Do Cold Plunges Increase Testosterone?

No cold plunges do not increase testosterone. The research points the other way. Three peer-reviewed studies that directly measured testosterone before and after cold water immersion all found either a decrease or a blunting of the normal post-exercise testosterone rise: Sakamoto et al. 1991 found a 10% drop after cold stimulation; Earp et al. 2019 found CWI blunted and delayed the testosterone rise after resistance exercise; and Teległów & Cicha 2025 found a statistically significant drop (p = 0.000037) in young men after a single immersion below 4°C. The claim that cold plunges raise T is a social-media myth it’s not supported by controlled human studies.

It’s one of the most confident claims in wellness content right now. “Cold plunges skyrocket your testosterone.” “Ice baths boost T by 200%.” “Get in the tub, get jacked.” You can find a version of this on TikTok, Instagram, and half a dozen cold-plunge brand blogs that have a financial interest in the claim being true. The trouble is that when you actually go and look at the published studies that measured testosterone before and after cold water immersion, they show the opposite of what’s being sold.

Just as cold plunges don’t boost testosterone, their relationship with inflammation isn’t straightforward. Immediate post-plunge measurements show increased inflammation markers, contrary to popular belief about single-session benefits.

While cold plunges don’t boost testosterone, they do affect men and women differently. Women often benefit from shorter plunges at slightly warmer temperatures due to physiological differences in thermoregulation and body composition. cold plunges and muscle recovery

This isn’t an edge-case finding. It’s consistent across a 1991 Japanese study that directly compared cold stimulation with exercise, a 2019 University of Rhode Island study in resistance-trained men, and a 2025 Polish study in young winter swimmers. All three found cold water either dropped testosterone or blunted the post-exercise rise. The 2025 UniSA meta-analysis of 11 studies and 3,177 participants didn’t even list testosterone as a primary or secondary outcome because the evidence base isn’t there. real benefits of ice baths cold plunges for mood and stress

That doesn’t make cold plunging useless. There are real benefits mood, recovery, focus, stress management at 12 hours post and you can read about those in our science guide to ice baths. But testosterone isn’t on the list. This guide walks through why the myth persists, what the actual studies measured, the important distinction between testosterone and sperm quality, and what actually does raise T if that’s your goal.

BEFORE YOU READ FURTHER: If you’re considering cold plunging specifically to address low testosterone, see your GP first. Low T has medical causes worth investigating sleep apnoea, obesity, chronic stress, medication side effects, primary testicular failure, secondary (pituitary) hypogonadism. Cold plunging doesn’t fix any of these. In Australia, healthdirect recommends starting with a morning total testosterone blood test. If yours is genuinely low, a chat with a GP about underlying causes not an ice bath is the evidence-based first move. Never use cold plunging as a substitute for prescribed testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) if you’re on it. Do not change TRT dosing without your prescriber’s input.

What three direct-measurement studies actually found

Competitor blogs cite mechanistic speculation. These are the studies that actually drew blood before and after cold water immersion and measured circulating testosterone. Every one of them showed a decrease or a blunted response:

All three studies measured serum testosterone via blood draw pre- and post-immersion. None used self-report or indirect markers. The direction of the effect is consistent: cold exposure does not raise testosterone acutely in healthy men.

The short answer: cold plunges don’t raise testosterone

SECTION TAKEAWAY: Every published human study that measured testosterone before and after cold water immersion found a decrease or a blunted post-exercise rise. The common “cold increases T” claim is based on mechanistic speculation (vasoconstriction, dopamine, brown fat) rather than direct measurement. When researchers actually drew blood, the numbers went the other way.

There’s a useful lesson here about how wellness claims get made. A neurochemical effect of cold the noradrenaline and dopamine surge everyone quotes is real. From there, the argument tends to go: “dopamine is a precursor for other hormones → therefore cold plunges increase testosterone.” That’s a leap. Dopamine is a precursor for noradrenaline and adrenaline, not for testosterone. Testosterone is synthesised from cholesterol in Leydig cells in the testes, regulated by luteinising hormone (LH) from the pituitary. The acute hormonal response to cold elevated cortisol, elevated catecholamines, transient changes in LH tends to suppress, not stimulate, testosterone production.

