About
Who's behind this, and why
Fire & Ice is an independent buyer's guide for home recovery gear, cold plunges and saunas. We exist because the buying advice for a $5,000 purchase shouldn't read like it was ranked by whoever pays the biggest commission.
Founded by Craig Fearn, Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health
Craig is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health (FRSPH) and of the Chartered Management Institute (FCMI), an executive coach on wellbeing both personally and corporately, and served for five years as the Wellbeing Ambassador for the Institute of Directors (IoD). He founded Lighthouse Mentoring, an organizational-wellbeing practice that brings evidence into boardroom decisions, and works one to one under his own name at Craig Fearn. Recovery, how people under pressure actually restore themselves, has been his field for years, well before ice baths and saunas became a trend.
A public-health background is why this site is careful about two things at once: it takes the practice seriously, and it refuses to overstate the science. Contrast therapy is genuinely useful and genuinely oversold, often on the same page. Our job is to tell you which is which, with the research cited and the hype flagged. Craig on LinkedIn.
Credentials at a glance
- FRSPH
- Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health
- FCMI
- Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute
- IoD
- Wellbeing Ambassador, Institute of Directors (IoD, UK), five years
- Founder
- Lighthouse Mentoring, organizational wellbeing practice
Why hot and cold, together
Everywhere else, saunas and cold plunges live on separate sites written by separate people. But the way most people actually use them is as one ritual, heat, then cold, in sequence. Treating them as one subject lets us do the thing single-category sites can't: tell you which sauna pairs with which plunge, what the combined running cost is, and how to build a recovery setup that works as a whole rather than two impulse buys.
What this site will, and will not, do
What we will do
- Cite named research for every physiological claim, and grade how strong it is.
- Publish the running cost and the total five-year cost, not just the sticker price.
- Tell you what to skip, and who should not buy at all.
- Flag contraindications (cardiovascular conditions, pregnancy) in plain sight.
What we will not do
- Let commission change a ranking, ever.
- Repeat "detox," "burns fat," or "boosts immunity" as if they were settled.
- Quote a precise number we cannot trace to a credible source.
- Pretend a buyer's guide is medical advice. It is not.
How we stay independent
We're funded by affiliate commission, not brand payments. Some links on this site are affiliate links, and if you buy through them we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It has no bearing on rankings or verdicts, and we publish our full ranking standards and affiliate disclosure so you can hold us to it.
Want to suggest a unit to test, or flag something we got wrong? Get in touch, corrections get published.