On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast
as a college student and I pretty much did all my body building via sweat blood tears creatine and some really nasty tasting protein shakes. That's something that's been known for a while. And that that's of course a gimme when it comes to anti-aging tactics any exercises intense because your body Heats going to go up anyways is going to feel way easier that dine orphan is kind of a fantastic bonus of the regular sauna a five-minute hot cold contrast shower. That's an example how little you need.
To get some of these
benefits he'll performance nutrition longevity ancestral living biohacking and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show.
So today's podcast in its gosh,
I think you're going to really dig this one. I don't think there's ever been a comprehensive podcast done on all of the benefits and the logistical ins and outs of incorporating a robust heat and cold practice in your life. I dug deep into the research for today's show. I think you're absolutely going to love it. It's a solo sowed with me everything you hear about the research studies the best.
This is the products the books the additional podcast everything. You're going to find it Ben Greenfield fitness.com hot and cold that's Ben Greenfield fitness.com hot and cold and put on your thinking caps and get out your notebook for this one because I'm going to give you everything you need to know for the fat loss for the cognitive benefits for the immune boosting benefits and Beyond when it comes to heat and cold will tell you how long how much haha, how cold everything. So if you're in the mood for upgrading your sauna or your cold room,
Genesis practice this podcast is for you. What's cool is that one of the one of the things that I use on a regular basis is actually colostrum and all you can colostrum reduce the amount of gut permeability, especially in athletes or active folks when they're exercising in the heat because it's a common issue and people exercise a lot. They get leaky gut and you pile on top of that the fact that active people got to eat more, you know more calorie throughput it becomes an issue I struggle with a lot when I was
Using Ironman triathlons and extreme heat and you know, I did a bunch of research into what could reduce gut permeability in the Heat and what could reduce gut permeability and athletes overall and it turns out that something called colostrum is pretty much the number one way to do that. For example, there was one recent randomized control trial on healthy adults. They showed that one gram a day of colostrum for 20 days reduce levels of stools on Yuan now stools on yulin is the gold standard
Marker of gut lining permeability. So this show that you were actually restoring the health and particularly the gut lining with regular consumption of colostrum. They only use one gram a day one serving of our key on colostrum is 3.2 grams. One tiny scoop. It's a totally bioactive powder. No capsules. You completely absorb all the nutrients we minimally process it to preserve all the fragile nutrients and proteins and peptides and especially the very bio active component called lactoferrin.
A lot of companies do not have appreciable amounts of lactoferrin in their colostrum. And so if you struggle with gut issues with leaky gut with feeling like you get bloating or gas or just kind of a blah feeling during your workouts from a gut standpoint. This stuff is for you. It's also wonderful for muscle building. It's wonderful for the immune system and we are offering this at 20% off right now at get key on.com slash Ben Greenfield, so you just go to get ki o n.com Ben Greenfield that will
Automatically get you 20% off of the key on colostrum. This podcast is also brought to you by my friends at Juve. I'm speaking about heat today. But if you want invisible heat meaning near infrared and red light therapy in addition to things like infrared and dry heat, then you can get the best of all worlds from a collagen standpoint from a wound or wrinkle or ask our healing standpoint from a thyroid boosting standpoint. The stuff has been shown to increase the level of
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they're Juve lights. So just go to Jo o VV.com / been and apply my code been to your qualifying order and they'll give you the VIP treatment and exclusive discounts o Jo o VV dot coms been and use code been. Alright, so this podcast remember all the show notes and there's a bunch of them are going to be a Ben Greenfield Dennis.com / hot and cold sit back. Get ready to take notes Here We Go.
Welcome to Fire and Ice the benefits and science of
hyper and hypo there are Mia but honestly Fire and Ice sounds way cooler. So let's try and use that vernacular whenever we can just so we're not too geeky. I love heat. I love cold. I've found a lot of benefits from them. I've studied up on both of them. And so I'm going to fill you in on all of the way.
The both heat and cold can make your life better. I'm going to fill you in on some cool bio hacks and techniques that you can use to enhance the effects of heat and enhance the effects of cold. I feel as though there's not really one single place where a lot of this information lives when it comes to a comprehensive science based treaties of what happens when your hot what happens when you call when you're cold, but then also kind of the Practical manifestations of what to do once you're armed with this knowledge.
Large so that is what we're going to delve into today. It's gonna be fun so strap on your thinking caps and prepare for a wild ride. Alright a little bit about me. I am often asked about my sexy wounded healer story and how I got into all this in. The first place fact is I've always loved physical culture Fitness the outdoors, you know, I grew up in North Idaho playing tennis and hiking and chasing rattlesnakes and you know making fortresses out of rocks out.
I'd and plane with my bow and arrow and dogs just absolutely have always loved just just physical culture in general and I was home-schooled and I also did geeky things like played violin and chests and I was I was super into fantasy fiction, but I also spent a lot of time Outdoors just just based on the nature of the fact of being homeschooled. I usually done with school by like 11 or 12 and had the rest of the day to just play my family wasn't super into video games and TVs and so I was pretty much Outdoors or reading books most of my young
life and that eventually led to to play a lot of tennis playing High School tennis and eventually playing playing college tennis and I I played at a local community college for a couple of years and then I wound up attending University of Idaho and it was at University of Idaho where I studied exercise physiology and biomechanics and wound up branching off to a lot of sports Beyond tennis. I got into water polo and plate whole set for the water polo team.
My played middle for the men's volleyball team. I got into bodybuilding. I manage the local Wellness facility and picked up a bunch of personal training certifications and nutrition certifications and addition to my my course load at a University of Idaho, which also included a full kind of pre-med curriculum, even though I opted later not to attend medical school, but ultimately, you know, just to just to give you an idea of how geeked out I was you know, this is me in my bodybuilding days and and I actually was using a little bit of
heat back then to strip off some water weight. And that was one of the techniques I got into was those long sauna sit somewhere with wrestler might do not that I consider some forms of that to be healthy. We'll get into some of this in the presentation but I bodybuild and that's kind of like the original geeked out, you know, almost like underground biohacking sector from from the 80s, you know, people injecting all sorts of different substances and taking all sorts of crazy synthetics. I was I was dirt poor as a college student and I pretty much
And she did all my body building via sweat blood tears creatine and some really nasty tasting protein shakes and a ton of caffeine before I'd work out and that was my that was my stack because that's all I could really do in college. And then from there I proceeded into the next most unhealthy sport of the planet arguably Ironman Triathlon where I competed for about anywhere from things about 10 to 12 years in races all over the world and kind of like body boom actually.
