Barbell Shrugged - Black Root Recovery: The Multi‑Modality Recovery Sauna Built for Veterans, Athletes, and High Performers #827

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

Former Marine and general contractor Andrew Kavanaugh joins the crew to share the origin story of Black Root Recovery, a company he founded after watching too many of his fellow Marines struggle physically, mentally, and emotionally after returning home. What started as a personal quest to rebuild his health led to a 90-pound weight loss, the elimination of sleep apnea and nightmares, and a profound shift in cognitive clarity and emotional resilience. Andrew combined the modalities that changed his own life (grounding, infrared therapy, red-light therapy, and traditional sauna heat) into a single premium, custom-built recovery system designed to reduce inflammation, support brain health, and help veterans and high performers reclaim their capability. Andrew breaks down the science and practical application behind each component of the system, including his patented grounding design that connects the user directly to an eight-foot copper ground rod to immediately reduce blood viscosity and "electrical noise" in the body. Paired with deep-penetrating red light panels, infrared heat, and a high-output traditional sauna, his units create a stacked recovery environment that improves circulation, reduces inflammation, accelerates healing, and enhances cognitive performance. Andrew shares how, after three months of daily use, he saw his social anxiety disappear, his brain function sharpen, and his jiu-jitsu endurance skyrocket. The conversation expands into the broader mission: supporting veterans, giving athletes a competitive performance advantage, and scaling access to recovery tools that have historically been too expensive or too fragmented to deliver real transformation. Andrew discusses future plans to build custom installations for gyms and sports teams, and continue refining the multimodal system. Whether the goal is longevity, recovery, or helping those who have served, this episode reveals why integrated recovery environments may become the next frontier in reducing inflammation, healing trauma, and elevating human potential. Links: Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram  

Shrug family this week on Barbell Shrugged, Andrew Kavanaugh from Black Root Recovery is on the podcast. And today we're going to be digging into the most comprehensive sauna you've ever heard of your entire life. Everybody knows songs are like extremely good for you. There's tons of science saying you need to get in there. It's good for your heart health. It's good for sweating out all the toxins and just feeling good. It's way cooler than being incredibly cold and like a cold tub. Everybody likes to get hot and sweat.

But on top of that, Andrew. story coming from a military background, PTSD, how he's been helping veterans in the military and what led him to designing really the most comprehensive sauna. So it's not just on the heat side or just on the infrared side, but really adding tons of recovery elements so that you can stack all of the winds on top and have the most enjoyable experience sitting there and get your sweat on. As always, friends, make sure you get over to rapid health report.com. That is where Dan Garner and Dr. Andy Galtb are doing a free lab lifestyle performance. analysis and you can access that over at rapid health report.com friends let's get into the show

welcome to barbell shrug I'm Anders warner Doug larson coach Travis mash Andrew cabinaw dear friends the uh the the the maker of mark farmer for those rapid health optimization fans out there mark has been on the show as well he probably got lots and lots of Instagram followers but welcome to the show man you you you build his sauna. This isn't like a regular sauna. As I was joking around, this is like the old rap song.

It's like a sauna that rides on 22s. I can't believe we work that into the intro here. But I'd love to, first off, sonnas, that feels to me like the, like the, a market that did not have a space for a new product like you have created. I'd love to kind of hear the origin.

stories of how you like turned uh the creativity on to to actually get into this business yeah absolutely so i'm a general contractor i own a small construction company i've done a lot of work on uh mr farmer's house um kind of became friends with them over the years and he a few years ago went through your guys's program and he was telling me about it and uh i started looking into a lot of the different things and I came across grounding and infrared therapy, red light therapy, halo therapy, salt therapy, all these different, you know, holistic approaches. And I was already doing some Wim-Poff breathing techniques that I was, that was probably the first holistic thing that I was introduced to back in probably around 2015. And I started doing those and I was doing it every single day without fail.

three sessions of the breathing technique. And after about a month or two, my heartburn went away. So I had diagnosed Gerd. This was so bad that I would bend over to tie my shoe and I would get this just big hit of stomach acid. So that kind of, and then that eventually, you know, the Wim Hof, you know, the ice man, that led to the ice bath. So I started doing the ice baths and I just started to feel better in my day.

