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Cold exposure and longevity

Ice bath, cold plunge, cold shower: what the research shows, and where the real risks are.

Updated 17 min read28 sources

The short answer

A cold plunge, or ice bath, usually means 2 to 5 minutes in water at 10 to 15°C. It reliably raises noradrenaline, a stress hormone linked to feeling wide awake,[1, 12] and may slightly ease soreness after exercise.[8] Promises about immunity, mood, fat loss and a longer life rest on thin or mixed evidence, and cold water straight after lifting reduced muscle growth in two small trials.[4, 6] The main risks are cold shock and drowning rather than freezing, so start small and never go into open water alone.[11]

This content is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your diet, exercise routine, or supplement regimen.

Cold plunge, ice bath or cold shower: what happens in your body?

A cold plunge and an ice bath are the same thing for most purposes: you sit in cold water up to your neck for a few minutes. That is only one of four common formats, though. They differ in temperature, duration and whether water or air does the cooling, and those differences matter because a study's result applies only to the format it tested.

  • Cold shower: the easiest way in. Water around 15°C, 1 to 5 minutes.
  • Ice bath or cold plunge: 10 to 15°C, whole body under, usually 2 to 5 minutes. Most of the water research uses this format.
  • Winter swimming: open water at 0 to 8°C, usually short dips of 30 seconds to 3 minutes. German-speaking countries have a long tradition of it, and the practical section of this guide lists clubs to start with.
  • Cryotherapy chamber: air cooled electrically or with liquid nitrogen to below minus 100°C, for two to four minutes.[17, 18] The evidence on soreness is too thin to say whether it helps,[17] and the water findings in this guide do not apply to it. Risks include cold burns, frostbite and, if the device fails, suffocation,[18] so only use one with trained staff.

What the cold does in the first minutes

Whichever water format you pick, the cold first switches on your stress system. Your body releases noradrenaline, a stress hormone that puts you on alert, and how much depends a lot on how long you stay in. After a 5-minute ice bath at 8 to 12°C, blood noradrenaline roughly doubled.[12] During a full hour up to the neck in 14°C water, it rose by about 530%, and blood dopamine by about 250%.[1] That dopamine figure comes only from the hour-long bath, because the short-plunge study did not measure dopamine at all.[12] Dopamine in the blood is also not the brain's reward signal.

While those hormones rise, your blood vessels clamp down, and they open again as you warm up. Whether doing this often trains them has not been shown, so the popular "workout for your blood vessels" is an idea rather than a result.

Brown fat, a type of fat that burns energy to make heat instead of storing it, needs far more cold than a plunge delivers. It becomes more active after about 10 days of mild cold air for several hours a day.[9] Short plunges or showers have not been shown to do the same. Experienced Danish winter swimmers even took up no more sugar into their brown fat in the cold than non-swimmers did.[5] They did make more heat, but the study could not pin down where it came from; the authors suspect brown fat and muscle working together.[5]

Inflammation shows the same split between a clear short-term response and an open long-term question. Inflammation markers in the blood rise right after a cold dip and stay up for at least an hour.[7] Whether regular cold lowers inflammation over the long run is still open. For now, the stress response is the one effect of a plunge you can count on.

Cold plunge benefits: what does the research actually show?

Cold water's best-supported effects are a large, reliable rise in noradrenaline.[1, 12] and somewhat less muscle soreness after exercise[8] Everything else, from insulin to immunity, rests on thin or mixed evidence, and there is no death-rate data like the sauna research has. Even the biggest pooled analysis is narrower than it looks: a 2025 review counted about 3,200 people, but most of them came from a single Dutch shower trial.[7]

Better supported

Most people feel wide awake after a plunge, which fits the noradrenaline surge, but controlled trials have barely measured alertness or focus.[1, 7, 12] So the wide-awake feeling is real enough to enjoy, just not a tested effect on how well you think.