Learned a lot especially in Triathlon with heat acclimation with cold acclimation. I did tons of Cold Water Swimming tons of sauna training, you know, three to four hour bike rides in the sauna where I just punish anywhere from 40 to 60 ounces of water an hour. I was losing fluids so much and you know, we had we would have sweat sodium analysis done for team Timex when I raced for them. And so I learned a lot about sodium balance and electrolyte balance and heat and then of course, you know, as far as the cold goes I didn't realize at the time that
Getting all the benefits of cold thermogenesis, but I mean, I was literally cold almost every single day whether it was 5:00 a.m. Pool session where I was freezing in my Speedo going back and forth in the fall and winter when all the drafts are coming in through the gym pool or whether I was you know out on a crisp spring morning or fall morning, you know in April or September and an icy cold river or lake or ocean sometimes in a wetsuit, but still pretty darn cold. I remember my longest cold water swim was upriver in the Spokane.
And river and in it was about mid-april and I was so cold shivering so badly face entirely blue. I literally crapped my wetsuit trying to get up to my car and nearly passed out. I do not recommend that approach to called thermogenesis, but that was kind of Maya my my initial introduction to that. So what we're going to do in today's presentation, we're going to start with fire with the good old sauna and and heat and what
Can learn about heat now. What's interesting? Is that even though we're not going to focus on many of the medical aspects today? Probably, you know, even though I've done all those bike rides in the saunas from a for my Ironman Triathlon days and preparation for races like Ironman Hawaii, for example, and even though I did a lot of long saw on assets during my bodybuilding days the most uncomfortable I've ever been was when I got curious about the cancer treatment hyperthermia, and this is often used in European biological medicine. It's increasing in popularity in the
us and there's lots of compelling research behind the cytotoxicity of hyperthermia, you know kind of based on the same concept of of your body, you know, presenting a certain amount of toxicity to foreign Invaders when it induces a fever for example, which is why sometimes taking like an antipyretic medication or something to shut down a fever is not the best idea when you're sick, you kind of want your body to get hot to to get rid of some of the some of the pathogens to a certain extent, you know, if your if your fever is above a hundred and four so you
Really want to begin to manage that so you don't kill off brain cells, but speaking of killing off brain cells. It's hyperthermia chamber. It's often used for Cancer Treatments is just this large kind of claustrophobic chamber in which your head sticking out. My experience was one which I was lying flat on my back inside a pod again. It kind of on my back inside a pod laying down. This was at the Swiss Medical Clinic in in in Switzerland all places and what they
Did was they put me in this really hot room had me ride a bike extremely hard for 30 minutes got my heart rate just through the roof. I was already dripping in sweat then they took me into this other room stuck a rectal probe up my butt put me in this hyperthermia chamber and I believe the goal that they were getting 244 internal temperature was somewhere right around in the range of 103 104. They're basically inducing a fever and I wasn't doing this because I had cancer I was
Wing it as a form of kind of immersive journalism. I wanted to see what this felt like what true hyperthermia involved and it was the most uncomfortable thing. Not the most about one of the most uncomfortable things. I have ever done. My wife would say that her childbirth was far more uncomfortable. And so I won't deny that there are there are less comfortable things than a hypothermia treatment, but I was in there for about three hours common treatment is a more than three to four hours and I had a little
green in front of me that was supposed to play DVDs, but that was broken. So I was just staring at the white ceiling and a nurse was there she would dip my forehead with an icy cold towel about every five minutes to keep my my brain from getting damaged by the heat. She had a little sippy straw and she would hold water up to my mouth again about every five minutes for me to sit and I just sat there and and watch the reading from the digital rectal probe show my temperature climbing and climbing and climbing well above a hundred degrees and
At the same time. I watched my heart rate going up and up and up. Just laying there on my back my heart rate got up to about a hundred and forty. Just just thought based on the fact that my heart was trying to cool my body. And and finally they let me out. I I tapped out. I got to a certain point where I was like this is this is the the hottest most claustrophobic most uncomfortable that I think I've ever been and I could imagine that if I had cancer I would be motivated to do something like that on a regular basis, but
In this case my motivation kind of waned and and I tapped out but I definitely got the full meal deal sensation. I was about to go take a cold shower afterwards, but they told me that the way this works is with that fever induced you then go lay in your bed for about five hours and just basically pass out dripping with sweat completely hot. So that's what I did went upstairs to my bedroom. And the in the it was actually a heat wave in Europe. And so it was about a hundred and two degrees in my room there at the Swiss mountain.
Anak and I just basically passed out for about four or five hours woke up felt kind of woozy drag a bunch of water. Finally took a cold shower. I definitely felt cleaned out / exhausted from The Experience. So do you need to do all that to enjoy the benefits of heat? Not necessarily but there are some cool things you can do. So let's get into that and if you hear a little buzzing in the background, it's because I'm a walking on my treadmill. Well, I'm giving you this presentation getting my step down.
In speaking of Step count, let's begin with the endurance benefits of heat. So this has been pretty well studied. It's probably you know, like I mentioned the initial way that I got interested in heat in general aside from some of those bodybuilding sessions that I had done so we know that it can lower your resting heart rate directly by increasing your blood volume, which is why a lot of endurance athletes like to do so on a sessions because you get a similar effect.
Act as you would with using the illegal performance-enhancing drug erythropoietin in terms of the increase in red blood cell count and the increase in plasma volume. They've actually shown compared to a control group a 30 plus percent increase in running endurance when running is accompanied by a 30 minutes on a session that takes place two times a week for three solid weeks post workout in Runners. So Runners who regularly hit the sauna for 30 minutes after a hard run which actually kind of hard to do because you're
Body is already hot. You see a drastic improvement in red blood cell count in plasma volume and you know most importantly an actual performance gains based on that. So, you know the body just tries to compensate for the rise and plasma volume by making more of the erythropoietin. So when you're not in the heat, you're delivering a lot more oxygen to cells now this this type of hyperthermic conditioning can also optimize blood flow to the heart to the skeletal muscles to the skin because it increases the
Volume and that's also important because it allows you to lower your core body temperature. If you are exercising in the heat, it also means that when you're not in the heat, you get reduced cardiovascular strain, you lower the heart rate for any given workload. And again, this doesn't mean that you're actually exercising in the sauna. You can literally just go get in the sauna after an exercise session to get this type of effect. Now interestingly. You also see increased blood flow to the skeletal muscles to keep them fueled.
