Cryotherapy. You've walked past the chamber at your gym, but what does it actually do? You stand in a booth for two or three minutes while air somewhere between -110°C and -130°C moves over your skin. That's colder than the lowest temperature ever recorded anywhere on Earth.
The chamber used to belong to elite sport. Now it's in high-street spas and premium gyms, and it's sold on a much bigger promise than sore legs. In April 2026 the Global Wellness Institute's own cryotherapy panel told operators that credibility would come from responsible language and evidence-based protocols, not from flashier tech. When the industry's own trade body says that, the marketing has got ahead of the evidence.
In this article of Emerald's myth busting series, we look at the claim that cryotherapy slows ageing.
What the claim says
A few minutes in the chamber slows the rate at which you age. Do it regularly and the sessions stack up into extra healthy years.
You'll have met this one from a longevity influencer, or on a spa treatment menu next to the facials. Cryotherapy gets marketed under prevention, longevity and performance, which is a broad enough umbrella to cover almost anything.
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What the claim gets right
The cold does something real to you. A 2025 meta-analysis of 11 randomised trials found that whole-body cryotherapy lowers IL-1β, one of your inflammatory signalling proteins, and raises IL-10, which does the opposite job.
That matters because chronic low-grade inflammation is a recognised driver of age-related disease. Researchers call it inflammaging: the slow background inflammation that builds with age and tracks with heart disease, diabetes and frailty. A treatment that pushes your inflammatory markers the right way has a plausible route to mattering for how you age.
There are metabolic signals too. In postmenopausal women, a course of cryotherapy improved insulin sensitivity, fasting glucose and HbA1c. Real findings, small studies, and largely from one research group. The trial figures are averages, not promises.
Where the claim falls down
Every one of those findings is a marker measured hours or weeks after a session. None of them is ageing. A cytokine that moves for an afternoon tells you nothing about how long you'll live, or how well. And the pooled sample across all 11 trials was 274 people, which is the whole randomised evidence base for the anti-inflammatory effect.
Nobody has tested the actual claim. Search the clinical trials register and you'll find more than 60 studies involving whole-body cryotherapy. They cover fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, atopic dermatitis, muscle recovery after exercise and, at Edinburgh right now, endometriosis pain. Not one has an ageing or lifespan endpoint. The trials haven't failed. They haven't been run.
Regulators haven't backed the chamber either. The US Food and Drug Administration has never cleared a whole-body cryotherapy device, and has said it hasn't seen evidence the treatment works for the conditions it gets sold for.
Then there's a swap you might not have noticed. Most of the cold-and-longevity coverage you'll have read is about cold-water immersion, the plunge pool, not the chamber. They're different exposures and the evidence doesn't carry across. The review behind the last round of cold-is-good-for-you headlines specifically excluded cryotherapy chambers.
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Emerald's stance
Emerald's position is straightforward. Cryotherapy has real short-term effects on your biology and no evidence that it slows your ageing.
The problem sits with the marketing rather than the treatment. Cold has legitimate medical uses, and most providers are selling an honest recovery session. Longevity is the word that outruns the data.
If you want something anti-inflammatory with outcome evidence behind it, start with sleep and resistance training, and track the markers that respond to them, like hs-CRP and HbA1c.
And if you like your sessions, keep going. An international consortium reviewed every documented case of harm and found 16 adverse events in the published literature, mostly avoidable by screening people properly and following the contraindications. Just don't count the sessions as an investment in your lifespan.
Verdict
Cryotherapy slows ageing. Unsupported. The measured effects are short-term marker shifts in small studies, and no trial has tested cryotherapy against an ageing outcome at all.
If you have a heart condition, high blood pressure, diabetes or poor circulation, speak to your GP before you book. Cryotherapy is contraindicated for some people.
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