How to Become Smarter Read Online Free PDF Page B

food and drinks for several days can cause a respiratory illness.
When core body temperature is elevated (fever), cold hydrotherapy reduces it.
Adapted cold showers at 20°C (68°F) work as a fever-reducing treatment; cold showers for the head (head showers) are effective against headache. Combining these methods with fever- and pain-reducing drugs such as aspirin or acetaminophen is more effective.
Washing the nasal cavity with saline is effective against the symptom of runny nose.
If a cough is present, you need to either avoid cold showers or modify them to exclude wetting the neck and chest areas.
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Key points:
Adapted cold showers at 20 degrees Celsius (68°F) are safe for the vast majority of people, with rare exceptions such as Raynaud’s syndrome. To be on the safe side, consult your doctor or a qualified health care professional about adapted cold showers if you have a chronic medical condition or are taking medication.
Water colder than 14°C (56°F) can cause pain in the skin. Swimming in such water can cause hypothermia (lowering of core body temperature).
Don’t use cold showers at night because they can cause insomnia. Daily cold showers in the morning can also cause insomnia and you need to reduce their frequency if this happens.
Because of the stimulant effect, patients with epilepsy need to be careful with cold hydrotherapy.
Adapted cold showers elevate mood and increase impulsivity. Bipolar patients should not use this procedure during manic or hypomanic episodes.
Healthy people should not take adapted cold showers on a daily basis because this procedure can induce symptoms of hypomania: inflated self-esteem, impulsiveness, and risky behavior likely to have painful consequences. On the other hand, adapted cold showers are OK during an illness (fever, weakness, nausea, depression).
People taking some medications or substances (see below) and people with low blood pressure, headache disorders, or inflammatory conditions should avoid heating the body. These people should consult with their physician before trying this approach. The medications or substances in question are alcohol, alpha-andrenergics, amphetamines, anticholinergics, antihistamines, benzodiazepines, beta-blockers, calcium channel blockers, cocaine, diuretics, laxatives, neuroleptics, phenothiazines, thyroid agonists, and tricyclic antidepressants.
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Summary of Chapter Two
     
    Students and knowledge workers often disrupt their normal sleep pattern when studying or writing keeps them up all night. Boiled grains appear to be mild sedatives, perhaps because they contain small amounts of Maillard reaction products. These are chemicals that form in a chemical reaction of proteins with carbohydrates at high temperatures. Several days of eating a diet of boiled grains only can aid sleep. Moderate heating of the body increases fatigue and shares many biological effects with sedative drugs: similar chemical changes in the brain and slowing of mental processes. Therefore, a warm environment or moderately hot baths or showers should also help to fall asleep. A number of studies on laboratory animals and human subjects support this idea.
    In contrast, brief moderate cooling of the body shares many biological effects with psychostimulant drugs, including increased blood pressure (a small and temporary increase), constriction of blood vessels, slightly increased heat production, reduced fatigue, increased activity, increased alertness, and elevation of mood. Adapted cold showers at 20 degrees Celsius (68°F), which include 3- to 5-minute gradual adaptation, promote wakefulness in the morning. Either these showers in the morning or hot hydrotherapy at night can restore a normal sleep pattern if some work-related activities have disrupted it.
    Inhalation of cold air may predispose a person to a respiratory infection, whereas cold showers in the atmosphere of room-temperature air will