With glucose and fatty acids and oxygen and this is important because what that means is you're able to reduce your dependence on glycogen stores. It causes you it has this What's called the glycogen sparing effect. It allows your body to more efficiently hold onto carbohydrates during exercise burn more fat as a fuel during exercise and what they've shown in studies with hyperthermic conditioning and human athletes is that muscle glycogen usage is reduced by about 40 to 50 percent compared to before
Heat acclamation and that's presumably due to the increased blood flow and glucose delivery to the muscles a couple other things that are really cool about what heat does specifically for endurance and cardiovascular performance is improved what's called Thermo regulatory control. Now, that's an activation of the sympathetic nervous system to increase blood flow to the skin and thus increase the sweat rate which dissipates some of the Core Body Heat and so after you've acclimated like that what happens is that at any given
temperature you start to sweat at a lower body temperature and your sweat rate is maintained for a longer period of time so your body becomes more efficient at cooling itself, whether you're in or out of the sauna and then the other interesting thing is that they see that you tend to produce or at least accumulate less lactic acid in the muscles when you're involved in a regular sauna practice, which again is going to make you a better exercise or in just about any sport that involves any amount of glycolysis or burning of
Her generation of lactic acid so extremely impressive in terms of what happens to you to your endurance capacity when you're doing something like likes on a training. I also want to focus on some other benefits. So let's talk about the muscular benefits. One of the cool things when it comes to muscular benefits is you get increased muscle hypertrophy heat is known to induce muscle hypertrophy so muscle hypertrophy is an increase in the size of your muscle cells.
and usually is accompanied by an increase in strength, of course skeletal muscle cells those contains stem cells that can increase the number of your muscle cells, but hypertrophy generally involves an increase in size rather than number and so what you see in the heat is a shift in the protein synthesis to degradation ratio, which means you degrade muscles specifically muscle proteins less readily and synthesize them more readily so your muscles are always performing this Balancing Act between
New protein synthesis and degradation of existing proteins and what happens is that he declamation reduces the amount of protein degradation and increases net protein synthesis and muscle hypertrophy and that can even occur. If you're not doing let's say like a strength training session or exercising in the sauna, which means that it's actually really useful for people who want to maintain muscle if they if they can't lift weights. So you're injured you can't lift weights. I have a lot of my clients go hit the sauna when their rehab
being an injury just because it allows them to maintain some of their muscle now the muscle hypertrophy in addition to increasing net protein synthesis causing that you also get induction of heat shock proteins, you get induction of growth hormone, you get increased insulin sensitivity. So the muscles are pulling and nutrients more readily and you delay muscle atrophy. And so all of these mechanisms are really cool because not only are they going to increase muscle hypertrophy and
Protein synthesis, but the other thing that happens is the mitochondria kind of kick into gear to help Meet The increased energetic demands of the muscle cells when you're in the heat to produce new energy in the form of ATP, you know, it's called oxidative phosphorylation and what that does is it kicks off some free radicals like super oxide and hydrogen peroxide creates oxidative stress and you think that'd be a bad thing. But what happens is when that happens your body induces what's called HSP and so
so HSP induction in response to these free radicals to mop up the damage it prevents the damage by Scavenging the free radicals and by increasing cellular antioxidant capacity primarily by maintaining glutathione status, it repairs misfolded and damaged proteins. And so it essentially increases your overall cellular resilience as a what would be known as the hormetic stressor, right? You get the heat as the hormetic stressor. They produces the free radicals the hsps prevent the damage but
Because you have an increased production of the hsps your muscles can build faster your mitochondria can proliferate more readily and you're essentially inducing cellular resilience via the regular exposure to the heat. So it's really kind of a cool effect. Now, of course, the other thing that I mentioned was the growth hormone benefits and what you see in response to regular heat practice is a pretty massive release of growth hormone and that can have a really great.
Great anabolic effect mediated by igf-1 so igf-1 insulin-like growth factor-1 is synthesized and response that growth hormone and there's kinda two cool things that happen when you produce your igf-1 you activate the mtor pathway, which is responsible for protein synthesis. And then the other thing that you do is you inhibit what's called foxo activation which can inhibit protein degradation. So for example, mice that the engineer to express really high levels of igf-1 in their muscle develop some really significant skeletal muscle.
/ trophy, they combat age-related muscle atrophy and they retain the same regenerative capacity as young muscle. So regular heat practice specially allows you to build and maintain young muscle. Even if you're aging which I think is really cool. And you know, they've actually administered growth hormone for example in human endurance athletes for about four weeks and they've shown that muscle protein oxidation, which is a biomarker for protein degradation. It decreases by about 50% So literally, you know people who
Growth hormone for that anti-aging effect that growth hormone is so popularly known for you can actually get it with as little as a couple of 20 to 30 minute sauna sessions in a single week. I'm a bigger fan based on some of the Finnish longevity studies of try and hit the sauna closer to four to five times a week, but but it's impressive nonetheless the increase in growth hormone activation. The other very cool thing is the increase in insulin sensitivity now the increase insulin sensitivity,
The reason for that is insulins this endocrine hormone, right? It regulates glucose homeostasis. It promotes the uptake of glucose in a muscle tissue and into adipose tissue and it also plays a role in protein metabolism. It regulates protein metabolism by increasing protein synthesis, right because you're up taking more amino acids and to skeletal muscle when their insulin sensitive and then it decreases protein degradation through inhibition what's called a proteasome and that's a protein complex inside your cells that's responsible for the degradation.
And of cellular proteins and so when you for example do an insulin infusion healthy humans and you increase insulin levels what that does is it suppresses muscle protein breakdown without significantly affecting muscle protein synthesis. And so hyperthermic conditioning or regular sauna lends itself to muscle growth not only feels growth hormone and heat shock protein Pathways, but through a promotion of insulin sensitivity which decreases muscle protein catabolism and you know, they've even
An insulin resistant diabetic mice that they see a significant re sensitization insulin and and reduction blood glucose levels indicating that it's actually really metabolically healthy to engage in sauna use pretty readily you also see an expression or an increased expression of something called glute for that's responsible for transporting glucose into skeletal muscle from the bloodstream and decrease glucose uptake that's one of the mechanisms that leads to insulin resistance. But what happens with the up,
Up regulation that glute for which you also give them things like strength training or even called thermogenesis, which we'll talk about. It's one of the best ways to make yourself metabolically healthy, which is again, probably one of the reasons we see in these finished longevity studies people living, you know, men particularly significant longer period of time when they have a regular sauna practice now, like I briefly alluded to you know, for for people who are injured, this is really great. It's really great because muscle atrophy.
Is going to occur when we tip the balance toward protein degradation and away from protein synthesis and that happens during a mobilization. It happens during disuse of a muscle and so you want to somehow maintain a hypertrophic state of the muscle that's injured. Unfortunately loading the muscle to allow that kind of muscle regrowth or muscle maintenance can be difficult if you're injured, but when you look at the effects of whole body hyperthermia on presenting the muscle atrophy and increasing the muscle regrowth even after
A mobilization which they've shown in studies it that elevated HSP basically is the mechanism via which you hold onto muscle as you are injured. So it's again it's wonderful if you're injured and if you can't get out and exercise to scratch that itch instead by getting in the sauna and it's cool because psychologically, you know, that your body still getting better and then physically you're actually maintaining that muscle that's not being used. So I've
A couple times to the longevity benefits of the sauna and this is one that's been well said a lot of people know this so in flies and worms just a brief exposure to heat treatment has been shown to increase their lifespan by up to 15% And that's mediated by these heat shock proteins that hormetic response that increases the heat shock proteins is associated with longevity and it's just basically decreasing the rate of which telomeres shorten and is protecting DNA.
