19/07/2025
Bravo to our dear friend ! As always trail blazing the way to show the many benefits to Cold water immersion! 🙏
If you haven’t already, buy Marks amazing book ‘Chill’ the cold water swim cure! 📘…it’s amazing, plus…we’re in it! ☺️
Posted • According to the World Health Organization, around 15% of the population of high-income countries are living with a mental health disorder - and amongst adolescents, there has been a drastic rise in these over the past decade, with the rate of deterioration accelerating during the COVID-19 pandemic in both the United Kingdom (UK) and Norway. There is, therefore, a real need for simple and easily accessible strategies that young people themselves can use to strengthen their mental health and thereby prevent the development of clinical disorders; of course, one such activity is outdoor swimming. I am therefore absolutely thrilled that our study of eighty teenagers - 62 from Norway and 18 from Brighton - has just been published. Although we didn’t look at longterm mental health or specifically at teenagers with mental health issues, using the Profile of Mood States questionnaire before and after a cold-water swim, we were able to study its effect on mood. We found that there were significant reductions in negative aspects and significant increases in positive aspects of mood and the overall ‘global’ outcome of ‘Total Mood Disturbance’ was significantly reduced across all groups. Even better, 95% of the participants both enjoyed the experience and would “definitely” or “maybe” like to repeat it. In conclusion, there is ample justification to study this ‘intervention’ further. My thanks to the pupils and teachers from , .skole.vgs and for their participation in this project. The pictures are before and after thermal images from one of the swims (yellow/orange is warm/purple cold). The study can be accessed here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2989/17280583.2025.2503348
