Beyond the chill
Rowan Clarke takes a deep dive into the little-known facts about wild winter swimming
By now, you probably have a pretty good idea why winter swimming makes you feel incredible. The immersion in nature, the effects of cold water on your nervous system, the camaraderie – all contribute to feelings of wellbeing, good health and courage.
Over the past few years, our knowledge has increased in direct correlation with the popularity of cold water swimming. Thanks to better research, innovation and coverage, more of us than ever can access cold water swimming more safely.
But are we getting to information saturation point? It feels like everywhere you look, someone is wanging on about the benefits of ice baths and cold plunges. Facts are getting buried under hyperbole, misinformation is rife, and suddenly, everybody’s an expert.
So, we decided to ask some actual experts to help us look beyond the zeitgeist and uncover the extraordinary depths of wild winter swimming.
Dive back in time
Considering our modern-day disconnect with nature, it’s little wonder that wild winter swimming is trending. This, according to Google, is down to its perceived health and wellbeing benefits, its community and adventure, and its celebrity advocates.
But, go back way before we coined terms like ‘biohacking’, cold water shock and afterdrop, and you’ll find that cold water therapy trended across most early civilisations, too. The earliest mention of cold water immersion for health was in one of the oldest medical texts ever discovered, an ancient Egyptian document from around 3500BC called the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus.
As you might imagine, ancient cold water immersion therapies were steeped in ritual, treating not just physical complaints, but banishing spiritual, religious and moral ills, such as negative energy, impurities and sins.
“There are quite a few examples of saints who would stand in cold water as part of their daily ritual,” says author Amy Jeffs, who tells the story of the virtuous Saint Assaf. “Every day, even though it’s icy cold, Saint Mungo goes and stands in the river to cool his hot loins, but one day it goes too far and he gets too cold. He comes back in from having had his dunk in the river and says he needs fire to warm himself back up again. And so, the young Assaf runs off to the kitchens to get some hot coals to build up Mungo’s fire, and the people laugh at him and say, Well, how are you going to carry them? He just holds out his tunic and says, Put them in here. And the miracle is that he’s able to carry the hot coals to Mungo in his tunic, which shows just how cool his loins are.”
In cultures around the world, spirituality, ritual, and religion are still key to cold water immersion. For example, in Russia, Orthodox Christians mark Epiphany by immersing themselves in icy water to celebrate the baptism of Jesus Christ. Often queuing for hours to dunk in an ice hole blessed by a priest, worshippers of all ages take part in this ancient ritual.
“According to the Bible, any water on this day is considered to be healing. Many people are jumping despite the icy water in the freezing cold,” says Alyona Lezhava in her Instagram post. “I remember on this day about seven years ago I jumped in the ice water when it was minus 29 degree Celsius outside. It was cold, but I did it and never looked back.”
Children can handle the cold
Despite the freezing temperatures, children also take part in traditions like Epiphany bathing. In Siberia, the youngest members of the Cryophile winter swimmers club plunge into the Yenisei River with the adults.
“I feel cold at first but I overcome it,” nine-year-old Cryophile Nastya Usachyova told Reuters news agency. “Many of my friends and their parents say it’s impossible to bathe in the winter in the Yenisei River. They don’t approve.”
There seem to be two main reasons for this disapproval. The first is a very legitimate concern that children might be coerced or even forced into cold water. In 2011, for example, a viral Epiphany bathing video appeared to show three adults lowering a young boy, kicking and screaming, into an ice hole.
The second reason is based on the idea that children cool faster than adults. In 1973, an American study suggested that this might be the case. However, two recent studies by the University of Portsmouth’s Extreme Environments Laboratory tested cold water shock, cooling rates, and perceptions of warmth and comfort in a small group of swimmers aged 10 to 11 years old.
“When we compared them with adults, they showed a smaller cold shock response and similar cooling rates,” says Professor Mike Tipton from the Extreme Environments Laboratory. “But the big thing in the two studies was that children were less distracted by the cold.”
It seems that so long as children are willing, they’re perfectly capable of swimming in cold water. And, with a lack of subjective awareness of how cold they are, they may even be better at getting into cold water – although their supervising adult will probably have to tell them when it’s time to get out.
‘Brown’ fat doesn’t keep you warm
Regardless of age, body mass affects our ability to cope with the cold. According to Mike Tipton, the ideal cold water swimmer is fit, fat and a capable swimmer.
