The misinformation specialist and imbecile Matt Weik of Ironmagazine continues to pull idiotic crap out of his ass, and this time it can really f**k you up, especially if you’re a competing athlete — or simply a gullible idiot who thinks that stressing the complete sh*t out of your body is a good thing.
Let’s see what this imbecile managed to put together this time and I will use my 30+ years of coaching, training, and nutrition experience at the highest level and conducting real-world studies in tandem with my knowledge and experience in biology, physiology, and biochemistry to correct him along the way (as usual.)
“On a frosty morning, thousands of wellness enthusiasts around the world step into icy waters below 50°F — not for a dare, but for their health. To me, this is crazy. But then again, I’m not a fan of cold water. Just thinking about it makes me shiver.”
To quote Matt, “Just thinking about it makes me shiver.” Yes, that’s because you instinctively know that it’s a bad and life-threatening idea. No sane human living in nature would willingly jump into a hole in a frozen lake and risk his or her life. Emerging oneself into ice-cold water is something that will cause an enormous acute fight-or-flight stress response in your body, making it fight for survival — to escape the life-threatening situation. So, those dimwits doing this should not be labeled as “wellness enthusiasts,” but rather as “brainwashed gullible idiots.”
“This practice, called cold plunging, has transformed from social media challenges into a scientifically-backed wellness routine. Now, you see everyone doing it and posting it on their platforms (because it didn’t happen if you didn’t take a pic or video).”
No, cold plunging or cold therapy is not scientifically-backed, as the idiots doing these studies have absolutely no knowledge or understanding of biology and physiology, nor do they understand the biochemistry of the hormones involved and the relationships between a stress response, the healing process, the mechanics of inflammation or enzymes such as creatine kinase.
“Research shows that brief cold water immersion may offer impressive benefits, such as faster muscle recovery, improved mood, reduced inflammation, and enhanced immunity.”
There Matt, you contradicted muscle recovery when you mentioned reduced inflammation, and you’re obviously to dumb to even realize it, just like the paid and/or ignorant researchers behind these deceitful “studies.”
Inflammation is the healing process, and in this case of athletes experiencing it after workouts, inflammation is the healing process of damaged muscle tissue, a process that generates symptoms such as stiffness, soreness, swelling, etcetera. Now, if you stress the body so it has to change its priorities to guarantee your survival, it will stop the healing of the muscle tissue and thus inflammation will of course go down, and so will all the symptoms of inflammation, as in the symptoms of recovery and healing. However, this also means that the damaged muscle cells have not been properly repaired and strengthened. You might be able to train hard again, but the damage will accumulate. In other words, a cold plunge or a cold therapy session deceives you into believing that you have recovered and can train/exercise hard again, when in reality you have not recovered at all. And that is not a good thing. That is a very bad and dangerous thing.
As for mood, that is simply from the acute stress response and the release of stress hormones such as epinephrine and norepinephrine. These hormones enhance your senses, focus, and concentration as the body needs you to escape the life-threatening situation it believes is happening.
This stress response also increases energy production and the neurologic drive to the muscles, making them ready for fighting or fleeing, adding to the illusion that you are recovering faster from the previous workout.
This should be child-level common sense, especially if you actually are in the “fitness industry” and should know one or two things about human physiology.
What are Cold Plunges?
“Getting started is pretty simple: fill your bathtub with ice and water, invest in an outdoor plunge pool, or visit your nearest cold lake or ocean. Just remember to prioritize safety, especially in natural water bodies. Clearly, if you can’t swim, stay indoors in your tub or a dedicated cold plunge tank, tub, or pool.”
Please, do not do any of those extremely retarded things.
The Backwards-Thinking and Alleged “Health Benefits” of Cold Plunges
I fixed that headline for you, Matt. And it’s not the first time I had to do so…
“1. It helps in recovery
Research shows cold plunging helps athletes bounce back faster after tough workouts. This is especially helpful for distance runners and HIIT enthusiasts who often face muscle soreness.
According to a study, people who took cold plunges recovered better than those who simply rested. They showed less muscle damage and experienced less post-workout soreness compared to others who skipped the cold water treatment.”
No, as previously explained, this idiotic practice of emerging oneself into ice cold water is a complete shock to the body and it will respond with an acute fight-or-flight stress response as it is a life-threatening situation. Thus, all resources will be “rerouted” to survival, and any healing, as in muscle recovery, will be interrupted and halted. As healing creates what we call inflammation, this will go down and so will all symptoms of inflammation/recovery, deceiving you to believe that you have recovered quicker. This is extremely bad as you still have damaged muscle cells and perhaps even weakened tendons, ligaments and other connective tissue from your previous workout. So, if you continue to use this practice every now and then, for each time more and more damage will accumulate and I guess that you know what that will lead to, yes, injuries! And what has become more and more common in sports as of late, as this idiotic practice has become more used, yes, muscle- and tendon injuries, especially severe muscle raptures, as in a complete tear of the muscle shearing away from the tendon!
