Odin Ice Bath Progressive Cold-Water Immersion Therapy (Temperature Contrast Therapy) at Delray Center
Cold-water immersion therapy involves submerging the body in cold water to promote recovery and potentially other health benefits. While often used by athletes to reduce muscle soreness and inflammation after exercise, ice baths are also explored for their potential effects on mood, stress levels, and immune function.
Potential Benefits of Cold-Water Immersion Therapy
- Enhanced Physical Recovery: Cold water immersion has been shown time and again to enhance physical recovery, especially after endurance and high-intensity exercise. A multitude of studies – covering a range of variables, including different exercise types and intensities, water temperatures, plunge duration and participant fitness levels – report measurable improvements in the following areas: reduced muscular soreness and DOMs (delayed onset muscle soreness), faster recovery of muscle power and increased perceived recovery. This is largely due to a significant reduction in circulating lactate (lactic acid) and creatine kinase – which appear in elevated levels after exercise.
- Reduced Inflammation: Scandinavian cultures have sworn by cold water immersion for its positive impacts on health for centuries, and the scientific community is finally uncovering the physiological processes responsible. Whether you’re an athlete or just starting your health improvement journey, chronic inflammation can be a significant hurdle to overcome. In addition to the plethora of anecdotal evidence supporting the inflammation reduction benefits of cold plunging, more and more empirical studies are finding supporting evidence within bloodwork of cold water immersion participants. Multiple studies indicate this may be explained by the cold temperature reducing blood flow to the muscles (vasoconstriction) having the effect of decreasing or slowing the activation of inflammatory cytokines (proteins), and increasing anti-inflammatory cytokines. Additionally, the vasoconstriction response to cold water immersion can also have a pain-relieving effect.
- Improved Mood and Alertness: Intentional cold water immersion results in the co-release of the catecholamines (neurochemicals) norepinephrine, epinephrine, and dopamine in huge amounts, WITHOUT negatively elevating cortisol (stress hormone) levels. In simple terms – deliberate cold water immersion leaves you feeling elated, energised, and positively motivated. In peer-reviewed literature this is not new information – a highly lauded study from 2000 measured markers in blood levels before, during, and after head-out immersions in cold water and documented consistent, irrefutable increases in these catecholamine levels. After submersions they recorded a metabolic rate increase of 350%, norepinephrine level increase of 530%, and dopamine level increase of 250%. Even more encouraging is the fact that the final measurements (from bloods taken two hours after exiting the cold water) indicated these significant increases were maintained during that entire post-plunging period – though anecdotal evidence suggests it lasts much longer.
- Increased Energy & Focus: Coffee just doesn’t do it for some of us anymore, but fortunately cold plunging is a healthier and far more potent alternative for boosting energy levels, focus and motivation in general. This is due to the significant release of epinephrine, norepinephrine and dopamine in the brain and body. The simultaneous release or “co-release” of these three neurochemicals make us feel alert and wanting to move about in a meaningful way – versus feeling fidgety or agitated – which can be positively redirected into other activities and tasks. Unlike caffeine or sugar, cold plunging lacks the “crash” in energy and concentration later. In fact, the huge increase in these levels is consistently recorded not just during the plunge, but also up to or greater than two hours afterwards.
- Improve Mental Resilience: Longing for simpler times is a common sentiment in modern day western cultures, but while achieving simplicity may be a futile dream for most people, cold water immersion offers an alternative solution to feelings of burnout and overwhelm: increasing mental resilience. In other words— we cannot control the world around us to reduce the stressors life presents, but we CAN enhance our capacity to cope with those stressors, so they aren’t as emotionally consuming and mentally taxing. Cold water immersion requires varying degrees of self-discipline to undertake voluntarily, and extensive research has highlighted the profoundly positive effects of self-discipline on mental resilience. Consciously overriding the reflex to get out of a “stressful state” (eg. being submerged in an ice bath) engages what is referred to as “top-down control”. This involves the pre-frontal cortex controlling deep brain centres that
regulate reflexive states. Importantly, the kind of stress experienced by the body during deliberate cold exposure is a POSTIVE stress (eustress), which increases the overall ability to cope with detrimental stress (distress).
- Enhanced Immune Functioning: Growing evidence increasingly shows that cold water immersion supports immune function by increasing the number of immune cells. Even simple practices like taking cold showers could potentially serve as alternative therapies to boost immunity and resilience, with a notably greater benefit derived from an actual cold water immersion. Recent studies have shown that regular cold shower exposure can enhance humoral and cell-mediated immunity through upregulation of immunoglobulins, interleukin-2, and interleukin-4. The result of this is that there is a notable greater resistance to illness, especially common upper respiratory infections, for those who use cold water immersion with regularity as compared to those who do not.
- Increased Metabolic Rate: Deliberate cold exposure can increase your overall core metabolic rate. The higher your metabolic rate, the more energy your body requires to maintain its normal functioning processes (via intake of calories/kilojoules or burning of fat stores). Cold water immersion triggers the body’s temperature regulation mechanisms which require energy largely derived from fat cells. There are three different types of fat cells: white, beige and brown. White fat cells have a low metabolic output, whereas beige and brown fat cells have a high metabolic output and are considered “good” fat cells. When activated by cold exposure, beige and brown fat cells “burn” energy and create heat (referred to as thermogenesis) that helps maintain body temperature . People with higher levels of beige/brown fat cells require more energy to maintain normal functioning processes – aka. they have a higher metabolic rate. Additionally, deliberate cold water immersion triggers release of norepinephrine, which is known to bind to low-metabolic-output white fat cells and help convert them into high-metabolic-output beige and brown fat cells. Most significantly, this process of activation and conversion has been well-documented as continuing for a period of at least 24-hours after plunging.
Cold-water immersion therapy at the Delray Center is done using the Odin Ice Bath. Immersion is done in a progressive manner, with everyone starting at level 1 and then gradually moving all the way up to level 5, as can be effectively tolerated. This is done together with the Infrared Sauna and the Full Body Red Light Therapy (RLT) to complete the trio for Temperature Contrast Therapy (TCT). Clients will first complete 10-15 minutes per side in the RLT, then heat up for 20 min in the IR Sauna, then 10-15 minutes in the ice bath, then back to the IR sauna coupled with Halotherapy for 20-30 min of reheating + microaerosolized salt therapy, then to the shower. The total experience will take 90 minutes on average.