When it comes to fat, we have two types. But it’s ‘brown fat’, or brown adipose tissue that you may have heard is healthiest and most beneficial for cold water swimmers.
The received knowledge in the cold water community is that more brown fat better equips us to cope with cold water, and that cold water swimming can help us ‘activate’ or ‘grow’ brown fat.
“The healthy brown fat is actually the temperature regulator that we have in our body. And if we don’t get exposed to different temperatures changing on our skin, then we are not using this organ in our body,” says Dr Susanna Søburg on Dr Rangan Chatterjee’s podcast Feel Better, Move More.
Dr Søburg is an advocate of cold water plunging and contrast therapy to activate brown fat, which her research has shown to help protect against lifestyle illnesses and obesity. But can it help us cope better with the cold?
“You’re talking about browning of adipose tissue, and there’s some evidence for that occurring,” says Mike. “The only thing I would say in terms of heat production is that any browning that occurs or the amount of brown fat you have is much more relevant to your metabolic health than it is to your thermal protection.”
So, while there may be some evidence that going in cold water activates brown fat, any increase in body heat, especially in cold water, is negligible.
“If you’ve got a bit more brown fat active, you’re burning a few more calories a day, then it might well contribute to your metabolic rate and weight balance energy,” he says. “But it’s not going to keep you warm in cold water.”
Sit, don’t swim
Our fascination with plunging into cold water is intriguing, especially since we are not well-adapted to extreme temperatures physically. In his popular blog Lone Swimmer, marathon and cold water swimmer Donal Buckley describes humans as, “stupid swimming apes, voluntarily shedding our learned advantages and protections and stepping into a lethal environment where we no longer have a natural protection.”
Unlike cold water mammals like seals, which have a complete covering of insulating blubber, we have a low fat-to-muscle ratio. On top of that, most of us want to swim in cold water, which only makes us lose heat more quickly.
Whether we’re responding to the fight or flight response elicited by getting into cold water, rationalising that vigorous movement will warm us up, or swimming for exercise, the increased blood flow to our muscles when we move causes rapid cooling. However, if we stay still, our unperfused muscles can actually help insulate us from the cold, offering variable insulation.
“Body fat is never going to be well perfused, so whether you’re staying still or exercising, it’s going to give you a fixed amount of insulation,” says Mike. “On the other hand, as soon as you start exercising, blood is sent to your muscles to support the exercise, and you destroy the insulation provided by muscle.”
Even shivering in calm water can increase our cooling rate, which is one of the reasons it’s so important to get out before you start to shiver.
Use your big brain
If you need more evidence that we’re poorly adapted for cold water immersion, take a look at our ears. Seals can close their ears when they dive, but we can’t. And cold water in our ears causes all sorts of problems like Surfer’s Ear and vertigo.
Repeated exposure to cold water and wind can cause Surfer’s Ear, bony growths called exostoses that form in the ear and can lead to hearing loss. Cold water in the inner ear can also confuse our vestibular system, where asymmetrical cooling of the ear canal causes involuntary eye movements called nystagmus and dizziness or vertigo.
“Lots of swimmers come to me complaining that they spin out in cold water, but they aren’t keen on wearing earplugs,” says Open Water Coach, Rikka Ryti. “I found some research that showed that without earplugs, 11 out of 15 swimmers felt dizzy, and ten of the 15 had nystagmus. During the second swim with earplugs, only one person felt dizzy.”
Like all the studies we’ve mentioned, this study shows the advantage that humans have over other animals, even seals – our big brains. Not only can we learn exactly why getting cold water in our ears makes us dizzy, but we also have the capacity to invent and manufacture well-fitting earplugs to prevent it.
It’s this ever-growing knowledge and innovation that puts wild winter swimming within the reach of pretty much anyone. It may add to the noise and chatter of a world saturated with information and opinion, making it harder to pick out the genuine facts.
But one thing will never change, and that’s the magic, ritual and pure joy of plunging ourselves into cold water. We’ve been doing it since the dawn of humankind, and so, long after the current trend has ended, we will continue to wild winter swim.
How to recognise cold water fact from fiction
• Check the source: Whether you’re learning from a real person or AI, ask where their facts come from.
• Find research: Look at research papers, books and organisations that are based on scientific studies.
• Ask an expert: Find coaches online or in person who are qualified and experienced in cold water immersion.