and then we had kids and I got a little bit lazy and I stopped training. And at the time I was working, I was living in San Diego and I was working for the Marine Corps as a contractor providing immersion training for the Marine Corps. So I was always, excuse me. You're a Pendleton? Yeah, Camp Pendleton, yeah. All over the U.S., anywhere the Marines were training from 2011 to, 2016, we would go there and provide the training. But it all kind of just led further and further into, you know, during that time when I wasn't

executing on doing any of those things, I was just researching it. And I was telling everybody about it. And people are kind of looking at me like, what is this woo-woo stuff you're talking about? And nobody was really taking me serious at the time. So a couple years back, I went to a Marine Corps reunion for the first. time. So I hadn't seen any of these guys for about 15 years since our racked appointment in 2007. And I didn't really know what to expect, but, you know, I expected everybody generally to look the same kind of be the same. And when I got there, I was shocked on how physically everybody was really out of shape and not looking in their best form.

And some of the guys that I remember being the most cop diesel PT studs, you know, 400 pounds. I was just shocked by that. And anyway, so the reunion was great, but it was very much the way that it was every time I hung out these guys in the Marines, we were drinking, we were kind of partying, we were eating bad food, having a good time. And a couple months later, we had one of the guys that I'd met at the reunion. I didn't directly serve with him, but he was, you know, years later in the same unit, I'd become really good friends with him. and he was starting a nonprofit organization. And long story short, he committed suicide. And it's, you know, so my unit, we lost, I think, 26 guys killed an action in our Iraq deployment.

100 plus that were severely wounded, double amputees. I mean, the worst that it can be. Now we're close to being over the number we lost in Iraq and suicides. Oh, my God. You're close to 26 then? You're close to a... I don't know the exact number and some different people have some different numbers, but it's too close.

Oh, man. So that really hit me really hard, and it hit me hard because when I was at the reunion, I was a lot of these guys' bosses. So I wanted to tell them about these things that I was doing that was helping me out. And I didn't. And in my mind, I was telling myself, you know, you're not there. boss anymore. You guys are all just, you know, civilians now and it's really not your place. It's none of your business, what their diet is and what their, you know, PT routine is.

But it stung really bad that I didn't say it because I really wanted to talk about the things, but I didn't. He killed himself. So that was one day I was sitting in my cheap sauna in my shop. and I was thinking about all the different health modalities that I was using on an individual basis, and I just thought, why don't I put these together and address inflammation of the brain and body and try to help guys get their health back? And I knew that the only way I could accomplish that was having that physical transformation that was undeniable. So I went to a reunion this summer, and I saw all those same guys, and it was finally those credibility, points came in.

They remembered me talking about some of these things, but now they saw like the physical transformation and lots of people were really interested. At this point, I'd already came up with the sauna. So, but that's how I, that's how I initiated that's what initiated me getting

into it and taking it serious was I wanted to be on the front of leading these guys into better health again. That's awesome. Wait, maybe I missed this. What was the physical transformation? that you went through in that time? So I lost about 90 pounds in a year and a half.

I was training jiu-jitsu five days a week. I wasn't doing anything more than that. And I was using my recovery sauna and doing the cold plunges and the breathing techniques. And that's really what I wanted. Were you using the wind-off techniques? Yes, yep. I just of late, late, got into that guy.

I'm absolutely amazed. I'll be honest, coming from a scientific background, you know, woo is hard for me. But, like, I mean, what that guy has done is undeniable. It's just, you know, it's undeniable that he has absolutely laughed in the face of what science said was possible. So, like, there's got to be something to what he's talking about. There has to be. Yeah, I agree. 100%.

And for me, I felt all of the. benefits that you know these different modalities claim and so much so that you know I I feel just like a fire of motivation to get after it and get the knowledge out to as many people as possible and you know now also a product that can help facilitate the transformation that is really my biggest goal is to help people transform their lives and assist them in doing that personally I want to hear more like what is what are the whim off things. Yeah, go into the details because it's kind of like you put all of these things. Like most people just think Hotbox sauna, but you've combined all of these elements into really like

the all in one sauna. Yeah. So the Wim Hof breathing technique is pretty simple. It's 30 breaths. And then it's a full exhale. And you're holding that exhale for as long as possible. And, you know, while you're in that Excel, it's like hypoxia, I think it's called. It's doing some stuff on the cellular level, and I can't really explain too much the science of it, but, you know, there's a lot of information on the internet for your listeners to look into. But what I can't tell you, it changed my life. 30 regular breasts or 30, what kind of breasts? 30 breasts kind of like this.

