Which Cryotherapy Chamber Is Best? After 30,000 Treatments, We Think That’s the Wrong Question.

We have seen more than 30,000 treatments carried out at Bio Logic. Thousands of people have stepped into our cryotherapy chamber, stood in the extreme cold, and walked back out a few minutes later. A crazy and incredibly fun experience in many ways.

But one of the treatments we remember most clearly was also one of our very first. We had only just opened. If we remember correctly, she was the fourth person, after us, the founders, to try our new cryotherapy chamber. One of Sweden’s best-known influencers.

And she forgot her gloves.

When she came out of the chamber, her hands were burning from the cold. The pain was intense, and we immediately had to help warm them up, rubbing them until the feeling and warmth began to return and the pain finally subsided.

It was a brutal reminder of what we had actually installed at Norrtullsgatan 39C. This was not an ordinary wellness machine. This was extreme cold.

The slightly strange part of the story is that she came back. Again and again. She became one of our most regular clients and, to this day, remains one of the people who has completed the most treatments with us. Now, she is also a close friend.

Since then, thousands of people have followed, and more than 30,000 treatments have been carried out at Bio Logic. Elite athletes and recreational exercisers. People living with aches and pain. People looking for better recovery, better sleep, or simply chasing the feeling they get after a few minutes in extreme cold.

And throughout these years, we have been asked one question more times than we can count.

Which cryotherapy chamber, or which type of cryotherapy, is actually the best?

After everything we have seen, we think the question itself may be wrong.

From Japan to Today’s Cryotherapy Chambers

Modern whole-body cryotherapy is generally traced back to Japan in the late 1970s. Since then, the technology has developed rapidly, and today, cryotherapy chambers can look very different from one another.

The Nitrogen-Powered Cryotherapy Chamber

When cryotherapy first began gaining wider recognition, nitrogen-powered chambers were, for a long time, the most common option. The person would stand with their body inside the chamber and their head outside, while extreme cold was generated using liquid nitrogen, with temperatures in some systems stated to reach as low as around –160°C.

They were relatively compact and made extreme cold therapy accessible outside major hospitals and rehabilitation facilities.

But they also came with practical challenges. Liquid nitrogen had to be ordered, stored and refilled, and operating costs could become significant. Our impression of the early Swedish market is that some operators therefore concentrated treatments into limited opening hours, meaning clients had to adapt to when the cryotherapy system was actually running.

It worked. But it did not always make regular treatments easy.

At the same time, the technology has developed enormously. Saying that all nitrogen-powered cryotherapy chambers are the same would be a bit like saying that every car with a combustion engine is the same car.

The Electric Whole-Body Cryotherapy Chamber

When electric cryotherapy chambers began taking a larger role in the market, the conditions changed as well. No gas. No cylinders to replace. The chamber could remain ready every day, and, above all, it opened up the possibility of true whole-body cryotherapy, where the entire body, including the head, is exposed to the cold.

That was the technology we chose when we opened Bio Logic in 2021.

Our chamber operates at around –87°C and uses an electric, water-cooled refrigeration system to create the extreme cold. You enter with your entire body, including your head, and the chamber is large enough for several people to go inside together.

And we have definitely taken advantage of that.

We have hosted speed dating inside the cryotherapy chamber. We have turned it into a nightclub and made the chamber a dance floor for three minutes to Ice Ice Baby. Friends, couples, families, teammates and entire groups have gone inside together.

Apparently, extreme cold does not always have to be so serious.

But behind all the fun is something we take very seriously. Since we opened, we have done everything we can to help more people discover whole-body cryotherapy. We have given thousands of people the opportunity to experience a few minutes of extreme cold, people looking to optimise their health, improve their recovery, or simply curious about what a few minutes inside a cryotherapy chamber might actually do.

And these five years have certainly left their cold mark. From Khamzat to Wahlgrens värld, Mauri and hundreds of top athletes, all the way to I Just Want To Be Cool(d).

But we are not particularly good at standing still.

