Cold showers are usually thought to be bad, something that you only give to your worst enemies. In fact, some people love to get in a hot shower at the end of the day or the start of the morning, but you could be missing out on a few HUGE benefits from taking a cold shower — yes a cold shower.
1. Cold Showers Burn Fat
There are two kinds of fat in your body: white fat and brown fat. White fat is bad and brown fat is good . White fat is the body fat we all know and struggle to get rid of. When we consume more calories than our body needs to function and we don’t burn those calories for energy, they are stored as white fat, which tends to accumulate at your waist, lower back, neck, and thighs. Brown fat is the good guy you might have never even heard of, and its function is to generate heat to keep your body warm.
Here’s the good news: when brown fat is activated due to extreme cold, it burns calories to keep you warm, which could provide a helpful assist in your weight loss plan. How much of an assist? Scandinavian researchers found that exposure to cold temperatures increased the metabolic rate of brown fat by fifteen fold, which could help a person drop nine pounds in a year if sustained.
2. Cold Showers Boost Recovery After Exercise
After you exercise, many of us want to hop right into a hot, steamy shower to wash off our sweat, right? Well, athletes often take ice baths after vigorous training do reduce soreness after their workout. You can obtain a similar benefit with a quick cold shower after your training sessions.
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3. Cold Showers Increases Alertness And Mood
Who doesn’t feel a bit groggy when they take that first step out of bed? This is something everyone struggles with, but if you’d like to put some pep in your step first thing in the a.m., take a cold shower before you go to work. When cold water pours over your body, your breathing deepens in response to the shock of the cold (this is…
Still Taking Hot Showers? Wrong. 5 Reasons Why Cold Showers Are Better was originally published on blackdoctor.org
