Can cold showers stop you from getting sick? The 29% finding has a catch

Have you ever heard your elders say that if you take a cold shower you will never get sick. They say that taking cold showers in winters prevent diseases and will make you immune from flu. But were our elders right or was it just a myth? A Dutch trial found that adults who ended their showers cold reported 29% fewer days off work due to illness. They did not report a clear drop in the number of days they felt ill. According to a 2025 review, there were no clear short term changes found in the immunity of people examined.

Can cold showers stop you from getting sick?

You wake up with a sore throat. If you work anyway, the day won’t show up as sick leave. You still spent it feeling ill. A Dutch experiment on cold showers captured that difference. People who ended their showers with cold water reported fewer days off work, but the study found no clear difference in how many days they felt sick.


So can cold showers keep you from catching a cold? The trial didn’t establish that. Its headline result was about days away from work. It wasn’t a count of infections, so you cannot conclude that cold showers increase your immunity.

What did the cold shower trial find?

Geert Buijze and colleagues recruited 3,018 adults in the Netherlands for the randomized trial, published in PLOS One in 2016. Participants were 18 to 65. The study excluded people with serious existing health conditions.

One group kept taking their usual showers. Everyone else was asked to end a warm shower with cold water every day for a month. The shortest finish lasted 30 seconds. Other participants were assigned a full minute or a minute and a half. For the next 60 days, people in the cold-shower groups could decide whether to keep it up.

Across the 90-day study, the cold-shower groups reported a 29% lower rate of absence due to illness than the comparison group. Longer cold finishes showed no clear advantage for work absences.

Why did people miss less work if they still felt ill?

The researchers couldn’t say for sure. Someone with mild symptoms might still feel well enough to work. Two people who feel equally ill might also make different decisions about taking time off. The trial didn’t establish which explanation, if either, accounted for the result.

Participants knew whether they’d been assigned to use cold water. They also reported their own symptoms and absences through online surveys. Random assignment makes the groups easier to compare, but it can’t remove differences in how people remember or report a sick day. The study also didn’t count lab-confirmed infections.

Do cold showers boost immunity? What a 2025 review found

Tara Cain and colleagues at the University of South Australia reviewed 11 studies of cold-water exposure, including the Dutch shower trial. The evidence covered cold baths and plunges as well as showers. The review found no clear effect on the immune measures it examined right after exposure or an hour later.

Those short-term measurements can’t tell you whether a person catches fewer colds over a winter. And the 29% result in the review came from the same Dutch trial. It wasn’t a second experiment confirming the finding. The evidence leaves open why people missed less work and whether cold showers offer any protection against infection.

FAQs

Did cold showers reduce sick leave?

Yes, in one Dutch trial. Participants who ended their showers cold reported fewer days away from work due to illness.

Were participants sick for fewer days?

The study found no clear overall difference in how many days people said they felt ill.