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New research says cold plunges are overrated. Long live hot baths.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

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It's safe to say that cold plunges, or several-minute-long ice baths, are having a moment. Athletes have been using them forever to recover from workouts and rigorous games (the ancient Greeks even liked it!), but at some point in recent years, cold plunging entered the zeitgeist as an everyday therapy for normal people.

Celebrities like Drake and Justin Bieber can be seen submerging themselves in frigid water on social media. Joe Rogan relentlessly evangelizes the benefits of cold plunging to his listeners. Fitness influencers all over the globe are pushing cold plunging as the key to unlocking better results.

What are the benefits of cold plunging? For starters, it reduces inflammation in muscles, which reduces soreness. It also makes you feel absolutely amazing, as the shock of the cold water causes an intense rush of adrenaline and dopamine in the body, creating a sort of natural high that can last for hours. Some experts claim that cold plunges can reduce anxiety and stress, boost metabolism, and even keep you from getting sick!

All that with very little drawbacks, the main one being that hopping neck-deep into 50 degree water is intensely uncomfortable.

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New research out of Ritsumeikan University in Japan is throwing some cold water on the trend. According to the study, a good old fashioned hot bath is a better choice for more people. And more fun, too.

Researchers took a group of 10 men and had them perform high-intensity exercise. Afterwards, one group soaked in a cold tub, one in a hot tub, and one just sat in a normal room as a control.

Not long after their 20-minute soak, the men performed high jumps, and the researchers measured how high they were able to jump.

The three-part study put the men through the rotation several times, so each man had eventually tried the cold tub, hot tub, and control room.

The findings showed that the men who soaked in the hot tub performed the best in the athletic testing afterwards.

Turns out, there's a downside to constricting the blood flow to your muscles and reducing inflammation and soreness. You also block the delivery of key nutrients and rich, oxygenated blood that promotes recovery.

Mamoru Tsuyuki, a master’s student in sports and health science and author of the study, reasoned that cold plunges still have their place when someone's injured or dealing with tremendous soreness. You can see why a Major League pitcher might dunk his arm in ice immediately after a game.

But most normal people don't need to hop into an ice bath after a workout. A hot soak is a lot more comfortable and will probably do a better job of helping those muscles recover quickly. Warmth and better bloodflow will also prioritize building new muscles rather than minimizing soreness.


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(It's also worth mentioning that, unlike a hot bath, cold plunging can be pretty dangerous. If the water is too cold, you risk going into shock or hypothermia.)

Overall, the scientific community is skeptical at best of the supposed amazing benefits to cold plunging. So why did it get so popular?

The fitness community has a new cold plunge every few years.

For a while, we were sure that High-Intensity Interval Training was THE answer to all your exercise woes. Then it was foam rollers that were going to unlock all of your flexibility and mobility and send your soreness packing. Same with cupping. Then it was the massage gun, the ultimate workout recovery tool. And on and on with Peloton and Bowflex and those vibrating As Seen on TV ab belts.

The truth we don't want to admit is that everybody's body is different, and what works well for one person may not work for us. That's because it's not an easy idea to sell, it's not profitable. No one wants to buy a $5,000 cold plunge set up unless they're convinced it's going to change their life.

So influencers play up the benefits. It's what they do.

Some people love cold plunging, and they have every right to enjoy it! Others find it miserable, and that's OK, too. Cold plunging has legitimate scientific benefits, but it also has drawbacks, dangers, and a whole lot of pseudo-science behind it. It's absolutely OK if you'd rather take a warm bath or soak in the hot tub after a workout.

Now you have scientific evidence in your corner next time someone tries to pressure you into an ice bath. Just say, "Nah, I'm prioritizing bloodflow and muscle recovery today. But you have fun."

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Study shows people with these 5 personality traits are more satisfied in life.

The surprising findings are a bit of a good news/bad news situation.

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If you were to try to pinpoint the things that might lead someone to say they're satisfied with their life, there might be a few obvious choices.

Things like having fulfilling relationships, an enjoyable career, good physical health, and a decent salary seem like a good starting point.

But while all of those things definitely play a role in how happy we are, a new study shows that there are much bigger factors at play — and that they come entirely from within.

A new study shows that people with certain personality types and traits are more likely to be satisfied with their lives.

A meta-analysis published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology revealed some fascinating insights about the long-studied realm of Life Satisfaction — which seems like a super important thing to get to the bottom of!

Regardless of what was going on in someone's relationships or career, researchers were able to predict with a high level of accuracy someone's satisfaction level based on their scores in the Big Five personality domains.


woman in black and white tank top Photo by Caique Nascimento on Unsplash

The characteristics people shared that lead to a higher likelihood of them being satisfied were:

  • Emotionally stable
  • Extroverted
  • Conscientious
  • Agreeable
  • Open

(Openness and agreeableness were correlated with high satisfaction, but less so than the other traits.)