Soreness has more direct evidence, though less than its reputation. Cold water after exercise eases muscle soreness for up to about four days, but the trials behind this are small, of low quality and vary in their results.[8] The trials that worked best also used about 10 to 15 minutes at 11 to 15°C.[16] That is longer than the 2 to 5 minutes most people do, so a short plunge is not proven to give the same effect.[16]

Plausible, but thin or mixed

Insulin sensitivity, meaning how well your cells respond to insulin and pull sugar out of the blood, is a popular metabolic claim. Its headline number comes from one small trial. Eight people with type-2 diabetes spent up to 6 hours a day in a 14 to 15°C room for 10 days, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt.[2] Their insulin sensitivity improved by about 43%, mostly through their muscles rather than brown fat.[2] That was cold air, not water.

Water pointed the other way. In healthy young adults, 16 daily 10-minute dips in 14°C water temporarily lowered insulin sensitivity, which was back to normal a week later.[14] So the 43% result says nothing about plunges. If you have diabetes, it is no reason to start plunging on your own; talk to your doctor first.

Brown fat runs into the same gap between the lab and the bathtub. Cold does switch it on,[9] but how many extra calories that burns over a whole day is uncertain and differs a lot between people.[9] The effect also happens mainly while you are cold,[9] and even after 10 days of cold, brown fat took up only a little more sugar.[2] So a plunge has not been shown to help with weight loss.

Mood is where feeling and data part ways most. Plenty of people feel great after a plunge, yet the 2025 review found no clear effect on mood.[7] Stress was lower at only one of the measured time points, 12 hours after cold.[7] The review's sleep and quality-of-life findings each came from a single study.[7] The sleep study involved men recovering from heat training, and in the Dutch shower trial, slightly better quality-of-life scores at 30 days had disappeared by 90 days.[7]

A 2026 review went further: the evidence does not establish benefits for mood, depression or stress.[15] Most of its studies also had a high risk of bias, meaning flaws in how they were run could skew the results.[15] Cold water is not a treatment for depression or anxiety, and anyone with symptoms should talk to a doctor.

Immunity is a popular claim with one interesting trial behind it. In a Dutch trial, about 3,000 adults ended their warm shower with 30 to 90 seconds of cold and reported 29% fewer sick days off work.[3] They were not ill for fewer days, though, and the sick days were self-reported. Most people in the trial had no sick days at all.[3] Participants also knew they were showering cold, and the authors say a placebo effect cannot be ruled out.[3]

The authors' own reading is that the showers may ease how bad illness feels rather than how long it lasts.[3] The pooled data add little support. Immune markers did not change right after or one hour after cold, and the only sign of a longer-term benefit is that same shower trial.[3, 7] As far as the 2025 review shows, no independent trial has confirmed it so far.[7]

Missing evidence, and one real cost

Longevity is the biggest gap. For sauna, the Finnish KIHD study followed middle-aged men for decades and linked frequent sauna use to lower death rates.[10] For cold water, no comparable death-rate data exists. The sprightly 70- and 80-year-olds in winter-swim clubs do not settle it either, since people who keep going for decades are usually healthy and fit to begin with.

Muscle growth is where cold can cost you something. In two small trials in young men, sitting in cold water within minutes of lifting reduced muscle growth.[4, 6] In the 12-week trial, the cold-water group gained only about a third as much thigh muscle as the group that did light active recovery instead.[4] Both groups still gained some, and strength gains were smaller in one trial but held up in the other.[4, 6] Data for women and older adults are missing, but if muscle growth matters to you, the safer bet is to keep plunges away from your lifting sessions.

Cold plunge risks: is it safe, and who should skip it?

For most healthy adults, short and controlled cold exposure is low-risk. When cold water does kill, it is mainly through the gasp and drowning, not through freezing,[11] and some people should not start without a doctor's check.

