07/10/2026
Rediscovering my love of cold water 🧊❄️
Ever since I was a collegiate athlete I've loved a good cold plunge. Before I even knew I had POTS (nervous system dysfunction that affects blood flow when going from sitting to standing) I found myself intuitively plunging into cold bodies of water and noticing how much better I felt. Turns out by vasoconstricting my blood vessels I was getting more blood flow to my core and brain, go figure!
Once I knew I had POTS, I would start every morning with a cold shower before putting on compression garments.
As I came back into relationship with my body and learned to listen to the cues it was sending me, I started to heal, and cold water became less of a necessity.
There's been a lot of noise in the past year about how cold water immersion isn't healthy for women, that all the studies were done on men and that it can wreak havoc on women's hormones. And I won't lie, I bought into it and doubted what I felt in my own body. Even after coming back into deeper relationship with my body, I outsourced my own knowledge and went against something I knew to be true, that being in cold water makes me feel amazing.
This trip through southwest Colorado revived my relationship with cold water, and damn did it make me feel alive.
So here's a reminder for you and for me, allow enough quiet to listen to yourself, before listening to the noise of the world.