With more and more media coverage of people like Wim Hof and other holistic health experts, ice baths are becoming a trendy yet effective way to achieve optimal health at home. Taking an ice bath is a therapeutic treatment that can quickly conjure a relaxed state of mind at the end of a long day. Stress and anxiety simply melt away when you plunge into icy waters.
Rather than waiting for winter, you can enjoy these effects anytime at home with a purpose-built cold plunge tub like one from RENU Therapy.
What is an Ice Bath?
For centuries, cultures like the Nordic have been taking plunges into frigid waters for the therapeutic effects. Often they even alternated from a hot sauna to the cold water for even greater feelings of euphoria and well-being.
Today, research has found numerous ways that exposing the body to icy waters can improve health, whether physical or mental. Because of these findings, more people have been seeking ways to benefit from this therapy more frequently at home.
How to Soak in a Cold Water Bath
Ice baths are a great way to improve your health at home, but it’s key to calibrate the process to ensure safe, effective outcomes. Limiting temperatures to only 39 degrees fahrenheit and soaking times to ten minutes are two good rules of thumb. Let’s cover the details of this process next.
Fill a Tub With Cold Water
First, fill your tub up with cold water. Then, start adding ice to the water to lower the temperature to your desired setting. It’s good to have a thermometer close at hand to carefully monitor just how cold the water is getting, because anything lower than 39º fahrenheit can be dangerous. If you have a RENU Therapy cold tub, all you’ll need to do is set the temperature and wait overnight for the tub to do all the work for you.
Prepare Your Clothes for After the Bath
After you get out of the ice bath, it’s important not to attempt to warm your body back up too quickly, which can actually be harmful to your health. Rather than jumping into a piping-hot shower when you get out of the ice bath, instead, put some warm clothes on so your body can slowly and safely bring your core temperature back up.
Set an Alarm
The amount of time you spend in an ice bath also plays a critical role in your safety. Although for most people, the immediate shock of getting into an ice bath makes staying in for too long seem impossible. But once you become acclimated to sitting in the freezing cold water, you may find it tempting to test the limits of how long you can endure the cold.
Keep in mind, ten minutes is the safe limit of how much time you should remain in an ice bath, so setting an alarm is a wise and safe practice to establish early on.
Enter the Tub
Once you have everything set up for a successful cold plunge session, it’s time to enter the tub of ice water. Before you just hop in, though, it’s good to take a minute to bring your breath fully into your control.
Breathe in deeply and exhale a few good times, then take a deep breath and enter the tub of cold water, working to resist the urge to gasp for air. Next, maintain a steady, even breathing pace for your session.
Four Factors When Choosing an Ice Bath Tub
When you’re searching for ice bath tubs for sale, what you should buy comes down to four key factors that will impact the longevity of the tub, along with how much value you get from your investment. Let’s examine each of these so you can be sure to get the perfect cold plunge tub for your needs.
Sanitation
If you’re planning on taking an ice bath in your regular tub with a drain, all you’ll need to do is keep a clean tub. But if you buy a purpose-built cold plunge tub, it’s important to look for how the water will stay clean. Do you need to drain and refill the tub every time? Or is there a filtration system to keep the water clean and sanitary?
RENU tubs use a 4-Part Purification System that is all natural with no chemicals required. Keep this in mind, because some cold tubs need chemicals for sanitation, adding to the cost and complexity of taking an ice bath at home.
Temperature Control
Being able to accurately control the temperature of the water is one of the biggest challenges of ice bath therapy. Tubs that enable set and forget temperature control are ideal for saving time and money on ice.
Warranty
What happens if your cold plunge tub stops working? Do you have to wait weeks to get replacement parts? Make sure you won’t have indefinite waiting periods to get back into your cold water immersion routine by checking not just what the warranty is, but how the manufacturer plans to handle any issues with your equipment.
Fit and Finish
Is the cold plunge tub going to be an eyesore just about anywhere you place it in your home? Aesthetics play an important role in the long-term practice of cold water immersion, as an ugly tub that looks awkward in your home isn’t something many partners will want to see.
Should You Get a Cold Water Plunge?
Getting a cold water plunge for the home requires proper research to ensure you get the results you’re seeking. Remember, cold therapy is only beneficial if you keep doing it long-term. You’ll want to find a cold tub that can stand the test of time, performing flawlessly for you every single day for many years to come. Be sure the cold tub you buy comes with a warranty that will keep you covered so there’s no delay in your cold water immersion practice.
Cold plunge and water therapy play an important role in health, especially mental health. Access to this therapy at home can be a real game-changer. Explore more therapeutic solutions for the mind and body at RENU Therapy.