That matches what Andrew Huberman who popularised many of the cold exposure protocols now in circulation has actually said on his own podcast when asked directly. His Lab’s summary explicitly notes that “well-controlled studies directly linking deliberate cold exposure to significant increases in testosterone are limited” and that the mechanism is speculative. That caveat gets stripped out when the claim is repurposed by influencers and cold-plunge brands.

Why does this myth persist?

Four reasons the “cold plunges boost testosterone” claim won’t die, even though the direct evidence is against it:

The feeling is real, so people assume T is behind it

After a cold plunge you feel alert, focused, energised, quietly aggressive. That feels like “more testosterone.” It isn’t. What you’re feeling is a noradrenaline and dopamine surge different hormones, different mechanism. Feeling “manlier” isn’t a valid proxy for measured free testosterone.

Conflation with scrotal-cooling research

There’s a real body of research showing that elevated scrotal temperature (from hot baths, saunas, laptops on laps, prolonged sitting) harms sperm production. One widely-cited study by Jung et al. (2007) found that men who stopped regular wet-heat exposure saw sperm counts rise by around 491%. That’s a real finding for sperm. It gets quoted as if it’s evidence for testosterone. It isn’t. Sperm and testosterone are made by different cells in different structures within the testis, regulated by different hormones. Keeping your testes cool helps sperm. It doesn’t, on current evidence, do anything measurable for serum testosterone.

Brand incentives

If you sell $8,000 cold plunge tubs, “helps with recovery” is a less powerful pitch than “boost your testosterone.” A lot of cold plunge product copy and blog content has been written with that pressure in mind. When a brand’s evidence list for a T claim consists of a single 2019 anecdote from Men’s Health magazine referencing a Swansea University study that never materialised in peer review, that’s the signal. Real evidence gets cited properly.

Rogan, Huberman clips out of context

A short podcast clip where someone says “cold exposure could plausibly increase testosterone through vasoconstriction-rebound” becomes, after four reposts, “Huberman says cold plunges boost testosterone.” Mechanism becomes claim becomes fact, without any actual study ever being added to the chain. The original speaker usually had caveats. The caveats never make the repost.

Cold plunges after strength training are actively counterproductive for anabolic response

SECTION TAKEAWAY: If you lift for muscle growth and want the post-exercise testosterone surge, do not cold plunge within 4–6 hours of training. The Earp 2019, Roberts 2015, and Fyfe 2019 trials all showed cold water immersion after resistance exercise blunts the normal anabolic response, including the testosterone rise and downstream muscle-growth signalling.

This is where the myth flips from merely wrong to actually harmful to your training. Heavy resistance exercise squats, deadlifts, presses produces a transient rise in circulating testosterone over the following hour or two. That acute T response is part of the anabolic signalling cascade (along with mTOR pathway activation and satellite-cell recruitment) that drives muscle growth. Earp et al. (2019) had 11 resistance-trained men do a 6 × 10 back-squat session at 80% of 1-rep max, followed by either 15 minutes of cold water immersion or a control condition. The cold water group had a blunted and delayed free testosterone response compared to control. That’s a direct measurement, not mechanistic speculation.

The pattern replicates across the strength-training literature. Roberts et al. 2015 showed long-term gains in muscle mass and strength were smaller in lifters who cold plunged after every session compared to those who did active recovery. Satellite cell activity was suppressed. mTOR signalling was attenuated. If you’re trying to build muscle, the most expensive timing mistake you can make is a post-lift cold plunge and the irony is that a lot of people are making that mistake because they’ve been told it raises testosterone.

Sperm quality is a separate question & cold may help

SECTION TAKEAWAY: Keeping the testicles below core body temperature is useful for sperm production. The testicles sit outside the body because sperm needs a temperature of roughly 31–37°C a few degrees below core. Chronic elevated scrotal temperature (from hot baths, saunas, laptops, prolonged driving) is associated with reduced sperm count and motility. Avoiding heat is the evidence-based move; whether adding cold helps further isn’t well established.

