Roseville Offers First-In-Nation Whole-Body Cryotherapy Treatment
ROSEVILLE (CBS13) — Imagine a treatment that can reduce stress, increase your energy, improve your sleep and relieve your muscle and joint pain.
The treatment requires no surgery or medicine, and it can be found in Roseville.
But you have to be willing to be cold—very, very cold.
Avid runner and athlete Laura Haase-Yamada found as she was getting older, exercising and staying active wasn't getting any easier.
"I started having a lot of aches and pains and it's just because I'm getting older, and I like to exercise and run," she said.
So she decided to do something that sounds a little bit crazy and looks a bit crazy too.
The room is far colder than the coldest temperature recorded on Earth.
In 1983, it dropped to -128.6 degrees fahrenheit in Antarctica.
In 2015, it dropped to -180 degrees in the room she walked into wearing shorts and a tank top.
She's taking part in cryotherapy.
"The goal of the treatment is to help reduce inflammation by stimulating lots of new blood flow throughout the body or a specific area," said facility general manager Matthew Winchell.
The alternative treatment has been around in Europe for more than three decades, and for four years in the United States. But the Roseville facility is the first in the nation to offer this kind of whole body treatment.
"Helps people heal faster, reduces the amount of chronic pain people are having day to day, increasing energy, reducing stress, improving sleep and activating the central nervous system," he said.
Besides feeling cold, what else is Laura experiencing inside?
"As the body's natural hot and cold receptors react from being in a cold environment and blood pools to the core, that turns on the central nervous system for those survival instincts," Winchell said.
And after just a few minutes, that's it. It's time for her to come out and do 10 minutes of cardio to warm back up.
"As you come out after 2.5 minutes and get blood redistributed everything is firing on all cylinders, all the blood is getting distributed to the rest of the body and inflammation gets reduced effectively," he said.
But does it actually work? The jury is still out. Doctors published in the British Medical Journal say it's not proven whether the therapy is effective since it's based on anecdotal evidence, not proven clinical trials.
Meanwhile, pain management specialists warn that precautions need to be taken, and they say the therapy shouldn't be done if you have heart trouble, high blood pressure, poor circulation, asthma, or if you are pregnant.
But despite the warnings and the extreme could, Laura says she swear by it.
"It does help you feel younger and then you feel like you can do more and you recover faster so you can keep active, and that's my whole goal," she said.
Cryotherapy does require new clients to fill out a health history and sign waivers to take part in the treatment. Initial treatments cost about $30.