So we continue moving forward into the cold.

The Modern Individual Cryotherapy Chamber

While whole-body chambers have continued to evolve, individual cryotherapy systems have also taken major steps forward. Today’s modern individual cryotherapy chambers should not be confused with the first generations of these systems. The technology has developed, become more efficient and significantly easier to integrate into different types of businesses.

Here, one person stands individually with their body exposed to the extreme cold while their head remains outside. Modern systems can measure skin temperature during the treatment and control the cooling directed at different areas of the body, allowing for a more individually controlled treatment.

Individual systems can also be compact, require significantly less space and fit into businesses where a large whole-body chamber simply is not practical.

It is not the same experience. It is not the same technology. And it does not necessarily have to serve the same purpose.

And no, speed dating works considerably less well. Unless you want to date yourself, of course.

But then again, you probably do not have to break the ice quite as quickly.

To say that one cryotherapy chamber is better than another, you first need to know what you want it to be best at.

But Is –160°C Colder Than –87°C?

On the thermometer? Yes. For the body? It is not quite that simple.

Different cryotherapy chambers use different technologies to transfer cold to the body. That means you cannot directly compare –87°C in an electric whole-body chamber with –110°C or –160°C in other types of cryotherapy systems. The stated temperature alone does not tell you how powerful the actual cooling effect on the skin will be.

It is a little like comparing an 80°C sauna with 80°C water. The same number on the thermometer, a completely different effect on the body.

For those who want to understand a little more, it comes down to factors such as what is actually surrounding the body, how the air or gas moves, how evenly the whole body is exposed and how quickly heat is transferred away from the skin. Humidity, treatment duration and where the temperature is measured also matter. A temperature of –160°C somewhere within a system therefore does not automatically mean that the skin is cooled more than it would be inside a chamber operating at –87°C or –110°C.

The truly interesting question is not simply the temperature inside the chamber. It is what happens to the body during the treatment. How quickly does skin temperature drop? How much of the body is exposed? How evenly is the cold distributed? And how does the body respond?

That is also why two people can argue about which chamber is the “coldest,” both referring to completely accurate temperature figures, while still comparing two entirely different things.

So when someone asks us whether –160°C is automatically “better” or colder than –87°C, our answer is simple. No, the temperature figure alone does not tell you that.

So what matters most? The chamber that cools the entire body, including areas such as the neck, where the vagus nerve runs, as well as peripheral parts of the body such as the hands and ankles? The one that reaches the lowest temperature? Or the one that can measure skin temperature and control the cooling more precisely?

We still believe the answer depends on what you are trying to achieve.

And perhaps that is exactly why the question “Which cryotherapy chamber is best?” is the wrong question.

And Should It Actually Be Spelled With a C or a K?

When we opened and started creating our first material about the cryotherapy chamber, a consultant quickly pointed something out, “You’re spelling cryo wrong. In Swedish, it should be spelled with a K.” But we wanted to spell it with a C.

Behind that decision was a perhaps slightly far-fetched entrepreneurial idea. If we consistently wrote cryo and cryokammare with a C, and managed to get enough other people to start doing the same, then people searching for those words might also find us more easily. And if, in some strange way, we actually managed to influence how the word was used in Sweden, perhaps one day we would get a fair amount of organic traffic as a bonus.

Did we have any evidence that this would work? Not really. Genius or completely illogical? No idea. But five years later, we still spell cryo with a C. And apparently, we are still just as stubborn.

And Then There Are the Really Big Ones

At the other end of the scale are the large walk-in chambers, entire cryotherapy rooms where several people can enter at the same time, with some systems using different temperature zones on the way into the coldest section. For an elite sports team, a large rehabilitation facility or a high-capacity operation, this can be a fantastic solution.

And development has gone even further than that. In Dubai, specially designed cryotherapy chambers have even been built for racehorses, with temperatures reaching around –140°C.

For a small clinic in the middle of Stockholm? Maybe not.

