In today’s post (#9), I discuss my experiments with cold therapy, which involves the application of cold temperatures to the body for both dealing with aches and pains after a game of soccer as well as for its potential impact on improving my metabolic health. I will focus this post on my observations around the latter.
I had read and heard about cases of folks using cryo-chambers and sitting in ice water showers, but frankly I don’t like cold water so that wasn’t something I was willing to do. What I was willing to try was something more practical and sustainable: I changed my routine from a standard ten minute hot water shower (my wife will disagree with the ten minutes because she doesn’t think I ever get out that soon) to an eight minute hot water shower followed by turning the knob to the coldest the water can get for the last two minutes. It used to feel like the worst two minutes of my day but now it just feels bad :)
I have been doing this particular experiment for about a year, but of that duration, there was about a sixty day period where I didn’t do any other experiments in parallel, in order to ensure my conclusions were not influenced by any of my other studies. Here were my observations:
- Impact on my Resting Heart Rate: My resting heart rate used to hover at about 48 to 50 bpm very consistently before the experiment. During the sixty day period, it dropped down pretty quickly to about 42 to 44 bpm. My doctor wanted to make sure that this low heart rate wasn’t due to any underlying health issue so I put on a Zio heart rate monitor for 2 weeks (which is probably one of the most accurate medical grade sensors on the market today). On looking at the data, she was convinced it was a healthy lowering of the heart rate. Cold therapy triggers the release of endorphins, which can help reduce stress, and that potentially plays a role in this observation.
- Impact on my HbA1c: This one is a bit trickier to completely attribute to cold therapy because this metric is a 90-day average of one’s blood glucose vs. the sixty day period when this was the only experiment I was conducting. However, through a combination of increasing my walking duration and cold therapy, my HbA1c did start dropping from 5.8 downwards over the last year to 5.4 today. Studies have shown increased insulin sensitivity and enhanced glucose uptake in cells, due to cold therapy, and that could help partially explain this improvement.
- Impact on my energy levels: I found that those 2 minutes of pain did lead to a feeling of alertness and clarity, which is always very welcome.
As always, speak to your doctor if you have any underlying health issues before embarking on this, and ping our team if you want to have someone guide you through these lifestyle changes that you want to try.
PS If there are any experienced clinician dietitians with 10-15 years of experience interested in joining our team of highly data driven and functional medicine doctors, please contact me