice bathing or cold therapy. You can see its popularity among athletes and fitness enthusiasts who use an ice bath to recover after workouts. But how beneficial is it for overall health?
It turns out that besides muscle relief and post-workout recovery, an ice bath benefits mental health as well. Each plunge in ice-cold water can be a mini-stressor that allows the body to release pain-killing, mood-enhancing, and mind-clearing hormones. That first splash of cold water can be uncomfortable, but over time, it positively affects the mood and mental function.
Thinking of ice bathing your way to better mental well-being? Let’s dive into the science of the mental health benefits of ice bath therapy to see why it’s worth it.
Benefits of Ice Baths for Mental Health
Taking a plunge in ice-cold water creates a shock to the system. This jolt to the body activates the sympathetic nervous system, a cause and effect that positively affects the brain. Most notably, a cold plunge stimulates the chemicals in the brain that affect your emotions, focus, and attention.
Recently, several positive scientific findings have also connected deliberate exposure to extreme cold waters to positive impacts on mental health.
Let’s find out the science-backed mental benefits of ice bath therapy.
Stress Reduction
Taking a dip in a cold plunge tub may not sound relaxing. But it turns out that a deliberate dip in an ice bath can help you relax and cope with stress. Although the icy temperature will put your body into an initial shock, you tend to feel better after taking an ice bath. It’s primarily because the cold temperature triggers the vagus nerve system.
When activated, the vagus nerve puts a break in the body’s stress response. The balance shifts from a stress response (sympathetic) to a healing response (parasympathetic). As a result, the blood vessels widen, creating a greater sense of calm, and you feel less stressed.
Can Help Improve Mood
Even a quick 2-minute ice bath has the power to transform your mood. There is a science that says cold shock increases norepinephrine (also known as noradrenaline). It is a hormone and neurotransmitter that significantly impacts your mood and energy.
On top of that, past research also revealed that taking an icy plunge increases dopamine by 250%. Dopamine, famously known as the feel-good hormone, plays a key role in regulating mood. As a result, ice bathing can lift your mood and mental state.
Improved Symptoms of Anxiety and Depression
Ice baths can significantly reduce anxiety and depression. The initial shock of dipping in icy water causes adrenaline to spread through your body. You panic, and your heart races. Your blood pressure also increases, and glucose and fats get released into the blood. All these are a classic fight-or-flight response of the body that also activates the electrical impulses from your nerve ending to the brain. This process, a study found, has similar effects to antidepressants.
In addition, the link between an ice bath and anxiety and depression is also through norepinephrine. An imbalance in this hormone, along with dopamine and serotonin, negatively affects your mental health.
Improved Brain Function
Taking an icy plunge has been found to energize the brain and improve brain function. For one, improved blood circulation after an ice bath is essential for optimal brain function. A quick dip in cold water also increases mental focus.
In addition, multiple studies have found that cold water exposure is a potential protective therapy for neuronal cell death, especially in neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s.
The link between ice bathing and improved brain function is also thanks to norepinephrine. It’s linked to improved memory and retention. An ice bath also releases the important neurotransmitter that plays a key role in brain health called dopamine. It plays a critical role in memory and brain health.
Functional System Reset
Sparking your body with new energy is one of the many ice bath mental benefits. When exposed to cold temperatures, it causes multiple responses, like changing how blood and other fluids flow through the body.
Firstly, when you sit in an ice bath, blood vessels constrict. But when you get out, they open back up, increasing the blood flow. The boost in blood flow also floods your cells with oxygen and nutrients. Secondly, the increase in blood flow also serves as a pump to push the stagnant fluids in your lymph nodes. It flushes away metabolic waste products.
All of these give the body a thorough reset.
Better Sleep
If you struggle with getting enough sleep, taking an ice bath might help for many reasons. For one, ice bathing greatly reduces stress levels. A calm mind and body promote better sleep.
One study also found that athletes taking a 10-minute ice bath after an evening workout experienced a drop in core body temperature and a greater amount of deep sleep. This boost in sleep quality may be attributed to a rapid increase in melatonin production, which happens when the core temperature quickly drops.
Additionally, ice baths help you get better sleep by increasing the time you spend in Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep. And it is also through activating the vagus nerve, which supports the body’s continuous healing response.
Regulates Hormones
Cold water immersion helps regulate hormones, which is a main driver in many mental health issues like anxiety and depression. Specifically, cold water plunging significantly lowers cortisol levels, your stress hormone.
On top of that, a dip in your homemade ice bath can also boost good hormones like endorphins and norepinephrine. Endorphins help reduce stress and relieve pain, while norepinephrine improves alertness and mood.
How Ice Baths Work
If you’re wondering about how an ice bath for mental health works, here’s the gist:
Exposing your body to ice-cold water in an ice barrel or tub creates an initial ‘shock’ to the system, initiating a stress response. Initially, your blood vessels constrict, and the body enters the survival mode. Your heart rate slows.
The vagus nerve that runs from the brain to your nervous system activates and turns the body’s ‘fight or flight’ response, which happens when the body undergoes stressful situations. Once you get out of the ice-cold water, your blood vessels will start to dilate. As soon as it goes back to its normal size, your blood flow improves, and it helps flush out metabolic waste products. Your muscle tissues and your whole body start warming up, causing a sense of relaxation.
Throughout the process, the body releases stress hormones while the production of good hormones increases. As a result, an ice bath creates a feeling of calm and relaxation, a mood and energy boost, and improves the condition of the brain.
Mental Benefits of Ice Baths: FAQs
Q: Do ice baths help with anxiety?
A: Yes. It may help to take an ice bath for anxiety. Cold water immersion helps increase the production and release of mood-elevating hormones and neurotransmitters like norepinephrine and beta-endorphins. As a result, it can help improve mood and relieve anxiety and depressive symptoms over time.
Q: What do ice baths do to the brain?
A: Ice baths stimulate the chemicals in the brain that regulate stress and affect how you focus and feel. Studies have also found that an ice bath helps improve the brain’s elasticity, keeping the brain active and healthy.
Q: How often should you ice bath for mental health?
A: It depends. But a small study found that 20-minute ice baths four days every week helped reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. That said, the ideal ice bath temperature also matters, and keep in mind that you’ll need to build up your tolerance to the cold.
Q: Do ice baths help with brain fog?
A: Yes. Ice baths help with brain fog. Low levels of neurotransmitters like dopamine and norepinephrine and high cortisol levels are commonly associated with brain fog. By regulating your hormones, ice bathing can help improve your focus and mental clarity.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, besides the benefits to your physical health, there are plenty of mental benefits of ice bath therapy. From quick stress relief and mood boost to regulating hormones and giving the body a functional reset, regular ice baths can help improve your mental health.
If you’re ready to plunge and reap these mental benefits of cold water therapy, a homemade ice bath is great for beginners and enthusiasts alike.
