Down to his skivvies under the robe, intrepid reporter Dennis Lynch enters the full-body “cryosauna” — wearing gloves to guard against frostbite — and prepares to undergo the KryoGenesis process.
BY DENNIS LYNCH
It was 61 degrees outside City Hall, but I was about to almost freeze to death just a couple blocks away.
Well, at least my body would think I was freezing to death.
I was about to step into a “cryosauna” that would blast me with compressed nitrogen gas at -270 degrees Fahrenheit for three minutes at Downtown’s first whole-body cryotherapy center, KryoGenesis on Duane Street.
Convincing your body that it’s freezing to death is the whole point of cryotherapy, said KryoGenesis owner Stan Kapica. He discovered cryotherapy as a way to ease his own pain after a double knee replacement a few years ago. It helped him so much that he quit his lucrative job as a media executive to start a cryotherapy business.
Some proponents of cryotherapy tout the whole-body treatment — developed in the 1970s by Japanese doctor Toshima Yamauchi to ease the pain of rheumatoid arthritis — as a cure-all magic bullet that goes beyond managing pain to also increase libido, improve mental focus and aid weight loss. But Kapica is not one to oversell his product — his pitch is more conservative.
“You have to be careful the way you go about taking about the benefits. I don’t want to get into an issue where we’re telling people that it does a myriad of things,” Kapica said. “The two things it does for everybody is that it boosts metabolism and reduces inflammation in your body. Anything beyond that is kind of personal for people. Some people say ‘look, it helps me sleep at night,’ some people say ‘I suffer from depression and this is very mood elevating.’ I don’t want to get into anything it might do and doesn’t do for everybody.”
But what would it do for me? Would I go into shock? Would it heal the shoulder I pulled moving a massive sectional couch across the city two days before? Would I emerge from the chamber with the power to freeze things with my mind?
“Maybe if a spider fell in there while you were in there and bit you,” said Dr. Kenneth McCulloch, an orthopedic surgeon who founded the Duane Street office and invited Kapica to set up his KryoGenesis center there.
Peer-reviewed studies have shown that certain biological processes my body would undergo when I stepped in for my three-minute cryobath do have benefits.
The freezing cold nitrogen bath would quickly lower my skin temperature to around 40 degrees Fahrenheit and initiate my fight-or-flight response within the first 30 seconds of the therapy session. My body would pull the blood from my extremities and send it to my vital organs, where it would circulate for the next two and a half minutes, soaking up nutrients and oxygen. When blood flows back through my body as it warmed following the session, it will deliver that rich payload to my muscles and joints.
The cold would also stimulate my sympathetic nervous system, triggering an anti-inflammatory response and boosting my metabolic rate, according to some studies. My body would also produce endorphins during the 10 minutes or so it takes for it to heat back up, which should give me slightly euphoric feeling similar to a runner’s high, Kapica said.
With that running through my mind, I changed into a KryoGenesis robe — plus some long socks and gloves, to prevent frostbite — and stepped into a machine that looked like some sort of futuristic hot water heater. Then I shed my robe, leaving me in my skivvies for maximum skin exposure, and Kapica hit the gas.
Stoic even as the temperature plunges to 175 degrees below zero, our correspondent puts on a brave face amidst the frosty fog of nitrogen gas.
Our reporter finally cracks — though fortunately, not literally — and starts shivering uncontrollably as the temperature drops further, eventually hitting -270 degrees Fahrenheit in the chamber, and chilling the surface of his skin to within just a few degrees of freezing solid.
As the cloud of nitrogen enveloped me, I wasn’t thinking about my fight-or-flight response, my revved-up metabolism, or of any that other good stuff Kapica told me about. I could only think one thing: “Holy s–t, this is cold!”
Really, really cold.
I shivered uncontrollably and grimaced through the pain. I tried to pay attention to Kapica’s explanation of what was happening to me, but my brain couldn’t take its attention off the cold.
“The first time is the hardest,” Kapica said. “Nothing is going to happen to you, but your brain is not used to the sensation, and it’s telling you to get out.”
Yeah, that’s exactly what it was saying.
But I took his advice to try to relax and eventually settled down, even though I kept shivering as the seconds ticked by on the display by my head and the temperature reading plunged: -125, -150, -175, -200…
Towards the end of the session, it actually became somewhat relaxing, and it only took a minute sitting in my robe to feel warmed up again. Unsurprisingly, I felt much more awake afterwards and I did get that bit of euphoria.
The Food and Drug Administration does not yet recognize any medical benefits from the full-body cryotherapy chambers that KryoGenesis and most other cryotherapy outfits use, but its European counterpart has. At the moment, Dr. McColloch and other American doctors can’t prescribe use of the machines at KryoGenesis, but he plans to suggest the treatment whenever he thinks it could help patients with injuries such as muscle strains, ligament strains, and basically any condition involving inflammation.
Until the device receives FDA approval, however, health insurance companies won’t cover the procedure.
Dr. McColloch thinks that with all the attention generated by celebrities and athletes using cryotherapy, demand for more FDA-certified studies will increase and the agency could approve it as a medical device within the next two years.
“I think it’s definitely going to happen,” the doctor said.
He pointed to several smaller studies that show most participants getting some benefit from the treatment as a promising start.
“They have done those studies and it’s very positive,” he said. “The overwhelming response is that there is a benefit, however the number is just not high enough to make sweeping generalizations about the treatment.”
KryoGenesis also uses a machine resembling a vacuum cleaner that pumps out the same compressed nitrogen used in the full-body machine for spot treatment therapy for people having localized pain. They also use it for “cryo-facials” to tighten up your face, a purely cosmetic treatment.
For now, cryotherapy exists in a middle ground between alternative medicine and a legitimate treatment. But as for me, my back and shoulder pain subsided somewhat the next day, but it came back a few days later. It’s hard to say if it had any benefit for me lasting more than a day or two, or any at all.
Kapica said many people don’t feel the full effects until they go a few times, but since each three-minute session costs $80 — or five for $360 — I probably won’t be back any time soon — unless Dr. McCulloch is right and it gains FDA approval, then maybe my health insurance will foot the bill in the future.
Freeze me until then.
Before you try out the treatment yourself, be sure to check out the company’s website to make sure you don’t have any of the medical conditions — such as venous thrombosis, hypertension, or an infection of some sort — that bar you from getting the therapy.
But if you got the cold cash to splurge of a deep-freeze in the next few weeks, the experience can warm your heart even as it chills your body. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas KyroGenesis will be donating 20 percent of all packages purchased to charities that support disabled firefighters, police and veterans.
Kapica already offers firefighters, police and veterans a 20-percent discount on cryotherapy sessions, and he plans to offer some free sessions to them one day during the holiday season, but hasn’t worked out all the details yet. Contact info@kryogenesis.com for more information.
