I am generally wary of folk cures. But when I’m hearing something at the kind of volume — I mean both quantity and loudness here — that cold-plunging has taken on, and my editors are asking what cultural trend I might want to explore for our new I Did It column, it seemed to me that it was time to get out the old bathing suit. The cold plunge has moved from Europe to stateside spas, from a bag of ice and your own bathtub to a $60+ sauna-then-ice-pool experience, and anyone I mentioned it to claimed that cold-plunging cured them. Of what, you ask? Of everything: Panic attacks, anxiety, overeating, “brown fat,” vaping(!), a million things. What I found was something I seem to be destined to keep learning, which is that if something works, you shouldn’t ask more questions.
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