Check with your doctor first if you have

  • Heart or blood vessel disease
  • High blood pressure, since cold pushes your blood pressure up in the moment.[1]
  • Heart rhythm problems, including inherited rhythm disorders[11]
  • Raynaud's syndrome, where cold can make fingers or toes change colour and feel numb
  • Cold urticaria (hives or swelling from cold), because cold water can trigger a severe allergic reaction[27]
  • Pregnancy
  • Epilepsy

If you take medication for blood pressure, heart rhythm or blood thinning, or anything that makes you drowsy, read the medication note in the practical section too.

How cold water kills

Most cold-water deaths happen before the body cools down[11] The first danger is cold shock: an involuntary gasp and fast breathing that are strongest in the first minute and can last two to three minutes or longer.[20] If your face is under water during that gasp, you can breathe in water. That is why you get in slowly, keep your face out of the water until your breathing is under control, and NEVER go into open water alone. Cold shock can be just as dangerous in 10 to 15°C water, the usual plunge range, as in icy water.[20]

The cold can also throw your heart rhythm off, especially if you have heart disease or an inherited rhythm disorder, which is one reason for the doctor check.[11] Swimming adds another danger, because your arms and legs can stop working properly in cold water while your core temperature is still close to normal.[11] Hypothermia, a dangerous drop in core temperature, comes later, with longer stays.[11]

No time limit is safe for everyone, because it depends on the water, your body and how much you move. Get out while you still feel in control. No cold water after alcohol or sedating drugs: they make all of these risks worse.[11]

After you get out

Your core temperature can keep falling for a while after you get out.[21] Heat keeps flowing from your core into your cold outer tissues, and cooled blood returns from your arms and legs.[21] That afterdrop is why you dress warmly straight away and warm up gradually instead of standing around wet.

Open water

Swimming in a cold lake is only for an experienced group with rescue gear close by, and only after months of building up your cold tolerance. Even then, cold-water swimming can, rarely, flood the lungs with fluid in healthy, fit people.[19] Doctors call this swimming-induced pulmonary oedema, and high blood pressure is a risk factor.[19] Breathlessness that gets worse, a cough, or blood-stained spit during or after a swim mean you get out, get help and see a doctor urgently.[19] Severe breathing trouble means calling an ambulance (112 in Europe).

Wim Hof breathing and water

The Wim Hof Method's heavy breathing exercises must never be mixed with water. Fast breathing pushes carbon dioxide down, so you do not feel the urge to breathe while your oxygen keeps falling.[23] Under water, that can end in a blackout without warning, and such blackouts have caused drownings.[23] The method's own site warns that passing out can be very dangerous in or near water.[24] Do the breathing sitting on solid ground, well away from any water, and keep it strictly separate from ice baths.

How long, how cold, how often: starting a cold practice

The safest way to start is a cold finish to a warm shower, whatever TikTok shows you. You get used to the gasp and the urge to get out with your feet on the floor and the tap within reach. Only once that feels normal does a tub make sense, and a club comes much later.

Three ways in

  1. Cold shower: 30 seconds at the end of your warm shower, working up to 2 to 3 minutes over 2 to 4 weeks.
  2. Tub at home: cold water plus ice, aiming for 10 to 15°C, checked with a floating thermometer. Stay in for 2 to 5 minutes.
  3. A studio or a commercial cold plunge: a day pass lets you try it before you buy anything (prices are in the cost list below).

The table gives common starting points for each format.

Format Water temp Time per session How often (starting point)
Cold shower about 15°C 30 s, building to 2 to 3 min daily, as in the build-up below
Ice bath or cold plunge 10 to 15°C 2 to 5 min 2 to 4 times a week
Winter swim (club only) 0 to 8°C 30 s to 3 min experienced swimmers in one Danish study went 2 to 3 times a week.[5]

Only the winter-swim frequency comes from a study group[5]; the rest is common practice, not doses a trial has tested.