This is where the myth and the reality start to overlap. If you’re asking “does cold help with fertility,” there’s a case to be made not because cold does anything special, but because avoiding heat is protective. A 2007 study at the University of California, San Francisco found that men who quit regular hot baths or Jacuzzi use saw sperm counts rise by an average of 491% over three to six months. That’s an avoidance of heat effect. Whether deliberately adding cold further improves sperm counts beyond heat avoidance isn’t well-studied.

Two important clarifications:

• Sperm ≠ testosterone. Sperm is produced by Sertoli cells in the seminiferous tubules; testosterone by Leydig cells in the interstitium. Cold exposure affecting sperm production doesn’t automatically translate to changes in circulating testosterone. The 1987 Nakamura paper often cited by cold-plunge blogs talks about DNA, RNA, and protein synthesis in the testis sperm-related processes, not testosterone synthesis.
• Don’t put ice directly on your testicles. Some influencers recommend ice packs applied to the scrotum. Frostbite is a real risk, as is tissue damage to the structures that make sperm in the first place. If you’re concerned about fertility, Healthy Male (formerly Andrology Australia) is the evidence-based AU resource start there, not with a bag of frozen peas.

What actually raises testosterone (by order of evidence strength)

If the goal is to genuinely raise testosterone, these are the interventions with the strongest evidence. In rough order of impact:

6. Where cold plunging actually does help men’s health

None of this is an argument against cold plunging. It’s an argument against one specific claim about cold plunging. Cold water immersion has real, measurable benefits just not in the T column. The honest list:

• Stress reduction at 12 hours post-exposure. The 2025 UniSA meta-analysis by Cain et al. pooled 3,177 participants and found significant stress reduction at 12 hours post-CWI. This is the most solid general-population benefit in the current literature.
• Recovery from endurance training. Machado 2016 meta-analysis and multiple follow-ups support 11–15 min at 11–15°C within 30 min of finishing. Reduces DOMS.
• Sleep quality when timed correctly. Chauvineau 2021 showed improved slow-wave sleep when CWI was done ~2–3 hours before bed after training.
• Mood effects. Multiple studies report reduced negative affect for hours after immersion. Not a replacement for mental health treatment, but a real shift.
• Habituation to stress. Repeated cold exposure blunts the cardiovascular and subjective stress response to subsequent cold, which has been proposed (without strong outcome evidence yet) to transfer to other stressors.

For the full evidence-based picture, see our science guide to ice baths. None of the benefits listed above are testosterone-dependent. You can have all of them without any T change which is, in fact, what the research shows.

Australian-specific context

Low T in Australia – what the actual data looks like

“Low testosterone” is a medical diagnosis, not a self-assessed state. Healthy Male (the former Andrology Australia, funded by the Department of Health) notes that about 1 in 200 Australian men under 60 have clinically low testosterone from a testicular or pituitary cause. Age-related decline is separate total T falls by about 1% per year from around age 30, but most older men still sit in the normal range. If you’re feeling tired, foggy, or low-libido, the most useful first move is an 8am fasted blood test ordered by your GP, not a cold plunge.

Winter tap water and scrotal exposure

For Australian users in Melbourne, Hobart, Canberra, or the Southern Highlands, winter morning tap water routinely comes out of the mains at 8–12°C. A morning plunge is genuinely cold similar to or colder than the water used in some of the direct-measurement testosterone studies discussed above. Don’t assume “I only plunge for 2 minutes” means the exposure is gentler than what the Polish or Japanese studies used; the duration is shorter, but the starting temperature can be lower. The biological stressor is real.

TRT access in Australia

Australian prescribing rules for testosterone replacement therapy are stricter than the US. PBS-subsidised TRT requires documented androgen deficiency from a specific cause and meets criteria under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. “Private” TRT clinics advertising direct-to-consumer testosterone access are a grey area and operate outside standard specialist pathways. If you genuinely have low T, an endocrinologist referral via your GP is the correct path not a cold plunge, and not an online “men’s health” subscription service.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

Medical disclaimer: General information based on current research. This article is not medical advice and should not be used as a substitute for evaluation by a qualified clinician. If you’re concerned about low testosterone, suspect androgen deficiency, or are considering testosterone replacement therapy, discuss it with your GP and (if indicated) an endocrinologist.