I'll just do a quick demonstration. Yeah, that's what I, you know, I saw him. kind of like hyperventilating yourself on purpose. Close, but not quite. And then you're doing that full exhale at the end and holding it as long as possible. And then inhaling and holding that as long as possible. And when that becomes comfortable, then you can add calisthenics into the breath hold on the inhale. God, I love this guy.

Okay, sweet. And it's natural and it's free. Yeah. I just love to hear him talk. Like, because he talks about his wife who committed suicide and weren't cause. is like, I mean, I just want to hang out with him, just listen to him talk and not say a word. Yeah, me too. And his story really resonated with me, but for me it wasn't my wife.

It was all of my friends, you know, and these are guys that if I would have asked them, you know, going on a patrol before we're about to step out on the streets in Hocklandi, Iraq, hey, does anybody want to volunteer to kill themselves before and just make this a little bit easier on our enemy? I mean, I probably would have been punched in the face, spat out. at and, you know, definitely some F-bombs thrown at me. So my question now is, why are we doing it now? You know, we've made it home.

This is what we talked about on deployment, getting home, starting the business, going to college, whatever it was. So why do you think it is? Why do you think this is? You know, I've got a couple different theories, but one that I gravitate towards the most is the transformation. So when you're a civilian and you go into the recruiting office, they're giving you the opportunity to earn the title United States Marine.

Right. But you go through a process. You go through boot camp. You learn drill and ceremony. You learn customs and courtesies. You learn how to shoot your rifle. You learn all of those things. And they build you up that whole time during that three-month process from you're a shitbag loser to

you're feeling like Cock Diesel Superman, March. around on graduation day. Unstoppable. And then you go off to your different schools and you do more, you know, enhanced training or more specific training for your job. And, you know, so it's about a year. And then you're in the fleet Marine Force. And during the time when I came in in 2003, they were sending guys straight from

School of Infantry right onto the front lines in Fuffaloosa and Vermont. So when you're in there and you know what your job is and you fill a, level of importance. Yeah. You know, there's not much to question about who you are and what your objectives and life are, but once you get out, you go through another transformation. But now you're transforming from undefeatable U.S. Marine to what the VA is telling veterans that you're broken and these things that you went through are the reason why you're

not going to have the relationship with your friends and family anymore that you did. And they basically took everything that would make you a hero amongst other heroes and said, you're fucked up because of that. And here's some of the symptoms. And if you ever look at the symptoms of PTSD, I mean, it's just, I mean, they connect basically any bad feeling to PTSD. Dr. Andy Galpin here. As a listener of the show, you've probably heard us talking about the Arte program, which we're all incredibly proud of. It's a culmination of everything Dan Garland and I have learned over more than two days.

decades of working with some of the world's most elite performers, award-winning athletes, billionaires, musicians, executives, and frankly, anyone who just wanted to be at their absolute best. Artae is not a normal coaching program. It's not just macros on a workout plan. It's not physique transformation and pre-imposed pictures. Arte is something completely different. Arate is incredibly comprehensive and designed to uncover your unique molecular signature, find your performance anchors, and solve them permanently. You'll be working with not one person, but rather a full team of elite professionals, each with their own special expertise, to maximize precision, accuracy, and effectiveness of your analysis and optimization plan. Artee isn't about treating symptoms or quick fixes.

It's about unlocking your full potential and looking, feeling, and performing at your absolute best, physically and mentally when the stakes are the highest. To learn more, visit Arteelab.com. That's A-R-E-E-Lab.com. Now, back to the show. I realize that PTSD is brain inflammation. So when I set out to create this product, reducing inflammation was the key thing for me. And if you can reduce the inflammation in the brain and body, then the symptoms of PTSD and the physical stuff they're dealing with, it's going to be a lot better. It's going to be manageable.

