Sport & Fitness

A Polish lady in a white coat dabs at my armpits with a very large tissue and asks, ‘Are you sure you are dry?’ I am sure, I have dried myself very carefully since I was told what will happen to my skin if it is wet when it is exposed to temperatures of -110°C for two minutes. It will burn.

Renata hands me my second pair of gloves – I am already wearing two pairs of socks, crêpe tube knee warmers, two pairs of cotton boxer shorts, an oversized sweatband-style ear warmer and large white clogs – and I prepare to enter the freezing chamber at the London Kriotherapy Centre, the UK’s only such centre and housed, since it opened in November, in an ex-Arab television station in Battersea.
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The technology and logic of kriotherapy is simple enough. Liquid nitrogen is used to lower the temperature in a space roughly equal to the size of a six-person sauna, which you enter after 20 seconds of acclimatisation at -60°C in an outer chamber. As the temperature drops, your blood rushes to the centre of your body to maintain your core temperature. Although some athletes in training have managed -140°C degrees for three minutes, I intend to get out sharpish after two minutes, as recommended for beginners.

Once you’re out, according to the London Kriotherapy Centre’s director Charlie Brookes, the good stuff starts to happen. ‘Oxygen and nutrients are pumped back into your extremities and, along the way, they kick-start your body’s essential systems,’ he says, claiming it can help with complaints as various as insomnia, period pains, a poor immune system, MS, ME, depression and skin problems.

At this, Peter, who has come to see if kriotherapy can help his psoriasis, looks hopeful. ‘The immune system is boosted,’ continues Charlie, ‘the central nervous system starts talking to your muscles and your hormones go haywire as your body releases endorphins, adrenaline and serotonin.’

The system was recommended to Brookes by ex-England rugby international Will Green, who had used kriotherapy while training in Warsaw, and claimed it had allowed him to significantly increase his daily stamina levels. In Poland every major hospital has a unit – the military hospital in Warsaw freezes up to 500 people a day – and the Poles believe practically every medical condition can benefit from short-term exposure to extreme cold. Apart from heart disease and embolism, where sudden rushes of the blood are clearly a bad thing. Brookes commissioned his own machine in Warsaw and brought over trained Polish staff. ‘It also,’ he adds, ‘increases testosterone.’