The Guardian

Is cold water good for you? You asked Google – here’s the answer | Nell Frizzell

Every day millions of people ask Google life’s most difficult questions. Our writers answer some of the most common queries
The 7th UK Cold Water Swimming Championships at Tooting Bec lido, south London, in January 2017. Photograph: Teri Pengilley for the Guardian

I swam through ice three weeks after giving birth. I wondered, momentarily, if it was possible to freeze breast milk in your own body. I wondered, briefly, if my uterus might shrivel up and fall out. I wondered, frankly, if I still had it in me. And yet, afterwards I felt happier, more clear-headed and warmer of heart than I had for weeks.

The question – as with all things that give us a rush of adrenaline, take effort, force us outdoors and push us into severe discomfort – is: should I

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Guardian

The Guardian4 min read
The Big Idea: Should We Abolish Literary Genres?
In her Reith lecture of 2017, recently published for the first time in a posthumous collection of nonfiction, A Memoir of My Former Self, Hilary Mantel recalled the beginnings of her career as a novelist. It was the 1970s. “In those days historical f
The Guardian8 min read
PinkPantheress: ‘I Don’t Think I’m Very Brandable. I Dress Weird. I’m Shy’
PinkPantheress no longer cares what people think of her. When she released her lo-fi breakout tracks Break it Off and Pain on TikTok in early 2021, aged just 19, she did so anonymously, partly out of fear of being judged. Now, almost three years late
The Guardian3 min readWorld
Historians Come Together To Wrest Ukraine’s Past Out Of Russia’s Shadow
The opening salvo in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year was not a rocket or a missile. Rather, it was an essay. Vladimir Putin’s On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians, published in summer 2021, ranged over 1,00

Related