And on that transformation side, I want to get these guys returning back to the ethos that we carried as Marines, which is absolutely nothing will stop me from mission success. Yeah, man, that's awesome. I mean, what a, yeah, I have a good friend who, at our church, who is a, he was a U.S. Ranger. Now he's, you know, he's like really struggling to find his place in life. Like he tried to be a teacher And like that didn't work out You know meanwhile his wife is a successful She's a doctor

And so you know Going from a ranger to trying to like You know It's going to be hard to replace that And so You know Finding a place for him You didn't come down to

Arkansas with Doug and I Yeah I did I went with that Yep We shot a show with him one time out there Yeah It was amazing Yeah you did the second time

The second time Right. Yeah, that one was almost relaxing, even though compared to the person we interviewed, it was like the most horrific stories. I literally cried for like 20 straight hours of podcasts. Like it was horrific of these people's journeys. Like I could, it was like, it was like listening to like a real life horror story. Every, in like every turn, it just got worse and worse. Yeah. It's, we failed those guys so badly. I think America has failed our military so badly. We asked them to go out there as kids and, like, you know, shoot people, protect America. Now come back and good luck, F you, because you did your job, but we're not going to help you acclimate back. It's like, you know, when someone's in the NFL and now you're out of the NFL, like, how the hell do you, like, become a normal person after you're used to, you know, 100,000 people,

screaming, chanting for you. And now you're going to want to sell insurance. Like, you know, like your guys is double that. You're like in this battle and you're, you guys are knights. You're like real live nights protecting America. Like, what a purpose. Like, and now you come back to America. You're like, now go sell cars.

What? Like, right. It just won't work that way. We've got to do a better job of helping you guys. Well, thank God the people like you that are trying to do that. We just need to do that at scale. So when when did you start to kind of put all the pieces together like making a product driven from this like problem that you're solving in your own life?

Obviously kind of like the you mentioned reducing inflammation and on the brain health and PTSD side. But that's that's that's that's an easy thing to say without actually putting pen to paper and kind of designing a system to help with that. that. Sure. So about a year ago was when I had the idea and I ran it past a couple of friends and some other colleagues and everybody was really intrigued by the aesthetics and the design. But back to, you know, the modalities is it sounded just kind of woo-woo to people and they're

like grounding and they're like, what's that? And, oh, red light, you're telling me I can go stand in front of this light and my muscles will be less sore. So I wanted to, you know, build the product and put all these things together. And I'm hoping that may be a relationship with you guys is that we could take some veterans in a bad position, get their blood work, find out what the, you know, inflammation markers are up when they start and then go through some protocols. Not just the sauna, but, you know, nutrition, all lifestyle type of things. and then see what they look like at three months, six months. And if it's anything like me, it was about three months into my sauna.

When I added sauna to what I was doing, my brain started to function better. Three years ago, I wouldn't have even been able to have this idea. My brain wasn't just functioning optimally at the time. I didn't talk very well with people. I had some social anxiety things that were going on. And I was convinced these were all, you know, byproducts of the war. And I found that it's because of the inflammation. And since now I do, I use the recovery sound on ice cold plunge and I do it every single day.

I'm essentially in a state of like no inflammation. And that's how I feel. So I'm better able to articulate my words. I'm better able to go out and meet new people and all these social anxieties that I had just kind of went away. and it was my wife actually reflecting and pointing out that, oh, you don't snore anymore, honey, or you notice you went and talked in front of all those people and you didn't even think about it or worry about it

or say anything about it. I didn't notice because those symptoms just weren't there anymore. What are your protocols? Can you lay that aside? You've talked about red light. You've talked about cold plunge and sunlight, but lay that out there for me. Yeah, so my protocol is just so,

