Thanks to Skillshare for supporting this episode,
and this whole week, of SciShow.
[♩INTRO]
If you follow any productivity gurus,
then you’ve probably heard how you need
to take cold showers in the morning.
After all, not only can they wake you right
up,
but you’re also promised a myriad of health
benefits
and everybody loves a good healthy life hack.
But whether these claims are actually true
is still kind of a gray area.
Also, I have to say, as someone who grew up
in Florida
and now lives in Montana,
a cold shower is different depending on where
you live.
So before you jump in that agonizingly cold
shower,
let’s look at some research.
One of the biggest problems with studying
cold showers is that…
well, people really haven’t.
Instead, most health claims are implied from
studies of cryotherapy
using cold water or air to treat a condition
or from things like people who repeatedly
go swimming in cold water.
But cryotherapy is really carefully controlled,
and those swimmers often stay in the water
for over an hour,
so it’s hard to apply this to your quick
rinse before work.
Still, that doesn’t mean there’s zero
evidence for cold showers,
because there is.
It’s just not very strong.
Like, take the claim people make
that those showers improve your immune system.
In 2016, a study published in PLOS One
wanted to see if taking a quick cold shower
in the morning
would reduce the amount of sick days someone
took from work.
For 30 straight days, more than 2300 subjects
took either a warm shower,
or a warm shower that turned cold for 30,
60, or 90 seconds at the end.
On average, subjects in all three of the cold
shower groups called into work
29% less than the warm shower group
roughly the same as one less sick day per
month.
But we don’t know why,
since the research team didn’t measure any
biological markers.
Many of the participants did say they felt
an increase in energy
and continued taking the cold showers after
the experiment,
but that’s not enough to close the case.
It’s possible that their white blood cell
count increased
like what’s been shown to happen with cold
water swimmers.
But again, a 90-second rinse is a lot different
from an hour in the water.
Many people also swear that cold showers can
boost mood.
But the results there are maybe even weaker.
A 2008 study in Medical Hypothesis gets referenced
a lot
as evidence for cold showers as an antidepressant,
but it’s not really all that convincing.
They hypothesized that cold water
would activate your sympathetic nervous system
the system that does things like increase
your heart rate
and stimulate the release of endorphins which
would elevate your mood.
But it only had three data points, one of
which was the author of the paper,
and none of them had symptoms that would diagnose
them with depression.
Plus, the biological markers they expected
to change
were never actually measured, so really we
don’t have any results to go off of.
To be fair, the author did mention all that
in the paper.
But alas, the blogosphere still holds onto
that antidepressant claim
even though the article wasn’t that powerful.
The thing here is, you can’t placebo a cold
shower:
you know if you’re getting one.
So it seems like cold showers get a lot more
credit than they deserve
based on the evidence that exists.
A short one probably won’t hurt you, but
hey, let’s do more research
before we start making claims about reality
and our bodies.
Seriously, if you’re looking for a research
project,
this sounds like a good one to try out.
Couldn’t be that expensive, it’s cold
water.
So, even though cold showers might not be
the key
to making you more productive,
the CEO and co-founder of Skillshare, Michael
Karnjanaprakorn,
is really productive and shares his systems
for productivity
in his class Real Productivity: Create Your
Ideal Week.
He provides a simple framework to prioritize
and accomplish what’s important to you in
the immediate and in the long term.
We’ll make sure to link to it in the description.
All these week, we’ve been sharing Skillshare
classes
we think SciShow viewers will appreciate,
but even though the week is coming to an end,
this offer from Skillshare is still available.
Skillshare is offering SciShow viewers 2 free
months
of unlimited access to their platform of over
20,000 classes.
Click on the link in the description to sign
up,
and let us know in the comments what classes
you take!
We always love to learn new things.
[♩OUTRO]
