Does Taking an Ice Bath Have Real Benefits, or Is It Just a Wellness Fad?

Doctors explain the potential perks of cold water therapy.

In recent years, the topic of cold exposure therapy has, at times, felt inescapable in the health and wellness space. From Olympic athletes touting the benefits of ice baths, to influencers showing off the results of frigid facials, and maybe even your own doctor recommending trying contrast showering to help relieve symptoms of a chronic illness, these and other cold immersion treatments have been, well, hot. But should we believe the hype? Are there any real, proven benefits of ice baths, or is it all just talk? We spoke with three physicians to find out whether it’s worth plunging yourself into icy water for the sake of your health.

What Is Cold Exposure Therapy?

Cold exposure therapy, also known as “cryotherapy,” refers to the use of cold temperatures to treat a medical condition or symptom, or benefit a person’s health. Though it can take various forms, we’re going to focus on cold water therapy (such as submerging yourself in an ice bath)—in other words, the kind that’s taken over everyone’s social media feeds. But what, exactly, is it?

“Cold water therapy typically involves water temperatures between 45 and 55 degrees Fahrenheit, with some situations calling for colder temperatures down to 38 degrees,” says Jeffrey Kutcher, MD, a neurologist specializing in sports medicine at Henry Ford Health in Detroit. “Regimens of differing frequencies and durations of cold water exposure are used for different conditions and situations.”

In addition to water in its traditional liquid form, cold water therapy can also involve frozen water, like ice baths, or even vapors. Take whole-body cryotherapy (WBC), for example, which consists of exposing your body to vapors ranging from -200 to -300 degrees Fahrenheit for between two and four minutes, while enclosed in a small, booth-like space.

Other examples of cold water therapy include cold water immersion (spending time in a tub or pool of water below 59°F so that it covers your entire body up to your neck), cold showering, contrast showering (alternating between warm and cold water), and swimming outdoors in a lake, river, or ocean.

Why Take an Ice Bath?

Starting your day with a cold shower may help jolt you awake, but when we talk about cold water as a type of therapy, we’re referring to its application as a way to improve health. According to Dr. Kutcher, cold water therapy works on many different levels, including directly on tissues and indirectly via stimulation of the nervous system.

“The goal of cold water therapy is to affect or modulate basic metabolic or biologic processes, such as inflammation, pain, and autonomic nervous system control,” Dr. Kutcher explains. “It can be used to help recover from strenuous exercise, reduce problematic inflammation, improve control of mood disturbances, and [manage] sensory regulation that can help reduce the effects of pain syndromes such a migraine.”

Much of the recent attention on cold water therapy has centered on stimulating the vagus nerve: one of 12 pairs of cranial nerves that run down both sides of the body, communicating with most organs along the way. The vagus nerve also activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which slows heart and breathing rates, lowers blood pressure, and promotes digestion to relax the body after bouts of stress. Multiple viral social media posts claim that different types of cold water therapy can be used to stimulate the vagus nerve to reduce anxiety and promote better sleep.

Related: Yes, There's an Ideal Temperature for Sleep—and Here's Why It Matters

Are There Real Benefits of Ice Baths (and Other Forms of Cold Therapy)?

The truth is, while there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence purporting a range of benefits of ice baths and other types of cold water therapy, the empirical research is largely lacking. There is a limited but growing number of mostly smaller studies that appear to suggest that cold exposure therapy, including cold water therapy, could be beneficial to a person’s health. For now, more research—controlled studies in particular—is needed to determine the effectiveness of these cold immersion therapies, the conditions and/or symptoms they treat, and the correct dosages to achieve these benefits. Below are several of the most studied and suggested benefits of cold immersion therapies like ice baths, whole-body ice immersion, cold showers, cold plunges, and similar modalities.

Pain, Stiffness, Fatigue, Mood Regulation

“In some limited circumstances, evidence shows [that cold water therapy] can be effective,” says Lora Scott, MD, division chief of pediatric sports medicine at Dayton Children's Hospital in Dayton, Ohio. More specifically, it “can improve general health and quality of life, with significant results in patients dealing with pain, fatigue, physical function, stiffness, and psychological variables,” she adds.

Similarly, Dr. Kutcher points out that cold water therapy can reduce pain and inflammation from injury or exercise, improve mood regulation, and decrease the effects of certain pain syndromes.

“In the right situation, I recommend cold water therapy in patients who are having a hard time managing frequent migraine headaches and related symptoms, as well as those who are having a hard time regulating their mood,” Dr. Kutcher says. “Benefits in these patients may extend to other important areas of health, such as sleep, and exercise tolerance as well. My recommendations are made after careful consideration of possible negative consequences, particularly in patients with heart disease or peripheral vascular disease, or who have an increased risk of stroke.”

Immune System, Nervous System, Metabolism, Cardiovascular Health

According to Claudia Dal Molin, DO, a primary care sports medicine physician at the University of Maryland Medical Center, cold water immersion is the most studied type of cold water therapy. For instance, a 2022 article published in the International Journal of Circumpolar Health reviewed the findings of 104 studies looking into the effects of cold water immersion on human health. It found potential benefits for the cardiovascular system, insulin resistance and sensitivity, mental health, and the immune system (e.g. tolerance for stress and respiratory infections). These findings are promising and warrant further investigation.

Some of the other potential benefits of cold water therapy supported by at least some research include reduced heart rate through vagus nerve stimulation, a statistical reduction of sick days, and a decrease in feelings of depression.

