Complement the warmth of an infrared sauna with the cold of the Plunge to enhance circulation, reduce inflammation, and support overall well-being.
For most of the past decade, “wellness” was an aesthetic. It was eucalyptus towels, beautifully designed lounges and perfectly lit recovery rooms.
June is Men’s Mental Health Month, a time to check in, speak up, and break the silence. Because the stats don’t lie: men are less likely to talk about their mental health, and more likely to suffer in silence. At Plunge, we’re big believers in doing hard things. But bottling it up? That’s not strength. Taking care of your mind is. Cold Plunging: Mood Boosting Benefits Cold plunging isn’t just a physical challenge, it’s mental training. That jolt of cold resets your nervous system, boosts dopamine, and gives you a tangible win when the rest of life feels overwhelming. It teaches resilience. Stillness. Breath. Control. For many of us, it’s where the mental fog lifts, even just a little. Dopamine Surge (aka your "feel-good" molecule): Cold exposure can increase dopamine levels by up to 250% - similar to or even higher than some antidepressant medications. This creates a natural high that can last for hours post-plunge. Norepinephrine Boost: Cold plunging elevates norepinephrine, which helps with alertness, focus, energy, and a positive mood. Reduced Anxiety & Depression Symptoms: Studies suggest that regular cold exposure may reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression by regulating the nervous system and lowering inflammation. Nervous System Reset: The cold activates the parasympathetic nervous system post-plunge, helping calm stress and create a state of mental clarity and calm. Sense of Accomplishment & Resilience: Getting into cold water is mentally challenging. Overcoming it trains discipline, builds confidence, and reinforces a sense of control - powerful tools for mental health. Sauna: Mood Boosting Benefits On the other side, the sauna is where stress melts off. Heat therapy helps lower cortisol, ease anxiety, and increase relaxation through endorphin release. It’s not just about sweating, it’s about slowing down. About being in your body when your mind won’t stop racing. Endorphin Release (natural painkillers & mood elevators): Heat exposure triggers the release of endorphins, leading to a natural sense of euphoria and relaxation. Lower Cortisol (stress hormone): Sauna sessions can reduce cortisol levels, helping manage chronic stress and anxiety. Improved Sleep (which directly improves mood): Sauna use promotes deeper, more restful sleep due to changes in body temperature and relaxation, which in turn stabilizes mood. Increased BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor): Regular sauna use may increase BDNF, which supports brain plasticity, cognitive function, and emotional regulation, all crucial for mood stability. Social Connection (if done with others): Community sauna sessions can foster social bonds, which are protective against loneliness and depression. So this month, whether you’re using the cold, the heat, or both, use them to care for your mental health. And check in with the men in your life. Invite them to plunge. Sit with them in the sauna. Talk. Or just breathe together in silence. It all counts. Let’s make vulnerability part of the recovery process. Want to support the men in your life this Men’s Health Week? Here’s how to get involved: Schedule a Health Check-up: Encourage regular visits to a doctor. Blood pressure, cholesterol, and prostate screenings can save lives with early detection. Host a Mental Health Session: Organize an informal talk or workshop, whether it's at work, the gym, or over coffee, that focuses on nutrition, stress, or mental health. Bring in an expert, or just start the conversation. Move Together: Plan something active, group plunges, pickup basketball, a community walk. Physical movement supports both body and brain. Share the Message: Use your voice (and your feed) to share facts, tips, and real talk about men’s health. Destigmatize getting help. Make vulnerability normal. Support Organizations Doing the Work: Donate to or volunteer with nonprofits dedicated to men’s health. They’re creating resources, funding research, and offering support where it’s needed most. Need someone to talk to? These resources are here 24/7: 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988 BetterHelp - Online therapy tailored to your schedule: www.betterhelp.com Man Therapy - A mental health site with resources made for men: www.mantherapy.org HeadsUpGuys - Support and tools for men battling depression: www.headsupguys.org Therapy for Black Men - Culturally competent mental health support: www.therapyforblackmen.org You’re not alone. And you don’t have to do it all on your own.
