How cold exposure helps you improve resilience, energy, focus and mood

If you want to improve your resilience, one of the best ways is to increase your "stress threshold."

Although it might sound — and indeed feel — horrible at first, deliberate cold exposure is an excellent way to pull this off.

Like cyclic hyperventilation, this method was popularized by Dutch extreme athlete Wim Hof, who is also known as "The Iceman."

By self-inducing and forcing yourself to embrace the stress of cold, you quickly learn to remain calmer when real-life stressors hit. On top of the improvement in resilience, cold exposure has additional benefits.

First, the significant release of adrenaline and noradrenaline in your system (i.e, the stress response) prompts an ongoing increase in your level of energy and focus after the exposure.

Second, it increases the release of dopamine by a whopping 250%, leading to a sustained elevation of your mood (as well as an increase in energy and focus). That's, by the way, the same elevation in dopamine that humans get from using cocaine.

Crazy, isn't it?

If I got you curious, here's how you can leverage cold exposure by taking a cold shower:

1. Safety first
To avoid cold shock, start warm and turn the water to cold at the end of your shower. When I started building a habit around cold exposure, I did exactly that for just 30 seconds. The colder the water, the shorter the duration of cold exposure necessary.

2. Temperature
According to Prof. Andrew Huberman, the key is to aim for a temperature that evokes the following thought: "This is really cold, and I want to get out, but I can safely stay in."

3. Timing
Go for 1-5 minutes per session, and limit it to 2-4 sessions per week – for a total of up to 11 minutes. Also, get into the cold early instead of late in the day to make the rebound increase in thermogenesis (i.e., the effect of waking you up) work for instead of against you.

Pro tip: If you want to delve deeper into the topic, check out this excellent overview of the science and use of cold exposure for health and performance.

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Until next week,
Christian