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Sam Cam’s sister stricken with M.E. for a year | Daily Mail | 27 June 2015

SOC

Senior Member
Messages
7,849
In Sweden there are people that all the year around take a quick bath in the sea or in lakes. They even go down in the water through a hole in the ice to get a bath. They have been studied as they get less colds, and are healthier, than others. Several theories were presented before, but it was shown that they had much higher levels of white blood cells than others. Maybe that´s why it cured some from ME.
Regular ice-water bathing may alter a person's physiology. I'd want to see plenty of solid research before I'd accept it as truth, though. Even if it does, I doubt a single dip in an icy sea would have the same long-term effect -- even a number of dips over a week is unlikely to have the same effect on physiology as regular ice water bathing.

Her story just doesn't hold water in any scientific way.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
I doubt a single dip in an icy sea would have the same long-term effect

It's not clear from the article whether Emily Sheffield took just one, or a series of dips, into the cold sea; I would guess it must have been a series of dips, because I also doubt a single dip into cold water would have long term effects.



I wonder: might the immune boosting benefits of cold water therapy appear if you only immerse a part of you body (such as your legs) in cold water? Immersing only your legs would be a lot easier.

Or do you need to immerse your entire body in cold water for the systemic benefits to manifest?

There are temperature receptors (thermoreceptors) throughout the skin of the human body, so if the benefits of cold therapy are mediated by these skin thermoreceptors, then possibility even partial immersion in cold water may work.

But if the benefits of cold therapy only appear when the blood temperature drops, then you would probably need to immerse your whole body in water, in order to lower blood temperature.


This tutorial article on the control of body temperature is interesting: it says that:
The hypothalamus is the processing centre in the brain that controls body temperature.
Temperature receptors in the skin detect changes in the external temperature. They pass this information to the processing centre in the brain, called the hypothalamus. The processing centre also has temperature receptors to detect changes in the temperature of the blood.
 

Sasha

Fine, thank you
Messages
17,863
Location
UK
Prof Kakkar made a big thing about reducing your core temperature, not just your skin temperature.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
Prof Kakkar made a big thing about reducing your core temperature, not just your skin temperature.

I remember reading a few years ago about a quick blast of cold being beneficial for health, ie, where you turn your shower to cold water for 2 minutes only. I imagine a brief blast of cold is not going to change your core temperature very much, but will obviously significantly stimulate your skin's cold temperature receptors.



Even when healthy, I always found the emersion into cold water an unpleasant feeling. I always hated jumping into swimming pools, because of the cold sensation (although of course once I started swimming and acclimatized to the cold, it was fine). Yet I knew other people who would find cold water stimulating and bracing; but for me personally, it was always an unpleasant transition, until I acclimatized.

So I was just trying to think of ways to get the possible benefits of cold water therapy, without the unpleasant cold water shock.
 

Bob

Senior Member
Messages
16,455
Location
England (south coast)
This is not going to be a cure for ME, but i suppose it may well have some minor general beneficial health effects, or perhaps at least an endorphin rush. But if anyone is thinking of trying this, please start off gently, and do it cautiously. Please don't go throwing yourselves into ice cold baths. It will very possibly cause a relapse especially if you're already having a bad time. When I tried it a few years ago, with sea salts in a bath, I started off by getting in a room-temperature bath and then slowly ran the cold tap until the bath became quite cool. This does away with the shock factor. But you should not make it too cool on the first few days. See how you get on with a room temperature bath first, and then make it gradually cooler over a period of days. Even expert and healthy cold sea swimmers understand that you have to gradually acclimate yourself to cold temperatures. BTW, it didn't help my ME.
 

SDSue

Southeast
Messages
1,066
With great excitement and fanfare, I humbly submit my application for a new word to be entered into the official English language dictionary:

Hip-opedia
hip-o-pe-di-a
noun

a living book, in many volumes, containing articles on all human knowledge under the subcategory of ME/CFS; a medical encyclopedia. :nerd: ;)

Please return to your previously scheduled conversation.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
or perhaps at least an endorphin rush.

The endorphin rush from cold exposure might well be instrumental in generating the health benefits of cold water therapy: endorphins increase natural killer cell function (refs: 1, 2), and since NK activity is thought to be low in ME/CFS, this might make cold water therapy particularly useful for our disease.

I imagine the endorphin release comes from the skin's local contact with the cold, rather than endorphin release coming from the reduction of overall core body and blood temperature (the skin generally is a good endorphin generator, releasing endorphins in response to caressing, pain, or to UV rays from the Sun).

So quite possibly you would not need to immerse your whole body in water in order to get this cold-induced endorphin release from the skin: you might just be able to immerse say you legs or arms in cold water (say in a shower), and still get a useful endorphin release.

