Bradley Cooper does a daily cold plunge. Should you?

Cold plunging is a practice of cold therapy that involves total or partial immersion into water that is below 60 degrees Fahrenheit for a short period of time. Andrew Jagim, director of sports medicine research at the Mayo Clinic Health System, tells Yahoo Life that immersion can be continuous or done in multiple intermittent sessions. Most people start at 30 seconds.

It s common practice among athletes or fitness enthusiasts to either start the day with a cold plunge or follow a workout or training session with a cold plunge, with the intent of improving recovery, he says.

Cold plunging is said to improve muscle recovery by inducing what Jagim refers to as a state of vasoconstriction, in which the blood vessels rapidly constrict to redirect blood flow to central organs. In doing so, it can limit inflammation in muscles post-exercise.

However, it s not just people doing intense physical activity who are participating in cold immersion therapy. Jagim says he s seen claims that cold plunging has helped treat symptoms of chronic pain or resulted in improvements in mood and bolstered resilience to stress, which can aid in immune system functioning.

While people across the internet have listed these potential benefits as fact, experts admit that there s limited research to back them up. François Haman, a health science professor at the University of Ottawa in Canada who has studied cold exposure for two decades, is among them.

via www.yahoo.com

I begin each day with a brief swim in our unheated pool. It’s invigorating and not too painful. The temperature of the water gets as low as the high fifties. Hardly cold except to us SoCal sorts. I think of the swimming club that swims without wet suits in SF bay. People who wear wet suits they call “wet suit weenies.”