Cryotherapy is a treatment that uses extreme cold to trigger healing and recovery responses in the body. In its most common form, whole-body cryotherapy, you step into a chamber cooled to temperatures between -110°C and -135°C (-166°F to -211°F) for two to five minutes. The intense cold causes your blood vessels to constrict, reduces inflammation, and floods your system with feel-good hormones. It’s used by athletes recovering from intense training, people managing chronic pain conditions, and increasingly by anyone looking for a mood and energy boost.
How Cold Triggers a Healing Response
When your body is exposed to extreme cold, the first thing that happens is rapid blood vessel constriction. Within the first 10 minutes of cooling, your sympathetic nervous system releases norepinephrine, a stress hormone that signals blood vessels to tighten and redirect blood flow toward your core organs. This is your body’s survival mechanism, pulling warmth inward to protect vital organs.
As the cold continues, a second mechanism kicks in. Your body reduces its production of nitric oxide, a molecule that normally keeps blood vessels relaxed and open. With less nitric oxide available, the constriction intensifies and persists even after you leave the cold chamber. This sustained narrowing of blood vessels is what helps reduce swelling and inflammation in muscles and joints.
Once you warm back up, blood rushes back to your extremities and muscles, carrying oxygen and nutrients that support tissue repair. This constrict-then-flood cycle is the core principle behind cryotherapy’s recovery benefits.
Types of Cryotherapy
Whole-body cryotherapy (WBC) involves stepping into a multi-room chamber wearing minimal clothing, typically a bathing suit, gloves, socks, shoes, and a headband covering the ears. Your airway is protected with a surgical mask. You pass through prechambers at progressively colder temperatures before entering the main chamber, where you spend two to three minutes walking in circles and moving your arms to maintain circulation.
Partial-body cryotherapy uses an open-top chamber that exposes your body from the neck down, leaving your head at room temperature. This is what you’ll find at most commercial cryotherapy centers, and it’s generally less expensive than a full walk-in chamber.
Localized cryotherapy targets a specific area, like a knee or shoulder, using handheld devices that deliver cold air or evaporative coolant directly to the injury site. It’s the most accessible option and doesn’t require a specialized facility. Studies comparing the two approaches have found that whole-body cryotherapy produces significantly better results for pain reduction than localized treatment, though both are effective.
Cryotherapy vs. Ice Baths
Ice baths and cryotherapy chambers both cool your body, but they do it differently, and the differences matter. Cryotherapy chambers use extremely cold air, while ice baths submerge you in cold water, typically around 10-15°C (50-59°F). Water conducts heat away from your body about 25 times more efficiently than air, which changes the recovery timeline.
Research comparing the two found that whole-body cryotherapy drops skin and tissue temperature lower immediately after treatment. In one study, tissue temperature measured 19.0°C right after cryotherapy compared to 20.5°C after cold water immersion. But here’s the catch: from 10 to 60 minutes after treatment, tissue temperatures were significantly lower in people who used ice baths. Water’s superior heat transfer means the cold penetrates deeper and lasts longer, even though the initial surface cooling is less dramatic. So cryotherapy hits harder and faster, but an ice bath’s effects are more sustained.
Recovery and Muscle Soreness
The strongest evidence for cryotherapy is in reducing delayed onset muscle soreness, the deep aching you feel 24 to 72 hours after intense exercise. A network meta-analysis comparing multiple recovery methods found that cryotherapy ranked first among all interventions for reducing muscle soreness, with an 88.3% probability of being the best option. It outperformed cold water immersion, contrast water therapy (alternating hot and cold), and passive rest.
Cryotherapy also helps lower creatine kinase, an enzyme that leaks into your bloodstream when muscle fibers are damaged. Lower levels suggest less overall muscle damage or faster repair. For this marker, cryotherapy performed well but was slightly edged out by contrast water therapy.
For athletes, a single session likely isn’t enough to see meaningful results. Research on athletic recovery suggests that 20 consecutive sessions is the minimum needed to properly evaluate effectiveness, with 30 sessions being the recommended course for a complete recovery response. The optimal protocol in studies used 30 seconds in a prechamber at -60°C followed by 2 minutes in the main chamber at -135°C.
Mood and Mental Health Effects
The mood boost from cryotherapy isn’t just placebo. Cold exposure activates your sympathetic nervous system, triggering a significant increase in norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter that enhances alertness, energy, and focus. This surge increases blood flow to the brain and can produce feelings of euphoria. Your body also releases endorphins, which ease pain and promote a sense of well-being.
What’s interesting is that unlike many stimuli your body adapts to over time, the norepinephrine response to cold exposure doesn’t diminish. Even after months of regular sessions, each cold exposure continues to trigger the same chemical surge. This has led researchers to explore cold therapy as a potential treatment for anxiety and depression, both of which involve low norepinephrine levels.
In one study, undergraduate students who took a 20-minute dip in 13.6°C (56.5°F) sea water reported significant decreases in tension, anger, depression, fatigue, and confusion compared to a control group. They also experienced increases in vigor and self-esteem. Another study found that just five minutes in a 20°C (68°F) cold bath left participants feeling more active, alert, attentive, proud, and inspired. While these studies used cold water rather than cryotherapy chambers, the underlying mechanism is the same cold-triggered norepinephrine response.
Who Should Avoid Cryotherapy
Cryotherapy isn’t safe for everyone. An international expert panel published a detailed list of conditions that rule out whole-body cryotherapy, divided into temporary and permanent contraindications.
You should skip cryotherapy temporarily if you have a fever, active skin lesions, blood pressure above 160/100 or below 100/60, are pregnant, or are taking certain heart medications. Cold intolerance and claustrophobia also make sessions inadvisable.
Permanent contraindications include a longer list of serious conditions:
- Cardiovascular: heart disease, heart failure, uncontrolled high blood pressure, pacemakers, peripheral artery disease, and recent blood clots
- Metabolic: Type 1 diabetes, uncontrolled Type 2 diabetes, and uncontrolled thyroid disease
- Immune-related: cold-triggered immune conditions like cryoglobulinemia
- Respiratory: severe asthma, advanced COPD, or active respiratory infections
- Age: adults over 80
One documented case involved a 56-year-old physically active man who suffered an abdominal aortic dissection after multiple sessions. Another patient developed cold panniculitis, a painful inflammation of the fat layer under the skin, after eight treatments. Equipment malfunctions can also cause cold burns. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved any whole-body cryotherapy chambers and has warned about risks including frostbite, burns, asphyxiation, and eye injury.
What a Typical Session Looks Like
Most commercial cryotherapy sessions last two to three minutes in the main chamber. You’ll change into minimal clothing and put on the protective gear the facility provides: gloves, socks, and ear protection at minimum. The temperature you experience depends on the facility, but chambers typically range from -50°C to -135°C (-58°F to -211°F).
Your body composition affects how quickly you respond. Research has found that people at a normal weight reach target skin temperatures in about 4 minutes, while those who are overweight reach it in about 3 minutes and 30 seconds, because a higher body mass index means a different surface-area-to-mass ratio that changes how heat is lost.
Whole-body cryotherapy remains expensive and limited to specialized centers. Most facilities charge between $40 and $100 per session, with package deals bringing the per-session cost down. Given that research points to 20 to 30 sessions as the threshold for meaningful results, a full course represents a significant investment.