The Hazards of Cold Therapy: What to Watch out for
Cold exposure presents certain health risks, especially when performed without the supervision of another person. Even if you are advanced, always practice cold therapy with at least one other person who will look out for you, especially outdoors. Always treat your body kindly and approach it consciously. Men usually find this principle very challenging, but I have noticed that women are often able to understand the fine line. It is simply thin ice. Each one of us should learn to recognise when we are just stepping out of our comfort zone, and when we are forcing ourselves and should stop. This is precisely why we need to train and experiment. We must not be afraid to make mistakes in order to find our own limits, which we will respect.
If you practise breathing techniques before cold exposure (which in itself would be enough material for an entire book), such as diaphragmatic (belly) breathing or the Wim Hof method, you also need to know what to watch out for and what doses are safe. I recommend watching the video in the link below that I once made together with Libor Mattuš.
Animated video (in Czech): The potential risks of cold therapy and the Wim Hof breathing technique.
So what are the main risks on the path of cold therapy, and what do we need to watch out for?
Hypothermia and drowning
The most common risk associated with cold exposure is hypothermia, when your body temperature drops under 35 °C. (1) This can happen when you misjudge the dose and simply overdo it. The symptoms include shivering, which can last for hours, hyperventilation, paleness, fatigue and drowsiness, but the signs may vary in each of us. We should also remember that as we change within our cycle - not just our hormonal cycle, but also the life cycle - our ability to adapt to cold also changes. This causes a shift in the limit of when we need to take it easy and when, on the contrary, we can dig deeper.
I would like to share a personal experience with this health risk. It happened during my first submersion in a cold lake, without any previous training and without listening to my body. Hypothermia occurred, my body temperature dropped under 35 °C and I began to lose consciousness in the water. If my mum and my boyfriend at that time had not been on the shore, I would have drowned. They pulled me out and took me home. I was shivering for hours, and felt cold in my bones - I was wearing several layers of clothing but simply could not get warm. My lips were purple. Then fatigue hit until I finally fell asleep. This is not a wholesome state. All the same, I am grateful for this experience because my body showed me once again where my limits lie.
If you are pregnant, it is important to practise cold exposure either locally or truly gently. Ice baths are not recommended because your baby might get chilled and so might you. This is a really fine line, and it is better to experiment with water of about 10-15 °C, but do it regularly, even twice a day. You can splash your body with cold water, take a cold shower for less than a minute, or go out in the snow barefoot, just for a minute. That is enough.
The shivering you experience after cold exposure occurs naturally, it is called afterdrop. When we come out of cold water, the cooler blood returns from the extremities into the central circulatory system causing a drop in the body temperature and shivering. Shivering is produced by small involuntary muscular contractions which the body uses to generate heat.
Frostbite
Frostbite is another health hazard which occurs when the skin freezes. This usually happens on the extremities or the face. Alcohol consumption can increase this as well as other risks. Although you can see people in Russia, for example, drinking alcohol as if it were water, while immersing themselves in cold lakes, this practice is neither safe nor beneficial for the human organism. During my winter expeditions to Sněžka, I have also seen a few men appear with a flask of liquor, saying that it would help to keep them warm. The truth is that in spite of the warm feeling produced by drinking, alcohol causes a lowering of body temperature and increases the risk of hypothermia and frostbite during cold exposure. (2)
A dramatic drop in blood pressure
If you combine extreme heat and extreme cold, be it with water or in the sauna, your blood pressure can change drastically and suddenly, and you may lose consciousness. (3)
Heart attack
Another big “killer” is heart attack which can happen when the temperature of the blood that returns to the heart suddenly drops - this can affect the electrical impulses in the heart and cause fibrillation. In general, if you have any health problems, you should proceed slowly when working with cold. Take it step by step. You do not have to dive in ice cold lakes right away, putting your health or even your life at risk.
Every one of us will have a different optimum level of cold exposure. Some of you may happily practise cold therapy every single day, even during menstruation, while others may find that once a week is enough for them. It is very important to create a protocol, approach it as an experiment, collect data and observations for a while, and subsequently use these as a basis to decide in what doses you should administer cold to yourself. You can request one such protocol that we have prepared for you here. All other risks have to do precisely with dosing. You do not want to overdo it. Biohacking is a path of harmony and balance.
Bibliography:
- https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12024-010-9142-4
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0953985994710998?via%3Dihub
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3218896/
