Can cold showers help treat depression?
I like cold showers. They make me feel good. To be more precise, they make me feel good after I take them, not during. The ‘during’ part can be pretty horrible, actually, especially in the winter months. I therefore have to steel myself before subjecting my tender corpse to every icy barrage I willingly put it through. I convince myself that this builds character and manliness and is somehow equivalent to a bit of robust exercise. My heart rate goes up, my muscles engorge (oh, shut up!) and my skin tingles
After having a freezing cold shower last night and feeling all the better for it, I decided to have a look on the old ‘internets’ to see if there might be some scientific reasons why a bracing deluge of cool H2O might lighten my mood and invigorate my tired carcass. In short, my curiosity was piqued (ahem). What I found pretty much supported all of my own personal anecdotal evidence regarding cold showers.
Photo by Sean McGrath (Image source: flickr Creative Commons)
A Discovery News article from December 2007 cites a study by one Nikolai Shevchuk of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, which postulates that ‘cold showers may stimulate the blue spot, which is the brain’s primary source of noradrenaline — a chemical that could help mediate depression.’ No wonder I don’t hate myself afterwards.
Another article regarding Shevchuk’s research appeared in the London Times the same month, citing him as saying that the practice may also alleviate chronic fatigue syndrome. This would explain my post cold shower energy buzz. Incidentally, the Times piece also mentions the benefits of Green tea in preventing Parkinson’s disease and that obesity may cause bad breath.
But back to cold showers. They’re also better for the environment because they use less energy by not heating the water and less water because you can’t wait for them to be over. No one ever took a long cold shower. I even turn the water off while soaping up. Hot showers, on the other hand – being deliciously luxurious – tend to be much longer and dry out your skin, making it itchy – again, especially during winter.
It should be noted that it may not be advisable to shock yourself too much with cold water, like those people who jump in ice baths in Russia and the Nordic countries. I’ve also done it and it’s no fun, though some athletes swear by it. ‘Heart patients and other at-risk patients’ should check with their doctors before taking cold showers, according to Nikolai Shevchuk. One should also start with a temperature of around 20 degrees Celsius (68 Fahrenheit) – which doesn’t sound particularly cold to me, anyway. So if you’re healthy, hardy and heart problem-free you might want to give cold showers a try. They could even help with the depression you have due to being such a ‘drip’.
By Graham Land
Additional resources:
Discovery News
Times Online Health
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Tags: cold shower, depression, Health, Shevchuk, water
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