Local cold therapy of part of the body only should be much easier to bear, because you are not going to get cold overall, and your are not going start shivering (I imagine shivering could induce PEM due to the muscular activity).



Interestingly, it seems that women are much more predisposed to releasing endorphins from cold therapy that men:
Sex-related responses of beta-endorphin, ACTH, GH and PRL to cold exposure in humans

A slight, but not significant increase in beta-endorphin, ACTH, cortisol and GH levels was observed after cooling in the men, whereas the women showed significant increments of these hormones. When

So this suggests that cold thereby, if it did offer benefits for ME/CFS, might work much better for women than men.
 
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Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
a living book, in many volumes, containing articles on all human knowledge under the subcategory of ME/CFS; a medical encyclopedia.

I wish that were true, but in actual fact my memory and general knowledge have become appallingly bad as a result of ME/CFS, and in fact everything I write comes either from Google, or from notes on a subject that I have written on my computer. My computer and Google skills have become a prosthetic for my totally useless memory!
 

Bob

Senior Member
Messages
16,455
Location
England (south coast)
I wish that were true, but in actual fact my memory and general knowledge have become appallingly bad as a result of ME/CFS, and in fact everything I write comes either from Google, or from notes on a subject that I have written on my computer. My computer and Google skills have become a prosthetic for my totally useless memory!
Tell me about it! I've got notes coming out of my ears! And to-do notes have become a specialty of mine. Or should that be "these-are-the-things-i-would-be doing-if-well-enough notes"?
 
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Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
@Bob
What I tend to do is set up a new folder on my Mac for every topic in ME/CFS, and then over the years, fill that folder with my notes, interesting text clippings, or weblinks from any articles or studies I read on the subject. That way, when someone mentions for example "endorphins", I just go directly to my endorphins folder, which then quickly fills me in all the relevant points about endorphins in the context of ME/CFS. That I find helps helps overcome the very poor memory of ME/CFS.
 
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Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
I just had a bath, and before I did, I used the shower head to spray cold water on me while I was standing in the bath. Holding the shower head in my hand, I started spraying cold water first on my feet, then I gradually moved up my legs, doing it slowly so I would acclimatize to the cold. After giving my legs the cold treatment, I then did my arms, again slowly. Finally, I braced myself and did the torso. This all took just a couple of minutes, and then I immediately had my hot bath.

Whether this is enough to stimulate sufficient release of endorphins from the skin, I do not know, but I found this quick and easy to do. I might try doing this every day for a few weeks, and see what happens. Certainly the cheapest therapy I have tried!
 
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Mij

Messages
2,353
@Hip I don't think the water has to be cold to the extreme where you feel uncomfortable, you could probably get the same affect with coolish water.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
@Hip I don't think the water has to be cold to the extreme where you feel uncomfortable, you could probably get the same affect with coolish water.

I think that's probably right, it does not have to be icy water. I measured the cold tap water temperature in the bathroom, and it is 20ºC (68ºF) at the moment (UK summertime). And using that 20ºC water, it felt quite cold and tingly enough for me on my skin!

Though I read that in the UK winter, the water temperature can go down to a little as 4ºC, so if you were doing this cold therapy in the winter, you'd probably want to add a touch hot water to the shower mix to bring it up to around 20ºC.

I have to say that I do feel in a slightly better mood than normal after doing that 2 minute cold therapy a few hours ago. My body and mind somehow feel a little more healthy and athletic, even though I have not done any exercise.
 
Messages
1,446
So, how many people have been cured of ME by cold water? Either baths, showers or diving into the Atlantic ocean?
 

Jenny

Senior Member
Messages
1,388
Location
Dorset
So, how many people have been cured of ME by cold water? Either baths, showers or diving into the Atlantic ocean?

This treatment for ME was popular in the 80s. I had cold water baths for 3 months, reducing the temperature of the water each day. It had no effect on my symptoms at all, good or bad.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
So, how many people have been cured of ME by cold water? Either baths, showers or diving into the Atlantic ocean?

If it does occur, I imagine it would be a very rare occurrence for cold therapy to actually cure ME/CFS. Cold therapy is regularly practiced in countries like in Nordic countries and Russia, so if cold therapy was regularly curing ME/CFS, I am sure we would have heard many anecdotical accounts about it. In the absence of such anecdotical accounts, I think we can safely assume that cold therapy is very unlikely likely to lead to a cure, and unlikely to lead to major improvements for most people with ME/CFS.

Though it's quite conceivable that cold therapy might lead to some useful mild benefits for some ME/CFS patients. Given the simplicity of applying 20ºC cold water to the skin for 2 minutes using a shower head, it is something that might be easily tried.