When I told friends that I was swimming in the sea every day, they would often say: “Oh, have you looked up that mad Dutchman who’s a cold-water guru?”
我告诉朋友们我每天都在海里游泳时,他们常常会说:“哦,你见过那个疯狂的荷兰人吗?他可是冷水游泳的大师。”
So I watched the episode of Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle series on Netflix, featuring Wim Hof, the famed Dutch champion of cold-water immersion.
于是,我看了一集《Goop》,这是格温妮丝·帕特洛在Netflix上的生活方式系列节目,这一集邀请了著名的荷兰冷水游泳冠军维姆·霍夫。
He credits his regime of cold-water swimming and breathing exercises with helping him to overcome the grief of his wife’s suicide and control his own immune system.
他认为自己之所以能克服妻子自杀带来的悲痛,并且能控制自身免疫系统,都多亏了冷水游泳和呼吸练习这些日常习惯。
Hof is a yogic 61-year-old with long hair, a beard and an evangelical certitude.
霍夫是位瑜伽修行者,61岁,留着长发,蓄着胡须,有着传教士般的坚定。
His website promises to deliver health and happiness through his ice-bath workshops, online courses, apps and books.
他的网站承诺,通过他的冰浴工作坊、在线课程、应用程序和书籍,传递健康与幸福。
In the Netflix episode, the volunteers jump one after another into the freezing water of Lake Tahoe, in California, the largest freshwater lake in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and emerged apparently transformed.
在Netflix的那一集里,志愿者们一个接一个地跳入加利福尼亚州太浩湖的冰冷湖水中,这是内华达山脉中最大的淡水湖,他们出来后,显然发生了转变。
“That was like next-level shit,” says one.
“那简直太超乎想象了,”其中一人说道。
The healthful properties of cold water are much touted by its disciples, but little examined.
冷水对健康的益处被其追捧者大肆宣扬,却鲜有深入研究。
“You’re talking about something at the homeopathic, at the esoteric, Wim Hof end of things,” said Tipton.
“你说的可是顺势疗法,是玄学,是维姆·霍夫那种极端的东西,”蒂普顿说。
“It’s easier to get funding to investigate drowning.”
“获取资金来研究溺水问题还相对更容易一些。”
For years, scientists have been more focused on the dangers of cold water than its possible benefits.
多年来,科学家们一直更关注冷水的危险性,而不是它可能带来的好处。
There is no doubt that the stimulation of cold water provokes changes of hormones and chemicals – adrenaline, dopamine, serotonin, endorphins – through the body.
毫无疑问,冷水的刺激会引发体内激素和化学物质的改变,这些物质包括肾上腺素、多巴胺、血清素和内啡肽。
We know that these affect metabolism, boost white blood cell counts, and over time and regular exposure, can reduce inflammation – potentially priming and increasing immune function – although exactly how is less well understood.
我们知道这些物质会影响新陈代谢,增加白细胞数量,经年累月地定期接触,还可以减少炎症,或许能增强并提高免疫功能,虽然它的具体机制目前尚不完全清楚。
There are many conditions and diseases caused or exacerbated by autoimmune reactions and inflammation – atrial fibrillation, arterial sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s, depression; so it’s very tempting to imagine that something as free and available as cold water could be therapeutic.
有许多病症和疾病是由自身免疫反应和炎症引起或加重的,比如心房颤动、动脉硬化、炎症性肠病、2型糖尿病、阿尔茨海默症、抑郁症,所以像冷水这样免费且易得的东西或许具有治疗作用,这实在是诱人。
But the research is thin and remains anecdotal.
但研究尚不充分,仍停留在传言层面。
Cold-water swimmers say they experience fewer infections, the easing of sore muscles and arthritic pain; some swimmers suffering from anxiety and depression have reported recovering to the extent that they can stop using medication.
冷水游泳的人表示,他们觉得自己的感染有所减少,肌肉酸痛和关节炎疼痛得到了缓解;一些患有焦虑和抑郁的游泳者自称他们的状况有所改善,甚至可以停止用药了。
But there has been almost no research to isolate which ingredient of the cold water swimming experience is causing what result.
但是,几乎没有研究能解析出冷水游泳体验中的哪一部分导致了哪一样结果。
Does a cold shower do the trick? Or is total immersion better?
冷水澡能起作用吗?还是完全泡在冷水里更好呢?
And how long does exposure to cold water need to be: one minute, or 10?
需要暴露在冷水中多长时间:一分钟,还是十分钟?
Once a week or every day? What’s the dose?
是要一周一次,还是每天一次?剂量是多少?
Whatever is happening, the physiological changes seem to be more than transitory.
不管发生了什么,生理上的变化好像都不仅仅是暂时的。
“There’s a component of the adaptation to cold, we would argue, that is generic to all stresses,” says Tipton.
蒂普顿说:“我们认为,对寒冷的适应中有一部分对所有压力都是通用的。”
In other words, getting used to cold water means you may also be able to better tolerate other stressful environments.
