I bet we can brainstorm some bullshit health benefits.

Dude, jesus christ. The Cleveland Clinic is a real, nonprofit medical institution. A professional writer consulted a (named, he’s right there) medical doctor for this. There’s compelling enough evidence elsewhere to support what this article is saying. Linked is a 2025 PLoS One systematic review and meta-analysis for cold-water immersion (CWI), including cold showers; more research is needed, but the authors at least make a conclusion in favor of CWIs, which says a lot for this type of paper.

Can you please get off your Dunning–Kruger high horse for five seconds and stop contributing to the science denialism that’s unraveling society? I take scalding hot showers; not everything has to be an attack you have to defend against.

Also:

That article doesn’t say “cold showers are good for you!”

Motherfucker, the section header after the introductory paragraph literally reads: “Why cold showers are good for you”. Was your problem that they missed the exclamation point or something?

I don’t know why you’re being downvoted so heavily. I agree that five days isn’t some brutal, or even abnormal, act of chastity. It’s moreso that “nofap” has connotations beyond just breaking an unhealthy masturbation addiction, and because everyone’s healthy status quo is different, keeping track of a specific number of days since you jorked your pork isn’t a great metric of how someone’s dealing with addiction. What’s a lot more important is how you’re approaching it; are you being mindful in the moment, or are you just doing it for a quick hit?

Recovering drug addicts will treat number of days since their last hit as a metric for success, but usually, e.g. with alcohol or nicotine, there isn’t a healthy upside to the object of their addiction like masturbation. “Nofap” basically does treat it like something strictly detrimental, and it stigmatizes something that’s normal, ironically probably coming with some mental health implications of its own (in a similar way that religious stigma against it often does).