The Perfect Cold Plunge Temperature and Time Allowance to Use

Before we dive into the ins and outs of cold plunging, we would like to tell you right off the bat that there are different temperatures and time frames for the perfect cold plunge, it all depends on your personal experience and tolerance.  The temperature range should be from 39 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, and the time frame you should stay in the water ranges from 1 minute to 10 minutes depending on how cold the water is and your personal threshold for cold. We will get into the specifics more, but first we would like to cover everything there is to know about cold plunging.

Cold Plunging has been a thing for a very long time, but over the last few years, social media has made it quite popular. Not only are people buying their own personal cold plunges, but they are paying for other types of cold treatments such as cryofreezing.

 

Varying Temperatures Depending on Your Experience Level

When you’re just a beginner and doing your first cold plunges, you should be testing yourself in water in the range of 55-60 degrees Fahrenheit. While this is still cold enough to receive the various health benefits of cold plunging, it is not deathly freezing to the point you will cry and want to leave the water immediately.

After you have a few sessions under your belt, you can enter the intermediate waters and start to lower the temperature to the 50-to-55-degree range. 5 degrees might not seem like a lot, but when your body is fully submerged in water, you can just about feel every degree.

When you have built up a strong tolerance to cold water, you can start testing cold plunge temperatures in the range of 39 to 50 degrees. Water this cold truly maximizes the effects and will surely test your discipline and willpower levels.

With all that being said, we will tell you this: the optimal temperature range for cold plunging is 50 to 59 degrees, it truly is considered the sweet spot.

 

Health Benefits of Cold Plunging

The benefits of doing cold plunges can be broken down into the following: Mental, Physical, Metabolic & Hormonal, and Long-Term benefits.

Mental

The mental benefits of cold plunging are probably the biggest, since mental health can translate into physical well-being also. Sometimes, even if there are no true benefits of something, the placebo effect in our minds can have positive effects and create real changes.

• Mood Boost – Exposure to cold triggers the release of endorphins, dopamine, and norepinephrine, which results in you being in a better mood with dissipated feelings of depression and down thoughts.
• Stress Resilience – Doing cold plunges on a regular basis train your mind and your body to deal with tough and stressful conditions. Staying calm in extreme situations is a very important tool. A lot of this has to do with your breathing and not allowing the cold to seize you up.
• Improved Focus & Clarity – The sympathetic nervous system becomes activated when your body becomes submerged in these types of low cold plunge temperatures. This can help your brain purge itself of stressful and intrusive thoughts, kind of like a mental reset.

 

Physical Benefits

Scientific studies exist that prove cold plunging has real physical benefits. To name a few, there is the Cochrane Systematic Review, the Systematic Review & Meta‑Analysis: CWI vs. Passive Recovery, and Randomized Crossover Trial. Studies like this show us that the physical benefits of cold plunging are not just social media hype, but it has a real footing in science.

• Reduced Inflammation – Just like when you put an ice pack on an injury, cold plunges help narrow blood vessels to reduce swelling and inflammation.
• Faster Muscle Recovery – Extreme cold temperatures can help reduce delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), helping repair and regenerate the damaged tissue.
• Improved Circulation – When your blood vessels constrict and dilate, it helps improve vascular tone and increases the efficiency of your blood circulation.
• Immune Support – There are studies that show cold temperatures can increase your white blood cell count and enhance immune function with regular exposure to extreme cold temperatures.

 

Metabolic & Hormonal Benefits

You hear about boosting your metabolism constantly in the world of health and fitness, and that is exactly what cold plunges can do. Certain hormone balancing can be improved as well.

• Increase in Brown Fat Activation – Brown Fat is officially called brown adipose tissue (BAT) and helps burn energy to generate heat. Cold plunging helps activate this kind of fat.
• Boosts Your Metabolism – Your resting metabolic rate can increase slightly over time when you do cold plunges regularly.
• Hormone Regulation – Hormones like cortisol, testosterone, and adrenaline can be optimized over time when you expose yourself to cold temperatures like you do while cold plunging.

 

Long Term Benefits

Not only does cold plunging help with things like short-term mood boosts and mental health, but it can have certain long-term benefits as well.

• Better Sleep Quality – This probably has to do with the decreased level of stress, increased happiness, reduced inflammation, and other benefits that cold plunges can promote. When you are happier and more relaxed, falling asleep and staying asleep is easier.
• Improved Cardiovascular Health – Your heart becomes stronger when things like metabolism are improved, along with better hormone regulation. Withstanding the cold also forces you to do breathe-work, helping promote overall lung strength and health.
• Stronger Discipline & Willpower – Forcing yourself to stay submerged in those very low cold plunge temperatures help make you more disciplined and able to withstand tough situations. When it comes down to it, your ability to overcome certain situations just depends on your willpower.
• Improved HRV (heart rate variability) and Lower Resting Heart Rate – HRV measures the variation in time between heart beats. HRV is a telltale meter of your body deals with stress and various physiological changes. Exposing your body to your optimal cold plunge temperature can help improve your HRV and lower your resting heart rate.

 

Safety Tips

Even if you are very disciplined, brave, and can withstand the ice-cold waters for a long time, try not to exceed 1 to 3 minutes when you are first starting out. Take a few dips to see how you are affected by it and make sure there are no issues that arise. The risk of hypothermia starts to increase after that 10-minute mark, and even more after 13 to 15 minutes.

Try not to cold plunge alone. If something were to happen to you while you were in the water, nobody would be around to help, and you could possibly drown. Of course, after you have some experience under your belt and you feel comfortable and confident, you can try doing it on your own, but we don’t recommend it.

If you are older than 60, you may want to consult with your doctor before you try cold plunging. Chances are you will get the green light, but the saying “better safe than sorry” exist for a reason. You should also consult with a doctor about if you have pre-existing health conditions. And if you are pregnant, don’t do it! Cold plunging while pregnant can be dangerous for the mother and the baby.

 

Something to Try After You Find the Best Temperature for Cold Plunge Sessions

Once you get a good feel about your ideal cold plunge temperature and time spent in it, you can start looking into other activities and things to do to compliment the health benefits of cold plunging. One of the things we recommend most is looking into the Wim Hof Method.

The Wim Hof Method is a form of breath control and series of breath exercises that was created by Wim Hof. It also integrates extreme cold temperatures, because the combination of breathing (in a certain way) and extreme cold can have a lot of positive benefits for both your mental and physical health. Since breathing correctly plays such a large role in being able to withstand freezing cold plunge temperatures, the Wim Hof Method is the perfect thing to try.

Another thing to investigate is the Huberman Lab and Huberman Lab Podcast. Dr. Andrew Huberman is a professor and neuroscientist at Stanford, and he has conducted multiple research projects about the body and mind’s ability to adapt to cold temperatures and how they are affected. His work revolves around this type of thing, including other things that have to do with brain function, health optimization, vision, stress, etc. Check out his podcast!