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Empty Ice-Cube Trays and Shrieks: Cold Therapy Comes to the Family Bathtub

Amateurs test alleged health benefits of ice-water bathing; ‘we just thought he was insane’

Willie McKenzie in his ice bath WILLIE MCKENZIE

By Julie WernauFollow

April 25, 2023 10:08 am ET

Justin Mullner, a 40-year-old doctor, emptied his family’s two ice makers into the bathtub at his home in Orlando, Fla., added cold water, checked the temperature with a thermometer, stripped down to his swim trunks and hopped in. 

His wife, Blair Heinke, heard him screaming less than a minute later. “I thought he was a wimp,” said Dr. Heinke, a former marathoner. “The ice cubes all melted. That’s not cold.”

Bathtub bound

Ice-water bathing once was the bone-chilling specialty of Scandinavian health fanatics and pro athletes with aching muscles. Now, thanks to social-media influencers such as Dutch extreme athlete Wim Hof, aka “Iceman,” actress Gwyneth Paltrow and ultramarathoner David Goggins, it is having a mainstream moment. 

Amateurs like Dr. Mullner are checking out for themselves the alleged health benefits of cold-water immersion, including stress reduction and boosted energy. But first, many have to surmount a problem. Unlike Mr. Hof, they don’t have a glacial lake nearby to plunge into.

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Instead, they are taking cold showers, filling kiddie pools with ice or cannonballing into backyard pools in the winter. They are posting videos of themselves climbing into trash cans and large freezers filled with ice water.

Willie McKenzie, 38, who runs a cannabis company in Bear Lake, Mich., said Mr. Hof’s ice-cold outdoor exploits seemed like an antidote to the malaise of everyday life, with its lack of physical challenges. “You don’t have to hunt for food. You don’t even have to go to the grocery store,” Mr. McKenzie said. “I think a lot of people are feeling this way.”

He decided to give his own routine a cold jolt. The main problem was finding a place to immerse his 6-foot, 215-pound frame in ice water. Mr. McKenzie said he didn’t want to pay $5,000 for the ice-bath tub he found online. So he bought a 180-gallon trough for feeding cows and horses and installed it on his porch, next to the hot tub.

He gets up at 4 a.m. to record himself bathing in ice water with a rubber duck while sharing his thoughts. Sometimes he needs two or three takes to get things right.

Before winter arrived, he was buying 60 to 80 pounds of ice every other day at the local gas station. That wasn’t sustainable, he said, so when it warms up, he plans to buy a pricey tub with its own chiller. 

His wife, Lucy McKenzie, stays snug in bed. “It’s almost annoying how consistent he is with it,” she said. 

Gareth Shadwell of the Centre for Applied Sport Physical Activity and Performance at the University of Central Lancashire using an ice bath to recover from a sporting event. PHOTO: ROBERT ALLAN

Robert Allan, a researcher at the Centre for Applied Sport Physical Activity and Performance at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, U.K., said cold-water bathing can be traced back to the ancient Egyptians. Along with ancient Greeks and Romans, the Egyptians used cold therapies for health, he wrote in a study published last February in the European Journal of Applied Physiology. Athletes, he said, have used cold therapy in recovery since the 1960s. 

Matt Goddard, 32, a fitness trainer and former professional boxer in Hampshire, U.K., said he used to do squats to warm up before dunking up to his neck in a tub of cold water. These days, as the father of two young children, he settles for a cold shower. 

“It’s this psychological battle that’s happening in the space of 30 seconds,” he said. “It feels like you’re conquering yourself every time you do it.” 

His wife, Rebecca Riley, 30, said she loves a hot shower. But after years of listening to Mr. Goddard tout the health benefits, she started jumping into cold showers every so often to wake herself up.

Mr. Hof, the Iceman, would approve. “Learning to have a cold shower, gradually going longer, is a superb sensation of our primordial inner nature,” he said.

Marcus Carlsson, 42, said he is glad the rest of the world is warming up to the ice bathing he grew up with in a subarctic archipelago in northern Sweden. For years after marrying his American wife, Vanessa Carlsson, 38, he tried to re-create in warmer climates the cold-water conditions he was accustomed to.

At Christmas, when they visited her mother in Florida, he would dive into the outdoor pool first thing in the morning. It was cold, but not Swedish cold. Her mother, originally from Colombia, would scream out the window in shock. 

“He tried to explain that it was good for inflammation, to wake yourself up, that it was a dopamine hit,” said Ms. Carlsson. “We just thought he was insane.”

The two met while studying in Barcelona and have lived in Abu Dhabi, New York and England. Everywhere they lived, Ms. Carlsson said, she had to adjust to her husband’s showering quirks.

“When I go in after him, it’s all the way on cold,” she said. “You have to wait until it warms up.”

Two years ago, they moved back to Northern Sweden. Mr. Carlsson is back to ice bathing he was raised on, dipping into holes cut into the ice by the local municipality. His friends roll around naked in the snow.

“He feels more at home here,” Ms. Carlsson said.

An ice bathing site in Lulea, Sweden. PHOTO: MARCUS CARLSSON

Write to Julie Wernau at julie.wernau@wsj.com