Am I the only one who turns the water on full blast cold at the end of my shower and freezes themselves out for a minute or two?

Lately the water has been exceptionally cold!

Not on purpose, although my water heater does it for me automatically sometimes...

Not a fan...

I do that some times..

I love a good cold shower in the summer too.

Do you have a reason for this? Like I've heard after spending time in a hottub its good to dip in cooler water to close your pores up. Supposedly less pimples develop this way. Just wondering.

I hear frequently switching between glacier water and scolding hot water in a shower is a good way to relax sore muscles after an intense workout. Other than that, I have no idea why another human with functioning nerves would do this.

Yeah, I have heard that pore thing and imagine it can help. I've heard it helps with circulation, and it's definitely helped my tolerance to cold.

Additionally, it's pleasantly warm feeling in the room when I shut the water off! That's the biggest thing I guess.


Also, there is a hot Bulgarian girl in my Remote Sensing class and the cold shower helps keep me calm for at least that long.

if i'm taking a shower before work and i am tired from lack of sleep i'll do it

a sudden blast of cold water is better than caffeine

During the summer I would do that. Though these months I try to avoid the cold as much as possible.

I did sit in an outdoor hot tub the other night. I wonder if just getting out and being in the cold counts as dipping in cold water.

Not here, Scalding-Babies hot all the way.

I usually do a cold shower after an intense workout, or after mowing the lawn during the Texas summer. Other than that, I'm always a fan of a nice hot shower.

Christ no.

Shrinkage is unpleasant.

The "hands waving around while yelling SCIENCE" answer is:

Hot things expand. Your body is no different. As the hot water hits you, your blood vessels expand and more blood is able to move through your muscles. When you switch to cold, the muscles constrict, slowing the blood flow. Repeating this essentially "pumps" the blood through your muscles, giving it a chance to clean out toxins, etc.

Although I really wouldn't do iceberg and scalding. Hot and Cold will often do just fine. After my workouts I like to do 10 or so 30-45 second intervals.

It sucks, but you feel amazing afterward, and it really cuts down on soreness.

I usually do it so that my body won't be hot (and thus I won't sweat) when I get out of the shower.

More fun to go from a sauna to a wintery lake, but yes, I do this, especially when staying up late writing. Much less pleasant to do when I'm waking up in the morning.

Not totally cold, but I do finish off with a temperature significantly cooler than what I use for most of my shower. Makes getting out easier, as well as drying off.

Yeah, that's bull****. It helps because your blood flows better when the tissue is warm which promotes healing. The cold helps reduce soreness and swelling. It does not "pump" the blood. Your heart does that just fine. And it's not cleaning out "toxins."

I cannot rapidly change temperatures, so I take showers that are only slightly warm.

I never heard of Remote Sensing, that sounds like your developing a supernatural ability.

Hmm, I don't really like them. But I live in a 4-story student housing building with 16 people in each story (which is in fact a single house)... 64 people using 2 water boilers in the morning tend to mean the water is cold...

I thought I would do cloudbursting and **** but it's about taking pictures of the earth with satellites. I was pretty disappointed.

Then I realized that I already have a solid and inviting resume in a related field from my 'intelligence' work in the Marines and that I only have to take five classes to get a fancy certificate. Teacher says signs point to yes that I could get a good job with just that with my background.

WHO NOES, maybe I will get my 4 year degree in GEOGRAPHY and then I can just do that vocational part of the film degree, yes sir that sounds like a good plan to me....

Went skiing last week in the alps with a bunch of friends, had a ski in/ski out chalet with a jacuzzi...one of the german girls decided to show us the hot->cold thing with the snow.

The guys then decided this was a challenge and each day it got more and more stupid in terms of how much snow you covered yourself with before jumping back in. I did a good penguin impression one day sliding down a slope...suffice to say my whole front was a little red afterwards...and man did it tingle when jumping back in.

and Emon, I think happydud was just over simplifying it, going from hot to cold does "pump" the blood away from the muscles in the sense that the body detects a rapid reduction in temperature and starts to divert the blood from the extremities to the "core". Hence there is a rapid flow of blood from the external muscles in your legs/arms etc to your internal organs and the "toxins" refer to the lactic acid that has built up. That's my understanding anyway, cold baths after rowing in my years at Uni were an absolute must otherwise I couldn't move the following few days.

That makes sense. I think Emon was mostly against talk of 'toxins' in general, because the vast majority of what you hear is nonsense made up by nutritionists and alternative medicine practitioners.

Before I met my wife, who takes blazing hot baths/showers, I would take ice cold showers, even in the winter. I was one of those over-active people that never sat still & was always hot, so a cold shower just felt better. I've gotten used to taking warm showers now, out of convenience (we often take showers together & constantly changing the temperature back & forth gets old really quickly) but I still enjoy a cold shower after a long day at work or after a good hike.

If it doesn't sear the flesh from my bones and liquefy my fat, I don't want to know.

I always rinse cold at the end of a shower. I don't adjust temperature well, so it helps me stay a comfortable temperature after getting out, and also keeps my pores dainty after the hot wash opens and cleans them.

I can't tell if you're joking or not. Do they really use satellite photography for cloud bursting now? And you still haven't explained what your Remote Sensing class is about.

It was an oversimplified explanation, hence the "hands waving around while yelling SCIENCE" bit. The "pumping" action is vasoconstriction followed by vasodialation. The "toxins" are things that the body produces during intense exercise to aid the muscles, but then need are absorbed into the bloodstream to be carried back to the liver to be filtered out of the body. Some people claim one of these "toxins" is called lactic acid, though there is some debate over whether or not it actually exists.

Around here we call those snowers.

You are kidding, right? Lactic acid is used in cellular respiration when oxygen is insufficient (like during hard exercise). It's not "toxic" and does not cause muscle soreness. Absolutely no biologist would disagree with this. This is literally biology 101.

I see how my post would be confusing. I haven't had any alcohol in a while...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_remote_sensing

The class covers the basics of that. It also has a portion on Geographic Information Systems (capitalized, natch) which is a bunch of **** that is tied to location.

Supposedly it's one of the fastest growing high tech thingies or whatever.

I personally don't see it as useful except for tagging and tracking hot girls.

This. I rarely want to be cold.