Latest news with #Demian
New York Post
22-04-2025
- Health
- New York Post
This centuries-old practice improves sleep, reduces stress and soothes sore muscles — how do it at home
Schvitz and shine. Bathhouses are making a splash these days, with newbies to these relaxation havens raving about how much they help reduce stress, soothe their muscles and aid their slumber. But this isn't your average spa day. Advertisement Much like taking a spin classes, bathhouses encourage you to work for your wellness — in this case, by sweating it out in a sauna and then shocking your body by jumping into a cold plunge. 4 Bathhouse newbies are raving about how much they help reduce stress, soothe their muscles and aid their slumber. Getty Images The art of alternating between hot and cold — also known as contrast therapy — yields plenty of health benefits, and while it may be the newest wellness trend, it's actually an ancient remedy. 'Contrast therapy is far from new — it has been practiced for centuries,' Dr. Hany Demian, CEO of BioSpine and Co-Founder of Pain Care Clinics, told the Post. 'Historical records show that soldiers used it post-battle to accelerate recovery and restore energy.' Advertisement Here's how to practice it yourself — and if you don't want to shell out at a bathhouse, we've also got the skinny on how to do it at home. How does contrast therapy work? 'Contrast therapy involves alternating exposure to hot and cold temperatures,' Dr. Steven Quay, founder of the Biopharmaceutical company Atossa Therapeutics, told the Post. In traditional Finnish culture, this typically involves a sauna session followed by — ideally — taking a dip in an ice-cold lake, while the Japanese experience centers around hot baths and ice baths. Either way, the underlying physiological mechanisms are the same. Advertisement 'The core principle involves alternating between cold — promoting vasoconstriction, which tightens blood vessels — and heat — promoting vasodilation, which expands them,' Demian said. 'This dynamic process boosts circulation, speeds up muscle recovery and reduces pain by flushing out metabolic waste and reducing inflammation.' It also just makes you feel like a golden god — here's why. 4 'Contrast therapy is far from new — it has been practiced for centuries,' Demian said. DeA / Biblioteca Ambrosiana What are the health benefits of contrast therapy? According to Quay, peer-reviewed research suggests contrast therapy has several benefits, including: Advertisement Boosted parasympathetic nervous activity, which promotes relaxation Improved circulation and blood flow Reduced muscle soreness and inflammation Enhanced recovery post-exercise Better thermoregulation, which helps your body maintain its core internal temperature Is there any scientific evidence behind this? While some of the benefits are anecdotal, there's are studies showing contrast therapy can help with blood circulation, relaxation and sleep, according to both experts. 'Alternating vasoconstriction and vasodilation can stimulate vascular responsiveness and enhance peripheral blood flow,' Quay said. 'Heat therapy (e.g., sauna, warm baths) is known to reduce stress hormones like cortisol. Cold exposure (e.g., cold showers) may activate the parasympathetic nervous system afterward, aiding relaxation,' Demian explained. 'Heat exposure before bed can help lower core body temperature, which is linked to better sleep. Cold exposure may also improve sleep by reducing inflammation.' 4 It can involve jumping sweating in a sauna and jumping into a cold plunge — or, better yet, an ice-cold lake. Getty Images Is it 'healthier' than just swimming in a pool/hot tub? Advertisement While chilling in a pool or hot tub is also undeniably relaxing, you're getting a little more gain from your pain when alternating from extreme heat to cold. 'Contrast therapy may be more therapeutically effective than passive hot tubs or pools due to its dynamic thermal stimulation,' Quay said. Does it burn a lot of calories? Between the sweating and the jumping, it's temping to to think you're burning as many calories as a hot yoga class, especially since it's not uncommon to feel hungry afterwards. Sadly — not so much. Advertisement 'It will burn a very small amount of calories, but nothing significant,' Demian said. 'It can cause stomach contraction and relaxation which stimulates the appetite.' 4 Research shows contrast therapy can help you sleep. Getty Images/iStockphoto How can you practice contrast therapy at home? Depending on where you live and what time you go, a day pass at a bathhouse can cost anywhere from $50 to $100. Advertisement And while at-home saunas and cold plunge tubs — or, better yet, lake access — are becoming increasingly popular, most of us don't have that kind of money. The good news is, all you really need to practice contrast therapy — and reap its benefits — is a functioning bathtub. To DIY the practice, Quay recommend taking three–to-five-minute hot shower (~104 Fahrenheit), followed by 30–60 seconds of cold water (~50 Fahrenheit), repeating three of four cycles. Advertisement Quay notes that people with cardiovascular disease should avoid contrast therapy without medical supervision. Pregnant women, people under the influence of alcohol or drugs or those with certain medical conditions like epilepsy, asthma, heart problems or severe infections should also consult with a doctor before trying contrast therapy.
