Whole Body Cryotherapy and Immune/Inflammatory Modulation

What is established about whole-body cryotherapy

Whole-body cryotherapy is a short exposure to extremely cold, dry air, typically two to three minutes in an electric chamber cooled to around minus 85 to minus 110 degrees Celsius. The physiological response to this exposure, skin cooling, a surge in catecholamines and cortisol, transient changes in heart rate and blood pressure, is well described in the sports medicine and physiology literature and is not in dispute.

That WBC is a tolerable, describable procedure in screened, healthy people is not the same claim as WBC being a treatment that reliably changes immune or inflammatory function. The two questions get conflated often in wellness marketing, and they need to be kept separate here.

What the evidence for immune and inflammatory effects actually shows

A 2025 meta-analysis pooled 11 randomized controlled trials, 274 participants in total, comparing WBC against control conditions. It reported that WBC was associated with lower serum interleukin-1β (standardized mean difference of about -2.08) and higher interleukin-10 (standardized mean difference of about 0.78) than controls, a pattern generally read as pro-resolution: less of a marker linked to acute inflammation, more of a marker linked to its dampening.[1]

A separate exploratory study, an 18-session WBC protocol at minus 90 degrees over 9 weeks in healthy adults, measured a wider panel of immune, stress and vascular blood parameters. Its own authors describe the work as hypothesis-generating. It had no control or comparator arm, so any change observed cannot be separated from time, season, expectation, lifestyle, or simply repeated blood draws.[2]

Why a biomarker shift is not a clinical result

Both cited sources report changes in circulating markers. Neither reports a change in anything a patient would notice: not infection frequency, not illness severity or duration, not recovery from injury, not a validated symptom score. IL-1β and IL-10 are useful research tools, but a favorable direction in a blood marker across a handful of small trials is a biological signal, not proof that immune function or health outcomes actually improved.[1]

What remains uncertain

The meta-analysis pools small, heterogeneous trials, different cryotherapy temperatures, session counts and durations, different populations including athletes and people with obesity, and different comparator conditions. Pooling studies that are not really testing the same intervention inflates apparent consistency and can mask the fact that no single trial in the pool was individually large enough to be conclusive.[1]

The pilot study's uncontrolled design means it cannot support any causal claim about WBC and immune function on its own, a limitation its authors state directly rather than one this review is imposing on it. Neither source measured infection rates, hospitalization, illness duration, or any other patient-relevant outcome, and no adequately powered, well-controlled trial with a clinical endpoint currently exists for this specific question.[2]

What this means for you

AION already screens for cardiovascular conditions, cold sensitivity, pregnancy and recent illness before any cryotherapy session, and that screening does not change based on this evidence. What this evidence does affect is language: cryotherapy at AION is offered and discussed as a supervised recovery and wellness modality, not marketed or described as an immune-boosting treatment, because the data behind that specific claim is still preliminary.

Where a patient's broader program already includes inflammatory marker tracking, such as hs-CRP, as part of a physician-led plan, cryotherapy sessions may sit alongside that monitoring. Any interpretation of change stays individual and physician-led, not a promised or fixed protocol, and cryotherapy is never positioned at AION as a substitute for diagnosis or treatment of an actual immune or inflammatory condition.