From Devanny's site....just a reminder of the importance of cold showers...plus I was reading about the enhanced fat burning due to released norepinephrine and increased circulation to those hard to get fat areas (aka the trouble spots with the A2 receptors)
"I don't know if I ever mentioned this before, but about 4-5 years ago, I started taking cold showers to prepare for adventure races and 24-hr orienteering races. Having access to only what was in my backpack while in the middle of the woods at night, I had to find a way of increasing my tolerance to cold (I nearly dropped out of my two first races because of hypothermia). Having once read that polar explorers prepared by taking cold showers, I decided to try it. Though it's hard to tell if it was the cold showers, I never became hypothermic in any subsequent race.
Knowing my experience was purely anecdotal, I did some research to see if this was ever scientifically documented. What I found was much more interesting however, as it suggested that cold showers could increase resistance to oxidant stress.
The first article I found showed that people who took cold swims had higher levels of endogenous antioxidants (superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase, and catalase). Though I was sold, there were no other papers out there supporting these results, or showing that the increase in endogenous antioxidants conferred a survival benefit. Being a medical resident, I considered writing a proposal to perform a few experiment on rats or other short-lived mammal, but I didn't think anyone would be interested in funding or supervising me given that most people wouldn't take cold showers even if they knew it would buy them an extra 20 years of health. Apparently, someone thought the idea was worthwhile, because I recently came across a paper which described an experiment in rats with similar results plus a survival benefit when the rats were injected with lethal doses of epinephrine. Still, it doesn't prove longevity benefits, but certainly does help support the idea.
There's a lot of anecdotal stuff out there with respect to cold showers and longevity. In fact, my mother had once told me about a very youthful and healthy russian patient of hers in his 90s, who told her his secret to longevity was that he never took a warm shower. Apparently he had to take care of all of his younger siblings, none of which shared his health in old age despite sharing 50% of his genes. Here's another anecdote from CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/04/24/living.well/.
Anyway, all this to say that you should read these two interesting articles - I know you have mentioned that you spray cold water on your legs following a shower to increase fat burning. There's also a body of work out there on cold shock proteins, but I haven't looked into it extensively enough yet to comment."
Cold showers for Health, Immune, Fat Loss
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