The beach is open in winter!

Of course, it’s not very crowded at this time of year, except some fisherman’s dressed from head to toe. Anyway, I went into the water for a nice swimming. Why? I had a cold therapy.

The relationship between man and cold is one of the most misunderstood things in the public mind, everyone is afraid of it, but it has huge potential if we get to know it better and get to grips with it. It is a ‘factory-installed’ ability of everyone to withstand cold temperatures, we just bury this skill very deep down, and most people don’t even believe it.

Gradually, given the right stimuli, anyone can bring it out of their system. Used properly, it has many health benefits, it can be an extra weapon for athletes, and more daringly, it has global economic significance in helping people adapt to the cold. I will be writing about the theory and practice of ‘cold therapy’ in the coming weeks, I have plenty to say on the subject.

Until then, here’s a brief history of my swim today:

14:00: arrival at the location, the Blue Fishing Lake between Dunaharaszti and Alsónémedi, Hungary

Air: 14°C, water: 10-11°C: my first thought is not this: ‘Oh, it would be nice to swim…’ but I go in gradually.

The first few minutes are not very pleasant, even if I can call myself relatively advanced in this genre. It takes a while for the brain to react to the change of environment and regulate hormones and proteins to start heating up the brown adipose tissue and muscles (the UCP proteins in the mitochondria of the cells help).

I put on the fins from my finswimming world champion friend Dénes Kanyó and started swimming. From about the fifth to the twenty-third minute was for me today the stage worth cold therapy, in this state I feel a real euphoria, the brain clears, the pains disappear. The inflammation level drops drastically, fat metabolism increases, the body goes into a kind of “winter mode”.

Regular practice is good because the more you get used to the cold, the more time you can spend in this state. When you start to feel uncomfortable, you should slowly stop “cold” exercising, because this is a sign that your core temperature has cooled down a lot. The point of the session is to cool the skin temperature to below 10-12 degrees (you don’t really need to go lower than that), but the core temperature should not go below about 35 degrees (hypothermia) and you should not get any frostbite. So you have to find that middle ground, it’s individual for everyone.

After I come out, I’m fine for a few minutes, then the shaking starts, speech is a bit sluggish, but these are normal processes, that’s when the body heats up again. The good news for dieters is that calories are burning like crazy this time! Several researchers see cold therapy as a solution to the population-wide obesity epidemic.

The shivering is very intense for about 20-25 minutes, after which it gradually stops, lasting up to an hour and a half or two hours in total.

If you are in the mood for a little “cold therapy”, the key is to be CONSISTENT and take the right dose for your individual condition!

I’ll be back soon with a bit of history and theory of cold physiology.

Have you heard about the benefits of cold?

Original Hungarian blog (11/11/2014): Télen is nyitva a strand