Ice bath

[5][7][8] Many athletes have used cold water immersion after an intense exercise workout in the belief that it speeds up bodily recovery; however, the internal physical processes are not well understood and remain elusive.

[13][25] A 2024 meta-analysis of controlled trials concluded that cold water immersion immediately following resistance training may blunt the ensuing muscle hypertrophy, although the authors cautioned that their conclusion was uncertain due to the relatively fair to poor quality of the underlying studies.

[5][7][8][27] Marathon runner Paula Radcliffe won the 10,000m event at the 2002 European championships and attributed her victory to the use of ice baths.

[40] In the summer of 2014, as a fundraising method, the nonprofit ALS Association, which raises money for research and public awareness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, began the Ice Bucket Challenge which involved donors filming themselves and challenging other donors to participate and then being doused with a bucket of ice cold water; as a fundraising effort, it raised $16 million over a 22-day period.

[46] Ice baths are a part of a broader phenomenon known as cryotherapy—the Greek word cryo (κρυο) means cold—which describes a variety of treatments when cold temperatures are used therapeutically.

Cryotherapy includes procedures where a person is placed in a room with "cold, dry air at temperatures as low as −135 °C" for short periods of time, and which has been used in hospitals in Poland as well as a center in London to treat not only muscular ailments, but psychological problems such as depression.

[24] Basketball player Manny Harris reportedly used a Cryon-X machine featuring extreme low temperatures around minus 166 degrees Fahrenheit, but used it with wet socks resulting in a serious freezer burn.

[47] Occasionally ice baths have been an ill-advised treatment of fever in young children, but that doctors were counseled not to use this technique because of the risk of hypothermia.

[30] In addition, there have been instances of ice bathing as an extreme bodily test by persons vying for an endurance record, such as Dutch Iceman Wim Hof,[49] and Chinese record-holders Chen Kecai[50] and Jin Songhao.

[51] According to reports, doctors and scientists are studying how these people can spend an hour and a half submerged in an ice bath, and survive.

Ice baths began to become extremely popular after being discussed extensively by Joe Rogan and his universe of scientist and comedians such as Dr. Andrew Huberman (Stanford) and Aubury Marcus (Onnit).

[56] The main medical treatments that Ancient Greeks employed the use of cold-water immersion for were fever, as the cold was thought to counteract the body's heat,[54] and for pain relief.