换句话说,习惯了冷水,意味着你或许也能更好地应对其他压力环境。
Tipton has experimented by sending cold-water swimmers up mountains (in simulation) and observed that they breathed more evenly, using less oxygen, and were less impaired by the altitude.
蒂普顿进行了实验,将冷水游泳者送上(模拟的)高山环境,发现他们的呼吸更加均匀,耗氧量减少,并且受高海拔的影响较小。
I told Tipton that I had noticed I was a lot calmer recently, that I did not get so upset when, for example, I broke a glass.
我告诉蒂普顿,我感觉自己最近平静了许多,比如,我打碎玻璃杯时并没有那么沮丧。
“So is the cold water making me less psychologically stressed about other things, not just physical things such as temperature?” I asked him.
“那冷水是不是让我在面对其他事物时心理压力也减少了,而不仅仅是像温度这样的物理因素?”我问他。
“The honest answer is I don’t know,” he said. “But I have no doubt that there is a common component to all of this. We just don’t know what it is.”
“真实的回答是,我不知道,”他说。“但我相信,这里面有个共同的因素。我们只是不知道它是什么。”
Anne-Marie Caroff has 80 people on her mailing list for Les Bonnets Rouges, about half of whom swim regularly through the winter.
安妮-玛丽·卡罗夫的邮件列表中有80人订阅了“红帽子”活动,其中大约有一半的人会在冬季定期游泳。
She believes the benefits are as much social as they are physical.
她相信,这些好处不仅仅体现在身体上,在社交上也是一样。
Les Bonnets Rouges has evolved into a congenial collective, they exchange surplus harvests from their gardens, tomatoes in the summer, apples in the autumn.
“红帽子”组织已经发展成了一个和谐的集体,他们会互相交换自己花园里富余的农产品,夏天是番茄,秋天是苹果。
They go on fishing expeditions together, to dig for clams or to gather samphire in the river estuary.
他们一起去钓鱼,挖蛤蜊,或在河口采集海蓬子。
Les Bonnets Rouges started a tradition of the last dip of the year on 31 December, or the first dip of the year on 1 Jan (depending on the time of the tide) and now more than 100 people gather to swim and splash.
“红帽子”定下了一个传统,要么在年末12月31号的时候一起游最后一次,要么在新年1月1号的时候一起游第一次(具体取决于潮汐时间),如今已有100多人聚集在一起,游泳戏水。
People bring hot chocolate and vin chaud and homemade cakes and the local newspaper sends a photographer.
人们带来了热巧克力、热红酒、自制的蛋糕,当地的报社还派来了一位摄影师。
At the end of the summer they have a big picnic – “it gets a little crazy” admitted Caroff – everyone brings a lot of food, and there are maybe 50 or 60 people there.
夏末时,他们会举办一场大型野餐——卡罗夫承认,“会有点疯狂”,每个人都带了很多食物,现场大概有五六十人。
When the moon is full in summer and the tide is right they organise nocturnal swims.
在满月的夏日,潮汐正合适时,他们会组织夜泳活动。
“I never found the sea so wonderful as under the moonlight,” she said.
“我从未发现,大海在月光下如此美妙,”她说。
Caroff told me that February and March were the most difficult months, the sea was at its coldest.
卡罗夫告诉我,二月和三月是最难的时候,海水是最冷的。
But through February, the colder the water, the stronger I felt.
但到了二月,水温越低,我感觉越有力量。
I had assumed there would come a point when I would use the wetsuit, but I never did.
我曾以为,总有那么一个时刻我会穿上那件泳衣,但我始终没有。
My brain itself felt different, as if its circuits were fizzing with new current.
我的大脑已经不一样了,仿佛它的回路里正滋滋作响,里面充满了新电流。
For many years, I had carried a heaviness in my head, a weight of not-good-enough.
多年来,我头脑中一直背负着一种“不够好”的沉重感。
There was a long list of things that could make me feel stuck and stupid, I was alone, cut off from friends and family by coronavirus and Brexit, living off savings, emotionally hungover from the break-up – and yet, quite often, I felt strangely marvellous.
有很多事情会让我觉得困顿和愚蠢,我独自一人,新冠疫情和英国脱欧让我与朋友和家人隔绝,靠着积蓄生活,情感上还因分手而余痛未消——然而,很多时候,我却有一种奇妙的愉悦感。
Sometime around Valentine’s Day, I stopped crying.
大约在情人节前后,我不再哭了。
I stopped railing and hurling and hurting when something went wrong: an editor’s rejection, a burnt cake, the time I left 200 euros in the cashpoint machine.
事情出错时,我不再咆哮、不再乱扔东西、也不再伤害自己了:比如被编辑退稿、烤焦的蛋糕,还有那次我把200欧元落在了取款机里。
I was respectful of the cold, but not afraid of it any more.
我对寒冷保持着敬意,但不再对它感到恐惧了。
In the same way I was becoming respectful of my sadnesses and disappointments, but not afraid of feeling them.
同样地,我开始尊重自己的悲伤和失望,已不再害怕去感受它们。