Protocol
Whole-body cryotherapy
WBC · Cryosauna · Cryotherapy chamber · Whole-body cryostimulation · Cryosuite
The human literature is real but narrow and short-horizon. Published trials are dominated by small athletic-performance and recovery studies and by inflammatory-disease cohorts (notably ankylosing spondylitis), measuring surrogate markers such as proinflammatory cytokines, lipid peroxidation products and antioxidant capacity over days to weeks. Several studies are confounded because cryotherapy is bundled with an exercise or kinesiotherapy programme, so the intervention cannot be isolated. Critically, none of this extends to longevity or healthspan endpoints: there are no trials showing that whole-body cryotherapy reduces mortality, slows biological ageing, prevents age-related disease, or produces durable functional benefit. Some of the supporting mechanistic work (for example thermogenesis and antioxidant-system effects) is animal or in-vitro. Marketed healthspan and "reverse ageing" claims are not supported by the evidence base; the defensible reading is short-term subjective recovery and transient biomarker change. Safety is a live concern: liquid-nitrogen chambers carry asphyxiation, frostbite and cold-burn risk, and the modality is unsuitable for people with uncontrolled hypertension, cardiac disease, Raynaud's, cryoglobulinaemia or pregnancy.
At a glance
- Evidence
- Commercial
- Singapore (HSA)
- No HSA position on file
- Australia (TGA)
- No TGA position on file
- Offered at
- No clinic on file
Singapore
Health Sciences Authority
- HSA status
- No position on file
- In our SG set
- Tracked in Singapore
- SG clinics
- None on file
Australia
Therapeutic Goods Administration
- TGA status
- No position on file
- In our AU set
- Tracked in Australia
- AU clinics
- None on file
Evidence is not approvalAn evidence grade describes how strong the science is. A regulatory status describes whether a body has approved the intervention for an indication. They are different questions, answered separately above.
What it is
Plain-language explainer
Whole-body cryotherapy involves standing in a chamber cooled to roughly -85C to -150C, usually by liquid nitrogen vapour or an electric refrigeration unit, for two to four minutes. Operators market it for exercise recovery, inflammation, mood, metabolic rate and, increasingly, for general healthspan and "biological age" benefits. Physiologically it is a brief, intense cold stress that triggers vasoconstriction, a catecholamine surge and transient shifts in inflammatory and oxidative-stress markers.
Categories
Protocol
Keep reading
Related coverage from the newsroom.
Sources
What this profile is built on
- The Longevity Suite at METT Singapore - operator site listing cryotherapy · The Longevity Suite Asia
- TH7 Body Labs - Equipment: Infrared Sauna · TH7 Body Labs
- PubMed Central search: whole-body cryotherapy literature (recovery, oxidative stress, ankylosing spondylitis, rat model) · PubMed Central, NIH
Every entity profile on variis is sourced. Not medical advice.