New York Times
24-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
One Exhilarating, Excruciating Night in Nell Zink's Berlin
There's a moment in J.D. Salinger's short story 'Teddy,' in which a boy watches his younger sister drink a glass of milk. He describes this vision as God 'pouring God into God.' Nell Zink's new novel, 'Sister Europe,' ends with a moment so lambent — but it takes one excruciating, tangled, exhilarating, humiliating night to get us there. Many novels take place over the course of a single day: Virginia Woolf's 'Mrs. Dalloway,' James Joyce's 'Ulysses,' Nicholson Baker's 'The Mezzanine.' Fewer chart the course of a single evening, as does 'Sister Europe' — although Haruki Murakami's 'After Dark' is another that comes to mind. To stay out late in Zink's world, loitering, is a pleasure. If you don't know what her writing sounds like, the only word for it is Zinkish. Her voice is cool and fastidious, but she has a screwball quality — a comic sensibility rooted in pain. She grinds her own sophisticated colors as a writer; her ironies are finely tuned; she is uniquely alert to the absurdities of human conduct. If this doesn't happen to be among her finest novels, well, it has strong consolations. The events in 'Sister Europe' occur on a Tuesday night in 2023. The place: a mediocre luxury hotel in Berlin. The occasion: a second-rate literary award ceremony. A $54,000 prize for Arabic writing is being given to a Bedouin writer who sounds a good deal like Salman Rushdie. The Rushdie character comes in for some ribbing. One wit comments that he probably uses A.I. to churn out his wordy and florid fables. Few of the guests want to be there. The evening is drudgery. The speeches are too long, the food is execrable (one attendee calls the entree 'Michelin mystery meat') and no alcohol can be had because of the event's Muslim hosts and guests. The prevailing mood is: Get me out of here. Among this book's primary characters is Demian, a German art critic, who is married to an American structural engineer named Harriet. They have a 15-year-old daughter, Nicole, who is transitioning from male to female. To her father's surprise, Nicole turns up at the hotel with Demian's friend Toto, an American publisher. Toto had recognized Nicole, in a party dress and with bee-stung lips, posing as a streetwalker in a red-light district, and invited her to the event to get her off the corner. Harriet is calm about Nicole's transition and her desire to take puberty blockers. Demian is less sanguine. He has a liberal intellect but a conservative gut, and he has an instinct to protect her from decisions made in haste. He battles his transphobia, Zink writes, but 'clearly hoped Nicole would emerge from her gaudy chrysalis as just another twink in golf duds.' Nicole is carefully and vividly drawn. She's a bird shivering on a wire. She's in an awkward phase, but then who isn't at 15? Zink writes: Demian seems relatively unperturbed that his daughter was (apparently) streetwalking, and similarly unperturbed when she vanishes into the hotel with a sybaritic prince, Radi, who has sexual designs on her. No real sex takes place in this novel, though it's gently pervy, like Mr. Whipple squeezing the Charmin. A main topic in 'Sister Europe' is indeterminacy. All of us are between stages, this novel suggests, at every moment. Another main topic is Berlin and its discontents. Zink, who has lived in and around the city for many years, catalogs the ghosts that continue to haunt it. A drawback of this short novel is that it introduces too many characters; none quite sink in. 'Sister Europe' lacks the air of inevitability that a good novel has. It also lacks a sense of drama, not that the gifted Zink does not try to inject some. All evening, an undercover cop named Klaus is following Nicole, thinking she may be the victim of sex trafficking. He represents the Chekhovian gun that keeps threatening to go off. He's an oddly comic fellow. In a film version, he'd be portrayed by the wonderful Yuriy Borisov, who plays the fragile and sentimental hired muscle in 'Anora.' After the ceremony, the characters spill out onto Berlin's wet, chilly, windswept streets. The merry revelers — among them Demian, Nicole, Radi, Toto and a young woman nicknamed the Flake (whom Toto met on a dating app) — form a sexy caravan. People stop and stare. Zink has a way of rendering even a late-night walk indelible, as if each moment has been tapped with a sprinkle from Tinkerbell's wand: I won't spoil the ending. Suffice it to say that these characters, along with an intimidating poodle, end up together in a space that functions as a kind of black-box theater, one with Nazi associations. Bring your black turtleneck; you may briefly feel you are in an absurdist Wallace Shawn play. Some of the characters pair off. For others, it's a school night. The cop is outside looking in. Is he really a gentle screw-up? Or will that Chekhovian gun finally go off?
