We have a fascination with old things: antique cars, golden oldies, old fashion styles that resurface — even vinyl records are making a comeback. Some ancient therapies are making a comeback too. We are finding that some of them have some health benefits that the ancients knew about, but we had forgotten. One of these therapies is cryotherapy — that’s not therapy that makes you cry; it’s about using cold to induce metabolic changes. Many forms of this therapy exist, the most popular being cold water immersion.
Ancient Greeks such as Hippocrates used cold therapies. Some Native Americans practiced cold water rituals, sometimes alternating with heat from sweat lodges, both of which they believed were good for the body and spirit. Now even the Mayo Clinic is suggesting cryotherapy as a helpful therapy for inflammation and muscle injury. The ancients knew that it had significant healing potential, and we are rediscovering that potential.
The biggest drawbacks of cold water immersion are the potential health detriment if immersed too long, and the patient discomfort. Mayo reports however that patients who stick with the therapy report less discomfort as they get accustomed to the treatments. The cold is initially stressful, but as the patient gets used to it, that stress reduces.
What does cryotherapy do? When you experience cold, your body will constrict blood flow to your extremities so it can preserve heat for vital organs. The constricted blood vessels will result in higher blood pressure, as will the stress the patient experiences, so those with high blood pressure issues should be cautious, but the therapy can actually improve blood pressure over time.
Your nervous system will rapidly respond to environmental changes, and will take swift action to protect you from harsh conditions. Therapies that intentionally stress your body, putting it into a limited crisis, are utilizing the rapid response systems that you have to give you resilience and clear out toxins, open up circulation, or spark healing responses. How does it work?
Cool it
With cold water immersion, the first reaction is shock. Your heart rate increases, and you may hyperventilate. The blood vessels closest to the surface of your skin will constrict, turning your outer skin into an insulating layer. Then you begin to adapt, so your breathing and pulse rate normalizes. Your sympathetic nervous system will release adrenaline, which will result in heightened awareness and an increase in energy. Then the blood vessel constriction continues, and deepens. An Immerse time of up to 3 minutes is ideal. As you return to normal temperature, your body will open up previously restricted circulation, which will lead to extra warmth in the extremities. Often in the recovery phase, endorphins will be released — these are natural painkillers which also tend to reduce stress and lead to a feeling of well-being. Whole-body inflammation reduction is a lasting benefit, which is a major benefit of this therapy.
Cold therapy joins the list of short-term crisis therapies that produce eustress (good stress) if done correctly. Others are fasting and high intensity short duration exercise. They are stressors, and if done to excess will cause damage, but done therapeutically they lead to greater health. Short-term stress is rarely harmful and usually leads to greater long-term resilience, but only if a quick and full recovery from that stress happens quickly. Stress that lingers is the big danger. Eustress is relatively short term, where the recovery period results in healing that often brings additional health.
Eustress is key to building strength, because your body will over-react to the stress and build you up better than before — so long as your stress does not hit the breaking point. You probably exercise, not for fun, but for the strength that it will build in you. Cryotherapy is similar: not initially enjoyable, but worth the stamina, strength, and resilience it builds. And just like exercise, you can adjust to the cold therapy such that it becomes much less stressful and unpleasant.
Cold-pressed processing
Nowhere is this highlighted more than in the U.S. Armed Forces. Their training not only includes exercise, but also exposure to virtually every form of eustress that exists to build fighting forces in top physical and mental condition. They must be prepared to enter dangerous and stressful conditions at any time. So, to determine their fitness and their stress resilience before accepting them into service, the Armed Forces all run various screening tests. They also conduct studies to improve their programs, and the results of this research also shed light on health issues for everyone. Published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research are such study results. Naval researchers wanted to predict the results of the Navy’s midshipmen screening program, and used a simple cold pressor test (CPT) along with blood tests to determine likelihood of the midshipmen being able to complete the screening course. (1)
The cold pressor test is usually performed with the participant placing a hand into nearly frozen water for a specific short period of time. The initial reaction of a healthy individual would be an increase in blood pressure and heart rate because the sympathetic nervous system will react to the stress. A lowered heart rate or blood pressure would actually be a warning sign of nervous system dysfunction. Stress hormones also tend to rise, with adrenaline usually rising first and cortisol shortly after.
