As I have documented previously, my discovery of cold-water plunging has been revelatory. On New Year’s Day, I added Queechy Lake in Canaan, N.Y. to my growing list of immersion sites, and added four family members to my list of converts to the practice. I hope to continue plunging two to three to four times per week throughout the winter, especially as the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual benefits seem to accrue the colder the weather gets. The most prominent of these are a sped-up metabolism, reduced inflammation, improved posture, boosts in good hormones, better sleep, and a keen sense of connection to the natural world. As others have noted, if you go into the cold water feeling bad, there is no way you won’t come out feeling better.
But I am also now realizing that plunging is giving me an unexpected primer on human nature, and its relationship to fear. When I looked into the research on cold-water plunging last fall, I discovered that there was very little of it. Lots and lots of information about the damage done to the human body by cold exposure, sure, but almost none about the good.
Why would researchers not be curious about what I and millions of others unequivocally know to be a simple, free, efficient, good thing? I know nothing about how and why research subjects are chosen, but it seems to me that a wellness practice this easy, which anyone with a working faucet can access, should be at the top of any researcher’s agenda, to say nothing of any doctor’s standard recommendation list. But I clearly don’t know anything about the motivations of scientists and doctors. It seems likely that health practices that are ineligible for grant funding, that do not provide any military advantage, that are not reimbursable, that cannot lead to the creation of new medical interventions or pharmaceuticals, will not be on the radar of a profit-driven world. Using water in lieu of medicine, in fact, is one good way to avoid interfacing with the whole industry.
Not only are there no research papers to reference for a positive story about plunging, but the people who study cold water don’t believe our testimony. Below, NPR references Francois Haman, their chosen expert, in their story on plunging from last year.
“….he cautions that much of the information currently out there is based on ‘very thin research’ — that some popular beliefs are way ahead of what we actually know. ‘A lot of claims are being made and leaps of faith are being made based on absolutely nothing, or just a few papers and social media,’ he says.”
Worthless and inconsequential, according to Dr. Haman, the sum total of our experience on the subject. Unconvincing, the physical evidence of the humans around the world who have, since time immemorial, been cold plunging. His skepticism is mirrored across the internet, evidenced by the selection of headlines below.
Health: “Cold Plunging Is All Over TikTok—But Is It Safe?“
Today: “Do cold plunges have benefits for physical and mental health?“
Cedars-Sinai: “Taking the Plunge: Is Cold Exposure Worthwhile?“
Glamour: “Is Cold Plunge Really as Life-Changing as Everyone Says?“
OSF Healthcare: “Cold plunging: Do the benefits outweigh the risks?“
CBC: “Cold plunge therapy: fad or a true form of healing?“
Advisory Board: “Cold plunges are popular — but do they have health benefits?“
Moral of the story, folks: When it comes to this cold water crap, the only people who know anything about anything have more questions than answers, so whatever you do, don’t listen to your own body, unless your own body is terrified and is telling you to go home. Do not, under any circumstances, dip your foot into that lake to see how you feel. If you do feel OK and have the inclination to proceed, don’t trust that feeling! Take an FDA-approved pain pill and wait until that feeling passes and is replaced by oblivion. Wait, what are you doing, walking deeper into the water? You’re playing with death, for sure! Didn’t you hear what we said? Unless and until we, the credentialed world, inform you that it’s safe to go in the water, don’t go in the water!
I’m afraid this and similar messages informing us of our incompetence at life have penetrated far and wide. Most people are terribly insecure about their ability to manage their own experience of cold water. In the past three months, I have been asked questions such as:
“How do you get into the water?”
“What do you do about the current?”
“How do you warm up afterward?”
“What sort of breathing practice do you use?”
“Have you ever been unable to warm up afterward?”
“Does it get easier the more you do it?”
Well, I get into the water by walking into the water. I believe you know how to warm yourself up, because if you have reached adulthood, you have done it hundreds of times. (Also, if my own body failed to warm up after a plunge, I would be dead.) I deal with the current by standing in the current. Is there any practice in life that does not get easier the more you do it? I find breathing to be one of those activities I don’t really need to think much about.
Why and where did we lose our confidence in even our autonomic skills? These questions—which, to be sure, I was asking myself, even last spring—are understandable, but they are irrational, because they are based on the assumption that cold water will kill us. Our bodies are so much wiser than we give them credit for! I started cold water swimming last summer and have continued with it because when I was feeling bad, it made me feel good. That’s it. That’s my research. My happier body is the evidence. When people meet my evidence with skepticism, I am happy to explain myself, but I also kinda feel like rolling my eyes. “Come on,” I want to say. “I’m alive, aren’t I?” (You should have seen me before I went in the water. I was a wreck.)
People—in the western world, at any rate—have been trained to look outward rather than in for the answers. We have handed over our powers of discernment and judgment to MDs and PhDs and MAs and MSWs and JDs and to whatever letters The New York Times journalists have after their names. I am now beginning to see, based on my experience with cold water plunging, which relies on old-fashioned common sense, that the success of the medical industrial complex seems to be contingent on our lack of faith in our own bodies.
My body is so wise. It feels so good to live in cold water for four minutes at a time. Even now, at my desk, I am thinking of my second home, the river, and when I will be getting in again.