A 4-week build-up

  1. Week 1: cold shower, 30 seconds at the end of a regular warm shower, daily.
  2. Week 2: 60 to 90 seconds of cold at the end of the shower.
  3. Week 3: bathtub with enough ice to reach 12 to 15°C. How much you need depends on your tap-water temperature and tub size, so use a floating thermometer. Stay in for 2 minutes, 2 to 3 times this week.
  4. Week 4: 3 minutes at 12°C, 3 times during the week.

You can check your resting heart rate before and after, and note how long you shiver once you are out and dressed. If you shiver less and the cold feels easier week by week, your body is getting used to it. That does not make you safer, though, because getting used to cold can blunt shivering and other warning signals[22] So it is no reason to stay in longer. Open water comes last: wait for at least 4 weeks of showers and tub work before you even think about swimming with an organized club, and never go solo.

How long and how often

No trial has worked out how long or how often is best.[7] Two to five minutes at 10 to 15°C, two to four times a week, is a cautious, common starting point. One online survey of regular plungers hints at a frequency: about twice a week went with the best self-reported mental health and the shortest colds.[25] Plunging more often went with slightly worse results, but a survey like that shows a link, not a dose.[25]

The 11 minutes a week you may have heard from podcaster and Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman comes from a study of Danish winter swimmers.[5] It is simply the average of that small group: the weekly habit of a handful of young Danish men, not a dose tested in a controlled trial.

The best time of day is just as open. The noradrenaline rise was the same in the morning and the evening.[12] In one small trial with trained cyclists, a cold bath after evening exercise did not change measured sleep either.[13] Many people still prefer mornings, and if evening plunges keep you awake, move them earlier.

Breathing

Get in slowly and breathe slowly through your nose. The gasp and fast breathing are strongest in the first minute and can last two to three minutes or longer.[20] Keep your face out of the water until your breathing is under control, and never hold your breath under water.

Cold and training

How you combine cold with exercise depends on what the session is for.

  • Lifting weights today? The muscle studies put people in cold water within minutes of lifting.[4, 6] Waiting 4 to 6 hours is a coaches' rule of thumb, and no trial has shown that it prevents the effect. If muscle growth matters to you, plunging on rest days is the safer choice.
  • Endurance session today? Cold afterwards may ease the soreness a little,[8] and the muscle-growth trials were about lifting, so hard run or ride days are a reasonable fit. The evidence is limited, though, and comes from longer soaks than a 2 to 5 minute plunge.[8, 16]
  • In a dedicated muscle-building block? Skip cold for those 8 to 12 weeks, or keep it strictly to rest days. You cannot get the most out of every lift and ice-bath right after it, so pick one.

Outside a lifting phase, a common pairing is sauna, then cold, then rest, or cold in the morning and your workout later in the day.

Cold and your medication

If you take medication for blood pressure, heart rhythm or blood thinning, or anything that makes you drowsy, ask your doctor or pharmacist before you start. Some of these drugs change how your heart and blood pressure react to cold, and that has hardly been studied for cold plunges. Sedating drugs, like alcohol, make the acute risks of cold water worse.[11] The conditions that need a doctor's OK first, such as heart disease or high blood pressure, are listed in the section on risks.

What it costs (rough ranges, as of October 2026)

Prices vary by shop and season, so read these as rough ranges rather than quotes.

  • At home, almost free: bathtub plus supermarket ice from Rewe, Edeka or Billa, roughly €3 to €5 a session, depending on how much ice your tap water needs. For most people, that is all it takes.
  • Plain tub for balcony or garden: a large plastic tub or a BPA-free 300 L bin costs about €80 to €150, sometimes less in Lidl or Aldi seasonal deals. You can use it from autumn through spring.
  • Branded ice-bath barrels: often €1,000 or more.
  • A cold plunge with a chiller: insulated, chilled, filtered and cold all year, about €2,000 to €6,000.
  • Studio day pass: for example from about €20.

