Is a Cold Shower Good for Testosterone?

Last Updated on April 23, 2023 by admin

Both men and women produce a hormone known as testosterone, although in varying quantities. Men especially should pay attention to their testosterone levels, as lower testosterone may result in fewer sperm. You’ve heard recently that a cold shower can increase testosterone, but is it true?

The data on whether a cold shower can increase testosterone is a mixed bag, with some research saying it’s possible and other studies not noting an increase. What’s clearer though is that by maintaining a cooler testicular temperature, sperm count goes up.

In this article, we’ll talk more about what testosterone does, what the research says on whether a cold shower can influence testosterone, and what kind of shower temperatures you might want to maintain going forward. Keep reading, as you won’t want to miss it!

The Importance of Testosterone in Men and Women

Testosterone in men is a hormone for developing both primary and secondary sexual characteristics. Those primary sexual characteristics include the development of male reproductive tissue, including the prostate and the testes. A man’s secondary sexual characteristics are body hair and more bone mass and muscle mass.

Women also produce testosterone in the ovaries, although not nearly as much as men, as we said. In both genders, testosterone increases your ability to think and your verbal memory, your mood, sex drive, and bone strength.

Those with chronic stress or certain health conditions might have low testosterone, also referred to as low T. The conditions that can cause low T are liver cirrhosis, alcoholism, kidney disease, and AIDS. If you have low T as a woman and especially as a man, you could experience thin bones, hair loss, mood changes, depression, weight gain, reduced energy, and low libido.

Cold showers, by the way, are not recommended as a sole treatment for low T, nor would they be advisable as a substitute for a current low T treatment. Hydrotherapy can only help your doctor-prescribed low T treatment, not be used on its own.

Is a Cold Shower Good for Testosterone?

Considering all those benefits, anyone would want healthy testosterone levels. That especially goes for men, as the hormone helps produce sperm. By shifting from warm showers to cold showers each day (or even a few times a week), can you really increase your testosterone levels?

Like we said in the intro, the results are mixed. Take, for instance, a 1991 study in the Japanese medical journal Nihon Eiseigaku Zasshi. That study involved 32 male participants, all who were 19 years old. The participants first spent 20 minutes on a 90-watt bicycle ergometer, then each one took a cold shower.

The researchers report the participants had a 20.8-percent increase in testosterone levels when exercising, but what about when taking a cold shower? The participants’ testosterone levels collectively dropped by 10 percent.

Now, there’s a lot you can say about this study. For one, it didn’t have many participants. Also, the study involved a relatively young sample of men. If men in their 20s or 30s were tested the same way, would the results be different? After all, testosterone production does tend to start decreasing in a man’s 30s.

This 2017 publication of the journal Infectious Agents and Cancer had similar findings to the Japanese study, that cold temperatures could decrease testosterone levels, not increase them.

James Elist, M.D. cites a study on his website about testosterone changes in rats when exposed to heat. When the rats spent 15 minutes in 109.4-degree Fahrenheit conditions, their testosterone was said to decrease. Elist mentions that “the results are expected to be in a similar range in humans” due to the sample of rats used, the Wistar rats. These rats have testes the same size as an average man’s.

That said, humans and rats are different animals, so even this study doesn’t present as much concrete evidence as you would hope.

While the verdict is still out on whether a cold shower is good for testosterone, science is much more confident in what the cold temps can do for sperm production. The ideal temperature for testicular health is between 95 and 98.6 degrees. By lowering that temperature even still, sperm count can increase, and even better, the sperm is more motile.

This classic study in the Journal of Reproductive Systems recommends an even lower temperature range, between 88 and 99 degrees for better protein synthesis, RNA, and DNA in the testes that increase sperm.

Also, the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology in a 2013 report says that cold weather can boost sperm motility and morphology, or the shape of sperm. To come to that conclusion, the researchers studied nearly 6,500 sperm samples.

Granted, cold temperatures aren’t quite the same as cold water, but you can see where the benefits of cold exposure can benefit the testes for more sperm.

Don’t miss:

How Cold Does a Cold Shower Need to Be?

How to Take a Cold Shower Without Freezing

Are Cold Showers Good for You?

Is It Good to Have Cold Showers Every Day?

How Cold Does Your Shower Have to Be for Better Testosterone?

As we discussed in our post about how long a cold shower should last, you should aim for a water temperature of around 68 degrees. To reiterate, this temperature is no cakewalk. A 68-degree day outside feels a lot different than 68-degree water, trust us on that.

If you’re curious how often you should take a cold shower, any day and every day you feel like! You’ll want to eventually spend at least 5 to 10 minutes in the cold, starting with 30 to 60 seconds of exposure and working your way up from there. If you can’t stand it that long in the cold all at once, then shower for a minute in the cold every day instead.

Make sure you have something to distract yourself too, be that a podcast, music, or even focusing on your breathing.

Conclusion

In men, testosterone is key in producing healthy sperm. The hormone also influences bone and muscle health as well as sex drive. Although cold showers might not do much for testosterone, they’re proven to increase sperm production and motility by lowering the temperature of the testes. Why not take a cold shower today?