People with chronic pain experience a lot of stress
Or are you more susceptible to pain when you experience a lot of stress? You can reverse it. The constant pain stimulus causes our nervous system to become overloaded and “hypersensitive,” which in turn causes it to transmit even more pain stimuli. Even stimuli that would not necessarily be painful.
Getting a grip on pain
To get a better handle on this, change from multiple angles is important. Nutrition plays a role, releasing trigger points and connective tissue, desensitizing the nervous system, controlling stressors and negative thoughts, restoring mind-body connection, as well as getting exercise.
Training blood vessels with the goal of reducing chronic pain.
With cold training, you strengthen your blood vessels, your immune system and reduce pain sensations. By briefly exposing your body to cold, blood flow to less vital body parts is temporarily cut off. In fact, it is vital that the body not cool down beyond 35°C so that the heart can continue to pump properly. Because of this prioritization of vital organs, your arms, your legs will receive less blood flow. Blood vessels constrict, arms and legs begin to tingle and may give a burning sensation.
Endorphins
Now when you start warming up your body again, the blood vessels will dilate again and blood flow will be restored at lightning speed. This constricting and dilating is basically a “workout” of your blood vessels. They become stronger from this with the result that chronic pain is greatly reduced. Also, your immune system gets a boost , your muscles recover faster after exercise, you feel more energetic. Also, enforphins are released (happiness hormones) which makes you happy!
Thus, there is a long list of other benefits you can have from cold training.
How do you go about this?
Stage 1: Taking a nice hot shower
Stage 2: Abdominal (deep) breathing: Inhale deeply, 3 counts, and exhale … 6 counts. Repeat these deep breaths about 5-10 times
Stage 3: Now turn the shower to cold, you will automatically start breathing faster and puff through your breaths.
Stage 4: Now try to resume normal breathing. Stay calm. Once you find that your breathing is under control, you can deal with the cold much better.
Tremendous boost of energy!
It energizes: it takes some getting used to, but if you want a boost of energy in the morning, a cold shower is more effective than coffee! If you also want to practice cold training? Then build it up slowly… Standing under cold running water for 30 seconds is already quite a feat. After a few times you may already be able to handle a minute. You can also turn the shower to cold in 2 or 3 steps if you find it too intense at first. Try it, it is very healthy!