Temperatures below -166 degrees Fahrenheit?? Am I going to freeze? Is it painful?

These are some of the common questions many people ask as they initially walk into CryoTexas, a cryotherapy studio in Houston. Whole body cryotherapy is a form of therapy initially discovered by a doctor in Japan who found that when the skin is exposed to temperatures of -166 degrees Fahrenheit or below, the body goes into a beneficial fight or flight response. It results in many benefits, including pain relief, energy boost, increased metabolism, improved sleep, and an increase in collagen production.

Many people fear that this freezing cold will be intolerable and even painful. However, during whole-body cryotherapy, your blood vessels and capillaries constrict, sending 80% of your blood to your core. Here, it becomes highly oxygenated and heats up, so you’re actually warmer on the inside during your whole body cryotherapy session then you were before. Also, although the air around you gets below -166 degrees Fahrenheit, that is merely the temperature of the air, not your body. Your body temperature will only get to around 40 or 50 degrees, but it will never get to 32 degrees or below since we are not actually freezing anything.

Furthermore, each session only lasts three minutes. In other words, it may feel very cold, but it is for such a short amount of time that it isn’t anything that you can’t handle! Although whole-body cryotherapy requires you to get through three minutes of cold, it has so many benefits, and it truly isn’t that bad!