Data was collected twice over a ten year period, and researchers found that people who were highly satisfied tended to stay that way — providing even more evidence that outside circumstance, which naturally ebbs and flows through the years, didn't play a large role.

Some feelings and traits that were highly correlated with feeling low satisfaction were "misunderstood, unexcited, indecisive, envious, bored, used, unable, and unrewarded" according to the study.

The findings could seem like bad news for people who feel they might score the opposite way in the Big Five. As an introvert myself, I have to admit my heart sank a bit when I saw the list. But don't worry, there's plenty of hopes for all of us.

The good news is that personality can change over time, and it's quite common for people to see big changes in the "Big Five" personality traits as they age.


woman taking photo while showing smile Photo by Gabriel Silvério on Unsplash

Even if you're a closed-minded, emotionally unstable introvert, that doesn't mean you're doomed to a lifetime of dissatisfaction. It's just a correlation. There are lots of happy people on all ends of the spectrum.
And better yet, our personalities can and will change over time, especially if we want them to.

In particular, becoming more conscientious and agreeable as you get older is quite common! Changes in some personality traits even continue into our sixties and beyond.

You can even become more extraverted over time, if you're motivated to do so. It doesn't seem super fair, but the modern world is definitely biased toward making extroverts feel comfortable (especially in America), so it makes sense that introverts may need to adapt in some ways to feel that they're living their best life.

Essentially, introverts can "fake it 'til you make it" by adopting certain extroverted behaviors until they start to feel a change in the way they see themselves. You may never be a true "life of the party" type but you can cultivate your inner extrovert.

(It would also be great if modern schools and workplaces met introverts at least halfway.)

If that fails, you can always work on being more open-minded and conscientious.

Once you understand that our personalities are fluids, the new findings about life satisfaction should be seen as a good thing. Almost everything we need to feel fulfilled and content with our lives is already inside of us, and it's not as dependent on our jobs or romantic relationships as we previously thought.

While being in good physical health or making a good salary are definitely a big leg up, happiness really comes from how you see the world and how you approach the problems you do have.

It's not a simple on-off switch, but I think it's amazing news that just because external factors beyond your control might be making things hard, there's always room to grow into a more satisfied approach to life.

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Wellness

If mosquitoes won't leave you alone, it could be because of what's happening in your body

They seem to be attracted to viruses.

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Mosquitoes are attracted to certain viral smells in both humans and mice.

As much as I love summer, there is one thing I could do without: bugs. More specifically, mosquitoes. Those pesky little buggers can wreak havoc on a beautiful summer day. Who hasn't spent time outside in summer and then come in all itchy and covered in bites? There are multiple reasons why some people are more susceptible to mosquito bites than others, but there's a new one that likely isn't on people's radars. Mosquitoes could be attracted to the odor certain viruses create in the body.

There is evidence that mosquitoes are attracted to the odor given off by mice infected by the parasite that causes malaria. Now, a team is looking at how the scent of mosquito-borne viruses such as dengue and Zika would attract mosquitoes to people rather than mice.

For those who may be unfamiliar with the two viruses, the most important thing to know about them both is how dangerous they are to humans. Some effects of dengue include vomiting, aches and pains, and in severe cases, internal bleeding, according to the CDC. Zika virus is best known for being dangerous for pregnant women, as it can cause certain kinds of birth defects in fetuses, per the CDC.

Because both viruses rely on mosquitoes for transmission, it begs the question: Do people infected with either viruses give off extra tasty odors? That's what the team was looking to discover.

"I mean, the infection just increase[s] the chance to be located by a mosquito," Penghua Wang, an immunologist with University of Connecticut Health, told NPR.

Wang and the rest of his team set out to find out if it's true that infected people become mosquito chow, and undertook a study, which was recently published in the journal Cell. In the study, they blew two different types of air: one infected with either of the two viruses and one without, over two different groups of mice. As to be expected, the mosquitoes buzzed around those infected mice like they were a buffet dinner.

"These two viruses can alter a person's body odor to be more attractive to mosquitoes," Wang said. What happens is that the smell alters the skin's microbiome to make it more appetizing to the blood-sucking little critters. Wang explained to NPR that he was "excited" by this new development as it could lead to a lot of understanding of virus transmission by mosquitoes.

While this is an incredibly positive prospect, it's important to keep in mind that experimenting on mice isn't really the same as experimenting on people. And just because this is going well with mice doesn't mean it will go well with people. But, during the study, the team discovered that people infected with dengue had similar attention from the mosquitoes.

The other promising thing? Since they've discovered the attraction, they were also able to find a possible treatment plan. They discovered that when they gave the sick mice a vitamin A supplement, the mosquitoes lost interest. Knowing this information can help researchers explore how Zika and dengue spread. According to Wang, in some of the areas where dengue and Zika are most common, many people are vitamin A deficient.

