Welcome to the Get Fit Guys' quick and dirty tips to slim down and shape up.

My name is Ben Greenfield and I'm the Get Fit Guy.

In this episode, we're going to delve into whether cold showers and baths are really

bad for you, like everyone seems to be saying these days.

Now, cryotherapy, cold thermogenesis, icing, and other forms of cold exposure are all forms

of recovery that I personally use almost every day.

In the article, how to use cold weather to lose weight.

And also in the article, cold temps for a hot body, I outlined many of the practical ways I do this, from keeping my office

temperature cool to morning and evening cold showers, to body cooling gear like a cool fat burner

vest, to compression gear with ice stuffed inside it, to cold baths. Now, I'll link to some of those

previous articles in the show notes for this episode,

and the show notes are over at quick and dirty tips.com. You'll just want to look for episode

number 247 of the get-fit guy. Now, of course, the application of cold to an injured area or

to a beat-up muscle is hardly a new concept. The Greek physician Hippocrates wrote about the use of cold therapy to

control pain and swelling way back in the 4th century BC. And the Roman physician Galen described

the use of cold compresses for analgesia and pain management following soft tissue injuries back in the

first century AD. During the Middle Ages, ice was used for presurgical anesthesia, and ice therapy has been

extensively used in athletic training and physical therapy for the treatment of sports injuries

for many years. But despite the seeming widespread acceptance of tossing a bag of ice on an injured

ankle or an aching shoulder, several years ago there was a surge of doubt concerning icing's efficacy. Now, the

arguments a few years ago went something like this. When an injury occurs, your body creates

inflammation as a healing response. Now, furthermore, there were many claims that icing could

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