Cold plunging seems to be the latest craze at the moment but should women really be jumping in an icy cold bath? Or should we be doing it with the same intensity as the men?
It is a fantastic method for many many things, whether it’s fat loss, whether it’s reducing inflammation, whether it’s recovery from training, boosting your dopamine and boosting your energy for the day. It is absolutely fantastic. I love cold plunging. I really do like it, but I don’t think it’s a modality that you should do every single day, especially as a woman in her cyclical years and it’s not for everybody.
It’s like anything. Every single day you should tune into your body and ask your body what it needs.
Does it need a cold plunge?
Does it need to reduce the flame?
Does it need to reduce the heat or inflammation in the body?
Is my body too stressed? Because if your body is in a highly, highly stressed state, you should not… be putting it into those intense stressful methods. The same as I wouldn’t recommend somebody to train intense if they are in a highly stressed state.
Cold plunging is a stress on the system…..
…and the whole idea is you’re putting your body into that ice water and you’re creating a stress and you’re teaching your body to handle stress and to get through stress and to breathe amongst many other things mentioned above that it also does.
If you’re in a highly stressed state it can actually be more detrimental for you to do that. Now women run on an infradium rhythm not a circadian, so our body is different at different parts of our cycle. Marginally different.
When we are in the luteal phase and our estrogen drops and our progesterone is higher than estrogen we can become inflamed much more easily which kind of says, should I do cold plunging at this time?
Also the body is hotter at that time, so it might not need to be as cold for you to get a result in that time and our body doesn’t like stress in the luteal phase so should we really be cold plunging in that luteal phase?
I don’t know….. I think it’s really important for you to actually just tune into your own body and ask your body what it needs. That’s what I do, I love a cold plunge I also love a cold shower but if I get in the shower and I tune into my body and know that my body doesn’t need that that day or my body is in too much of a stressed state then I won’t have a cold shower that day.
Getting up at 5am to test your body by jumping into a cold plunge maybe great for men, not so much for women..
Women need more sleep than men for one, sometimes up to 10 hours in that luteal phase! So that tells us that in that phase, sticking to a dogmatic approach of everyday lets get up at the same time and putting our bodies through stress isn’t actually ideal.
There was also a study done where they tested women compared to men and women don’t need the water as cold. For women to get a response, we can have the water at about 15 degrees.
Now that doesn’t mean you have to have an icy bath. You could get that from a cold shower. If you’re from somewhere really cold, the water will be even colder than that! So you don’t necessarily have to have a cold plunge in an ice bath.
I still haven’t seen any studies that actually look at women at different parts of their cycle. So I think that’s really important when that study does finally come out.
Women are also very different in terms of recovery from training. So in terms of cold plunging, men should not get into a cold plunge directly after training because it will actually inhibit their muscle growth, whereas women can get into a cold plunge or have a cold shower directly after training because it will actually help us to recover by pushing our blood to the muscle for recovery.
So I think the jury’s still out. I think there’s still a lot of study that needs to be done on women compared to men. But the best thing that you can possibly do is just to tune into your body and ask your body what does it need that day.
If you need to do a cold plunge go ahead do a cold plunge or cold showers are fantastic as well. You don’t have to jump in ice to get a response from the body.
At the end of the day there are many different methods that can be used for healing and harmonizing the body, or just getting more our of life. Remember that not every method suits every body and it’s up to YOU to learn how to tune into your own body and soul and ask yourself what you need on any day, at any time. Then feel into your responses and see if it’s the right fit for you.
If you need help with your health fat loss, becoming strong or harmonizing your body, reach out for a chat with one of our holistic trainers and we will see how we can help.
Hayley