Cold water has gotten a rather
chilly reception in the United States, where it is mostly sought after
as an antidote to a hot day. We love slipping into a cool blue pool when
the mercury rises, or dipping our toes in the cold ocean. An icy
mountain stream is okay for bathing if we're camping, but hot water is
always our first choice for cleanliness, comfort, and health. Hot water
relaxes and soothes. Cold water is a rude awakening, a shock to the
system that we would rather avoid.
Other
cultures around the world have used cold water as a 'shock to
the system' to flush the organs and energize the body since ancient
times. Scandinavian countries are famous for their
dry-hot-sauna-roll-in-the-snow (or jump in a lake) routine, which the
Finns were doing a thousand years ago. The Romans and Ottomans used
cooling rooms after hot baths two thousand years ago in one of the
largest social spa settings in the world. Traditional Chinese medicine
has used cold water in healing therapies for even longer.
"Cold water is a stimulus," says Anne Bramham, founder of the
American Spa Therapy Education & Certification Council, which trains
spa industry providers in the physiology and science of spa therapies.
"The use of all hydrotherapy is to manipulate circulation to improve our
quality of life."
The man most closely identified with promoting cold water therapy in
the (relatively) modern Western world is Sebastian Kneipp, a German
priest who was pronounced terminally ill with lung disease when he was a
young man in the 1800s. His self-treatment included daily baths in the
icy Danube River for just a few minutes. After a year he was cured. He
developed a system of self-care that involves more than hydrotherapy,
but his treatments of alternating hot and cold water therapies have
since been employed for many different health complaints. Bad
Woerishofen (near Munich), where he lived, grew into a famous spa
center. Today the Kneipp Association has a network of treatment and
training centers throughout Europe and in South Africa.
Cold showers and immersions have been credited with increasing
circulation by bringing blood to the capillaries, strengthening the
parasympathetic a
nd sympathetic nervous systems, contracting muscles in a
kind of simulated massage that helps eliminate toxins, and
strengthening mucous membranes that help resist hay fever, allergies,
colds, and coughs.
"The skin and nervous system interact to boost the immune system,"
says Bramham. But timing is everything, Bramham points out. And more is
not better. "It's not an endurance test. The second you're in cold
water, receptors are working and firing to the nervous system." The
body responds more quickly to water temperature than air temperature and
there are more cold receptors on the skin than heat receptors. It only
takes 30-45 seconds of exposure to benefit from the effects of cold
water. "Always finish cold," says Bramham. "And then wrap up and rest
until your pulse rate and body temperature returns to normal. The
effects on stress are amazing."
Canadians have also embraced thermotherapy, also called Nordic Spa,
slowly heating the body up and then quickly cooling it with a swift,
cold plunge, and many spas above the border offer bains chaud-froid,
or hot-cold baths. With so much respect for the benefits of cold water
therapy in other parts of the world, why hasn't it caught on before in
the United States? "We want to take a pill to be healthy," says Mimi
Barre, owner of International Skin and Body Care in Redlands,
California, and a certified Kneipp therapist. "It's a remarkable way to
get healthy and stay healthy but seems too weird by our standards
because Americans don't like to do anything the least bit uncomfortable.
We will eventually catch up," says Barre, who offers a Scotch Hose
Galien Jet water treatment, where the body is sprayed with a strong
stream of alternating hot and cold water. "But the treatments have to be
presented as fun rather than healthy."
Leave it to Las Vegas to make cold water hot. Qua Baths and Spa
opened in October 2006 at Caesars Palace with an Arctic Ice Room (55
degrees, heated benches), where artificial snow falls from a glass
ceiling with 120 waving fiber optic lights, a shaved ice fountain
provides crushed chips to cool the skin, and the air, lit by 25,000
iridescent blue glass mosaic tiles, is infused with mint. Qua has also
copied the Roman bath concept, offering a tepidarium (98 degrees),
caldarium (104 degrees), and frigidarium (56 degrees) for alternating
water therapies.
Spa Montage in Laguna Beach offers The Art of Spa, alternating hot
and cold experiences, with a cold plunge pool that (at 51 degrees)
stimulates everything from the tips of your toes to your hair roots.
Their Botanical Bath service includes iced peppermint towels for the
forehead and feet, a soak in rose and bergamot-scented warm water, as
well as the use of both hot and cold stones for the Toning Facial. A
sixty-minute complimentary ocean walk invigorates in the morning with
thigh-high cold water stork-walking along the shoreline.
While the health benefits of cold water therapies and alternating
hot-cold immersions are vast, the truth is that it is almost impossible
to endure cold water without laughing, screaming, or cursing. I laugh
and scream, whether I'm counting out my 30 to 60 seconds in the shower
at home, or doing the plunge pool routine. Cold water is a thrill, and
that's hot.
My therapist, Alex Rentz, uses sound therapy techniques to enhance
bodywork and energy balancing. It is significantly relaxing on its own,
but it is also a way to prepare the body to be more receptive to more
intensive healing work. Practitioners of Acutonics, a system of healing
based on the power of music and sound to ease pain and promote balance,
are taught to work with tuning forks, Tibetan bowls, gongs, bells, and
drums to replicate specific frequencies and musical intervals that tune
our bodies to the earth's own frequencies.