Where to swim with a group

Winter swimming belongs in a club, and German-speaking cities have plenty of them.

  • Munich: ice-bathing groups meet along the Isar and at lakes nearby (for example Alpines Eisbaden). Never swim anywhere in the Englischer Garten, where bathing is banned in all its waters, the Eisbach and Schwabinger Bach included. The Eisbach's strong current and undertow have killed people.
  • Berlin: the Berliner Seehunde at Orankesee (since 1980, part of SG Bergmann-Borsig) meet on Sundays from mid-September to the end of April, arriving from 9:30 for a 10:00 start (as of October 2026).[28] There are also groups at Müggelsee.
  • Vienna: IISA Austria, the Austrian branch of the International Ice Swimming Association, plus Sunday meetups on the Donaukanal.
  • Zurich: several winter-swim groups on Lake Zurich.

Wherever you go, bring a buddy and have a thermos of warm tea, dry clothes and a hat waiting on shore. A few minutes a few times a week, in a lake or your own tub, is a reasonable way to find out whether you like the cold. Just never go alone, and never after a drink.

Frequently asked questions

What is a cold plunge, and is it the same as an ice bath?

Yes, for most purposes. A cold plunge or ice bath means sitting in 10 to 15°C water up to your neck, usually for 2 to 5 minutes, in a tub, barrel or chilled pool. Winter swimming in a lake (0 to 8°C) is related, while a cryotherapy chamber cools you with air below minus 100°C and is a different stimulus.[17]

How cold should a cold plunge be, and how long should you stay in?

No trial has worked out an ideal temperature or time, so 2 to 5 minutes at 10 to 15°C is a cautious, common starting point rather than a tested dose.[7] First time? Start with 30 to 60 seconds, or with a cold shower. Colder or longer is not automatically better, because no time limit is safe for everyone and most cold-water deaths come from the gasp, failing arms and legs or heart rhythm problems before hypothermia sets in.[11] The Danish winter swimmers in one well-known study averaged about 11 minutes of cold a week, spread over 2 to 3 sessions.[5]

Ice bath before or after training?

After endurance training, cold may ease soreness a little, although the trials are small and the best results came from 10 to 15 minutes at 11 to 15°C rather than a short plunge.[8, 16] After strength training it is better to keep them apart: in two small trials in young men, cold water within minutes of lifting reduced muscle growth, though strength held up in one of them.[4, 6] The suggested 4 to 6 hour gap is a coaches' rule of thumb, and no trial has shown that it prevents the effect. If muscle growth matters to you, rest days are the safer choice.

Cold plunge before or after sauna?

Most people go cold after the sauna. The Danish winter swimmers in one study alternated short cold dips with hot sauna, 2 to 3 times a week, and in the cold their bodies made more heat than the control group's did.[5] Ease into the cold water after the sauna, stay 1 to 2 minutes, then warm up gradually. Heart problems or high blood pressure? Check with a doctor first.

Are the longevity effects as strong as sauna?

No, not on current evidence. Sauna has the Finnish KIHD study behind it: among 2,315 middle-aged men, 4 to 7 sessions a week went with about 40% lower death rates than one session.[10] That is a link, not proof, but cold has no comparable death-rate data. Its metabolic results are thin too: the insulin findings come from a few small trials with very different cold protocols, and they point in different directions.[2, 14]

Does cold really switch on brown fat, and how long does it take?

Yes, but the proof comes from cold air, not plunges. In one study, about 10 days of mild cold, several hours a day in a cool room, measurably switched on brown fat (it shows up on a PET scan).[9] No study has shown that short plunges or showers alone do the same, and experienced winter swimmers took up no more sugar into their brown fat in the cold than non-swimmers did.[5]

Does a cold plunge burn fat? How many calories does it burn?