Strength training has spent years being treated like a body-composition project. Lift if you want more muscle. Lift if you want to look better in a shirt. Lift if you have strong feelings about creatine and chicken thighs. The newer longevity data is making a calmer argument. Strength training is not just about adding muscle. It is about keeping enough muscle, power, bone density, balance, glucose control, and physical confidence to stay harder to kill for longer. A 2026 study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine followed more than 147,000 adults across three long-running cohorts for up to 30 years. The headline finding was surprisingly practical: people doing roughly 90 to 119 minutes of resistance training per week had a 13% lower risk of death from any cause compared with people doing none. The same range was associated with a 19% lower risk of cardiovascular mortality and a 27% lower risk of neurological disease mortality. 90-119 minutes of weekly resistance training was linked to a 13% lower risk of death from any cause. That does not prove lifting weights magically extends your life. This was observational research, which means it can show strong associations but cannot prove that resistance training alone caused the outcome. Still, the pattern is useful because it lines up with what exercise scientists, doctors, and anyone over 40 with a stubborn knee already know: muscle is not vanity tissue. It is infrastructure. The useful number is smaller than expected The most interesting part of the study is not that resistance training looked good. Most people already know they should be doing some version of it. The interesting part is the dose. Ninety to 120 minutes per week is not a professional-athlete schedule. It is two 45-minute sessions. It is three 30-minute sessions. It is a few focused blocks of squats, hinges, pushes, pulls, carries, and core work that ask your body to stay capable. ScienceDaily framed it plainly: 90 to 120 minutes of weekly strength training may be the sweet spot for reducing long-term mortality risk. Scientific American added the nuance that benefits appeared to plateau after about two hours per week. More training can still build more strength, more skill, or more muscle depending on the program. But for broad longevity, the study suggests the biggest health return may come from getting a manageable amount done consistently. That is good news, because the barrier for most people is not knowledge. It is repeatability. A perfect plan that leaves you too sore, too tired, or too annoyed to continue is not a longevity protocol. It is a short story. Strength is the stimulus. Recovery is the system. Resistance training works because it is a stressor. You load tissue, challenge coordination, create fatigue, and give the body a reason to adapt. Then the adaptation happens between sessions, when you sleep, eat, hydrate, downshift, and let the nervous system stop acting like every email is a bear. This is where contrast therapy fits. It should not be sold as a replacement for training, because it is not. Heat and cold do not build strength the way progressive loading does. What they can do is support the recovery environment around the habit. Sauna is the warmer half of that system. Heat exposure raises heart rate, increases sweating, and creates a cardiovascular load that feels very different from lifting but still asks the body to adapt. It can also be a practical transition out of the day: 15 to 30 minutes of heat, followed by a gradual cooldown, is a better evening ritual than answering one more Slack message while standing in the kitchen. Cold is the sharper tool. A cold plunge can help people feel more alert, reduce perceived soreness, and practice staying calm under stress. The timing matters. If your main goal is maximizing muscle growth from a heavy lifting session, many coaches recommend avoiding aggressive cold exposure immediately after training because blunting some inflammation may interfere with parts of the adaptation signal. If your goal is soreness management, mental reset, or getting ready for the rest of the day, cold can make more sense. The adult answer is not heat good, cold bad, or cold good, heat bad. It is matching the tool to the job. A simple weekly rhythm For someone trying to build the longevity habit without turning life into a spreadsheet, the week can stay simple. Two or three strength sessions handle the stimulus. Think full-body work: squat or lunge, hinge, push, pull, carry, and rotate. The goal is not to destroy yourself. The goal is to create enough challenge that your body has a reason to maintain muscle and capability. Sauna can be on training days or recovery days, especially when the goal is relaxation, circulation, and sleep support. A practical range is 15 to 30 minutes at a heat level you tolerate well, followed by a proper cooldown and hydration. If you are stacking sauna with training, start conservatively. The goal is adaptation, not proving you can suffer in multiple rooms. Cold can be used on non-lifting mornings, after conditioning, or later in the day when you want a nervous-system reset. If hypertrophy is the priority, give the lifting signal some space before going very cold. If consistency and soreness are the bigger problems, use cold where it helps you come back tomorrow. The best version of contrast therapy is not random intensity. It is a weekly rhythm that makes the training habit easier to repeat. The longevity stack is boring in the best way The study's main lesson is almost annoyingly reasonable: lift a little, do it every week, keep doing aerobic work, and do not assume more punishment equals more benefit. Medical News Today emphasized that the strongest pattern came from combining aerobic activity with resistance training. That matters because longevity is not built from one magic input. It is built from overlapping basics that protect different systems: muscle, heart, brain, metabolism, balance, sleep, mood, and recovery. Contrast therapy belongs in that stack because it helps people build a recovery practice around the work. Sauna can make recovery feel deliberate instead of passive. Cold can create a clear reset point. Together, they turn training into something more sustainable than a burst of motivation followed by a week of soreness and bargaining. The sweet spot is not just 90 minutes of strength training. It is 90 minutes you can keep doing. Key takeaways The new BJSM study followed more than 147,000 adults for up to 30 years. The strongest resistance-training range was roughly 90 to 119 minutes per week. That range was associated with 13% lower all-cause mortality, 19% lower cardiovascular mortality, and 27% lower neurological disease mortality compared with no resistance training. The benefits appeared to plateau after about 120 minutes per week for broad mortality risk. Strength training works best when paired with aerobic activity and a recovery system that makes the habit sustainable. Contrast therapy should support the training goal: sauna for heat exposure, relaxation, circulation, and cooldown rituals; cold for soreness, alertness, and nervous-system control when timed intelligently.