The naval researchers learned that cortisol levels after the CPT were lower in those who were able to finish the admittance screening compared with those who failed. The finishers had no nervous system malfunction and they had overall lower cortisol levels as well as healthy elevations in heart rate and blood pressure; this was because they were reacting in a less stressed manner to the same physical test. Compare this with results of another study, published in Psychoneuroendocrinology which also looked at the cortisol levels induced by the CPT. In this study, the researchers found that the cortisol levels rose significantly higher by adding a social element: young men would be tested in the presence of a woman as well as being videotaped. The men were not willing to show their discomfort with the test and potentially be embarrassed, which added to their perception of stress and further raised their cortisol levels. The two studies together showed that those who perceive less stress are actually less stressed, even under the influence of the identical physical stress. (2)
Those who completed the CPT with lower cortisol levels were more stress resilient. As the Mayo Clinic also reported lowered stress reactions with those who were more accustomed to the testing, the researchers all showed that lowered perception of stress translates into actual lowered stress and a greater stress resilience. The naval research also showed that greater stress resilience meant a higher likelihood of being able to complete the Navy’s arduous screening program.
Sure you can
If you think you can’t, you are probably right. If you think you can, you are more likely to succeed. If you receive a diagnosis of a serious disease, your chances of succumbing to that disease just increased unless you have a remarkably optimistic attitude. This is an irony: if you are told that you are sick, you are more likely to actually become sick or get sicker. It’s all about perception. You won’t have a stress-free life, nor should you expect one, but you will have a life that is not stressed out, that is not letting stress rule.
Thankfully, modern research is giving us ways to improve our health, and since we know that they work because the studies prove them, we can also be assured that our health will improve if we practice them. Even cancer patients can recognize there is much that they can do to improve their survival chances in many cases, if they take the right steps. Hope isn’t just a feeling that things will be better — it is an assurance that they will be. If you take all the healthy steps within your power, you are likely to live longer, in greater health — you will be more certain that you can do exactly that, which makes you all the more likely to succeed. Step out in what is inside you, knowing that you are doing what you should do to improve your health and that those steps are effective. You can be what you set out to be — a healthy, strong survivor and thriver.
Conventional medicine is very powerful in an emergency situation but does not take the place of a healthy behavior. Drugs are sometimes a necessary bridge, but they rarely improve true health. That has to come from inside you.
Dr. Nemec’s Review
Eustress versus distress
There is good stress in this life and there is bad stress. It’s all a matter of how you perceive it and also how long you’re in it. Let’s consider the cold therapy. This is a tremendously beneficial stress if done short term; it’s a tremendously detrimental stress if it’s continued long-term, meaning continual at the same time. At Revolution Health & Fitness our members participate in cold – hot therapy. In the cold portion, they immerse in 42° water for up to three minutes. Then they follow with an infrared sauna at 110°.
Both cold and hot are stressors to the body, but the key is: are they short term or long-term? Are they eustress or distress? Three minutes in cold, followed by a short-term heat is eustress. If you stayed in the cold for an hour, this would definitely be a distress to your physiology: you would go into hypothermia and start negatively affecting other systems of your body. So in life, it’s all about stress — you can’t get away from it. It’s in your everyday life, but you can be stress resilient or stress hardened, or we can call it “stress strengthened.”
Stress Strengthened
When you go in the 42° therapy water for three minutes, there is a vasoconstriction of your blood vessels and lymphatic vessels. This brings the oxygen and nutrients into your cells and brings the waste products out of the cells. Then when we follow up with heat for three minutes, we get a vasodilation of your blood and lymph vessels: the combination produces a pumping action or circulation of your blood and lymphatic fluid. This is a tremendous health benefit, which will decrease recovery time, speed healing, decrease inflammation, increase oxygen and nutrients at the cellular level and also decrease waste products at the cellular level. All these amazing effects come with just three minutes or six minutes.
Short term stress, long-term gain
The key is an anti-inflammatory lifestyle and a life that is seeking longevity with both quality and quantity of life is controlled stressors to stimulate cellular physiology into an epigenetic resilience state, which produces longevity.
Cortisol the stress indicator
Cortisol is the number one stress-related hormone. Short term it has tremendous beneficial effects. Long-term it has extremely detrimental effects.
