Here’s What Taking A Cold Shower Every Day Really Does To Your Body

It’s early in the morning, and you have to get ready for work. So you jump into the shower, turn on the tap, and enjoy… icy cold water. Ugh. Most of us shudder at the idea. We prefer our showers hot and steamy. But maybe it’s time to consider a spritz with the chilly stuff. 

Most people do love a hot shower, when it’s available. But it hasn’t always been that way. Hot showers have in fact only been a part of our lives since 1810, when the crafty English came up with the invention. It wasn’t until 1850, though, that they figured out plumbing so that you didn’t have to shower in the same water every day!

But even then, the hot shower was a privilege of the rich, and the rest of us had to make do with chilly splashes out of a bucket or baths. That changed in the 1920s, when showers became commonly available in the United States. The British were a bit slow to the party, though, only embracing showers decades later.

Cold showers have a longer pedigree, appearing in public baths in a primitive form in ancient Greece. During the 1760s William Feetham came up with a more up-to-date version in England. For some reason, in the early days showers were often put on wheels. Perhaps the creators believed that it was hard to fit a proper wash into a busy day. 

Of course, not even the ancient Greeks invented washing the body. In the Bronze Age, the people who lived in what’s now Pakistan, called the Harappans, had advanced plumbing. While we don’t know whether they ever heated water, the Romans certainly did. Their bathhouses had complex hot-water systems.