The James Bond Shower

A Shot of Cold Water for Health and Vitality  

James Bond always starts off his water (in the shower) nice and hot and then, turn it down to cold for the last few minutes. Perhaps a subtle way to illustrate Bond’s ancestry since this type of shower is sometimes known as the ‘Scottish Shower’ (although many cultures have this routine).

Hilarious History (as it usually is)

Hot water used to be a luxury in the ancient times, unless you lived near hot springs, so for most of human history, people bathed in cold water. However, even after the Greeks invented a heating system for their public baths, they continued cold showers for health benefits. Although they also made ill people bleed or induced vomit…

During the first century, the Finnish would sweat it out in the ancient version of a sauna and then, jump into an ice-cold stream or lake, a past-time also known as icehole swimming and still enjoyed by modern Finns and Scandinavians. And by those stupid Americans in movies, who fall into the ice, get stuck and die.

I'm still considering whether or not to add this to my bucket list. What say?

Many other cultures also incorporated cold water dousing during religious ceremonies. Native American tribes would alternate between sweating it out in a sweat lodge and jumping into a snow bank. Ancient Russians also took frequent plunges for health and spiritual cleansings. Who’s betting that Vodka was involved? Japanese Shinto practitioners would stand under an icy waterfall as a part of a ritual called Misogi to cleanse their spirit and is still practiced today.

In the 1820s, a German farmer named Vincenz Priessnitz started touting a new medical treatment called ‘hydrotherapy’ which used cold water to cure everything from broken bones to erectile dysfunction. Shhh…Don’t tell the pharmaceutical companies, they’ve got billions of dollars in this research! He converted his house into a sanitarium and patients flocked to it in the hope that his cold water cure could help them. Why couldn’t they just take long cold water baths? This soon spread to the rest of Europe and United States and people took to it like a duck to water - haha get it? – Charles Darwin was one of them (a chronically sick guy in addition to coming up with evolution). By the end of the 19^th century, there were over 200 hydrotherapy/sanitarium  resorts in the US, the most famous founded by John Harvey Kellogs (Inventor of corn flakes, preacher of circumcision to prevent self-abuse and great believer in the power of enemas).

What is practised in the name of hydrotherapy these days. Just looks like a $60 bath.

Although its popularity declined over the 20^th century as more physicians started to adopt allopathic medicine rather than holistic approaches which were seen as pseudo-hokum. While ice-cold baths are not prescribed for illness cures, they are still used to treat injuries such as sprained muscles and broken bones.

Real Benefits of a Cold Shower

1. Jump-start your mood and motivation
2. Deepen your breathing
3. Keep your hair healthy
4. Help with insomnia (although warm showers are also known for doing the same thing)
5. Detoxify your body
6. Rejuvenate, heal, and tone the skin
7. Enhance immunity against infections and cancer
8. Give your glands (thyroid, adrenal, ovaries/testes) a boost, improving hormonal activity
9. Crank up your metabolism to fight type 2 diabetes, obesity, gout, rheumatic diseases etc…
10. Increase testosterone and also virility
11. Reduce stress by regulating your autonomic nervous system
12. Strengthen exhausted, irritable nerves
13. Normalize your blood pressure
14. Train and improve your blood circulation
15. Fight fatigue
16. Improve kidney function
17. Reduce swelling and oedema
18. Improve lymphatic circulation, thereby increasing immune function
19. Regulate temperature, fighting chronically cold hands and cold feet and excessive sweating
20. Improve haemorrhoids and varicose veins
21. Decrease chronic pain
22. Reduce aches and pains

People who shouldn't try this: If you have the following conditions – heart disease, high blood pressure, overheated or feverish

Steps for the perfect James Bond Shower

1. Start off with the hot water.
2. Wash your hair with some Pinaud Elixir shampoo, just like 007.
3. When you’re ready to rinse, turn on the cold water. Bond would spend a few minutes under the cold water, meditating about a lost love or on how awesome his job is.
4. As you walk out of the shower, kill the hitman that’s been hiding in the closet using nothing by a towel and a Scotch glass.
5. Say a pithy one liner and proceed to put on a tux.

My personal advice (if anyone cares), is take it with a pinch of salt. If you want to try this, gradually decrease the temperature so your body can adjust.

Most importantly, listen to your body, it knows best.