A cellular membranes and mitochondria when you have this regular sauna practice. So so it's you know, that's that's something that's been known for a while. You know, Rhonda Patrick has talked a lot about those finish longevity studies and that that's of course, you know, just just a just kind of a gimme when it comes to anti-aging tactics. Now the brain is also really really helped dramatically by by regular sauna or heat exposure. So this again partially comes down to the
Heat shock protein production. So what we know is that when you get in a sauna sauna induced hypothermia can induce this robust activation of the sympathetic nervous system and the HPA axis. So your hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis is actually kind of going to go into overdrive a little bit and because the song is mildly stressful. That's why a lot of times if you're in the sauna you see an increase in norepinephrine you see an increase in blood flow or blood on blood glucose. You see a big increase in prolactin you see an increase in cortisol, but then when you get out,
Out of the sauna all that stuff drops conch when you exercise. Well, if you exercise for a long time just going to constantly a really high heart rate and really high cortisol and a lot of muscle damage but then brief bouts of exercise are actually really good for you and turns out that the same thing can be said for the sauna and the reason for this is that big surgeon prolactin that promotes Milan growth makes your brain function faster and that's a key in repairing nerve cell damage. Then you get the increase in norepinephrine, which allows you to better handle stress. It's why a lot of people feel stressed out.
If they get in they do a sauna session feel kind of Zen afterwards, especially if you do it regularly because your body is getting used to having to deal with this norepinephrine response and begins to blunt a hefty norepinephrine response. When you're stressed out by say, you know emails traffic arguments Etc. And so it so it stresses you out short-term the sauna does but then when you get out you're actually distressed now, we know that heat stress can also increase the expression of brain-derived neurotropic factor, and that's
Increases the growth of new brain cells is the reason people take things like lion's mane and smart drugs and nootropics, but he is one of the best ways he and aerobic exercise can both pretty significantly increase bdnf the fact that I think my assistant turn the heat on in our house. I usually keep our house pretty cold for some of the cold benefit, but I'm walking on the treadmill on I'm actually sweating while I'm talking you guys right now. So I'm increasing bdnf via both heat that I'm generating by walking. I'm also increasing bdnf based on the fact that I'm
Aerobically moving as I'm talking to you so bdnf can also Miller eight depression. It can increase resilience to stress in a similar manner as those norepinephrine Pathways that I talked about earlier and a beta endorphin which is induced by hyperthermia is actually one of the things that has like this feel good effect when you get out of the sauna, so that's another cool effect of it, but in addition this beta endorphin
The other one that you should know about is dying orphan. So dying orphan is what's responsible for your runner's high. Okay. So so beta endorphins are these endogenous opioids or natural opioids that are part of your body's natural pain killer system. It's called am you opioid system and you can block pain messages from spreading from the body to the brain via this this process called anti nociception when you have high levels of these these natural painkiller circulating in your body. Well, there's this peptide that's a little bit less or no. It's called Dyne orphan. It's called
the Kappa opioid and that's responsible for the sensation of pain killing. You get it when you eat spicy food, you get it when you're doing intense exercise like afterwards. That's why you feel good after a high intensity training interval session. And then you also get it from the sauna. And so that that's why you almost feel like you have kind of like a feel-good mood enhancing runner's high effect when you have someone in the song it's also why sometimes if you get into a sauna it kind of feels uncomfortable for the first 10 minutes and then
Your body produces more and more dine orphan in kind of last a longer period of time and the sauna the other cool thing is that the the dine orphan these mu receptor Agonist they can reduce increases in body temperature. And so what happens is that they appear to have some type of temperature regulating effect, which is all just really cool because once again coming back to the cardiovascular and the endurance benefits, that means that if you're out exercising in the heat
Eat and your regular sauna visitor exercising on the heat is going to feel way easier ways. I mean any exercise its intense because your body Heats going to go up anyways is going to feel way easier. So that down orphan is a kind of a fantastic bonus of the regular sauna. Hey, so here's something cool. My kids have a cooking podcast and they are actually hiring for their cooking podcast. So they do things like Chef interviews plant foraging really really unique recipes. I mean like healthy glow.
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Something to start calm hot and cold. That's Ben Greenfield fitness.com / hot and cold. All right back to the presentation.
I want to give you a few quick tips and tricks to enhance your sauna experience to enhance your phone experience because there's certain things that have actually been shown to cause your sauna to be a little bit more effective. So the first is this idea of topical muscle warming creams. These are called embarkation creams. I remember I first discovered these when I was racing Triathlon, and I had some triathlons and really cold weather and somebody told me about this cream that cyclist put on their muscles to
Muscles feel warm usually has stuff like capsaicin and another topical gradients of bring blood flow to the surface of the skin. And I remember I use this capsaicin one, but I used it as I was getting ready for the race. And then as you do right before the race starts, I ducked into the porta potty to go to the bathroom before the race. I stole this stuff on my hands and I wipe my butt and all I remember is just me having one of the best swims of my life in that race. I swam like hell and it's because it felt like red ants were eating my balls off. And so there's another
Bonus, if you want to run faster just just smear this topical muscle warming cream everywhere fellas one that I liked was made by a company called ATP science called prototype 8. They I think they discontinued that it was an Australian company, but you can go to Amazon for example and type in embarkation cream. That's embr. Oh see a tion or topical capsaicin but a few of the things you can do black pepper tea black pepper can actually heat the body from the inside.
the piperine in it can increase your body temperature and so before us on a session, you can literally just have a cup of hot water and you can put a few grinds from your black pepper grinder if you shakes from black pepper in there and that's another really great way to heat the body from the inside out niacin and and even things like Viagra and sildenafil and these blood flow increase others, you know people who are doing sauna for the detox effect may be interested in this because nicotinic acid, you know niacin
Or niacinamide for example, it causes this kind of flushing effect that increases blood flow to the liver and to the kidneys. That's what that's why a lot of times high-dose Tyson's used therapeutically to inhibit your free fatty acid releasing to decrease LDL and increase HDL but niacin can also really enhance these detox Pathways because inhibit oxidation in the vasculature, and so basically what this means is that your liver and your kidneys are just gonna flush
Toxins through a little bit more quickly when you get a really good blood flow opener into your system, like niacin now, you can bind those toxins as they wind up in the gut and in the bloodstream by also consuming activated charcoal and a lot of functional medicine practitioners for folks who are detoxing folks who have like mold mycotoxin stealth infections things like that. One of the protocols they'll recommend and this is what I'll do even on like a weekly basis for one of my sauna sessions is you have a big glass of like activated charcoal.