As for the incredibly stupid study that Matt referred to, they measured serum creatine kinase. When muscle damage occurs, the integrity of the muscle cell membrane is compromised, leading to the release/leakage of creatine kinase into the bloodstream. While this can be used as a measurement or indicator of muscle damage, it is the result of acute damage and also the result of the healing and repair process. In other words, you have elevated levels after exercise from the acute damage, then you have some leakage taking place during the healing as tissues are broken down and rebuilt until the recovery is complete. So, if the healing is stopped, creatine kinase levels will drop much quicker as there is none being released from the healing process. So, this finding proves absolutely nothing about recovery, as simply jumping into ice cold water cannot heal the muscle in an instant. It simply indicates that the healing process has stopped and there is no more leakage of creatine kinase from healing. Again, a very bad thing.
“2. Improves mood and focus
Cold plunging is deemed to be very beneficial for your mental health. Research reveals that a quick dip in 57°F water triggers remarkable hormone changes: dopamine jumps by 250%, and noradrenaline soars by 530%, with effects lasting hours.”
Matt, you imbecile, this is from the fight-or-flight stress response, something that is extremely straining and damaging for the body, especially if often repeated. It’s a survival mechanism and it’s not meant to be triggered artificially by cold water immersion or by drugs such as caffeine.
Keep in mind that most people trigger this stress response daily by having coffee, energy drinks, or anything caffeinated, albeit to a lesser degree than a cold plunge, but the damage accumulates — especially to the cardiovascular system (which we will get to.)
If you think that tricking the body time after time into believing that your life is in danger is a good thing, you are seriously stupid. All these bodily processes that go through the roof due to an emergency response and the hormonal releases are an enormous stress on the body that really wears on you. And again, each time this happens, all healing- and detoxing processes are temporarily or even permanently shut down.
“3. Improves heart health and metabolism
A 2016 scientific review found that this chilly practice increases blood circulation, slows down heart rate, and strengthens overall heart health.”
No, it does not improve anything. This is yet another example of backwards-thinking and not seeing the forest because of the trees. Blood circulation increases as a result of the stress response. And heart rate might be a bit lower several hours later after the stressful situation has passed, as the body needs to rest and return to homeostasis. Also, the initial fight-flight response stopped all ongoing detoxification and healing processes, so there is less work for the body to do once it starts to recover from the stress response, which could lower the heart rate even further. This might seem like a good thing, but it’s not, as a lot of damage has not been healed and the cardiovascular system was extremely taxed during the stress response.
So the obvious truth in the real world is that inducing acute fight or flight stress responses with the release of epinephrine and norepinephrine is not good for heart health, just the complete opposite!
“4. Reduces inflammation and pain
Cold plunging fights inflammation through a simple but clever process. When you hit the cold water, your blood vessels tighten up, limiting blood flow to inflamed areas. After you step out, fresh blood rushes back to these spots, helping reduce swelling and discomfort.”
We have already covered this. Reducing or eliminating inflammation is an incredibly bad and stupid idea, as it is the healing process, as in you recovering from the damaging exercise.
“5. Reduces core body temperature
Jumping into cold water provides rapid relief for an overheated body after exercise. However, this cooling effect requires careful management, as staying too long in icy water can drop the core temperature to unsafe levels.”
Reducing the body temperature in an overheated body is an even greater shock to the body. This could really damage the heart or even induce a heart attack in someone with a weakened heart or compromised health.
If overheated, you could use something cold to help lower the body temperature, but nothing that is freezing cold, and absolutely not expose the whole body, as that will induce a shock response. Simply exposing your wrists and perhaps feet to cold water will help lower the body temperature and in a much more safe way.
This is, again, common sense.
“6. Improves insulin sensitivity
Cold water immersion offers more than just a refreshing shock — it might help your body process sugar better. A 2022 scientific review found strong evidence that choosing to brave cold water regularly improves how well your body responds to insulin.”
Again no. This is a temporary thing as the acute stress response mobilizes energy, increasing glucose metabolism and storage. Claiming this as a benefit considering how incredibly stressful and damaging this is to the body is as stupid as it can get.
When Should You Plunge?
No need to even quote the imbecile on this one. The answer is obvious. You should never do this!
And also, trying to adapt the body to this trauma-inducing cold plunging is not a good idea, as some imbeciles claim on the interwebs and in YouTube videos.
While the body can adapt to the stress over time, lowering the impact of the stress response, the damage inflicted each time to even get there will strip years of your life, and also, stopping your body’s detoxification and healing processes each time is incredibly dangerous and damaging.
This is also true for any perceived benefit, such as reducing itchy skin which is from detoxing, so fix your diet and lower your toxic exposure instead — do not use a harmful and idiotic practice as a bandaid while damage and toxicity continues to accumulate.
Only a complete fool would do these cold practices repeatedly, especially since there is absolutely nothing to gain from it, just accumulated damage and accelerated aging.
Again, all this should be common sense, but apparently it’s not. And we can see this in illogical culture traditions such as ice baths and “avantouinti,” as in the Finnish tradition of jumping into cold water or rolling in the snow after a session in the sauna — extremely stupid, dangerous, and harmful, yet practiced because people does not understand simple physiology or stress responses and how much it damages the body — they simply get addicted to the euphoric feeling of a near death experience. idiotic.
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