Do cold showers help brain fog?

written by Adriana

posted on Oct 8, 2022

Whether you are a youngster or an adult, you may have experienced a lack of concentration, mental cloudiness and disorganised thinking. However, it was so short and temporary, that you didn’t pay attention.

Until it happened again.

Your ability to think became slower and multitasking suddenly vanished, as you experienced a symptom known as a “brain fog”.

In this article, I will explain what is a “brain fog” and share practical tips on how cold showers helped me to regain my mental clarity.

What is brain fog?

“Brain fog” is not a medical condition, but a combination of symptoms, such as confusion, difficulty concentrating, and processing thoughts into words. “Brain fog” is often caused by sleep deprivation, stress, medication, chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), dementia, post-viral infection, poor nutrition, depression, and excess sugar consumption.

Although these symptoms are not a medical condition, your well-being and productivity are highly affected.

The term “brain fog” is not used in the medical or scientific world, however, individuals who experience a“foggy memory” use this analogy to describe their slowed thinking.

Generally, mental fatigue may have a variety of underlying causes, however personally I realised it was due to lack of sleep and chronic stress.

“Brain fog” is a subjective experience and at the moment there are no tests to measure it. However, if you need prompts to evaluate your state, you may check this quiz.

When do you get brain fog?

“Our lifestyle choices affect our sleep, which directly impacts whether we have brain fog.”

Andrew Huberman

Often, people experience “brain fog” after waking up, which is the morning state when you are not fully awake, and feel grogginess. In scientific literature, it is called sleep inertia due to waking up from a deep sleep. This transition from lower arousal to the state when you are fully awake usually doesn’t exceed 30 min.

Since the brain functions differently when you are awake compared to deep sleep, sleep inertia happens when your brain tries to get more blood flow after the night.

The best way to combat sleep inertia is a gradual waking up or activation of the sympathetic nervous system.

When I moved to London, I started having this unforgettable feeling of slower thinking, poor decision-making and even short-term memory loss. Going through the day without being able to focus on one task or multitasking was becoming more and more difficult.

For those who lived in London, or travel for holidays, the image of the underground is familiar.

After a few weeks, I noticed I was feeling drowsy every time I commute.

So, as a researcher who likes experimenting, I decided to do research for an effective zero-cost method to reduce my “brain fog” and stepped on the cold shower.

So, can a cold shower help with brain fog?

What do cold showers do to your brain?

A cold shower can help to get rid of brain fog because it makes you breathe faster so your brain cells get more oxygen which leads to faster transmission of nerve signals in your body and you become more alert and focused. It increases cerebral blood flow and leads to narrowing of your vessels – vasoconstriction – so your heart rate increases.

Also, a cold shower activates the sympathetic nervous system by increasing the release of neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, adrenaline and endorphins, playing important role in mood regulation and cognition.

The rationale behind the cold showers is based on the phenomenon called hormesis – a small amount of stressful trigger benefiting health. Here are several examples: holding breath, hyperventilation exercise, and heat shock such as sauna).

A cold shower is one of them.

Although it is similar to electroconvulsive therapy, it has no harmful effects and doesn’t lead to memory loss or seizures. There is a greater density of cold receptors (3-10 times higher) in the skin compared to warm receptors. At the moment when all cold receptors start firing simultaneously, and pressure receptors are activated, your brain is overwhelmed.

It has a shock with positive effects since all these factors lead to a great number of electrical impulses coming from peripheral nerves to the sensory cortex in the brain.

However, there is one essential element to get benefits from a cold shower.

Your mindset.

How to prepare your mind for a cold shower?

Prior to the cold shower, I was thinking about the negative effects and how painful the experience will be, focusing on the reasons why I don’t have to do it.

“I may get a cold, a warm shower is better than cold, you are giving too much stress to yourself, you need to be compassionate to yourself” – all these thoughts were coming up in my mind.

I noticed them but directed my attention towards the reason why I do it. Studies show that mindset and the positive perception of stress affect your physiology differently.

If you want to learn more, I would recommend this podcast on mindset for health and performance.

