The Truth Behind Cryotherapy
True stories and the latest science from an experienced technician.
Cryotherapy and Cold Exposure are two terms I will use in this article — its important I define them prior to getting into my experiences working as a technician.
I’ll use the term Cryotherapy when I refer to stepping into a chamber or room designed to chill the air using Oxygen or Liquid Nitrogen. This is my area of expertise.
I’ll use the term Cold Exposure to describe all other viable methods of chilling the body to achieve the same benefits as the Cryotherapy. These could include cold plunges, ice baths, cold showers, meditating in the snow, etc.
It seems improper to discuss this new, unorthodox form of taking care of the body and mind without mentioning the “Ice Man”, Wim Hof. You may know him as the man who climbed Everest in shorts or the genuine funnyman on Joe Rogan podcasts but to me he is a straight up guru. He focuses on forms of cold exposure to introduce the body to the cold and to harness it’s benefits as well as breathing techniques that put the body into an alkaline state. The man is an alchemist yet he stresses that anyone and everyone can do the things he does — he’s proved it too.
Side note — cold exposure and breath-work are supplemental to each other and should not be done at the same time.
Anyway, he is illuminating the fact that cold exposure and cryotherapy are holistic healing tools and doing the research to support it. I could get into all the feats he has accomplished but that’s an article for another time.
When asked if cryotherapy is equally as beneficial as cold exposure practices, he essentially said as long as you endure the cold, the benefits are all the same. I started with cold showers, river plunges, and cold meditation until I started working as a cryotherapy tech where I met all sorts of people using this technology for wildly different reasons.
Inflammation Annihilation
Inflammation is the root cause of all autoimmune disease, from Parkinson’s to Lupus. There are many methods to combat inflammation but nothing is as immediately effective as Cryotherapy and Cold Exposure.
When I first started, I had to learn that there are two types of Cryotherapy machines/rooms. One is oxygen-based while the one I work with is nitrogen-based. The only difference is you can’t breath in the nitrogen (obviously) and so your head sticks out of the chamber. It is much more accessible to people that get claustrophobic.
Our clients are typically extremely weary of the cold (like all people at first) but either follow Wim Hof or have heard its beneficial for pain and discomfort. The first couple of people I met had all come in for sports recovery (often times they are college athletes at CU Boulder), allowing them to get back into an intense workout the next day with little to no soreness.
As an avid lifter, I do a 3 minute Cryotherapy session before and after my workouts for increased energy and phenomenal recovery times respectively.
The next set of clients I happened to meet were all 50+ years old. Normally you’d wear gloves to keep your hands from getting too cold but these ladies insisted they keep them off during the session. This is because the cold helps their arthritis from flaring up for weeks at a time (on top of giving them a boost of energy). WEEKS.
To say the least I was beginning to see I was helping a lot of people with my work and I fell in love with talking to them and figuring out how the cold helped them in their day to day lives.
These ladies had also claimed that cryotherapy every other day had helped ease the discomfort of their menopause like nothing else could. Though I know very little about this, the ladies in my life assured me that this was no small feat.
Depression Repression
In my time, I had also met many individuals, college students and middle aged people alike, who were battling depression. This is an area I’m familiar with and passionate about. Refusing to pay loads for medication that may or may not help, they looked to natural remedies and eventually discovered Wim Hof’s story. His story led them to me, where I was able to hear about their lives as they froze and shivered a bit in the chamber.
Most people don’t realize that depression is caused by inflammation in the brain, which can be influenced via cold exposure/cryotherapy. I wasn’t sure how much I believed this statement but being exposed to people who swore by cold exposure had changed my mind — many of them are now good friends who rarely need cryotherapy anymore.
On top of inflammation and sports recovery, I’ve met many people who’ve had reconstructive surgeries, tweaked their backs, or just wanted to have a good nights rest (which is one of the first things you’ll notice besides the surge of energy after the session).
You may have noticed, this article feels pretty biased. This is because I have truly never heard about anything negative from our customers — partly because we make sure they consult their physicians before purchasing a membership. Although, I f you have some of the following ailments, cryotherapy will not be beneficial for you and may even hurt you:
- Uncontrollable high blood pressure
- Prior heart attack(s)
- Open sores
- History of blood clots
- Nerve pain in legs or feet
- Disease of blood vessels
These are the main conditions yet if you are relatively healthy and up to being super cold for a little bit, I’d say try it out. In this sphere of health and wellness, we take our job very seriously and keep your safety our number one priority.
Fun Fact: The process burns around 300–500 calories and is great for the skin. I was told each session burns around 800 calories depending on how much one shivers but I don’t see that as being realistic at all. With the research being conducted as you read this, we’ll soon find out.
For more, accurate science behind cold exposure, please check out my man Wim Hof. His work/research is easily accessible and may change your life as it did with so many others.
Cryotherapy is truly a holistic feel-good tool and I urge you to try it out. You may come to discover you prefer the cold more than warmer conditions.
