Dhru Purohit Show - 6 Ways Your Diet is Making You Look Older + The Power of Sauna and Cold Therapy to Keep Your Body Young

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

This episode is brought to you by Ollie and Lumebox. We all know inflammation can influence our risk of developing diseases, but did you know it also plays a role in premature aging? Today’s guest reveals powerful strategies to reduce inflammation, helping us age gracefully while keeping longevity at the forefront. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Dr. Susanna Søberg to explore six key factors linked to premature aging. Dr. Søberg explains how inflammation affects the aging process and shares practical lifestyle practices to combat "inflammaging." She dives into the benefits of hot and cold therapies, emphasizing the importance of building tolerance to sauna heat therapy, especially as we age. Additionally, she debunks popular social media myths about cold therapy and offers actionable tips for incorporating it into your routine. Dr. Susanna Søberg is one of the world’s leading researchers and experts in cold and heat therapy and functional breathing. She is also the founder of the Soeberg Institute, an online research-backed curriculum designed to help anyone optimize their stress management and performance for a healthier and happier life. Dr. Søberg obtained her PhD in metabolism at the University of Copenhagen, and her research has contributed to a deeper understanding of brown fat metabolism in adults.  In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Søberg dive into: The role of inflammation when it comes to aging (00:00:20) Sugar increases inflammaging (2:50)  What shocks Dr. Søberg about the standard American diet (5:30)  Trans fat hidden in foods and adequate protein intake (9:20) Alcohol consumption (21:00) The impact of hot, cold and contrast therapy on our health (29:45) Building your tolerance for sauna heat (45:45) Microplastic and toxin exposure (50:45) The importance of community and addressing loneliness (1:04:45) Why and how cold exposure can be beneficial (1:08:25) Myths and truths about when and how you should implement cold therapy (1:12:35) Trusting yourself and moderation (1:33:10) Also mentioned in this episode: Dr. Søberg's Newsletter  Microplastics and Your Health-Huberman Lab Podcast Microplastics and Your Health-Dr. Rhonda Fitzpatrick Podcast For more on Dr. Søberg, follow her on Instagram, Facebook, X/Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, and her Website. This episode is brought to you by Ollie and Lumebox.  Want to give your dog the best in clean eating? Take the online quiz and introduce Ollie to your pet. Right now, Ollie is offering 60% off your first box of meals when you subscribe today! Just head to Ollie.com, use the code DHRU and you’ll get 60% off your first box of meals in your subscription. Lumebox is offering my community $260 off their FDA-registered portable Red Light device!  That's over 40% off! Go to thelumebox.com/dhru and get your Red Light device. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So many people feel that they're premature aging, this idea of them looking older than they feel like they should, is all related to bad genetics. But one of my favorite newsletters that you wrote was you talked about six things in particular that have strong evidence around them that are actually connected to premature aging and getting older. Essentially, you found that your diet done the wrong way could make you look older than you need to look. Well, let's talk about one of the first things that you've talked about in your newsletter that can accelerate aging, which sometimes people and researchers call inflammation, right? So it's inflammation. It's aging you in that process. And this is the idea that is a big

issue more in our country, United States, probably than your country, Denmark, and it's the role of a high sugar intake in the diet. What is the role with sugar when it comes to accelerating aging and making us look older than we really should be looking? What happens is that you have this inflammatory response and there are certain foods that would increase inflammatory response and that would be high sugar diets as you mentioned. So what happens is that it's, it's kind of like sugary foods or sugary drinks will activate or lead to a process that is called glycation. So this process is when sugar molecules bounce to our collagen and elastatin. So that means that if we take too much sugar in, it would decrease this process of having a lot of collagen in our skin

and also how elastic it is. So we can see actually from studies where they have looked, it's a new study that is published in the German network. a scientific journal. They looked into different kinds of diets. So they looked into the processed diet or a diet where they eat a lot of processed food and also a diet which was more raw food like Mediterranean diet. And they compared the epigenetics in these diets and looked at more than 300 people and compared these and looked at the epigenetics changes. And what they could see was actually that those who had a healthier diet, which was more raw food and not... More minimally processed.

Yes, exactly. They could see that they had more collagen in the skin and they also had less changes in their epigenetics. So it means that they had more elastic skin, more collagen in the skin. And they also looked younger. So the thing is that when you do this on a regular basis, you eat healthier food, which is not processed, then you have less inflammation, and then you will also have more collagen in the skin. So what happens? This is also a lot to do with protein, and we will get to that one. But if you

eat these kinds of high fat, a diet, high sugary diet, you will increase this process, which I just mentioned called glycation. And glycation is not something that we want because we age too fast in that way. You're in America right now with your husband. You guys are taking a little break, doing some podcasts, some things like that. You've both been here many times before. What are the most shocking things when you come here and you're in the airport or you're visiting different parts of America or going to different restaurants? What are some of the most shocking things to somebody from Denmark or European when it comes

to the level of process and added sugar? We're not talking about fruits, right? We're talking about added sugar. What are some of the things that have just blown your mind that Americans have on a regular basis that are part of their diets? It is shocking. When we come from Denmark, we eat a lot of raw food. We don't eat on a daily basis a lot of processed food, just in general.

