C old water therapies aren’t new to our world, but they may be new to those of us who prefer to avoid the shock of icy water. There are several forms of cold-water therapies being offered across the North Bay and word of their benefits have led the cold-averse to take the plunge. We spoke with two North Bay businesses that offer a dip into frigid waters for health and well-being. Take the plunge Jim McAlpine is the founder and owner of Fire and Ice Therapy Center in Novato. McAlpine describes himself as a lifetime entrepreneur, and says he’s always created businesses around things he loves. McAlpine decided to start a business featuring ice baths when he discovered how beneficial they can be while recovering from injury. He had fractured a vertebra and broken his ankle in an accident a few years ago. Because of that and some other inflammation issues, a friend suggested he try taking ice baths. He’s been doing them daily ever since. “It almost immediately changed my life in terms of taking me out of pain and helping me with my inflammation,” McAlpine says. “That's why I decided to start Fire and Ice.” “It's one of the rare cases where I think you can both do good for the world and help people live a better, pain- free life,” he says. “And also, fingers crossed, make some money doing it.” McAlpine describes his first ice bath as “a minute of a lot of tingling and I guess pain.” “I don't like to use the word pain but, it was a scary first minute. And then my body became peaceful and I got out after three minutes,” he says. “That's all you really have to do and I found I felt 25 years younger for about six hours where the pain in my knees, my back, my neck and all my old-man stuff really was gone literally for hours.” Now McAlpine does an ice bath every morning and the benefits aren’t just physical. “Sometimes if I've had a long day or if my anxiety gets a bit high, I do an ice bath in the evening and it kind of helps me quell my anxiety,” he says. “But my main thing is every morning, I do six minutes in the ice bath, right after I wake up.” McAlpine had been steadily working on the launch of Fire and Ice for the past year and he opened the doors on Dec. 1 of 2024. He says it’s been scary, but it’s also been “awesome” and he notes that there’s a lot of curiosity around ice bathing. “What I've found is there's a tried-and-true community of ice bathers that are already there that are looking for places like this,” McAlpine says. “People are so excited this is coming to Marin.” There are also the cold-plunge-curious who venture in to check it out. “I'd say it's about 50/50 people that already do it at home and then people that have always wanted to try it,” he says. “It's been a great surprise how many people have already called and booked appointments.”
Fire and Ice Therapy Center in Novato offers a calming front lobby and breathing techniques to help first-timers into the ice-water baths.
For those who haven’t taken the plunge or perhaps have a memory of jumping into an ice melt and the shock that comes with it, the idea of getting into ice water may seem unappealing. “For people who've not done it, it definitely is something I think that's a mental challenge,” McAlpine says. For those new to ice baths, McAlpine also offers a complimentary breath-work session. “What I find quells both the mental side of things as well as the sting of getting in the water is just a couple minutes of breathing patterns that we teach everybody as they first get in,” he says. “Everybody's very hesitant, but we teach them the breathing techniques. For anyone “really scared,” McAlpine will coach them through that first minute in the ice bath and “then they sail off into the sunset.” “There's a huge smile and feeling of accomplishment on almost everybody's face after their first session,” he says. “It's only three minutes, but once they've made it through that, they are beaming with pride. “And then they kind of slowly realize how good they feel.” McAlpine says the thing he hears the most is that inflammation is gone along with their pain for a solid four to six hours after the ice bath. For those with arthritis, cold air can bring on pain and therefore the thought of using an ice bath may seem counter-intuitive, but McAlpine is quick to point out that the opposite is true. McAlpine says he suffers from arthritis in his hips, shoulder, knees and ankle; he concedes cold air can exacerbate symptoms, but finds cold water has the
50 NorthBaybiz
February 2025
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