User:Schwab444/Ice Bath

Mental and Emotional:

People tend to only consider what ice baths can physically do for you, but there are more than just possible physical benefits to an ice bath. Sitting in the cold water of an ice bath releases endorphins. When your body releases endorphins, it puts you in a better mood and you may feel less stressed. Ice baths are also an environment where you have to focus on the present. It's hard for your mind to water when all your thinking about is how cold you are. Being in the present allows you to practice mindfulness. Taking deep breaths and asking yourself how you feel can lead to a better emotional state since you are not worrying about the past, future, or any work you have to get done.

Resnick, A. (2024). Ice Bath Benefits for Mental Health (verywellmind.com) Very Well Mind.

Spiritual:

Another benefit to ice baths is making people feel a greater sense of self and clarity. Going back to mindfulness, ice baths are a great environment to practice it and reap all the benefits of it. Once again this is because of how present you need to be, what the sense of being present can help you accomplish. You are able to confront your fears and overcome them. This evokes different feelings in different people, but you may feel calm and inspired.

4 Spiritual Benefits of Ice baths: Mind, Body, and Soul - The Cold Pod The Cold Pod.

The information above is a new section I want to create explaining the other benefits to an ice bath besides just physical.

A study done by Dr. Jonathan Peake proves that ice baths may not be as effective to physical recovery as some people think. The study has 9 men around the age of 20 do resistance training multiple times throughout the week for two separate week long trials. For the first trial they took ice baths after working out and for the second trial they did low intensity cardio. Muscle biopsies were taken at throughout the day during both trials and found no evidence in favor of ice baths speeding up recovery.

'''NewsRx. (2016). New research calls into question merits of ice baths for athlete recovery - Document - Gale Health and Wellness (rowan.edu) Gale Health and Wellness.'''

As for the mental, emotional, and spiritual benefits, we cannot conduct studies the way we can with muscle biopsies. These benefits are things people claim to have felt and there is no way to prove these claims to be true or false.

The paragraph above is something I am going to include in the "effectiveness" section of the article.