I would say that Denmark is a country where we make our own food at home. Yeah, you eat a lot of whole food diet. Yes, exactly. But when we are here, I am surprised, I would say, and sometimes shocked, that what you get is a lot of, like, fatty foods. There's a lot of processed food here. And it's definitely more than we see in Europe. You feel full, very fast, and everything is more sweet and it's more fatty, I would say.

So the processed food here is definitely more obvious. You can get it around every corner. And it's on all the menu cards, which is a bit surprising to us. We have seen it now many times, so we kind of like know where to go, not to get all that food. But, I mean, it's just so normal here. And normalizing processed food is exactly what is the problem. So we have an increase in obesity on the world scale. So the pandemic is definitely increasing.

But helping ourselves understanding what is causing all this inflammation, we have to look at our environmental factors. And one of the things is what we put in our mouth. So we have to be more mindful about what exactly is it that we buy when we go out. But there's also like that's more like a bigger problem. I think that here it is allowed to put other things. in the food that we are not allowed to do in Europe. And it's definitely something that I see is a problem here.

So we have a lot of food here, which is processed, and we find it everywhere, and people eat it everywhere and all the time, even in the morning, which I think is like very surprising, shocking even. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. Yeah. And the problem, one of the problems with processed food, of course, is that people who eat an ultra-processed diet consume on average about 500 to 1,000 calories more a day. So so much of our obesity epidemic can be connected directly to that.

Yeah. You're just eating more calories. And so it's harder to lose weight over time. But also the other big problem with process and ultra-process foods, which we're really talking about ultra-process foods, is that you can hide all sorts of things in it that you would never use in your kitchen at home. And one of them, which is number two on your list, is this idea of trans fats. and how trans fats in particular can be something that can accelerate aging in people.

And if you eat a lot of processed foods, you'll get a lot of exposure to it. And in the United States, I'm not sure if you've heard about this, but there was some laws that were passed a while ago saying, okay, manufacturers, we're going to be banning trans fats. But the problem is, is it ban them up to a certain degree. They can have small amounts of trans fats still. in the food, the ultra-processed food, without even writing it on the label. Really? I didn't know that.

So regularly, so there's a, I'm not sure if you're familiar with this test, but there's, do you know the omega index test? So like it gives you breakdown of your fatty acids, 369, but they also, I used a company before, no affiliation, omega-quant, they give you a breakdown of your level of trans fats in your blood. And even somebody like me who doesn't eat ultra-processed foods, just from eating out and other places and things like that, I still had a tiny amount of trans fats that were shown in my blood.

Where is this coming from? And why are trans fats so damaging? Yes. So it's hidden in the food. It's just added to the foods, as you just mentioned. And that's where I think it's difficult for us to be mindful about what we eat, but just be more concerned about when we go out and eat because that's where we cannot see what's actually coming into our food.

So, yeah, I definitely want to say home cooking is the best thing to do because then you know exactly what you're doing. And trans fats are definitely and processed food is the key to increasing our inflammation and looking older eventually. So the fast food chips, baked goods, it often contains all these trans fats that we have to try to avoid. And these triggers the inflammation in the body and damages the skin structure. So that means that it damages the proteins. And that means that it reduces the ability to retain this in the elastatin and the collagen in our skin. So it has a direct effect, actually, on how our skin is, is moistered and how the collagen is kept in our skin. So in that sense, when you, if you do these behaviors like eating a lot of processed food with a lot of trans fats,

and you also don't move, you have less protein intake, then you would age very fast in your skin and you would see it. That's why how healthy you are actually on the inside will be shown on the outside. It's such an important message because I think more now than ever, we're spending so much money on all these beauty products as a global society, but there's not that much conversation about how our diet makes our skin look healthy. Or in this case also, we're talking about how. it makes our skin look unhealthy.

So I think this is an important conversation, especially for young people to know that it's not about the super expensive moisturizer. Nothing wrong with getting a good quality moisturizer, but that really taking care of your body from the inside out will affect your appearance as well too, in addition to just making you healthier. Yes, exactly.

It's like putting makeup on something that is already broken, right? So you have to, if you want, this is a message to all the young people are, right? It's also the message to all the elderly people. You can still do something about this. But the younger people, you have the key now to do something about your behavior. So you will age slower or at least it will be shown that way. Because you can do something about your behavior, change how fast you age and your skin will look more young. Buying that moisture that is super expensive to decrease the wrinkles is not going to work if you're not building it from the inside.

