Video·3 min read·May 2026

Harnessing the Power of Cold: What Whole Body Cryotherapy Can Do for You

Cold Therapy • 3 min read • Based on research by Dr Lucy Hammond, Miss Katie Mitchell, Mr Saul Cuttell (2023)

Imagine stepping into a sanctuary of icy air, where the chill envelops your body, awakening your senses and igniting your vitality. Whole body cryotherapy (WBC) may sound daunting, but it holds the potential to enhance your health and recovery in profound ways. Recent research sheds light on how brief exposure to extreme cold can significantly improve respiratory function and energy expenditure, paving the way for resilience and clarity in your wellness journey.

Conducted by Dr. Lucy Hammond and her team, this study explored the physiological responses to WBC, revealing that this powerful therapy can elevate your body's performance and well-being. Let’s delve into the findings to understand how contrast therapy can serve as a valuable tool in your wellness protocol.

Understanding the Science Behind Cryotherapy

Whole body cryotherapy involves a short exposure to temperatures that can dip as low as -140°C. This extreme cold triggers a range of physiological responses in the body, including changes in breathing and increased energy consumption. In the study, participants exhibited a notable increase in expired volume (V E) by 10.8 L.min-1 and oxygen consumption (V O2) by 0.4 L.min-1 following WBC. This means that after just a few minutes in the cold, participants were able to breathe out significantly more air and utilize more oxygen.

This enhanced respiratory function is not merely a fleeting effect. The body's increased oxygen consumption indicates a boost in metabolic activity, which can be particularly beneficial during athletic recovery. When your body is capable of utilizing oxygen more efficiently, it can recover more swiftly from physical exertion, promoting resilience and longevity.

The Gender Factor: A Unique Response

The study also highlighted interesting differences in thermal sensation between males and females. After WBC, thermal sensation (TS) decreased significantly, with females experiencing a more substantial drop than males. This suggests that women may respond more favorably to cold exposure, potentially making WBC an accessible option for enhancing their recovery protocols.

Understanding these variances helps us appreciate how individual differences can influence our wellness rituals. The ability to adapt to cold may vary, but the benefits of increased oxygen consumption and respiratory efficiency remain universally valuable.

The Connection to Body Composition

Another compelling finding from the research indicated strong negative correlations between fat mass index and oxygen consumption post-WBC. This means that individuals with higher fat mass experienced less of an increase in oxygen consumption compared to those with lower fat mass. Essentially, the benefits of WBC may be more pronounced for leaner individuals, but the implications for overall health and performance are significant for everyone.

Incorporating WBC into your wellness routine may help improve metabolic rates, suggesting that regular exposure could support your journey towards achieving a healthier body composition. By enhancing your energy expenditure, WBC not only aids in recovery but also contributes to long-term health goals.

Key Takeaways

Whole body cryotherapy can significantly enhance respiratory function and energy expenditure, making it a valuable addition to your recovery protocol.
The benefits of WBC may vary between individuals, particularly between genders, highlighting the importance of personalizing your wellness approach.
Regular exposure to WBC can support metabolic health, potentially aiding in achieving a healthier body composition and promoting overall well-being.

Based on: Ventilatory Responses to Whole Body Cryotherapy
Dr Lucy Hammond, Miss Katie Mitchell, Mr Saul Cuttell (2023). Not specified in the excerpt

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Ventilatory Responses to Whole Body Cryotherapy

What the Body Does in the Cold Chamber

Step into a WBC chamber at -140°C and something immediate happens: your body starts breathing differently. Not just shivering — breathing. Hammond and her colleagues at Warwick Medical School quantified this response in 22 recreationally active participants, measuring ventilatory function before and after a standard WBC exposure. The results were unambiguous. Expired volume jumped by 10.8 liters per minute. Oxygen consumption increased by 0.4 liters per minute. Metabolic equivalents of task rose by 1.0. These are real, measurable physiological events triggered by three minutes in extreme cold air.

The mechanism, the researchers conclude, is acute transient shivering. Your skin thermoreceptors detect the thermal threat, your sympathetic nervous system activates, and your muscles begin involuntary contractions to generate heat. Shivering is metabolically expensive — it burns oxygen, elevates breathing rate, increases energy expenditure. This is your body maintaining equilibrium under extreme thermal stress.

How This Sits in the Broader Literature

Cold water immersion research has documented shivering thermogenesis extensively. What's valuable here is that Hammond extends those findings to cold air exposure — a fundamentally different stimulus. Water pulls heat from the body roughly 25 times faster than air. Yet the shivering response appears regardless, suggesting that cold air at -140°C activates the same thermoregulatory cascade through cutaneous thermoreceptors. The pathway is the same. The medium is different.

There's a tension in the existing literature worth noting. Engel reported a transient bronchodilatory effect from WBC; Smolander reported minor bronchoconstriction 30 minutes post-exposure. Hammond's findings suggest the ventilatory spike is real but brief — the largest increases occur within the first minute post-exposure and return to near resting levels within two minutes. The body adapts quickly. That speed of adaptation is the point.

The shivering response is not a side effect. It is the signal. Your body generating heat through involuntary muscular work is exactly the adaptation you are trying to train.

Who Gets the Most from It

The body composition correlations here are striking. Strong negative relationships emerged between fat mass index and post-WBC oxygen consumption — leaner individuals experienced significantly larger metabolic responses to the same exposure. Fat insulates. When you carry more insulating tissue, the cold signal is attenuated before it reaches the deeper thermoregulatory centers. Leaner participants were more thermally exposed in the chamber, which paradoxically drove a stronger metabolic response. Higher fat mass doesn't disqualify you from benefit, but it does shift the dose-response curve. Repeated sessions accumulate the adaptation that a single session can't fully deliver.

What to Do With This

If you're using WBC for recovery or metabolic benefit, remember the ventilatory response is acute — it resolves within minutes. This isn't a sustained metabolic elevation like 20 minutes of aerobic exercise. But the cumulative signal matters. Ten WBC sessions reduce serum triglycerides. Twenty sessions improve lipid profiles further, reducing total cholesterol and LDL while raising HDL. Three sessions per week, three-minute standard exposure, appropriate safety garments. Let the shivering happen. That's the mechanism working.

A Subtlety Worth Sitting With

The sex difference finding is understated in most discussions of this paper. Females experienced a significantly greater decrease in thermal sensation than males — not from greater sensitivity per se, but from body composition. Higher BSA-to-mass ratio and lower fat-free mass index correlated with stronger thermal sensation responses. This echoes what we see across the cold exposure literature: thermoregulatory response is profoundly individual, shaped by body composition, surface area, and lean mass. Your protocol should be calibrated to your own thermal profile. Don't benchmark your tolerance against someone else's baseline. Build your threshold from your own starting point, session by session.

Ventilatory Responses to Whole Body Cryotherapy

Harnessing the Power of Cold: What Whole Body Cryotherapy Can Do for You

Understanding the Science Behind Cryotherapy

The Gender Factor: A Unique Response

The Connection to Body Composition

Key Takeaways

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