And started “counting walls”.

I tried to imagine mental obstacles and how I resist them, thinking about the reasoning why I’m doing it, which helped me to stay despite my heart pumping faster and my brain looking for an escape.

Overall, this mental exercise was the reason I stayed longer in the cold shower and boosted my dopamine by 250%.

Tips on taking a cold shower to get rid of brain fog

Aim to have deliberate cold exposure for 11 minutes per week (in total).

It may be 2-4 cold showers lasting from 1 minute up to 5 minutes. These values are taken from the recent study exploring the effects of cold exposure on health.

Choose the right temperature.

The ideal cold shower would be the one that makes you think “ this is really cold, but I can stay in.” Although it varies from one individual to another (for me it’s 45°F, while for my friend is 60 °F).

The colder the water, the shorter exposure.

If you have a very cold shower (40 °F), even 20 seconds may be enough to increase adrenaline.

Start with a warm shower and always end with cold water.

If you do deliberate cold exposure often, you will start feeling more comfortable and tolerate colder temperatures.

Allow yourself to shiver.

Don’t cross your arms during the cold shower or after and don’t towel off. By increasing shivering you let your body accelerate metabolism and reheat naturally. It was a big challenge for me, as I wanted to move, towel dry, and jump into a sauna, but you get more benefits due to shivering releasing succinate from the muscles.

In this way, you activate brown fat thermogenesis.

When you take a cold shower, you may feel the need to move or scream, which is totally normal.

This is due to adrenaline release, which makes us feel agitated and alert, and serves as a great preparation for mental/physical tasks.

Try the “Counting Walls” approach.

It will help you to keep top-down control and stay in the cold shower despite your mind telling you to stop it. Set a goal to imagine 3-5 mental walls, and perceive the effects as adrenaline by-products, that improve mind-body connection by staying under the stress exposure until it passes.

Personally, I found cold showers stressful during the first few seconds. However, after daily deliberate cold showers in the morning, I got used to it.

I started thinking that I may become the new James Bond fighting with mental obstacles by exposing myself to cold showers longer.

Maybe that’s the reason quick cold showers are known as “Scottish showers” or “James Bond showers”?

Without a doubt, James Bond knew about the benefits of the cold shower and kept his mind sharp!

After two weeks of cold showers in the morning, I noticed that my body adapted to the sensations and my mental abilities improved:

I was able to concentrate longer
programming tasks didn’t seem as complicated as they used to
I wasn’t overthinking but was ready to act e.g. wrote emails, asked for help, expressed my opinion
I spend less time on decision making
I was able to cook faster without thinking about the recipes, movements or planning in advance
I felt more energised during the day and crossed all the tasks from my to-do list

NOTE: If you have heart problems or you are pregnant, you must consult this with your doctor before trying a cold shower.

Never do hyperventilation (increased breathing exercise) before or during the cold shower. When you start, start slowly, as you would do when you begin to exercise. You start with what you are capable of today.

Also, a temperature lower than 95 °F (35 ° C) may lead to hypothermic shock, however, it takes 30 minutes to develop the full effects of hypothermia.

Final Word

Experiencing “brain fog” may be irritating and frustrating, as it affects your life quality and well-being. Being efficient at work, enjoying meeting with friends when you are able to process thoughts into words and, learning new tasks depends on your cognition, thus your brain.

If you leave “brain fog” without acknowledging this symptom and underlying cause and continue doing what you do, it will persist, and lead to a more severe mental cloudiness, fatigue and confusion.

However, a quick cold shower may help you to wave goodbye to “brain fog“ by releasing dopamine and getting your cognitive abilities back.

What do you do when you experience brain fog? Do you take a cold shower or you preffer a warm bath? Let us know in the comments section below!

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With better awareness, better results

A&A

Hi there!

Thank you for stopping by! We are neuroscientists by day and digital creators by night who are passionate about self-development, personal growth and a healthy mindset. 🧠

We met when studying Master’s degree in Clinical, Social and Cognitive Neuroscience at City, University of London and instantly realised that we had a lot in common!

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