I have a morning routine. I've learned a lot about how morning routines can be really effective. I've got back to, you know, getting up at 5 a.m. like I did as a Marine every day and getting, you know, a lot of work done before most people are even awake. So those are a lot of the protocols. Sticking is returning to the way of discipline and fighting against my natural automatic response, which is to be a lazy, loser essentially. Everybody, sure. Think about this, talk about how I'm upset

about, you know, what's going on with my brothers. I just decided one day, like, I'm done, I'm taking action. If they don't believe me, I'll physically show them. So it'll be undeniable. And that's kind of been my focus. So I've tried to train,

you know, at least four times a week. I've been working with a fitness coach from first form for about three years doing all of their fitness competitions i think i'm right there i could win it now my physique i think i could do it and i just wanted like you were saying in one of the previous episodes i want to show my kids we don't give up that's not a thing that we say we actually make the action take the action to not do it amen that's just to get after it every day so that would be if i had to say what my protocols are

it's it's the the way of discipline it's the constant transformation uh metanoia so to speak But how often do you do, like, the sauna, the cold plunge, all these things? The grounding. Like, I'm so intrigued by that. So the grounding, I have a grounding mat that I sleep on. So the first thing with the grounding was I stopped snoring. I had sleep apnea. Yeah.

I would wake up and have these nightmares of sometimes stuff that happened on deployment. Sometimes not. I would just wake up like, wah! And I'd scare the shit out of my wife. my kids, you know, we always have a kid sleeping in the bed, you know. And there was a point where my wife was like, you need to sleep in the living room. And, you know, so like I did that, but, you know, we were separated. We started to come distant from each other.

We weren't hanging out as much. And then when I got the sleep stuff under control, I mean, I sleep in the same bed since the snoring went away. And it's, my wife's been on this transformation with me. All of these things have also improved for her. Some of our neighbors and friends that we let use it regularly at our house. What's a grounding mat? Can you tell me about a grounding, like, tell me about grounding. Like, really, tell me about grounding.

Because, like, I don't really know. We have grounding and earthing. So, you know, to be ground with, like, a level. electrical is, you know, it's basically it grounds out anything. Make sure that doesn't get too hot. Your house doesn't get too hot. Basically, grounding does the same thing to your body, but when you step onto the earth, it's the uninterrupted connection between you and the earth's energy.

So you have oxidative stress from the environment, food, all of that stuff. Right. Free radical steel from your cells, other electrons. and now you have a depleted cell that's also now looking for another electron, but they're borrowing from each other. They're robbing from Peter to pay Paul. The second that you step onto the earth,

you discharge the electromagnetic activity in your body, and you start to absorb these free-flowing electrons from deep in the earth, and they can now borrow freely from... Excuse me. a little thought crisis here, an antioxidant. Right. And it can borrow freely from these electrons,

and it's not doing that damage to your body anymore. It's restoring it. Awesome. And the kind of coolest thing that got me to want to implement this into the sauna was they did a study on blood viscosity, and they had some users grounded and some that weren't, And they took their blood at the beginning, looked at it under a microscope, and then two hours later, they did the same thing. Well, everybody that was grounded, their blood viscosity was reduced by 270%.

So you have like the average person blood looks like ketchup. They ground. It starts to thin out. It's like fine wine. So imagine trying to push ketchup through your piping in your house. It's going to be a little bit harder and require more effort and more. pressure than it would if you put fine wine in the same pipes. Sure. How do you do grounding with a sauna?

Like, how do you take grounding that you would get outside and put it into a sauna? This is awesome. So we have a, I came up with the design that is hooked up to a copper ground rod that is actually driven eight feet into the ground inside of your sauna. I don't want to give away the system because we're working on getting it patented right now. Sure, sure, sure. Connected to the system that sits flush with the acupressure rock stones. And so the idea is that you get into the sauna, your blood starts to immediately thin.

And now the sauna and all the rest of the modalities can work that much better because it's working with fine wine as opposed to catch up blood. That's amazing. And so you also have the red light therapy within this sauna? Or is it just red light therapy? The sauna? Nope. the red light therapy panels are included in every one of our sonnas. It's on a separate timer switch, so you can use it the way that you want. And then that would depend on if somebody's in bad health

or in good health. You're trying to use it for optimization or you're trying to use it to recover from a bad injury or bad lifestyle, which is, you know, again, I hope that, like, you guys could help answer a lot of those questions for people in the future of the exact protocols for for them and their use with the recovery son. So your son is on steroids. Is it a son on steroids is what it is. It's like the MAC daddy sauna. Yeah.

It's on 22, man. Dang. You hear me say that? Yeah. It's the American sauna. Yeah. Even better. All right.