Whatever they discover, I'm very curious to see if this information will offer insight on not only how diseases get spread, but also what makes people (like me) more susceptible to getting bitten in the first place.


This article originally appeared on 7.6.22




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Studies reveal women don't react to sexual harassment the way they imagine they would

Most women predict they'd feel angry and confront the harasser, but that's not how real-life scenarios played out.

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When it comes to sexual harassment, imagined reactions play out differently in real life.

It's easy to imagine what we'd do or how we'd respond to imaginary scenarios, playing the hero in an emergency, speaking up when we witness an injustice or confronting someone who mistreats us.

Real life, however, can feel different than we expect it to as emotions and fight-or-flight chemicals flood our minds and bodies.

Two studies illustrate this reality when it comes to responding to sexual harassment, finding that imagined responses don't tend to play out in real-life harassment scenarios.

A 2002 study published by Julie A. Woodzicka and Marianne LaFrance in the Journal of Social Issues examined the way women anticipated they would respond to sexual harassment in imagined scenarios vs. how women respond when facing a real sexual harassment scenario in a job interview and found that the two did not match up.

Psychologist Kaidi W, Ph.D. shared excerpts from the study on X, illustrating the study's key findings.

Setting up a real sexual harassment scenario posed an ethical dilemma for the study design, as they couldn't create severe harassment without the subjects knowing. They created a job interview that participants thought was real and had the male interviewer intersperse three sexually intrusive questions amidst regular questions:

"Do you have a boyfriend?"

"Do people find you desirable?"

"Do you think it's important for women to wear bras to work?"

When presented with such questions in an imagined scenario, women shared how they predicted they'd respond. "The most prominent emotion women imagined they'd feel was anger (27%), while fear was rarely mentioned (2%)," Wu wrote. "62% of women said they'd confront the interviewer. 68% said they'd refuse to answer at least one harassing questions."

However, when the researchers set up the job interview, women facing the questions in real life reacted very differently. None of them refused to answer all the questions, none confronted the interviewer, none left the interview, and none reported the harasser to the supervisor.

Notably, the most prominent emotion women experienced in the real scenario was fear. "Simply put, women imagined feeling angry, but women in the situation were actually afraid," the authors wrote.

"It is noteworthy that the self-reports of being afraid were not due merely to actually being in an interview situation in contrast to an imagined interview situation," the authors added. "For when we compared interviewees in the sexually harassing interview to those who got the surprising but nonharassing questions, we found that women who were asked harassing questions reported feeling significantly more afraid than did their nonharassed counterparts."

Another finding was that women facing the harassing questions exhibited more non-Duchenne smiling (basically feigning a smile) than the others. Non-Duchenne smiling is associated with accommodation or appeasement as opposed to genuine pleasure. The authors suggest that the women may have been smiling in such a manner to signal that they were "willing to play by the rules so that they could get out of that place."

Another study from 2023 also found a gap between how people think they'd respond to a sexually harassing situation vs. how they actually do.

A study by the University of Exeter, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and published in Psychology of Women Quarterly, found that people who imagined a sexual harassment scenario predicted that they would feel a strong need to take formal action, such as reporting the harassment to authorities.

But people who had actually experienced harassment shared different needs that often overrode the need for immediate justice

Senior author Manuela Barreto, from the University of Exeter said: “We found there is a widely held belief that quick and formal reporting is the correct response to sexual harassment. It’s what’s generally meant with the phrase ‘coming forward.' Yet most people who are sexually harassed do not report it formally and those who do, often report the offence a significant time after it happened."

“There is an assumption that those who experience sexual harassment are primarily guided by their desire for justice," shared lead author Thomas Morton of the University of Copenhagen who worked on the research at the University of Exeter. "But this research shows that peoples’ needs are wider than what others might expect, and include needs for safety, personal control, and for life to just return to normal. Of all the needs that people expressed, the need for justice was not the highest priority. This might explain why people don’t take the kind of formal actions, like reporting to police, that others expect them to."

"If you have not experienced sexual harassment, it is hard to accurately anticipate what you might need, and therefore what you would do to satisfy those needs," Morton added. "Our research suggests that the assumptions people make are often wrong, or at least don’t reflect what the people who have experienced sexual harassment say they need.”

The Me Too movement brought needed awareness to how often women face sexual harassment, but it also raised a lot of questions about why women don't confront or come forward to report it. These studies are a good reminder that we don't truly know how we are going to feel or respond until we are facing a real-life scenario ourselves, so we can't truly judge how another person handles an experience with sexual harassment. They also help us expand our understanding of how easy it is to underestimate fear and a sense of security as primary motivating factors in our responses, even if we are convinced our righteous anger and justice will override them.

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