While you are in cold water, your energy use jumps: during an hour at 14°C it was 350% above resting in one study, and 93% above at 20°C.[1] A plunge lasts 2 to 5 minutes, though, not an hour, and how many extra calories brown fat adds over a whole day is uncertain and varies a lot between people.[9] So a plunge has not been shown to help with weight loss.

How much dopamine does a cold plunge release?

In the study everyone quotes, blood dopamine rose about 250% and noradrenaline about 530%, but after a full hour up to the neck in 14°C water.[1] After a 5-minute ice bath at 8 to 12°C, noradrenaline roughly doubled, and dopamine was not measured.[12] Dopamine in your blood is also not the same as dopamine in your brain.

Can I do cold too often?

Some people plunge daily, but no study shows that daily is better, and no trial has worked out an ideal frequency.[7] In one online survey of regular plungers, about twice a week went with the best self-reported mental health and the shortest colds, though a survey like that cannot show cause.[25] Watch for signs of overdoing it, such as bad sleep or a heart-rate variability (HRV, a rough recovery signal) that stays low for weeks, and dial it back if you see them.

Is a cold plunge good for depression or anxiety?

No benefit is established on current evidence. A 2026 review of 13 studies found that the evidence does not show improvements in mood, depression or stress, and most studies had a high risk of bias[15]; the 2025 review found no clear effect on mood either.[7] Cold water is not a treatment for depression or anxiety, so if you have symptoms, talk to a doctor.

What time of day is best for a cold plunge?

No time of day has been shown to be best. In one study, the noradrenaline rise after a 5-minute ice bath was the same in the morning and the evening,[12] and in a small trial with trained cyclists, a cold bath after evening exercise did not change measured sleep.[13] If evening plunges keep you awake, move them earlier.

Is a cryotherapy chamber the same as an ice bath?

No. A cryotherapy chamber exposes you to air cooled to below minus 100°C for two to four minutes, while an ice bath is water at 10 to 15°C.[17] The evidence that cryo chambers ease soreness is too thin to say whether they help,[17] and the risks include cold burns, frostbite and, if the device fails, suffocation.[18] Only use one with trained staff.

Can I do a cold plunge after drinking alcohol?

No. Alcohol and sedating drugs make the main dangers of cold water worse, from the gasp to failing arms and legs to heart rhythm problems.[11] Wait until you are sober, and keep alcohol well away from any open-water swim.

Sources28

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  2. Hanssen MJW, Hoeks J, Brans B, et al. (2015). Short-term cold acclimation improves insulin sensitivity in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Nature Medicinedoi:10.1038/nm.3891
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  7. Cain T, Brinsley J, Bennett H, Nelson M, Maher C, Singh B. (2025). Effects of cold-water immersion on health and wellbeing: A systematic review and meta-analysis. PLOS ONEdoi:10.1371/journal.pone.0317615
  8. Bleakley C, McDonough S, Gardner E, Baxter GD, Hopkins JT, Davison GW. (2012). Cold-water immersion (cryotherapy) for preventing and treating muscle soreness after exercise. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviewsdoi:10.1002/14651858.CD008262.pub2
  9. van der Lans AA, Hoeks J, Brans B, et al. (2013). Cold acclimation recruits human brown fat and increases nonshivering thermogenesis. Journal of Clinical Investigationdoi:10.1172/JCI68993
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  13. Robey E, Dawson B, Halson S, et al. (2013). Effect of evening postexercise cold water immersion on subsequent sleep. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise 45(7):1394-1402doi:10.1249/MSS.0b013e318287f321
  14. Solianik R, Jarutiene L, Brazaitis M. (2025). Daily brief whole-body immersion in 14 °C water temporarily decreases glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity. Journal of Thermal Biology 129:104088doi:10.1016/j.jtherbio.2025.104088
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Created by Maurice Lichtenberg, Founder, Longevity Cities

The information provided here is for educational purposes only. Longevity Cities does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified healthcare providers with questions regarding medical conditions.