Epsom Salts
Epsom salts can enhance your ice bath by softening the ice & allowing magnesium absorption through the skin, helping to boost mood & replenish micronutrients.
Benefits of Epsom Salts
Adding Epsom salts to your ice bath allows for the transdermal absorption of magnesium through the skin, offering improvements in mental health & alleviating depressive symptoms. This supplementation may also help to meet the magnesium demands of cold thermogenesis. As explained in How to Make an Epsom Salt Ice Bath, high blood serum levels of magnesium have also been associated with reduced risks of cancer & improved muscle quality,
amongst others. Along with this, Magnesium is Critical for Cold Thermogenesis mentions that magnesium offers several other health benefits, with noted improvements in anxiety, insomnia, vertigo, headaches, blood pressure, restless leg, constipation & other ailments. Epsom salts will also break up the hard ice in the ice bath, giving it a slushy-like texture & helping to produce more ice.
Which Type of Salts for Your Ice Bath?
Some of the most common suggested salts include magnesium sulfate (Epsom salt), zinc sulfate, copper & potassium sulfate. Magnesium sulfate (Epsom salt) softens ice & provide health benefits. However, magnesium is a also fertilizer that can promote a green algae bloom requiring extra filtration — especially in stainless steel tubs that are deficient in zinc. Zinc galvanized tubs already resist algae growth, because zinc from the tub coating enhances the anti-microbial properties of the ozone filtration.
Also, zinc is an essential mineral for metabolic and immune system health. Adding zinc sulfate salts to stainless steel tubs can boost water clarity & provide some transdermal zinc benefit. Copper is a powerful anti-microbial, anti-fungal, & anti-algae agent, as well as an essential trace mineral. Adding a copper sulfate to a zinc galvanized tub will dissolve some of the zinc coating, & deposit a black dusting of copper metal in its place. In a stainless steel tub, copper sulfate may enhance water clarity & provide some transdermal copper supplementation. However, copper in excessive amounts can be toxic to humans & those taking copper supplements should caution to adding copper to their Morozko, depending upon the total dose. Potassium sulfate is an electrolyte that increases water conductivity, and lowers the freezing point. Transdermal absorption of potassium thru the skin during or following an ice bath likely provides some electrolyte supplement to the bather that supports cold thermogenesis.
How to Add Salts
A good pace to start when adding ice bath sulfate salts to your Morozko is with small quantities that allow you to make observations of any changes. When adding salts to your Morozko, it is recommended to add 4-6lb of pure magnesium sulfate. Your salt recipe may vary depending on individual experimentation, but it might look like:
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4 lb Epsom salt
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1 lb potassium sulfate
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1 tablespoon zinc sulfate monohydrate
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several grains of of copper sulfate pentahydrate (in stainless steel tubs only)
To add these salts to your ice bath, pour the salt into your tub & allow the water filtration to flow over the salt crystals until they are dissolved. This process should only take a few hours. Note that it is important not to use salts that have additives such as essential oils or perfumes. The water treatment system will identify these as contaminants, & the ozone disinfection system will attempt to remove them. Under ozone attack, oils typically go through a partial oxidation phase in which they foam & can clog your filter.
Browse our Accessories page for bags of pure Epsom salt, amongst other salt alternatives. You may also find Epsom salts at most garden stores where it is sold as fertilizer.
Salt Safety Precautions
The danger in adding too much Epsom salts to your ice bath is the possibility of achieving water temperatures lower than 32F, as adding salt will lower the freezing point of water. This can lead to freezing the water inside your own skin cells, causing frostnip, or in more severe cases, frostbite injury. To minimize this risk, maintain your ice bath at temperatures above 32F. While frostnip is not expected to cause permanent skin damage, it causes soreness & red splotches on the skin that are uncomfortable, counter-productive to the purpose of cold water cryotherapy, & giving up one of the major safety advantages of an ice bath over frigid gas cryotherapy.
Other safety precautions include to never add chlorine, chlorine bleach, or chloride salts of any type to your ice bath, as the results might be unhealthy. Adding chloride salts to your Morozko ice bath will also undermine the efficacy of the ozone disinfection system designed to keep your water safe and crystal clear.