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noYou know outside or Wild swimmer – And you are reading Observer, and let’s be honest, you definitely are – you probably had the most fun last week. The recent cold snap has seen water temperatures drop two degrees in seas, lakes and rivers and lidos, where many wild swimmers consider the sweet spot to be in the mid-teens Celsius. Strap on enough to get the buzz but not too cold and then let it chill to the bone.
“You’ve heard about it Pareto principle? asks Dr. Mark Harper, anesthetist, researcher and author Cold: Cold water is the main cure. “20% of the effort brings 80% of the results. So the temperature we have now is 15 to 20 C.
Wild swimming was already up.But the Covid pandemic has sent the numbers into overdrive. Lidos, once unloved and anachronistic, rise again: Cleveland Pools at Bath, the UK’s oldest open-air pool, now has It was reopened after 40 years Negligence and turnover of £9.3m. When the Outdoor Swimming Association (OSS) started in 2006, it had 300 members. It now has 175,000 on its channels and one million visitors to its website annually. The society recently asked its members why they swim outdoors: 94% responded that the main reason was “enjoyment” and said they felt happier and less stressed after taking a dip.
Such testimonies are anecdotal, and even the OSS admits that the community is a “borderline cult built on curiosity.” And this remains a recurring question mark for wild swimming and cold water diving: Despite the evangelical claims made by proponents, there is still little scientific evidence to back them up. That doesn’t mean the benefits aren’t there, just that there aren’t enough, rigorous clinical trials to prove it either way.
That, however, is starting to change, and in the past month the papers have been coming thick and fast. Harper was part of a team investigating whether swimming could be a “new intervention for depression and anxiety.” The study involved 53 people — 47 women, five men, one non-binary — enrolled in an eight-session swimming course and monitored their well-being with a questionnaire. Harper said there was a significant improvement in the mental health of most of the participants, and he was particularly impressed that after three months, 80% were still able to swim outdoors.
“This is just a feasibility study, but the numbers are pretty impressive,” Harper said. “If you say it’s from drugs, people won’t believe you. It’s way better than anything you get from SSRIs. [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors commonly used to treat depression]for example.”
Harper also worked on a project this year with frontline NHS staff to see if outdoor swimming could improve stress symptoms and work-related burnout. Participants swam either in a London pool or in the sea in Cornwall, and overall reported a 14.8% increase in health scores after six weeks.
Before you go and throw yourself into the nearest lake, however, there were words of caution. British Journal of Sports Medicine. There, Mike Tipton, Professor of Human and Functional Physiology and an international expert on extreme environments, pointed out that between 2018 and 2021 there was a 52% increase in open water swimming-related calls to HM Coastguard. Deaths in the UK increased by 79%, from 34 to 61.
Tipton was encouraged to publish the paper after watching the BBC reality series. Freeze the fear by Wim Hof About a Dutch extreme athlete in direct contact with ice for over three hours. “Even though there’s a safety message at the beginning, if you’re watching those programs, you’re going to want to go and put yourself in cold water,” Tipton said. “So we thought it was necessary to say: ‘Look, we’re tropical animals, and this is one of the biggest stresses you can put on the body.’ We’re not trying to stop people from doing things; We are not the fun police. But there are ways to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks.
Here Tipton and Harper are in complete agreement. Especially if you’re thinking about dipping your toe in outdoor swimming this winter, you should get a medical evaluation first. Start in one place with the lifeguards and slowly get into the water: resist the urge to jump, dive, and dive. Spend less than 10 minutes in the water, even if you don’t feel cold. From personal experience of outdoor swimming, this is a key point: where I timed it right and felt great all day, and others where I spent a lot of time in the water and my teeth still chattered. After hours.
Tipton and Harper are both clear that more research needs to be done before assigning transformative powers to outdoor swimming. “I can know the answers to the stories that we don’t know Open water swimmingHowever, it is the main ingredient,” says Tipton. “So when you swim in open water, you meet your friends, you get into a beautiful environment, you float, you help the water, you exercise, you cool off, you get out. Have a cake.
“There are many other factors, but we don’t know which one is responsible for any significant effects,” Tipton continued.
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