I'll drink before you go get in the sauna. And so if you do that and then you've already taken niacin about 30 to 60 minutes prior, you get the blood flow you get the flush, you know do the black pepper T and the topical muscle warming cream to enhance that even more and then the charcoal binds it so it gets removed more readily in your stool and well primarily with charcoal. It's gonna be in your stool. She might have a nice big black poop at some point after your sauna session now on a few other kind of cool ways to enhance the effects of the sauna.
One would be the use of this this halotherapy and I have a clearlight infrared sauna. This one called a sanctuary says big sonnets. It's I can fit like, you know four to six people in there for a dinner party because we like to do a lot of hot cold dinner parties at our house, but I can also basically just getting that song to myself and do yoga swing kettlebells. I can put a bike in there if I'm a glutton for punishment etcetera, but this this company clear light they also sell these a halotherapy in it.
It that you can install in your sauna. It's basically salt therapy, you know, the efficacy of salt for improving respiratory issues is something that's been done. You know in for a long time was practiced in ancient Greece and Rome and Medieval Europe and the eighteen hundreds. There was this researcher who noted a huge amount of respire Troy health benefits and minors who are working in an insult mines in Poland really low occurrence of respire to our problems in these folks. And so the way the halotherapy works is it
Little unit. It can put on the wall your sauna or the floor your sauna you dump some salt in there. There's a little aluminum ball that rotates and it tears apart the salt and releases these microscopic particles, like micro crystallized salt into the air and you breathe this in and not only do you breathe it in but you sweat more while you're in there and so so that's that's another thing that I always run in my son. And now when I get in sauna and you just feel better you breathe better you sweat more essential oils huge fan of those usual. I'll do some real warming.
Essential oils in there. I like peppermint essential oil cinnamon is good. But you had to loot it can burn the skin a bit. Tobacco essential oil is another great one. There's a physician in Sarasota, Florida who makes this this Amazonian spray. It is it's based on an alkaloid from the Amazon called ha pay or I pay and he has like an intranasal administration of that. I interviewed on a podcast. Dr. John Lawrence. If you go to Ben Greenfield fitness.com and search for Zen spray, you'll find that interview and a few sprigs of that.
Kind of a similar effect is the black pepper T and the one-two combo will really get you hot for your sauna session. I'm often asked about remineralizing afterwards. My go-to is King tan. It's a hypertonic plasma solution. I get it from either water and wellness or Quicksilver scientific, but they take sea water use this cold microfiltration on it. It has like 78 minerals and Trace elements and it's one of the best kind of like electrolyte rehydration type of things the that I've ever used and it's all the more important.
And if you're doing some of these binders like charcoal or blood flow increases like niacin, but this this Quintana hypertonic plasma, I usually do a shot or two that after the song if you don't have that just make sure when you're drinking water for all the water you drink after your sauna sessions on your saw on today's use a really good salt Celtic salt is pretty high in minerals pretty low in things like micro Plastics and metals. So that's another kind of option if you didn't get the Quintana, which actually is a little bit expensive now, you'll note I say to be a little bit careful.
Neuro muscular recovery time. So here's what I mean by that as you've learned the sympathetic nervous system kind of gets put through the ringer when you're doing a sauna session and so because of that you should ideally track your heart rate variability if you can if y'all can or a ring or a whoop or or anything that will track your HRV because sometimes people will do a sauna every day and it's just so stressful for their system that their HRV never bounces back so I'll often go
Landsat my HRV in the morning and if it's lower than typical, I'll often not do a hefty sauna session just because I know what happens from a sympathetic nervous system standpoint. So remember you're not getting sore after your sauna sessions you do want to make sure you're not over stressing your nervous system and frankly, I found with a good amount of hydration and electrolyte in take my HRV bounces back way faster after a sauna session. So so those are the basics when it comes to the Heat and now
We are going to move on to you guessed it ice. So ice I already told you about how I first discovered how intense cold thermogenesis can actually be during my early days of Cold Water Swimming back back. I was racing triathlons, but really, you know, it was a while between the time that I was swimming upstream and that I see Spokane River and I really began to look into the benefits of actual cold thermogenesis and what it can do for
or the body and trust me, you do not have to swim upstream in an icy cold River or really even get a nice bath regularly to get a lot of the benefits of the cold. So with the cold we're actually going to start with the brain because the the effects of cold on the brain I think are often not talked about enough because you know, one of the most consistent and profound physiological responses to cold exposure, especially if your head is under the water and this is actually probably why they've found
In a recent study just last week decreasing the risk of depression dementia and Alzheimer's in people who regularly swim in cold water and part of that is related to this release of norepinephrine into the bloodstream. It winds up in What's called the Locust coriolis region of the brain and it's very interesting because this norepinephrine is a hormone and neurotransmitter involved in things like vigilance and focus and attention and mood so the cold induces this robust
Bust increase in norepinephrine mediated by a sympathetic nervous system fight or flight response. And what happens is that increased neurotransmission and the the effect of metabolism norepinephrine. It actually combats things like ADHD and depression and that the reason for that is norepinephrine is depleted in in people typically by pharmacological interventions and that can cause depression a lot of people who are using what are called norepinephrine reuptake.
Take Inhibitors and the complete opposite happens when you get regular cold exposure. Now, you also get an acute increase in vasoconstriction and construction of blood flow to the brain. But after that happens you get this big rush in blood flow to the brain. And so what happens as a result of that that increase in norepinephrine neurotransmission is this increase in focus and cognitive ability and energy and mood and this all happens.
As soon as you kind of get out of the cold and begin to warm up, but the effects don't stop there when it comes to the brain and and just so you guys know, you know Coldwater immersion at about 68 degrees Fahrenheit, which is not that cold one hour of 57 degrees Fahrenheit increases norepinephrine by 500% and dopamine by 250 percent 40 degrees Fahrenheit Coldwater. Immersion for about 20 seconds 20 seconds.
Norepinephrine 200 to 300 percent so you can see like 20 seconds versus an hour at a slightly, you know warmer temperature dictates that just a few quick tips in a nice tub versus spending an hour 57 degrees Fahrenheit actually still gives you a significant increase in the norepinephrine and the dopamine response. Now the important thing about norepinephrine is also has these really profound effects on pain and metabolism and inflammation and it can even maintain some amount of Serotonin balance. So
There's some really cool things happening with this big increase in norepinephrine. Now the synapses between your neurons actually do break down during cold exposure and you think that that would be bad but what happens is animals that hibernate when they warm back up. They regenerate these synapses and So based on this researchers actually looked at mice who had cold air exposure about 41 degrees Fahrenheit for on 45 minutes, and they actually got about
25% loss of synapses in their hippocampus, but once they warm them back up, they rapidly regenerated those synapses and the mechanism by which that occurred was dependent on this thing called are bm3 that's a cold shock protein. Okay. So already know what a heat shock protein is that's a cold shock Protein. That's our bm3 and just like the mice we also have that and that's what is responsible for allowing for the restoration of synapses. It binds to RNA increases protein synthesis.