Yeah. F-350. The team USA. That's right. That's right. Man. This is amazing. If I've known this,

I wouldn't have been like bitching about doing a show today. Like, I was busy. But like, this is amazing. I'm so glad we had this. And this like a regular steam sauna. It's not like an infrared sauna. This, we have infrared in panels inside of the sauna, but you also have your traditional dry slash steam heater in there as well.

Yeah. So. I like having the combination like that. This is incredible. Yeah, I know. When I went through the design. I started with like the negative reviews for your commercial, you know, cheap sauna that you can get off of Amazon. And it was that they weren't heating up quickly and then they weren't staying hot.

So they don't stay hot enough, the red light sonnas. I reverse engine neared that. So infrared, our infrared panels get up to 140 degrees in about one minute. And so the way that I like to use the sauna as I go in and it's cold inside, it's the sauna's not on yet. I go in and I do my infrared, I turn that on, and then I turn the sauna heater on. And I do about 15 minutes by the time the real heater is getting hot. And then I turn the red light off and I start dowsing it with water. And it just climbs up to 200 degrees pretty quickly.

Can you dive to the red light therapy piece? I don't think we've ever done a show on red light therapy, have we? We should. I mean, I've read about that. I read somewhere, or maybe it was probably an Instagram reel, that it helps you grow your hair back, and I immediately went, listen up. No chance.

No chance. That should be sell for you. There's no color light you can shine on my head that's not going to make this thing grow any hair. At this point, it's evergreen. Leave me alone. I don't want the hair. I don't worry about it. You would not look right with hair.

No. That was just... This is stuck in time forever. I would have to fire you because you're all... Character would be... The whole dynamic would change. You would. No, it's funny that you guys ask about the hair

because I was really thinning out right here on this area. And since I've been doing the red light for... Well, I've been doing the red light therapy for about three years before I put it into the sauna. But it's definitely gotten thicker. I've noticed even new growth. Nice. So, like...

Because never grow any hair on my cheek. you know, as a 41-year-old man and everybody's got these great ears nowadays. Look at that. Yeah. Yeah, but even more high level than just the hair. That was just me making a joke on my baldness. But what is kind of like the theory behind the red light? What is the overall, like, actual impact?

I'd love to just understand that, like, top to bottom, like, where does that fit into this? Call it wellness. performance side of things. Yeah, so there's probably even more studies for red light therapy than there is on grounding. And, you know, obviously everybody that I know has a cheap infrared son at their house. And there's, you know, so there's a lot of benefits to it. You guys mentioned hair loss and stuff.

Wound healing, yeah, better skin, reduced inflammation. It's like on and on and on. Yeah. but it does it penetrates deeper so it's a light that penetrates deeper into your skin it gets you know down to the bone and the science says that this light can essentially charge the mitochondria and how it's doing that i mean i would refer to the studies again i would you know i would try to find out find a doctor that's got, you know, the very specific answers. I just know it's been working well for me, the benefits.

And I know less about red light than I do about grounding and the rest of the modalities. But certainly has worked for me, and that's why I put it in there. I mean, all the studies, there are a million studies, and almost all of them are very positive. And so, I'm sold. Since you're actually putting one in, like what, is it a specific light? Like, when I hear red light and people are doing it and warming themselves, it makes me feel like they're sitting in front of like the thing that keeps the French fries warm at the cafeteria. Like, what is that light? What's so special about it?

Is it a different frequency? Mesh, you can. Yes. Yeah, that's it. It is a different frequency. Yeah, so much stuff is frequencies. I don't know. Honestly, I don't know enough to give you an educated answer on the science of it.

But I would love to one day. I will look into that further for you. Well, there's, I mean, actually some of the studies, there's like lots of different frequencies and multiple frequencies have worked, you know, with red light. You know, like, I'm looking at one right now from 570 and 850 nanometer. polychromatic lights you know like

there was like there was like three different levels and then they used a bunch of controls and all of them worked really well compared to the controls when it come to like inflammation

skin rejuvenation collagen increases like I mean and this is a this is a massive study year I'm looking at so like yeah yeah

this is it's like a synthetic son is what I like to tell people. I thought it was bull until for reading the research. I'm like, yeah, I'm really, my niche, I'm always, I don't believe it, you know, at first guy, and then,

man, like, the study's all laughed at me, so I was wrong. Is there a benefit to kind of stack all of these things into, like obviously, I don't think that science likes to isolate a variable and then test that against a control group.

