I tried Cryotherapy for the first time a few weeks ago, and I would consider it a safe bet to call me obsessed.
A Cryotherapy chamber has found its way to Starkville, which I learned in early August whilst scrolling through Instagram. The account @alloramodernwellness posted a video in which two players from the Mississippi State University men’s basketball team were undergoing Cryotherapy. Within minutes, I had booked myself an appointment to do the same thing.
Rich and Lisa Lopez are the owners of Allora Modern Wellness, the home of the only Cryotherapy chamber within roughly 100 miles. According to the wall decor, signage plastered throughout the storefront and the company website, Allora offers services that exist in the crux of three categories: aesthetics, health/wellness and athletic recovery/pain management. My visit fell into a category of its own making: fun.
The company motto is short and sweet — “Live Well, Be Well” — and Rich Lopez puts the real emphasis on wellness coming from within.
“All of this stuff is really for physical recovery and mental recovery,” Lopez said. “We wanted to find natural ways to help people get well and stay well.”
As someone who would like to be well and stay that way, that sounded perfect to me. To get to know a little bit more about the science of Cryotherapy, as well as what precisely I was signing up for, I asked Lopez to elaborate on Cryotherapy in general.
“Basically, the extreme cold helps the blood vessels constrict, which means you get less blood flow to the skin, which helps with low-level pain that is at the surface of your skin,” Lopez said. “From a brain standpoint, your brain is trying to protect the body, so it sends out stress receptors, the endorphins, so that is what you feel immediately after you get out: a sense of relief, pain relief, stress relief. It is a mood enhancer. It helps muscle recovery because of the blood flow to the muscles.”
Ready for my new adventure, I stepped into the room where the chamber was. A blue and white glow came from the metal and glass box, and even without opening the door, I could feel a chill. Switching over into my bathing suit — the more skin the air can access, the better the results — I donned my gloves, mask, fleece headband, slippers and headphones as I prepared for the challenge awaiting me.
I had selected the beginner level which put the box at 145 degrees below zero and had “slight winds.” I had also set the timer for three and a half minutes. With the sound of Rihanna’s “Pour It Up” bumping in my headphones, I opened the door and was faced with a rush of cold vapor. I stepped into the box.
Immediately, I decided I had made a mistake. “Call it off,” I thought to myself. “There is no shame in leaving early.” But there would be. How could I abandon what I set out to do so early in my mission? Instead of leaving, I looked down to watch my hair freeze, small snowflakes from the vent above my head falling onto my bathing suit. I felt my eyebrows freeze, my eyelashes, even the hairs in my nose. By the time I had decided to officially give up, the lights in the box blinked: my time was up. I left the box, feeling reborn and christened, all while Rihanna continued her serenade.
Per the attendant’s instructions, I drank a lot of water on my drive home, feeling my skin tingle as the microscopic icicles that I imagined I was covered in melted in the Mississippi August sun. I felt more awake than I had in months.
“Anybody who exercises, at all, should do it,” Lopez said. “Anybody who has stress, at all, should do it. That pretty much sums up that most people should do it… We definitely have been working with a lot of MSU student-athletes, from many different sports, but this type of thing is not just for D1 athletes. Everybody needs to take care of themselves a little bit better.”
I agree, and I will be back to freeze once more.
At Allora Modern Wellness, Cryotherapy costs $39 a session, but there are ways to bring this price down. MSU students, for instance, get a 10% discount on all services. The business is also running a promotion for students who have not been there before where the first service is free and the second is half-off. There are also memberships available for frequent customers. All services can be booked via the website linked in Allora’s Instagram bio or through the Mindbody app.
