Cryotherapy: Is it safe?

The extreme anti-ageing craze of cryotherapy has arrived in Australia — but with one mysterious death already is it as safe as we're led to believe?

Whole-body liquid nitrogen chambers are popping up around the world as celebrities lead the charge for the extreme-cold health movement with Sydney's first clinic already filling hundreds of pre-booked spots.

Shocking the body for just three minutes with temperatures as low as -140 degrees is purported to lead to benefits from tissue repair to increased metabolism, according to experts like Dr Rohnda Patrick.

"It increases norepinephrine, which is important for mood or also to even help you burn more fat," Dr Patrick said.

"Men and women who have been exposed to cold air for a certain number of days, they’re able to increase their metabolism."

"There are proven signs that it reduces pain and helps with rehabilitation."

But the death of a cryotherapy technician last year raises important questions about the dangers of using liquid nitrogen.

Devotee Chelsea Ake managed a cryotherapy clinic in Las Vegas and had dreams of starting her own business.

But her frozen body was found by a business colleague after she used the cryotherapy chamber unsupervised and outside business hours.

A coroner found that Chelsea died of asphyxiation, suffocated most likely caused by inhaling the liquid nitrogen gas which froze her lungs instantly.

The family's lawyer, Rick Harris, said Chelsea may not have even survived if she was supervised; such is the danger of liquid nitrogen.

"That’s unreasonable to think you can jump into a machine that’s supposed to make you feel better but if you bend over a foot you’re dead. That’s a design fault," Mr Harris said.

"In one report the coroner indicated the death was instantaneous. So that Chelsea, whether there's an attendant there or not, she breathed in one or two breaths of liquid nitrogen and she's passed out, dead from having her lungs frozen at 250 degrees below zero Fahrenheit."

While liquid nitrogen chambers are relatively new, the concept of 'cold therapy' is not.

Poland's 'ice man' Wim Hoff is the world's most daring advocate for freezing your way to good health.

Wim's ability to withstand 1 hour and 53 minutes in ice water makes him the world record-holder — a feat that has scientists baffled.

But more interesting still is the unseen effect it has had on his body.

A team from Radboud University in the Netherlands ran a series of scientific tests designed to understand how Wim could tolerate extreme cold and what it did to his system.

They put him in an icebox for a prolonged period of time before injecting him with bacteria that should have made him sick, but nothing happened.

"They saw all kinds of things they thought not to be possible. Scientifically, physiologically not to be possible," Wim said

"Any disease related to inflammation, which is almost all the diseases, are helped or prevented by going into the cold, that means auto-immune diseases like Arthritis, Arthrosis, Roma, MS, Psoriasis, Diabetes"

Cold therapy is not without its critics. Llion Roberts is a Doctor of Sports Science at the University of Queensland who has conducted several studies on cold therapy – and discounts many of the claims made by cryotherapy clinics

"At the moment the scientific evidence to support that is very much lacking.

"If they have an underlying cardiovascular issue that they are not aware of themselves then unnecessarily increasing their heart rate and blood pressure and respiratory rates could be having very, very big detrimental effects on them."

Wim Hof is coming to Australia in June to hold a series of workshops. For more details visit his website