So stacking like all three of these things. But in people that have them, have they noticed like, you know, that and it's likely not just for, you know, a lot of people just think of sauna as like a relaxation technique or like increasing blood flow and VO2 max or things along those lines. But stacking all of these things together, has there been any pieces or kind of. call them case studies where people are I've never seen a study exponentially like putting this stuff or getting healing things at a much faster rate than would be expected

no I haven't found any studies like that going back to what I was saying earlier I hope that a relationship with you guys we can look a little bit further into these things I would absolutely love to help with the study like that because I can't imagine you know the benefits I mean I know

it work if you've got the red light that works we know that but like and we also know that sauna works oh man and he talks about it all the time or any of me they've talked about the multiple benefits you know the cold there's always question though depending on the use people will question the use of cold but um when it comes to sonnas and red light um i don't know enough about the grounding but i can only imagine the three combined i can't imagine like what would happen yeah for me it just kind of makes sense that if we can thin the blood out and change the pH in our body just by stepping onto the earth, it's going to make the sauna. If you only just had the sauna work much more effectively. It's going to allow, you know, when your pores open up, it's going to allow the infrared light to penetrate deeper.

I don't use it when it's the humidity's eye and the sauna because I can fill it literally like inside of my organs. I can fill the heat. So I use it at the beginning when my body's cooled, so I don't fill that, but I'm getting that benefit because I really like the dry and steam heat. Oh, yeah. I mean, I like it all. Another thing I tell people is I built this for recovery

and for optimization, rest and relaxation is a result. Sure. Yeah. That's why you have them up at BigSah. Are you in Montana? Tanna? Yes, I am.

Oh, yeah. See, you're in the right spot, man. All these people freezing to death going, Mark puts in like 20 miles a day on the slopes out there. He's a maniac. Someone's got to get a for the next day. Yeah. Have you had any conversations or like,

I hate to give Mark Farmer any credit for being an athlete, but it sounds like this thing would be phenomenal for, just the recovery of pro athletes, getting them ready on, you know, every 48 hours, they got to go play if it's baseball, hockey, basketball. Like, those are just games of recovery once you get to that level. Yeah, I mean, what I'm really excited about is to see what it can do for somebody who's already got dialed in nutrition, dialed in lifestyle. They're working towards a big goal, winning a championship or something,

than to give them that extra edge. For me, I'll be honest, when, you know, with jujitsu, I'd usually like start to get tired after rolling with three or four people on an open roll day. You know, so I don't know, about 30 minutes into an open roll. I'm starting to gas out halfway, stop and take a good breath, grab some water. When I implemented the recovery sauna, I took no break for the full two hours and felt I could keep going. keep going. And I was actually...

I love to choke you out. Oh, yeah. No, I've seen some of this stuff, and I definitely would be picking a fight with him. I want to be your friend. I don't know. No way. Yeah, I'm this of forever white belts. And that's been a series of, you know, gyms closing and stuff like that happening.

And the gym that I've been a part of just recently closed. And we just came back from a jiu-jitsu competition. in Salt Lake over the summer and our kids won first place and put us on the map and then it's closed I'm like a Ronan samurai with no master running around looking so I'm just

putting all my focus here right now. I think you're on something super cool. Yeah. Where can people actually find the saunas? Do you ship across the country? Like what is the process of getting one of these? Yeah. So I have a website

at blackroot recovery.com. So they find more information on there. Look at a few blackroot recovery.com. I'm going right now. Yeah, me too. And then on Instagram, we still have a pretty small following, but it's at Blackroot Recovery. And then on X at Black Root Sanas.

Yeah, nice. Yo, moving on past the kind of the practical side related to health. But like, as far as the kind of the look and feel of these, These are beautiful premium saunas. Like they're not just a wood box like you're making these things a work of art at the same time. Absolutely. Yeah, I'm putting everything into it. In my construction company, we use copper a lot to protect beams and flashing, you know, on roofs and chimneys.

