Yes, You Can Get Instant Relief For Anxiety

Turns out humans are designed for it through the “diver’s reflex”.

Image: Jeremy Bishop/Unsplash

Anxiety makes us feel “hot under the collar.” But evolution has provided a mechanism to help cool us down. Enter the “diver’s reflex” — or the mammalian diving response, the body’s physiological response to acute submersion in cold water.

Scientists have long known that aquatic mammals, such as seals, whales, dolphins, and otters can override basic homeostatic reflexes that keep an organism in optimal functioning in order to survive for long periods under the ocean’s surface. But it wasn’t until the mid-twentieth century, when an Italian air force lieutenant named Raimondo Bucher took a bet that he could free-dive one hundred feet down and back to the surface without his lungs collapsing, that scientists realized water may have a preservation effect on humans. Research by Per Scholander confirmed this idea — particularly, that at certain temperatures, water triggers an immediate decrease in heart rate.

If you’ve had the not-so-pleasure of feeling anxious, you’ll know how much anxiety impacts your heart — the pounding, the skip beats, the elephant’s weight crushing down. This is because your nervous system, an involuntary and reflexive, “behind-the-scenes” mechanism that helps to keep us alive, is stuck on hyper-alert and kicked you out of your “window of tolerance.”

Anxiety activates the sympathetic nervous system. But there is a co-equal branch called the parasympathetic nervous system, or what is often referred to as the “rest and digest,” “feed and breed,” or “tend and befriend” system, because it dampens sympathetic responses and keeps the body in a restorative and resting state. In 2015, scientists found that the diver’s reflex occurs from signals sent by the trigeminal nerves in the face. When cold water hits the face — and it must get just below the eyes and above the cheekbones — a message is sent to the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve, which controls the parasympathetic nervous system, connects the base of the brain to the rest of the body and regulates the heart rate and breathing, among other essential functions. Net: cold water on our face, short-circuits anxiety.

Activating the diver’s reflex gives us a…