That your dendrites which are part of the neuron that communicate with the synapses and it regenerates those damaged neurons. And and this is really cool because you know when we're constantly bombarded by brain inflammation Wi-Fi and 5G and cell phones and you know all all these synapses they do get a little bit of damage done to them. But it appears that cold is actually able to regenerate that to a certain extent, you know, and some some neurosurgeons are actually utilize cold in their practice as a way to not only keep the blood brain barrier.
And decrease inflammation, but also increase the repair of these synapses now the ability to prevent the loss of synapses. That's that's pretty significant because losing synapses is something that occurs in neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease and even after traumatic brain injury, which is why you know regular cold exposure if you had a TBI or concussion is something that's actually kind of smart to do. So a few other things regarding this this RB M3 is
The Coldwater immersion for something like that, you know, it's it's a little bit longer. You can see that 41 degrees Fahrenheit for 45 minutes for mice, but that's that's ambient temperature. That's not Coldwater immersion. And so that would be like a long walk outside in the cold for 45 minutes to an hour, which is not that bad. And then if you can get a two degrees Fahrenheit reduction in core body temperature that can induce this are bm3 cold shock protein and that's about
68 degrees Fahrenheit, right. So again, if you can either do these brief super cold ice soaks and you don't like most of the data it's anywhere from 20 seconds. Like I mentioned up to a maximum about 10 minutes that you would need something like cryotherapy or the intense ice bath immersion, right? Those can be a lot shorter, but you can also get similar effects with a long swim at your local gym that keeps the pool kind of cold or just going to a lake and
dipping in the lake and just hanging out in the lake for a while or just you know, I do a lot of this just in the winter of the Fall go for a walk without any clothes on and you can get a lot of these same effects. You don't have to just like, you know, freeze your eyeballs out in a nice tub every day. There's a lot of ways to do this. So, you know brief bouts of really cold or longer bouts of kind of cold both seem to have a pretty good effect. Now the cool thing about cold is it affects a lot of stuff of in the brain, so there's some inflammation and immune system benefits so we know that the
Norepinephrine that's released during the cold that can inhibit a lot of inflammatory Pathways. It decreases what's called tnf-alpha and macro Flay's inflammation. So the reason you have inflammation is, you know, eliminates the initial cause of a cell injury clears out dead cells and and you know in tissues that get damaged from an insult and the inflammatory process can initiate tissue repair, you know, when that process runs, awry, you know, like in the absence of a biological threat and instead because of just chronic stress. It's a pretty key driver of the aging process.
SS and it's actually associate with a lot of of age-related diseases low inflammation is the only biomarker that predict survival and cognitive capabilities across all age groups. When you look at centenarians and semi supercentenarians and supercentenarians. Like it's pretty much lower inflammation. That's the main thing now norepinephrine reduces inflammation. And so we know that norepinephrine is really cool is a neurotransmitter but it also inhibits this tumor necrosis Factor Alpha the tnf-alpha and it's a potent molecule that increases inflammation.
Then it also is something that decreases macrophage inflammatory protein MIP one and that's produced by immune cells and can cause things like, you know, arthritis and other inflammatory related conditions. So, you know, this also might be why you know a guy like Wim Hof can get really robust immune system response and was shown to be able to fight off toxins. I believe in this case. It was an E.coli injection that he had just based off of his regular heat practice now,
Now there's some other cool things that when it comes to the inflammation and the immune system some of these pro-inflammatory molecules that I told you about like tnf-alpha and some of these prostaglandins that get produced in response to inflammation. Those can cross the blood-brain barrier and they can activate some of the brains immune cells that are known as microglia. And what happens is that when you increase norepinephrine that doesn't occur to as great an extent. I suspect part of it too is because cold can improve the Integrity of the blood-brain barrier and it
So increases the activity of a lot of antioxidant enzymes are very very similar to the way the heat does it but in the case of cold what happens is that it's shutting down a lot of the reactive oxygen species and that's because of a doubling of one of your body's most potent antioxidant enzyme systems called glutathione reductase and there's another one called superoxide dismutase that also gets just through the roof in response to cold. So, you know, all of that is really fantastic for
formation and the immune system, but then the other interesting thing is that cryotherapy even local crowd therapy with like those little cold wands that you'll find a lot of health clubs or medical treatment facilities these days that inhibits what's called collagenase activity, which as the name implies is something that breaks down collagen now in addition to decreasing the production of prostaglandins, which can have an effect on breaking down collagen cold can decrease pain response to an injury, but then also decrease the amount of collagen that
It's
down. So this is why as you can imagine like a one-two combination of a regular heat practice and a regular cold practice is fantastic for a variety of benefits, but it's really impressive in terms of the ability to be able to manage injuries or even allow injuries to heal a little bit faster. We know that aging is something that can cause the production of immuno senescence, right? So so you basically get these non-functional immune cells and what cold can do.
And this was a case in which they did long-term cold water emerge about three times a week for six weeks in males it increased lymphocyte numbers and that's a type of white blood cell and when you increase those white blood cell numbers, you're getting an increase in the amount of cytotoxic T lymphocytes. And those are a special type of immune cell that can kill cancer cells and these natural T killer cells would decrease naturally with age which is why I regularly consume things like thymus extract and and sweetbreads and
Use peptides like, you know, thymus and Alpha 1 for example, but you can also increase the the cytotoxic T lymphocytes with regular long-term cold exposure. So that's another really really cool benefit when it comes to inflammation and the immune system. So there's some really cool things going on in terms of you staying healthier and you being able to fight off inflammation more readily now of course cold is well known for its effects on the the activation of this uncoupling protein.
Okay, so so I'll explain to you what this means and why this is important for for fat loss. So basically there's two different types of thermogenesis that occur when you get exposed to cold. Okay. So first you'll wrap up your metabolism like your metabolic rate will increase to produce heat and as part of that your body also Burns through glucose, like just like frickin candy pun intended. I found one of the best ways when I'm using a continuous blood glucose monitor to control my blood.
