I’ve been seeing cryotherapy popping up in a lot of places lately & being that I am a big fan of cold immersion, I thought it would be a cool (😆) thing to try.
What is cryotherapy you ask? Basically a blast chiller for your body. The idea is that the extreme cold forces blood from your extremities deep into your core to preserve core temperature for survival. This process will force a lot of metabolic waste from your cells to be flushed from your system, helping reduce inflammation & increase recovery.
I wanted to try cryo because the better I get to know my own body & the more I research medicine, that actually heals the body, the more I believe increasing circulation is crucial to preventive medicine. Get your blood moving & learn to stretch your body out to flush out the crap you’ve been storing up! Expose yourself to safe extremes of hot & cold regularly & your body & mind will be stronger for it.
Here is the 80,000 USD machine, preparing to freeze me & turn me into soilent green
You leave your underwear on to protect your precious, & then you put on mittens, that were too small, & socks, also too small & of course a robe, two sizes too small.
Then you hop in & take the robe off, & relax for 3 minutes of -280f air being gently blown all over your body. Reminiscent of being stuck in a giant punch bowl full of dry ice. There is a little elevator in the machine if you’re short so your head is exposed. I had to bend my knees a little to get the top of my shoulders in there, too tall for life.
After the treatment, they recommended to hop on the exercise bike to get the blood moving & circulate some of the beneficial hormones that were excited like norepinephrine.
I’ve got a knee, ankle & back all in recovery as well as general workout soreness, so will be cool to see if I feel any extra healing from this treatment.
I have taken a lot of ice baths in my day & feel like there is more of an immediate benefit from an ice bath. But every time I took an ice bath in the past was after extreme physical exertion & maximum soreness so it felt amazing. Today was nowhere near that level of soreness, but still a very refreshing feeling in general.
Keep working out hard & take time to work on healing your body, it is a lifelong learning process 👍