Intense Exercise Recovery and Heat Illness Treatment

As a practitioner of sports medicine, Dal Molin says she primarily uses cold water therapy as either a recovery tool or a cooling treatment for heat illness. “As a recovery tool, we use it to minimize muscle soreness and aid in muscle recovery after the micro-injury that a bout of exercise can cause,” she explains. “Heat illness is a spectrum of exercise-related overheating in the body, which if severe enough, can be life-threatening. Whole-body ice immersion is the most efficient and effective standard-of-care measure for addressing overheating.”

Speaking of which, a 2023 review of empirical evidence supporting the use of WBC published in the Open Access Journal of Sports Medicine, found that the treatment “offers improvements in subjective recovery and muscle soreness following metabolic or mechanical overload, but little benefit towards functional recovery.” Because many of the studies on WBC are small, they don’t provide us with “any statistically significant conclusions,” Dal Molin notes. “They are good pilot studies, meaning they form good justification for a larger trial, but limited in their ability to form conclusions.”

Along the same lines, there are also some small-scale, non-academic surveys that involve people providing self-reported data on their experiences with cold exposure therapy. One comes from Eureka Health, an online community where people living with chronic conditions can learn about the various ways people treat their symptoms, as well as share their own experiences.

Potential Long Covid Symptom Relief

According to data provided by Eureka, cold exposure therapy has been one of the top-five most-effective treatments for people living with Long Covid. Out of the 181 people who tried some form of cold exposure therapy, 166 (roughly 92 percent) reported at least mild overall symptom relief, and indicated that it was most beneficial for relieving symptoms associated with anxiety, fatigue, and low energy. Of the various types of cold exposure therapy, taking cold showers was the most popular among participants, followed by the Wim Hof Method (a combination of breathing exercises and cold water immersion therapy), cryotherapy, and taking ice baths.

The objective, evidence-based research is still limited, but promising.

The lack of sufficient research means that, at this time, there’s no medical consensus as far as whether one form of cold immersion therapy is more beneficial than the others. But even if extensive empirical evidence did exist on the effectiveness of different treatments, and/or their ideal temperature or duration, the outcomes would largely depend on the condition or symptom the therapy is aiming to treat.

For now, there’s more enthusiasm for cold water therapy than there are research findings suggesting that this practice is warranted. “While there is good scientific evidence supporting the use of cold water therapy for some indications—such as for the control of local inflammation and pain—other uses are based more on anecdotal evidence,” Dr. Kutcher explains. “In any situation, the pros and cons of cold water therapy should be carefully considered with a healthcare professional.”

Related: 4 Beneficial Uses for Epsom Salt—and One You Should Always Avoid

Potential Risks of Cold Water Therapy

Though much of the focus is on the potential benefits of cold water therapy, that doesn’t mean it’s risk-free. For example, prolonged exposure to cold water can result in frostbite (in the form of burns and blisters), as well as rashes (i.e. cold panniculitis), Dal Molin says. It can also lead to non-freezing cold injury: nerve and blood vessel damage that causes the pain, tingling, and numbness associated with cold exposure to persist long after the person is no longer exposed to the cold—in some cases, for several years.

Cold water therapy can also have other serious effects on your cardiovascular system. “While hydrotherapy is usually safe, there is a known risk that submersing the face in cold water can trigger a heart arrhythmia, with some reported cases of death,” Dr. Scott says.

(In fact, according to the National Center for Cold Water Safety (a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization), the jolt of cold shock from being immersed in water between 50 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit can be fatal in less than a minute—sometimes even within seconds.)

“Cold water therapy can significantly increase both heart rate and blood pressure, and should only be done after consultation with a physician—particularly if you are susceptible to heart disease, stroke, or other vascular conditions,” Dr. Kutcher recommends.

Also, in the Eureka Health survey of those living with Long Covid, 12 percent of participants reported experiencing some type of side effect—with shortness of breath, and dizziness/vertigo being the most common.

Try Cold Therapy at Home

According to Dr. Kutcher and Dal Molin, cold water therapy can easily be done at home using one of these methods:

• Cold shower: “Run the shower on the coldest setting, which is typically around 60 degrees Fahrenheit, and stay under the shower for 30 seconds to start, or longer if tolerated,” Dr. Kutcher says. “Typically, the amount of time someone can stay under cold water in this situation will increase with repetition.”

• Cold bath: While a soak in a cold-water bath can also be useful, Dr. Kutcher says that it’s more difficult to keep the temperature consistent than it is in a cold shower.

• Ice bath immersion: To try ice immersion for post-exercise recovery, simply fill a bathtub with water and ice, Dal Molin says. She doesn’t necessarily recommend ice baths for everyone, however. “Because most people don't do the amount of exercise [elite] athletes do, there are often simpler recovery tools to consider using,” she explains. “Foam rollers are probably the cheapest with good evidence for their use.”

According to Dal Molin and Dr. Kutcher, while cold immersion therapy is preferable over limited cold exposure to a particular part or area of the body, it’s possible to reap at least some of the benefits even if you don’t have access to a bathtub or shower. One example of this is icing injuries, Dal Molin says.

“While cold water therapy is typically more effective if applied across as much body surface as possible, if a bathtub or shower is not available, cold packs can be used to achieve some of the effects,” Dr. Kutcher explains. “Typically, [an ice pack] placed on the back of the neck or under the arms are most effective.”

Related: Why CBD Might Be the Key to Your Most Relaxing Bath Ever

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