Cryotherapy is really just the use of cold temperature to shock the body. It's thought that the cold shock of the cold temperature is very good for unlocking a variety of different healing mechanisms.

Cryotherapy is used for quite a few things. Some use it for mood enhancement. It's very good for releasing catecholamines in the body, which is epinephrine and norepinephrine. You've got some serotonin and dopamine release, too. It's a very good cup of coffee in the morning if you're trying to decrease your caffeine intake. And let's not forget, cryotherapy has been shown to drastically reduce inflammation in the body, and it's very popular as a pain management tool.

There are a few different mechanisms of action that are interesting. The cold shock of cold air or water creates a hormetic effect in the body that is really kind of the secret sauce that's what triggers all the different cascades of healing, and they vary person to person a little bit, but that's where you get all of those beautiful anti-inflammatory cascades and things like that.
Additionally, there's this phenomenon of cold shock proteins, which are a very specific family of proteins released in response to cold shock. These proteins are still being studied and discovered, but they're thought to have some pretty profound impact on immunity and a variety of other cool and interesting health benefits. Lastly, there's this idea of vasospasm. The cold shock is a vasoconstricting agent, and so the changes to vasculature have been shown to unlock a whole cascade of healing very good for blood pressure and even the strength of the arterial walls in the blood vessels.
Another cool feature of cold therapy is this idea of brown fat mobilization. Brown fat is a metabolically rich fat, very mitochondrial dense, which is why it's beige and brown in color, and it lives sternoclavicular in the upper back. When that area of the body gets particularly cold, you get some interesting metabolic effects from that fat being activated and not to mention there's some really good collagen and elastin synthesis that goes on when the skin and the face get cold.

That varies widely from person to person and cryo machine to cryotherapy machine. If you're using water, for instance, or air, your times may change. I think everyone is different, so it's important to kind of think about what goals you have and what your reason for doing cryotherapy is. However, at our Brickell, Miami location we generally recommend a typical treatment lasts about three to three and a half minutes (3 to 3 ½ minutes). Of course, that time can be adjusted based on you and your goals.