Suffering is completely the wrong concept when one is considering the benefits of a cold shower. The biggest plus of a cold shower is the shock-effect that makes you alert and awake.
Taking Cold Showers
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Re: Taking Cold Showers
#72[deleted]
Re: Taking Cold Showers
#73Good luck getting a clean shave under those conditions. It sometimes amazes me what people think constitutes adversarial conditions, and testing oneself. Reaching down and turning a knob, then telling yourself that you're building character? Odd. By the way, I loved the comments. They read like something I would have written as a twelve year old. "I'm like a Navy SEAL because I beat myself up every day with a cold sh…
"Reaching down and turning a knob, then telling yourself that you're building character? Odd." Seems like something Calvin's dad would suggest. e.g. http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lkypfyWBiK1qczkzxo1_250.jp...
That's the same advice that we hear a lot on HN though. "Get out of your comfort zone." How is this any different? By 'turning a knob' he is getting blasted with cold water, which is outside of his comfort zone. By doing it consistently, he is attempting to get used to living outside of his comfort zone.
Just because he's talking about a cold shower instead of a start-up and a bunch of comments on his blog are by "I'm a macho man" types doesn't somehow make this different.
update: Maybe the idea that 'turning a knob' is somehow a low barrier is the issue here? I would say that the real barrier is sticking with it and not bailing out of the cold water (jumping out of the shower, quickly turning the water off, etc).
Re: Taking Cold Showers
#74Cold showers just make me feel great. Never suffered of those.
I also use them after workouts, as described here: http://paleohacks.com/questions/995/what-is-the-deal-with-co...
"Invented by the French and used by virtually every elite athlete on the planet, it is often confused with some kind of torture. Right after working out, hop into the shower. First, cook yourself for no longer than 5 minutes in hot water, relax, get those blood vessels well dilated. Then slowly add cold water to the mix until it's so cold you can't stand it. Endure it. Focus the water on the back of your head and the muscles you just worked. Feel the blood vessels constrict. Stay under it for as long as it takes to really cool off - 2 to 3 minutes. The time it takes to cool down will increase as you adapt, and the temperature for cooling will decrease. Then, switch the hot water back on. The blood vessels will dilate, and inrushing blood will flush the lactic acid out. Start the cooking process again. Repeat at least two cycles and finish on cold. This induces a tonic effect and you'll rebound, flushing again as your body warms up in your clothes."
Re: Taking Cold Showers
#75My dad used to tell me about the time he was in a cold, remote location (military), and he was the only one in their group who would take cold baths (from a snow-fed stream nearby); the others would warm up water and then bathe. The entire year he was there, he never fell ill; though the rest of the bunch came down with cold/flu with regularity. I know this is not scientific evidence, but just anecdotal.
Thanks for the article; I had forgotten about his story, and now will try to work in cold showers slowly.
Re: Taking Cold Showers
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Where there are hot springs, there are happy, relaxed locals. Some people feel they work better and are more motivated when they're not in a state of happy relaxation. Comfortable and focused perhaps. > "Reaching down and turning a knob, then telling yourself that you're building character? Odd." The detail that is important is not the knob, but the endurance of a blast of cold water. (Note: the following is a ridi…
Some people feel they work better and are more motivated when they're not in a state of happy relaxation. Comfortable and focused perhaps. I don't work in the shower. The detail that is important is not the knob, but the endurance of a blast of cold water. I believe that you have missed my point. Turning a knob, over which you have complete control, really isn't subjecting yourself to anything meaningful. You're not…
>> Some people feel they work better and are more motivated when they're
>> not in a state of happy relaxation. Comfortable and focused perhaps.
>
> I don't work in the shower.
> Turning a knob, over which you have complete control, really isn't
> subjecting yourself to anything meaningful.
> Go climb a mountain. Or even a challenging rock.
Re: Taking Cold Showers
#77As someone who has taken many, many, many cold showers in Iraq and other unpleasant locales, if your character is so underdeveloped that taking a cold shower builds it up, you should be taking bigger strides. Edit: point being, cold showers are such an unbelievably mild form of suffering that suggesting they're "character builders" is painfully pretentious. Surprised this blogger of all people wrote this. He knows su…
Hey Matt - thanks for your thoughts. I think mild is definitely in the eye of the beholder. Doing 50 pushups everyday would be a walk in the park for me - it might be absolute hell for someone else. A developer/designer might take 15 seconds to debug something that I could only manage after hours if not days of researching/Googling/struggling.
As I mentioned in the post - I really like warm showers and hate being cold. For me, it really was quite difficult to force myself to take a cold shower. It's now much easier.
You're right, I have gone through intense suffering - dislocating your knee, tearing all 4 ligaments and undergoing 5 surgeries will do that to you. So please have faith in me when I say that this activity was a challenge for me, was highly uncomfortable at first and required substantial willpower.
I offer my experience as something others can draw from and suggest that this might be worth doing.
Re: Taking Cold Showers
#78Don't know why it's not mentioned, but it will also reduce your penis to subatomic lengths
Re: Taking Cold Showers
#79I've done cold showers at times (for medical reasons). I loathe them and only take them in desperation.
Trivia that the HN crowd is unlikely to know: Ending showers with a brief bit of cold water is supposedly something French women do to keep themselves perky.
Re: Taking Cold Showers
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you like to share some specific reasons why people shouldn't engage in cold showers? Would you like to share some sort of science proving that taking a cold shower has some health benefit over talking a hot shower?
Science is the attempt to make sense of the world based on observations and thought. It does NOT have to happen in a laboratory, or in a study, or in any other Science Realm®.
No it's not. From Wikipedia: science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world.
The key word is testable. Thought experiments are not science. Measuring stuff to disprove a hypothesis is.