via Flickr/Barta IV
Everything’s polarized these days—politics, religion, the economy…So it makes sense that the wellness therapy making the “hottest trends” lists for 2018 requires freezing yourself.
That suited me fine. I love arctic blasts, and It’s a rare day that something in my body doesn’t hurt—I inflame faster than a Firestarter. So, while I was entirely prepared to pass on cashewgurt and liquid collagen, I thought I might give the cryotherapy a whirl.
I thought twice when Palm Health’s medical technician asked if I had any heart, severe respiratory, or circulatory problems. I mean, I don’t, but just how cold was this going to be if they had to ask? But by then I was in tights, a bra, and the softest robe I’ve ever donned, and I was seated in front of something that looked a bit like Woody Allen’s Orgasmatron in Sleeper.
Besides, I’d been lulled by the waterfall in the waiting room and the promise of an after-freeze snack in the café, which serves pastry that’s healthy and actually tastes good. And I was breathing ionized air with a hint of lavender in it. And Anney Perrine, whose job is to help Palm’s members navigate its various services, was handing me socks, elbow warmers, diving booties, and gloves.
When the tech Velcroed a blood pressure cuff to my arm, I gulped and asked just what “adverse reactions” someone might have.
Lightheadedness, he said, or sensitivity on the skin.
That’s a beer at an afternoon ball game, so I nodded to proceed.
When he opened the door to the metal cylinder, a dry-ice fog swirled out. The temp inside would drop from 22 degrees below zero to 130 degrees below zero over three minutes.
You can tolerate anything for three minutes, right?
“The cold is intense, but it’s superficial,” said Perrine. “An ice bath would feel colder, because water absorbs our body heat faster.”
I pushed up those elbow warmers, brisk and no-nonsense, and stepped inside. The tank’s floor adjusts for height, so my head popped right up out of the tank. All shudders, grimaces, and profanity would be visible to spectators. And there would be spectators: At Palm, someone is in the room with you the entire time, so you don’t have to be cold and lonely, and you don’t have to panic at the thought that the thermostat will go into freefall and you’ll be locked inside the tank. You just press a panel and it releases you. Meanwhile, as another safety measure, the med tech has to hit the button every 30 seconds, or the machine will turn off of its own accord.
I focused on the professional athletes who use cryotherapy for performance recovery, on the assumption that it pushes out lactic acid and reduces any inflammation. Some even use it pre-game; it’s said a session can improve aim. For the rest of us, there’s not much U.S. research yet—cryotherapy’s only been commercially available for 10 years, and most of the studies were done in Eastern Europe. The key to the benefits is the “parasympathetic rebound,” explains med tech Dave Gouaux. That’s the opposite of the “fight or flight” response; it’s a peaceful, “rest and digest” state. Which means you sleep better after cryotherapy, and it can improve mood.
Maybe I was already rebounding, because I was enjoying the cold. If it were a color, it would be a slick-smooth white. A sound? High and clear, on an Andean flute. Taste? Pure oxygen.
One minute in, I heard a pulsing, letting me know the temp was about to nosedive.
OK, now it was cold. Really cold. But I could still think and talk, and I was still glad to be alive. My teeth only started chattering like prank dentures when it occurred to me that I’d never felt 130 degrees below zero before. They stopped chattering immediately: I was distracted and inspired by the story of a client who’d used cryotherapy to come off of an antidepressant...
And then it was over. And I wished it had been longer and colder (there are two levels beneath my first-timer's experiment).
We sat by the fire in the café, and after Dr. Sita Kedia—a neurologist, pediatrician, and headache specialist who is Palm’s chief medical officer—mentioned that cryotherapy could boost metabolism, I reached for a second dense, improbably rich brownie, made with sunflower-seed-flour and dusted with coconut sugar. “It’s not a silver bullet,” she remarked, and for a minute I thought she meant the brownie, which, arguably, is.) “We use cryotherapy as one part of an entire treatment plan for chronic pain, mood issues, joint issues, muscle recovery,” she continued. “For some people it may not be the right thing. If someone has MS, it can actually exacerbate it.”
Kedia is busy creating safety and tolerability data; she worries that cryotherapy will be a “popup” fad, sold without caution. “There was this Shark Tank guy starting cryo popups. They asked what the medical concerns were, and he said none! We probably turn down one in 10 new clients to do cryo. We have run over 2,000 sessions, and we follow each individual. We’ve shown that it’s really safe”—in the right circumstances—"and now we’re looking at how effective it is. That’s the benefit of having a medical center running cryotherapy.”
The selfish benefit? I left elated, and that night I slept like a baby.
