If you want to choose a natural healing process to detox yourself, cold water therapy can be your perfect choice. Coldwater Therapy is known to relieve stress, anxiety, and depression. It is even known for its soothing benefits on your skin.
What is Coldwater Therapy?
Hydrotherapy or cold water therapy is the practice of using water that is around 59 degrees Fahrenheit or 15 degrees Celsius to treat health conditions and relax your body. It works wonders, not only to relieve stress and depression but also to fight blisters and other skin conditions.
This therapy has been practiced for hundreds of years. Coldwater immersion activates the body’s natural healing powers and thus promotes a sense of natural healthy well being. If practiced regularly, Coldwater therapy shows long-lasting effects. Apart from working wonders on anxiety and stress, it improves your body’s lymphatic, circulatory, and digestive system, thus ensuring a healthy life. Hence, it ensures both, your physical and mental well being.
And the best part? It is absolutely free!
Benefits of Coldwater Therapy
Below are the benefits of Coldwater therapy:
Eases depression and anxiety
Coldwater therapy may not cure depression completely but is known to ease depression and anxiety. There have been several studies that prove this particular miracle of cold water therapy.
A particular case study involves the tale of how a woman who suffered from depression since the age of seventeen. At twenty-one, she decided to opt for a trial program of weekly open swimming. Over time her symptoms decreased so significantly that her doctors said it was completely safe for her to stop the medication.
In another observation made, it was proved that twice-daily cold showers help you to avoid symptoms of depression, mood swings, and anxiety. After a bad day, a cold shower helps to soothe you and fight anxiety issues and mood swings.
So, the next time you have a long day at work, take a cold water shower upon returning home and watch your stress vanish.
Coldwater therapy for a healthy skin
When we wake up in the morning, our skin appears to be a little more fluffy than usual. This is because when we sleep, our skin cells regenerate, our skin pores expand and thus it looks fluffy. If you feel fixing that is not easy, fear not, there’s an easy and cheap process to fight it too.
Washing your skin with cold water has magical effects on your skin. Some of them are:
- Washing your face with cold water closes the pores of your skin.
- Coldwater works great as an anti-ageing solution. Use cold water daily to wash your face, and it will slow down the process of ageing and make your skin glow.
- Coldwater also helps you to fight the harmful rays of the sun. When our skin is exposed to the UV rays of the sun, our skin pores expand. Washing the face with cold water helps you to tighten your skin pores and relax your skin.
- Coldwater fights skin eruptions. It works magic on blisters. Generally, we get eruptions or skin allergies, if our skin is not happy with heat or other cosmetics. In moments like this, our skin needs to relax. Nothing – I repeat nothing, works as good as cold water does. It relaxes and soothes your skin and gets rid of the burning sensation.
Different celebrities have even vouched that cold water therapy works miracle for their skin. Try it out; you will be satisfied as well.
Coldwater therapy for eyes
Coldwater therapy is an effective way to improve blood circulation. It also relaxes strained eyes. It is similar to the warm compressed method, but you use a cold, soft cloth instead. If your eye strain has resulted in puffiness and swelling, use a soft cloth, soak it in cold water and then dab around your eyes for around two minutes.
Did you know? Coldwater therapy can help you to reduce dark circles as well?
The cold compress method relaxes the nerves around your eyes and helps you to get rid of the puffiness.
Coldwater therapy for weight loss
Beauty influencers over the world have claimed this for years that cold water therapy helps you lose weight. However, more research study is to be made to confirm this fact but cold water increases the metabolic rate of our body. The increased metabolic rate helps you to lose weight at a faster rate.
A 2009 research study shows that immersing yourself in cold water for around fifteen minutes helps you to increase your metabolic rate. But that does not mean that taking more cold showers will help you to lose more weight. Sadly, science did not reach that far yet.
Coldwater therapy for relieving muscle soreness
Debates are still on to confirm the fact if athletes go through less muscle soreness if they use cold water therapy. A study was made in 2011, which showed that cyclists after an intensive session had less muscle soreness when they decided to take the cold water therapy for about ten minutes.
Another study in 2016 showed the same thing. Around twenty participants, who were originally athletes, participated in this study. The ones who decided to soak their muscles in a pool of cold water reported having less muscle soreness than the ones who did not.
According to medical and health experts, the reason cold water helps to reduce pain is that it constricts nerves and the blood vessels. This reduces the blood flow of the area. Thus, when after an injury you apply ice, it reduces swelling and pain. On an additional note, after applying the cold water therapy, you may choose to do light stretching exercises, but do contact a doctor before trying it out.
Coldwater therapy is cheap and has proven results. It helps you fight stress and depression, improve your sleep, have glowing skin, improves the nervous system of your body, helps to fight muscle inflammation, reduce weight, and whatnot. It not only helps to toughen your mental health by relaxing your body but also contributes to your physical well being.
Start your journey of cold water therapy today by getting a cold shower and experience the dramatic effects of it.
Also Read: Is Hot Shower Better Than A Cold Shower?