8 Good Reasons You Should Take a Cold Shower This Morning

Fewer sick days

Sniffling your way through cold and flu season? When it comes to battling common illnesses, it’s a two-pronged approach: Avoid all the germs you can and strengthen your immune system for those (awful) occasions when your coworker comes in with the stomach flu or your kid sneezes right into your face. (These habits boost your immune function.) And when it comes to fortifying your body’s defenses against germs, science has a new weapon—cold showers. Ending your daily shower with an icy blast can help reduce the number of sick days you take by 30 percent, according to a new study published in the journal PLOS ONE. Participants who turned the faucet to cool for 30 to 90 seconds at the end of each shower not only took fewer sick days but strangely also reported less anxiety and a slightly better sense of life satisfaction. (If you can make it through a minute in cold water then that big project suddenly seems less scary, perhaps?)