by Dr. Stacy Sims Nov 05, 2025 Cold plunging has exploded in popularity, with everyone from elite athletes to wellness influencers posting their ice bath rituals. But long before it hit social media, cold-water immersion was a Nordic tradition—often paired with saunas —as a way to build resilience, reset the mind, and connect socially. Those plunges weren’t just about recovery; they were about ritual, renewal, and community. Fast forward to today, and you’ve probably seen the claims: “Go as cold as possible for maximum benefit.” But as is so often the case in exercise and recovery science, what works for men doesn’t always work the same way for women. When I see women shivering in tubs of icy-cold water at 4°C (39°F) because they’ve been told it will boost metabolism, burn fat, or supercharge recovery, I want to jump in (literally) and explain: you don’t need to go that cold—and in many cases, it’s counterproductive. Let’s unpack what’s really happening physiologically, how cold exposure can support both health and performance, and why for women, the sweet spot often sits around 15°C (59°F)—not ice-cold extremes. Health vs. Performance: Two Different Goals Cold exposure has two broad uses: For health and longevity: to support metabolism, mitochondrial function, mood, and the neuroendocrine system. For athletic performance and recovery: to reduce inflammation, soreness, and muscle damage after training or competition. The mechanisms and optimal temperatures for these outcomes are not the same. If your goal is overall health and metabolic resilience, i.e., enhancing brown fat activity, dopamine release, or cold thermogenesis, then the aim is to trigger mild stress without overwhelming your system. That’s where moderate cold (around 14–15°C or 57-59°F) is most effective. When you plunge into near-freezing water, your body mounts an intense stress response: skin vasoconstriction, elevated catecholamines (adrenaline, noradrenaline), and a massive sympathetic surge. For men, this produces robust metabolic adaptations, such as more brown fat activation, greater thermogenic capacity, and stronger shifts in glucose metabolism. For women, though, that same extreme response can tip too far, elevating cortisol, suppressing thyroid activity, and blunting the very hormonal and metabolic benefits we’re trying to elicit. The Female Neuroendocrine Difference Men and women differ significantly in how the autonomic nervous system and thermoregulatory processes respond to cold. Women’s resting metabolic rate and core temperature regulation are influenced by estrogen and progesterone fluctuations across the menstrual cycle. Research shows that women generally vasoconstrict faster (reducing blood flow to the skin) and experience greater drops in core temperature during immersion, especially in the luteal phase when progesterone is high. This makes us more sensitive to cold stress. So, when women plunge into near-ice temperatures, the neuroendocrine system responds with a sharp spike in sympathetic activity and cortisol. Over time, that can disrupt menstrual regularity, blunt thyroid function, and impair recovery. In contrast, immersions at moderately cold temperatures—around 15°C (59°F)—produce a more balanced response: you still get the release of norepinephrine (for focus, alertness, and mood), mild shivering thermogenesis (for metabolic boost), and increased mitochondrial biogenesis, without tipping into chronic stress territory. This aligns with research from Suzana Søeberg and colleagues, who’ve shown that short immersions (2–5 minutes) at 14–15°C can activate cold-induced thermogenesis and brown adipose tissue while maintaining parasympathetic balance, which is especially important for women. RELATED: Check out my Microlearning Course on Heat & Cold What About Recovery and Performance? Now, if your goal is post-workout recovery—say after a hard race or heavy training session—cold water immersion can help reduce inflammation and muscle soreness. But again, temperature matters. For athletes, immersions in the 10–12°C range for 10 minutes post-session have been shown to reduce muscle damage and perceived soreness. However, if you’re using cold immersion every day, particularly right after strength training, you could blunt the very adaptations you’re working for. Cold dampens inflammatory signaling pathways (like mTOR and PGC-1α) that drive muscle and mitochondrial growth. In short, if you’re trying to get stronger, faster, or fitter—save the ice bath for competition recovery, not for after every gym session. Where Cold Can Help: Ovulation Pain and Endometriosis There are exceptions where targeted cold exposure can be beneficial for women’s health. Around ovulation, localized cold (not full-body immersion) can reduce inflammation and pain in women with ovulatory discomfort or endometriosis. Cold helps modulate prostaglandin activity and local blood flow which can be helpful for symptom management. But again, the context matters: this is therapeutic cooling, not whole-body ice bathing for metabolic gain. So What’s the Ideal Protocol for Women? Based on the collective evidence and what we see in both lab data and lived experience for active women, here’s the framework I recommend: For general health and metabolic benefits: Temperature: 14–15°C (57–59°F) Duration: 2–5 minutes Frequency: 3–4 times per week Timing: Morning or post-sauna; avoid right after strength sessions For recovery post-competition or heavy training block: Temperature: 10–12°C (50–54°F) Duration: Up to 10 minutes Timing: Within 2 hours of intense activity; not used daily For symptom relief (ovulation/endometriosis): Localized cooling (cold compress or partial immersion) Keep it brief and targeted Cold exposure can absolutely be a powerful tool for women’s health—but like so many things, the dose makes the difference . The emerging science shows that women’s optimal cold exposure lies in the middle ground: cold enough to challenge you, not so extreme that it drives chronic stress or hormonal disruption. For men, plunging into ice baths may deliver bigger metabolic and vascular adaptations. For women, smarter—not colder—is better. Women are not small men—and just like everything else—our physiology deserves its own protocol.
The first cold plunge is not a habit. It is a negotiation.
The new season is a great reason to make and keep resolutions. Whether it’s eating right or cleaning out the garage, here are some tips for making and keeping resolutions.
