Okay! Here is a clinical case I recently had in Dec 2023 and it had to do with cold plunge. I know that cold plunge is pretty popular right now ,but is it really good for everybody?
Male, 38 years old, very fit and athletic. He came in for debilitating lower back pain with a normal X-Ray result. The patient had trouble sitting or standing for a couple of hours at a time without feeling the pain and stiffness in the lower back. After performing some orthopaedic evaluations on him, i didn’t get the impression that his lower back had any obvious pathological changes.
Upon inquiry, I asked him if the pain gets any better with heat. The patient said yes and mentioned that he had been doing cold plunges once a week for the past three months. Last year around this time, he admitted that his lower back pain was even more severe as he did the cold plunge every day for two months straight. Many rounds of physio and chiropractic adjustments didn’t resolve the pain.
Many of us working with Traditional Chinese Medicine know too well what external pathogenic cold factors can do to our bodies. External cold pathogen constricted his lower back’s range of motion by slowing down the blood circulation and Qi (energy) movement in that area. Most importantly, I think the icy coldness of the water penetrated through layers of his lower back muscles to have caused what we call the Cold Painful Obstruction Syndrome. After educating him upon the cause of his condition, the patient was surprised that cold plunge wasn’t a good idea for his body constitution after all.
I treated his lower back with acupuncture and lots of moxibustion. At his follow up session, the patient said he felt much better and was able to sit for hours without feeling the same lower back stiffness and pain.
If you ask me, is the cold plunge good for any type of body constitution? To be honest, I don’t recommend the cold plunge. People may not realize what damage external pathogenic coldness can do to our body, but I know for sure that our body needs Yang Qi (warm energies, opposite of coldness) to support a healthy blood circulation, food digestion and even maintain healthy reproductive health!