Because the entire day long is a good 5 to 10 minute cold exposure in the morning. It is it's fantastic and part of that is the up regulation of metabolism part of his the upregulation of some of the group for Transporters some of the increase in insulin sensitivity. But but for blood glucose management, I mean it's way up there for me as far as an effective tactic, but in addition to the increase in metabolism, you also see what's called non shivering thermogenesis, right? So the increase in metabolism would be like you're shivering your muscles are Contracting. Your metabolic rate is going up your body's doing everything to keep
Keep warm, but then there's this thing that occurs on more of a cellular level that's regulated by the norepinephrine increase that I already discussed. So when you have this cold induction of norepinephrine, you get an increase in the expression of this protein called uncoupling protein one UCP one that uncouples the mitochondria what that means is that mitochondria would normally be responsible for generating energy by transporting electrons that are derived from
Food calories that you eat now cold exposure uncouples that electrochemical gradient. And what happens is that instead of producing ATP the UCP effect allows the mitochondria to produce heat and if you've heard of like white adipose tissue to Brown adipose tissue are Browning effect fat tissue, one of the reasons for that is because of a higher amount of this dense uncoupling rich brown adipose.
Issue, and so there's this bat this brown adipose tissue conversion is something that can only assist with metabolism and he production but of course it will decrease a lot of fat around the waist line. For example, you'll notice like some like big polar, you know, you know Bay Area cold water swimmers, you know Polar Bear Club members, sometimes they have like some dense amount of fats up in their neck and the collarbone area and that's that's because the Browning of some of the white adipose tissue some of the tissue can accumulate up there. But I mean if you're
Doing
other things to stay lean or watch your calorie intake Etc. You're not going to like look fat up in your neck your instead. Just going to decrease the appearance of that white adipose tissue, for example, you know around your waistline or or anywhere else, you know along with that increase in metabolic rate and glucose response. There's a lot going on when it comes to maintaining your body composition or improving your body composition via this uncoupling protein and the white fat to Brown fat conversion, so,
That's another wonderful effect. And there's there's a guy who runs this websites. It's like cool fat burner.com. I interviewed him on my website. It's a podcast that was a few years back, but he even sells like this cooling gear that you can wear at the office and he's shown in his exercise physiology laboratory. So like a 300% increase in metabolic rate, when just like where this this clothing they pull a bit of a of these ice packs that it comes with on your body. He's got one for like a vest and one that just wraps around your waist and he sees some some really cool.
Is the fat loss as have Ray Krone eyes, if you look up Ray Krone eyes and his Wired Magazine article from way back in 2013. I mean, I remember he talked at a conference I attended and he was sitting super impressive results without any changes in the diet and people who he was simply having do a 5-minute hot cold contrast shower at the beginning and the end of the day. It was 20 seconds of cold 10 seconds of hot ten times through and that's it. And and that's that's an example of how little you need to get some of these benefits.
So performance and Recovery, there's a lot of benefits when it comes to cold and its effects on performance and recovery, for example, we know that right after exercise you produce these pro-inflammatory cytokines, right those activate immune cells and they're involved in tissue repair. And the these macrophages already talked about those are the type of immune cell that can get produced and activated in response to inflammation. Including you guessed it exercise-induced inflammation now,
It
happens is that that when when these macrophages which are actually a type of immune cell like I mentioned get released they can increase satellite cell migration satellite cells are basically like a stem cell and there are associated with the same type of muscle hypertrophy that you get from strength training. Okay. So you exercise you get inflammation. There's an anti inflammatory response and then these anabolic hormones get released, but you know,
What's more important to realize here is that a lot of people are under the impression that if you do Hefty amounts of cryotherapy or cold that you're going to shut down that satellite cell migration, the mitochondria proliferation and the igf-1 response that should occur in response to exercise because you're getting cold and you're decreasing the amount of some of these inflammatory molecules. If you actually dig into the research, you need a three to eight percent drop in muscle temperature in order for that to occur. So that's the equivalent of
Basically, like 10 minutes of pretty cold water immersion. That's like doing a 10-minute ice baths. We're not talking about a cold shower. We're talking about 10 minutes ice bath and we're talking about doing that in like an acute post-exercise state. So yeah, if you're doing super duper cold stuff right after you exercise then you may actually see a blunting of the hypertrophic response. Even though wanting is his pretty slight like it's you know, you see, you know, a small decrease in muscle mass, you know a
I'll drop in performance. But again, that's a cute exposure to really really cold like ice baths or cryotherapy Chambers. Now, if you look at for example, you know Runners, you know, 15 minutes of exposure to 50 degrees Fahrenheit, which is not super cold following running can increase P GC 1 Alpha in muscle tissue, which actually going to increase mitochondrial proliferation now, that's great for for endurance athletes, of course and
And that's actually beneficial if your endurance athlete so I realize I'm kind of getting into the weeds here. But what I want to do is step back and tell you that if you are an endurance athlete a frequent Runner marathoner triathlete etcetera after you finish a hard training session to decrease core temperature get blood flow back to the gut faster be able to sleep better at night. I've seen very little evidence that like a post long run or post long bike ride cold exposure is going to impair endurance performance at all, and then for strength and hypertrophy
And the trick is allow your body time to produce that inflammatory response sure, if you're sweating and you're pitting out at the office after strength training session a quick cold shower to cool your body down. It's great stocking to blunt the hormetic response to exercise a 10-minute ice bath save that for at least two hours after the exercise session because it's about the two-hour window that allows your body to mount that inflammatory response. Okay, so it's about timing and and dosing and so what I do is
If I do an ice bath like a long ice bath like 10 minutes plus I'm just not doing it right after a strength training session and arguably I'm fine with doing it, you know after like a long run or a long bike ride or something like that. So, you know, there's there's a few other considerations here when it comes to Performance. For example, like I was mentioning on mitochondrial biogenesis, which is the you know, the the production of a lot of these new mitochondria the cold will activate this PG c 1 Alpha, right?
That makes more mitochondria in the muscle. It's called mitochondrial biogenesis. And PGC one elf is the master regulator of that process. And if you get exposed to cold water after you engage in endurance exercise, we see an increase in that P GC 1 Alpha production. And so, you know, when it comes to triggering mitochondrial biogenesis getting cold right after an endurance training session has a lot of benefits again, unless you're pure strength and pure hypertrophy. We also see.
