You do not have time for this. You do not have time to sit in a 200-degree box, as if you were a slice of leftover pizza. You do not have time to spend a half-hour in a hotter-than-even-standard sauna, then immerse yourself in a bath of water that is extremely frozen if not actual ice, shocking the eggshell of your sanity from the membrane of your gelatinous insides. You — meaning I, who have lately been thinking of myself as a you — truly do not want to do what is called cold-plunging.

And yet, when cold-plunging becomes so ubiquitous than you make a joke about it vis-à-vis the inanity of a bored existence to your friend Maria, Maria tells you that she has been going four times a week. Four. Times. A. Week. In your memory, she tells you this gripping your shoulders, though that can’t be right. She definitely does, however, look deeply into your face and say, “It cured me.” Of what, you ask. Of … everything, she says, and begins to list the ways that cold-plunging has helped. And yes, this aligns with what people have been telling you. That cold-plunging, it cures you. It cures inflammation, panic attacks. It cures food-control issues, life-control issues. Depression, rage, arthritis, eczema.

And, well: You have stress. You have inflammation. A few months ago, you had your first panic attack in years. You are, lately, feeling held together by chewing gum and inertia. In this state, your snideness and irony dissipate and you begin to wonder if despair is a thing that can be heated up, melted down and washed away.

So you tell Maria, Let’s make a date.

To be clear, there’s little to back up anyone’s claims. You could point to some analyses about muscle recovery and stress reduction, but you would not want to mislead the reader into thinking that what you were able to find was particularly compelling or comprehensive. All the studies you read use the words “slightly” or “marginally,” so including them here would just be a trick to suggest that science has gotten involved. It hasn’t. Scientific research is mostly fueled by the need to sell drugs that will cure diseases, and society is not yet dumb enough to pay more than the $5-a-bag market rate for ice.