And now we are getting closer to answering the question we asked at the beginning. Which cryotherapy chamber is best?

The one that gets the coldest? The one that cools the whole body? The one that measures the most? The one that fits the most people? The one that costs the least to operate?

After five years and more than 30,000 treatments, we still believe the question is wrong.

Because perhaps the most important question is.

Which cryotherapy chamber actually gets people to use cryotherapy, and keep using it?

But What Does the Research Say?

There is research today suggesting that cryotherapy may help reduce muscle soreness and support recovery after physical exertion. Studies have also investigated potential effects on pain, inflammation, sleep and well-being, but the results in these areas are more mixed, and the research is still developing.

And perhaps that is exactly why we find this discussion so interesting. Researchers are trying to understand exactly what happens during and after a few minutes of extreme cold. At the same time, manufacturers continue to develop the technology. Colder temperatures. Better measurements. Smarter control systems. New designs. All of that matters.

But after five years and more than 30,000 treatments, we have personally arrived at something much simpler. You can have the most advanced cryotherapy chamber in the world and the most detailed research behind the technology. But if the treatment is too expensive, too complicated or too difficult to access for people to use it regularly, then in the end, it matters less how impressive the specifications are.

We have seen people come once. And we have seen people come back week after week, year after year. It is among the latter that we most often hear the strongest stories. About recovery. About less pain. About better sleep. About simply feeling better.

That is not research. It is experience.

And speaking of experience, there is one thing we have noticed ourselves. Since Bio Logic opened, neither of us founders has been ill a single time. Knock on wood. Can we say that is because of cryotherapy? No. We do considerably more for our health than stand in extreme cold for a few minutes, and two people hardly qualify as a scientific study.

But after thousands of people and tens of thousands of treatments, it is still difficult not to become curious about what regular exposure to extreme cold might mean over time. It is an experience we believe is worth paying attention to.

So, which cryotherapy chamber is best? We still think the question is wrong.

The best cryotherapy chamber is the one that is right for its purpose, its setting and the people who are going to use it. Because technology can create the cold. But consistency gives it the chance to make a difference.

And What About the Future?

If a few minutes in extreme cold sounds futuristic, we can finish with something considerably more extreme. There are already companies and centres today offering people the possibility, after legal death, of preserving their entire body, or just their brain, at extremely low temperatures.

The idea? That future technology might, perhaps one or two hundred years from now, be able to repair what cannot be repaired today and bring you back to life.

No one knows whether it will ever work. No human being has ever been brought back to life after being cryonically preserved.

And us at Bio Logic? We will probably stick to a few minutes at a time. At least for now.

Ice Ice Baby.

And if we had received a commission every time that song was played alongside an Instagram Story from our cryotherapy chamber, we would probably be richer than Ice-T by now.

No, wait. That was Vanilla Ice.

Ice Cube?

We should probably just stick to cryo. (Cryo-B and Logic Baby)

// Norrtullsgatan 39C

Sources and Further Reading

• The history of whole-body cryotherapy. A scientific review describing how modern whole-body cryotherapy was first introduced in Japan in 1978 and later brought to Europe. Read the study

• Recovery and muscle soreness. A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis of 57 studies, in which cryotherapy showed positive results for muscle soreness and neuromuscular recovery. Read the meta-analysis

• Inflammation. A 2025 meta-analysis based on 11 randomised controlled trials examining whole-body cryotherapy and inflammatory markers. Read the study

• Sleep and recovery. A study examining the effects of three minutes of whole-body cryotherapy after evening exercise on sleep and recovery. Read the study

• Different types of cryotherapy. A scientific review examining the differences between whole-body and partial-body cryotherapy. Read the review

• Different cryotherapy systems compared. A systematic review and meta-analysis comparing whole-body and partial-body cryotherapy in relation to factors including muscle performance and post-exercise muscle soreness. Read the study

• Cryonics and future preservation. There are organisations today offering cryopreservation after legal death, although future revival remains entirely unproven. Cryonics Institute