For example in tennis players doing crowd therapy after tennis practice you decreasing tnf-alpha you can increase and in some of the cytokines that can help to long-term blunt inflammation and you know skeletal muscles in mice have been engineered to show increased levels of cold Chuck protein that are bm3 and they've actually shown improved muscle cell survival and a larger muscle size after being exposed to the cold shock protein. So what this means is that again even
If you're going after strank after power Etc cold is still going to be good for you. Just don't do it right after your workout. Okay, so hopefully you guys are kind of getting the idea in terms of timing dosage Etc. When it comes to that this cold shock protein when it comes to decrease inflammation Etc. What I do want to also do is get into some tips and tricks when it comes to cold thermogenesis. So one I already told you about if you don't like to get wet, you know ladies if you don't want to
Cold shower and lose all your makeup and have to redo your Hair Etc. This is a cool trick or guys if you're at the office and you just don't want duck out and take a cold shower. The that equipment from cool fat burner.com is amazing. I have a lot of clients that will just wear that a few times during the day at work because it triggers the same type of brown fat thermogenesis uncoupling protein and metabolic activity is Coldwater. Immersion. Melatonin is One supplement that's been shown to increase Brown fat thermogenesis. So,
So, you know best way to do that is just adequate sleep and paying attention to your light rhythms and your circadian rhythm, but you can also use small amounts of melatonin even pre cold exposure. It's not something I do because melatonin makes me sleepy. I think some of these other things I'm going to give you AR are arguably better because of that but just know that melatonin can increase some of the brown fat thermogenesis caffeine cup of coffee or if you're going to be in the cold, you know, preferably like an iced caffeine Source would be better.
Jenna having to re cool what you've just heated up that's another way that you can increase thermogenesis. There are things like bitter melon extract and a lot of the polyphenols that you'll find in Olio pair and camp for all those can also increase uncoupling protein one really cool studies showed capsaicin from Red Pepper piperine from black pepper ginger and cinnamon can all boost thermogenesis. There's another supplement you'll find called Citrus or Ranchi. Mm. Okay that has a Nord rental in effect and also boost the activity of this uncoupling protein.
Bile acids which can directly up regulate your thyroid hormone function. So taking care of your liver and your gall bladder health, but then also considering the inclusion of like digestive enzyme supplements that have bile acids in them that can also increase the thermogenesis in brown fat Forskolin another supplement that activates was called the denial cyclase in brown fat. So you higher amounts of cyclic GMP and you get an increase in that metabolism even over and above what you get from Pure cold one really cool study on fish oil you saw an increased metabolism in mice and
Used fat accumulation by 15 to 20% by partnering fish oil with cold and some people say well fish oil has calories and I'm going to advise you have to burn those first. It's a it's a drop in the bucket folks. Trust me same thing with ketones like you can literally dose up with ketones fish oil little bit of caffeine and maybe throw in some of the polyphenols and literally have like your own cold thermostat as a matter of fact if you listen to podcast number 420 at Ben Greenfield fitness.com / 420. I have a whole stack
That I get into that's kind of like my preferred stack and I have links to like all the different manufacturers and the supplements and the things that I pop before. I do called thermogenesis and some of the newer research is actually on ketones ketones Esters on the beta-hydroxybutyrate seem to really increase that white to Brown fat conversion. So kind of like with heat there's all sorts of cool little hacks and supplements that you can use to enhance the effects of cold thermogenesis. Now a couple of other tips here a lot of people struggle
With with the cold and I think with off breathwork don't do it under water. Don't do it while you're in the water but doing like 30 to 40 rounds and even two to three repeats of 30 to 40 rounds of the deep. Inhale Letting Go Letting Go letting go, you know, the Wim Hof style breathwork deep and healthy end and then hold the exhale that's basically like old-school yogic fire-breathing its inner fire you're increasing your metabolism. And so that's one way that you can after you've done a session.
Like that and you're not dizzy and you can stand up and you're not concerned about passing out then you get the water afterwards and it can really help you to maintain some of your nervous system resilience in your calmness in the water. I'm also a big fan of box breathing. You know, I learned this when I was doing some some training down in Encinitas at this thing called kokoro, which is kind of like Navy SEAL hell week for civilians and they trained us to do a four count in for count hold for count out and for can't hold when we were doing some of these frigid Pacific ocean sits and doing like long ice baths.
15 to 20-minute ice baths and that's what I teach my children to do that's what I do myself and it can really help with keeping you in the cold for a longer period of time if you really struggle with ice pads. Another question I get is what's the difference in these sexy fancy like three-minute treatment in a kraut therapy chamber versus Coldwater immersion. Well, I'm a bigger fan actually of Coldwater immersion rather than the cryotherapy. So first of all, cryotherapy is a little less effective.
Because it only uses are right. So so ice has the greatest capacity to extract heat from the body and then cold water a second and are is third so you're basically getting less heat transfer out of the body when you're doing cryotherapy. Okay, so that's one issue and it's even a bigger issue for your head is not inside the crowd Therapy Unit like some of these units are because then you're not getting a lot of the Mental effects the brain affects I talked about when it comes to cryotherapy the other kind of interesting thing is that
With cold water immersion you get this increase in the amount of surface area of the body that's exposed to the cold and you also get this hydrostatic pressure of the water against the skin and when that happens you actually reduce a lot of the lymphatic fluid back flow that occurs in response to the cold that can actually have some of that that inflammation reducing effects that you might not be looking for if it's an immediate post exercise scenario. So that's kind of interesting as well. It's a pretty similar increase in norepinephrine.
Nephron with cold water immersion versus whole body cryotherapy, even though you gotta do a longer treatment for the whole body cryotherapy again, 20 to 30 seconds in an ice bath versus three minutes in a kraut therapy chamber that is arguably also more expensive. And so, you know, it's one of those things where I'm personally if I can do Coldwater immersion, like I have a cold Bath called a marasco forge and my backyard, I got one of those above ground pools that I keep pretty cold and then I live like two miles from a river.
Right whenever I can I go with cold showers or Coldwater immersion. But um, you know, if the crowd therapy Chambers, you're still going to see a good effect, but you just got to do them way more the less efficacious. I know they look cool, but they're just they're just not as effective as Coldwater immersion frankly. So I'm not not the biggest fan of them. Jeez. We made it. We made it through you guys. So if you my book at boundless books.com, I've also got tons more on cold.
Thermogenesis in there as well. And you know, if you reach out to me on social media Instagram Twitter Facebook Etc. It's pretty easy to find my profiles there. I always like to help people teach people Point people in the right direction and you know, hopefully that wasn't just to geeked out and they're ready for you because I want to give you some of the Practical things that I do as well probably behoove you to listen in that Ben Greenfield fitness.com / 420 podcast 420. We really focus in on some of the things that can enhance the effects of cold and
So thank you all I hope you've learned a lot about Fire and Ice. I'm incredibly happy and blessed to be able to share some of what I've learned with you. This is what I love to do. So thanks for tuning in and I hope this has been helpful. So if you want to download the PDF the slides for everything that you just heard or if you want robust show notes with all the studies the extra resources podcast books goodies. Everything just go to Ben Greenfield fitness.com hot and
old I'll have it all there at Ben Greenfield fitness.com hot and cold. Thanks for listening and have an amazing week.
Thanks for listening to Today's show. You can grab all the show notes the resources pretty much everything that I mentioned over at Ben Greenfield fitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me including the highly helpful Ben recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones sleep digestion fat loss performance and plenty more. Please also know that all the links all the promo codes that I mentioned.
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