What is cortisol?
It is an anti-inflammatory hormone. It also gives you energy short term, but chronic cortisol elevation leads to not only fatigue, but also to immune suppression and brain cell death. This is a classic example of what short-term benefits and long-term detriments look like in a hormone. So short-term cortisol goes up to counter the stress, whether it be mental or physical, but if it stays up too long and the stress remains too high, it does the reverse effect, weakens the immune system, and fatigues the system — it actually kills memory cells in the brain. This is a big reason why you don’t want to stay in stressful circumstances in your life unless you’ve been stress strengthened. That’s one of our goals at Revolution Health & Fitness.
In this world, you cannot get out of stress — it’s all around you — but you can be stress strengthened so that the stress doesn’t seem stressful any more. That’s our goal at Revolution. So, as these research studies show: first, with the Navy midshipmen, the ones that finished and thrived in the program were the ones that their cortisol stress hormone lowered after the cold water test. What does that mean? That means something extremely powerful! That means the cold water no longer seemed terribly cold to them because it wasn’t much of a stress as they perceived it. How can they do that? When you’ve trained yourself to be able to comfortably handle all types of stressors, they don’t set off a stress response in the body anymore. This is the difference between the naval candidates that made it and the ones that didn’t. This was also demonstrated in the second study when the men were videotaped the presence of women while they were having the cold stress test: this was double stress, the stress of the cold and the stress of failure in the women’s eyes — that’s why the cortisol would go up and stay up because they were not stress strengthened.
The answer
At Revolution Health & Fitness we have the finest fitness equipment and anti-aging therapies in the country. We use these to help our members become strong in body, mind, brain, emotions, and spirit. You need to be strong in all these areas to be stress strengthened and to lead a life that is anti-inflammatory and anti-aging. This is the new world. This is the new American. This is the new life: one that is strong, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
Why do people drive nine hours to get to our facility?
They come because they want to be all that they can be in body, mind, brain, emotions, and spirit, and they do not make excuses in their strength training. Just think about it: we have people that drive nine hours one way three times a week to come to our facility. That’s 18 hours of the day just to get here and get home, then they’re at our facility for another four hours. Do the math. They have two hours in that day left to eat and sleep. How come they improve? How come they get better — aren’t they stressing themselves too much with less sleep, less food, less pleasure in their lives?
Absolutely not. They are strength training body, mind, brain, emotions, and spirit in everything they do, including the 18 hours of driving in the day.
On the other hand, we’ve had people complain that because we’re an hour from them, we’re too far away. And they never came. They didn’t want to stress themselves to drive two hours back and forth. It would take away too much of their free time. Do you see how important perception is?
One person does whatever it takes to become strong and healthy in every part of their being and another person chooses to stay pleasurable and comfortable in their life, but has built a house on sinking sand, and it’s just a matter of time until a stressor comes along and crumbles that house.
Take home message
Stress strengthening is the key to life in every area: absolutely in your body, and that starts with your brain,which controls your body — but your brain is only the translator of the message from either your mind or your heart (which is your spirit). From one of these two places you can be talked out of the outcome from the other place, it’s a done deal. The question is: which one is ruling in your life? Is it your mind or your heart?
Only a heart-driven life can not only survive in all circumstances, but it will definitely thrive under any stressor presented to it. Be a member of the most exclusive training facility in the world. At Revolution Health & Fitness, we not only have on-site services for all of our driving distance members, but we also have remote teaching and coaching programs. Join the body, mind, brain, emotion, spirit, strength revolution!
(1) Martin BJ, Wright M, Patel V, Susmarski A, Lovalekar M, Forse JN, Beckner ME, Ledford AK, Nindl BC. Physiological, Physical, and Psychological Determinants of Success During the Naval Special Warfare Screener Selection Course. J Strength Cond Res. 2025 Feb 1;39(2):e162-e170. doi: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000004979. Epub 2024 Dec 19. PMID: 39705113. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39705113/
(2) Schwabe L, Haddad L, Schachinger H. HPA axis activation by a socially evaluated cold-pressor test. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2008 Jul;33(6):890-5. doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2008.03.001. Epub 2008 Apr 9. PMID: 18403130. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18403130/