And it also just looks beautiful. Oh, it does. With black in contrast to black. So my original design is the one that. is up on Mark Farmer's property and it's built with logs a lot like Anders. I went out one day and was like I'm going to cut down trees

and cut my own lumber got myself a an ad. I do it by hand with an axe as part of my workout. Man stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And I love the log cabin look. I work on primarily work on log cabin mountain homes. Oh, so. I just have

taken that down to a small level and the reason why they're premium prices because we use premium materials and when I was trying to build this and I was trying to think about getting them out to the general population I would just have to compromise on the materials and I just wasn't willing to do that because this isn't about rest and relaxation sonas I'm trying to create a purposeful recovery and I just didn't want to sacrifice any health benefits because of the materials. Now, do you do them for, you know, like I'm at a sports science at a big, it's a big sport science. It's a big facility.

It's called Risen Door Sports is 130,000 square feet. And we're looking to start a recovery room. So do you do, is it just homes you do or do you do like, you know, facilities like ours or a sport, you know, like a protein? Like we will do. We will do it all. They're custom saunas. We can fit them into your home if you have an extra closet that's available. Or we could make an entire warehouse into a grounded, you know,

it would take a lot of heaters to get that thing hot. But yeah, we can go as big as somebody would want to go. Sweet. All right. And I think as far as the veterans, that's going to be one of my main priorities is trying to get them into gyms and stuff so people have access to them. who maybe not necessarily could afford the unit further. I would love to get my boy, you know,

I don't want to say his name, but my friend here, you know, I would love to, he needs a lot of help. So, um, it's a start. Yeah. What? I just noticed you got rebuilding Milo in the back. Oh, yeah.

Andrew, this is fantastic, man. Blackroot recovery? Blackroot recovery. There it is. Blackroot recovery. com at Blackroot recovery. dot com at blackroot recovery on instagram fantastic man i'm uh i'm fired up to get out to big sky and enjoy the grounding sweating breathing all the things travis man let people find you uh mass lead

dot com we got something really cool about to drop it's called mash reignites for adults just to get adults in the best shape ever so so probably by thanksgiving black friday sale long yeah i'm trying so god man get wanted Get that landing page up. Let's go. I'm trying. You got a whole bunch of 50-something out there, just overeating already,

just thinking about Thanksgiving, dying to get on your vertical leap program. Yeah, I'm trying to get it out. It's going to be something cool. Jumping, running, sprints, get up at 5 a.m. My morning routine is a big part of it. Get up.

I'm totally with you. So I'll give you a text. Well, when I get up at 5 a. am like it's still three ham but you're house. Never mind. That's all right. If you want to text me at three. All right.

I'll respond. He's rolling. Doug Larson. You bet. I feel like I should listen to Travis. He used to dunk a basketball. How tall are you? Five, six.

Five, six. Dude, if you're five, six and over 200 pounds and you're dunk in a basketball, you know what's up for explosive power, let alone to all the other impressive list that that's out. My wife tells me that that's what she fell in love with, my jumping. I don't think that's it, but I thought you were going to say explosive power, but that's fine too.

It's explosive power, but yeah. You can find you can find it on Instagram. I'm Douglas E. Larson there. We also, you know doubt if you listen to the show on the last couple episodes prior to this one, you've heard us talk about optimum muscle. It's our muscle health and performance program. Very cool. We take MRI data and we can give you very precise metrics on.

each individual muscle in your body telling you if your left peck is 4% bigger than your right peck, et cetera, and kind of the coolest bonus of all time. We talked about this with Dr. Chris Pear a few weeks back. We also can give you your muscle mass percentage, which is very hard to come by. You probably get your body fat percentage done a million places, but muscle mass percentage is basically unheard of up to this point. It's a brand new thing, and that is also a part of this program. So only can we tell you your muscle mass percentage.

We can tell you what your actual skeletal muscle to subcutaneous fat ratio is as well. So if you're 42% body fat and your 14% muscle mass and your muscle to fat ratio is three. And of course, as you've heard me probably saying on the show before, I think over time, we will get more normative values for all these things. And we will start to view being undermuscled as equally unhealthy compared to being over fat, obese, etc. So you can check that out over at optimum muscle.com. There it is. I'm Anders Varner.

At Anders Varner. We are barbell shrugged at barbell underscore shrug. And also you can get over to rapid health reports. to watch Dan Garner and Dr. Andy Galpin do a free lab, lifestyle, and performance analysis over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.