Cold water

[jtb73]

What does anybody know about the various practices invovling dumping buckets of cold water over yourself in the morning or jumping from hot tubs to cold pools... What are the claimed benifits? Are there people who have done these things and are their potential risks?

jt bymaster

[Edited by jtb73 on 10-12-2000 at 09:54 PM]

[Yojimbo558]

Hi JT,

Not the thing to do! The practise of being in a steam room or hot tub and then jumping into cold water or dumping buckets of cold water was thought to be a method of improving your health.

I think it might have been on Nova or Discovery a few years ago. But what happens when you do this is that it shocks the body and your blood pressure sky rockets! People in poor health doing this or can put themselves in a possibly fatal or serious medical condition. While if your in good health you're taxing your system and run the risk of catching it on an occasion in which it can't cope with the two extremes.

Eric Bookin

[Steve Williams]

The scandinavians have been doing a similar thing for years (centuries?).
They have a sauna then jump into a frozen lake (having first made a hole in the ice :laugh: ).
They swear by it (well many of my Finnish relatives do), we just think they are crazy.
The claim is that it cleanses your body, it probably does, but if you have any heart or blood pressure problems then it could be disasterous, although I have not heard of any fatalities in the past, perhaps it is not talked of, crazy vikings.

[Barry]

One of my customers was Scandanavian, was, and was a
fitness nut for many years, also an M.D. One night after
a sauna he did his customary jump into the swimming
pool and his widow found him floating there. Heart
attack.
Barry

[Gavin Gunavardhana]

Originally posted by jtb73
What does anybody know about the various practices invovling dumping buckets of cold water over yourself in the morning or jumping from hot tubs to cold pools... What are the claimed benifits? Are there people who have done these things and are their potential risks?

jt bymaster

[Edited by jtb73 on 10-12-2000 at 09:54 PM]

I have heard that going from very hot to very cold water quickly is bad for you. However, I have recently read that the Russian health system includes cold water dousings. I have been reading about Russian methods on Vladimir Vasiliev's and Scott Sonnon's websites. They practice Russian martial arts and conditioning methods. The dousings seems to be done in isolation and I have seen no mention made of hot showers/saunas beforehand.

The idea is that, as well as being invigorating, the shock of a cold bucket of water forces your body temperature to temporarily shoot up to a high level at which some viruses and germs can't survive. I have no idea if this is a sound theory. Perhaps some people with medical knowledge can comment.

Here are the links to start with:

http://www.russianmartialart.com
http://www.amerROSS.com

I'll see if I can dig up the link that explained the theory behind the dousings.

Hope this is of use to you

Gavin

[Gavin Gunavardhana]

Found it! Here are the links with the theory and some more info:

http://www.whitbyyachtclub.on.ca/newsletter.html
http://www.stockwell.net/rma.html
http://www.stockwell.net/water.htm

Never would've stumbled across these without a search engine :)

The yacht club article in question is called "Racer's Edge" and it is in the May 2000 newlsetter

Gavin

[Edited by Gavin Gunavardhana on 10-18-2000 at 04:04 PM]