I TAKE A DEEP BREATH before flipping on the cold water. It's the heart of winter, and the warm spray splashing from my shower head has been a brief reprieve from another blistery, bitter Cape Town morning. Almost instantly, hot water is replaced with a flurry of (what feels like) glacial rain. Insanitythat's what my brain tells me, a primal instinct that compels me to step out from under the crisp cascade. But I've been pushing up against that fight-or-flight response in the past few weeks. Last week I swam in 13°C water in Camps Bay's tidal pool. The week prior? I was submerged in Spar-sourced ice tipped liberally in my bathtub for a DIY plunge that put me in a state of shock. But something is starting to happen: I've braced myself for some serious suffering as the shower shifts into the blue, but there's part of me that revels in the sudden dip in mercury. That almost zealous devotion to so-called cold therapy, an adrenaline-fuelled pursuit of near-freezing temps-yeah, I'm starting to understand the appeal.
ICY ORIGINS
Ice baths are nothing new. Performance athletes have been taking the plunge for decades, tapping into the power of frigid temps to accelerate their recovery times. This cold exposure helps reduce inflammation, altering how blood and other fluids flow through the body. So when you submerge, your blood vessels constrict; and when you re-emerge, they open back up.
That process-manually-helps flush out metabolic waste in the wake of a gruelling workout, says Wimpie van der Meijden, a physiotherapist and recovery specialist at The Athletic Recovery Centre. "For athletes, that's like magic because they've got a small amount of time to get ready for the next race, match or game, and inflammation takes time," he adds. "They need to get refreshed fast, and hopping into an ice bath can get them there."
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