The hot-water-heater has been on the fritz all weekend, and it’s been nothing but cold-showers since yesterday morning. Is there some scientific explanation why “cold” showers are so much more miserable than just jumping into your everyday swimming pool?
A 75 degree swimming pool is a little chilly for me as well although I agree the shower feels worse. I think there are a few reasons for it:
-
You are fully immersed in the swimming pool. Your body can acclimate fairly quickly to cool water but you need to be submerged in it so that it gives an equal temperature sensation across your entire body.
-
The shower is not only spraying you with cool water unevenly, it is also cooling you through evaporation due to air exposure. You probably weren’t hot to begin with yet you are mimicking the way sweat cools you except on a huge scale and it isn’t needed. This is probably the biggest factor.
-
You can be active in a swimming pool and not so much in a shower. Swimming is good exercise and you will generate lots of heat doing it. It is just quickly lost to the water but that is a benefit.
- The swimming pool is more often in the sun.
4b) But if there’s a wind…
A swim in 75 degree water is torture, so I don’t see why it would be any different in the shower.
You wimps! Living in oregon, we’d jump in a 55 degree river and enjoy it when we were kids, we would!
A shower is a little worse due to evaporate cooling, and the fact that the water is moving so quickly off your body, taking your body heat with it. Same concept as windchill. If you stand still in a pool and the water isn’t moving much, the water acts somewhat of an insulator; a thin layer of warmer water surrounds your body. In a shower the water that is warmed by your body is quickly moved down the drain and replaced with 75 degree water. But also, as I mentioned, is evaporate cooling, which is the reason why you feel so cold when you are wet getting out of the shower (colder than if you had been dry). When water evaporates, it takes heat with it (only the hotter particles have enough energy to escape into the air), and in a shower a large portion of your body is exposed to the air.
The mammalian dive reflex may be a factor. Mostly it’s considered a oxygen conserving breathing mode for diving, but it may also help with water temperature response, shutting blood to the extremities, conserving core heat. From what I know of the MDR it takes immersion, not sprinkling to activate.
I don’t know the explanation fo rit, but moving from the air to the water, the water always feels much colder. Then when you move back into the air, the air feels colder. Stay out llong enough to dry off, and you’ll start the process all over again. No idea why that is.
But in the shower you are basically in a constant flux of air/water/air/water so it makes sense that it would be miserable.
All that said I actually like the way I feel when I take a cold shower in the morning. I always feel invigorated all day afterwards. I used to be disciplined enough to do it every day; I seldom do it now though.