And it's actually not that difficult. It's being mindful about what you eat, what you do, how you exercise. So the protein intake, for example, is very, very important. The thing is that we can change our epigenetics. So the epigenetics is it's a change in our genes and how well they function. It's not a change in the DNA, but it's a change in the genes, so how well they function. And if we can increase that function, we will look younger. But we can do the opposite also, changing that.

in a bad way if we eat unhealthy and fatty foods and processed food, for example. And trans fats are the key to this. So it increases the inflammation. We're going down a list. We've already covered the first three big ideas as a part of that list. The first component was the role of inflammation as a whole. And then you talked about a high sugar diet. We also talked about the role of ultra-processed food and trans fats.

And now you've mentioned this a couple times. So now we'll go into it. Talk to us about inadequate protein. intake. That was number four on your list. How is inadequate protein intake, not having enough protein in the diet? How does that play a role in making us look older than we should, quote unquote, be looking? Proins are our building blocks in the body. So we need proteins to build muscles. And muscles are important for keeping the inflammation in the body down. I mention that all the time. I want people, your listeners, to remember this, that the inflammation is the root cause of looking older,

or getting older. So if we can decrease the inflammation, that is the key. And protein intake is important in that sense. So if we eat more protein, you will increase also your muscle mass. You have to exercise, of course. But the proteins directly also has an effect on our skin because we need protein to build collagen in our skin. So if we don't have enough protein intake, we cannot build collagen in our skin.

So that is definitely also something that we need. And as a rule of thumb, you can say that we need 0.8 grams per kilo per day. So you can calculate that depending on your weight, of course, and how lean you are. But that is definitely an important thing that people need to look for. So proteins are our building blocks. And without that, we will also have an increase in inflammation because we have nothing to build on. So the proteins for our muscles to increase that mitochondria, mitochondria is also the key that these are the, you can say, the fabrics in our cells, which will increase our metabolism.

And by increasing our metabolism, we will then increase our insulin sensitivity. And with that, we will lower the inflammation. So it always is a process in the body, which is all connected. So from what you eat to how the body is taking that in and building you up healthier is, is so important. So it's all a cascade, you can say, in the body. So eating processed food, not enough proteins, then you have a combination which will increase your inflammation,

and that will show on your skin. There's been this whole emphasis in the last couple years of a lot of incredible people talking about how men, and especially women, need more protein in their diet. You know, for a long time in the U.S., there was a sort of movement for a plant-based diet. And people were talking about that and it was connected to the environment and they thought it was healthier and longevity. And then more recently, there's been people talking about if you want to age well and be strong longer,

you need healthy lean mass. And I think the statistic is above the age of 40 you can lose, I think per year, you can lose like three to four percent of your lean muscle mass if you're not exercising, eating adequate amount of protein, all fact check that I might have gotten the numbers wrong. but basically your lean muscle mass, which we want to protect, goes down and down and down and down. So some of the experts that are out there have even been recommending that a good target for people is a gram of protein per your ideal target lean body weight that is there. Do you have any thoughts on that with that emphasis and the focus on resistance training? Are you on board with that generally?

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So if you're not completely satisfied, you're going to get your money back. That's ollie.com, O-L-L-I-E dot com slash D-H-R-U, Drew. That's me. And enter the code Drew, D-D-R-U to get 60% off your first box. Start your dog's new year off the right way with Ollie. Yes, definitely. I mean, especially if you exercise, you need even more protein. So I definitely think that's a good recommendation.

And we cannot really get too much because it's like, and you can get your proteins from different things. It's not only from meat. There's also beans. I mean, there are so many places where you can also get that from a more plant-based diet if you prefer that. Sure. But then you have to eat a lot of proteins from your vegetables. vegetables. It's definitely another place to go, I would say. So not that we have to go into that discussion because I think that people should do what they do. And it's definitely a thing,

whether you want to be a vegetarian or you want to eat meat. But it's a personal choice. It's a personal choice, I think. But we need the proteins and I think we can go with that one gram. Yeah. Let me ask you a question. You've talked about collagen a few times. Well, actually, people don't know. What are the best sources? And for you personally, do you use a collagen supplement, which seems to be popular these days. What are your thoughts on that? I think that people can. I do sometimes. I wouldn't say that I am very, that I'm very strict with it. So I do that sometimes. It's just a powder that you can just put in your drink and then drink that. But to be honest, it's about having a healthy diet. You can increase the collagen naturally.

And that's easier, I would say, because it also helps on other things. But you can take a little supplement. think that will harm anything, but taking it as a substitute. And I think that's where the misconception often comes in, that people are like, oh, I can just take this and then I don't have to do all the other things. But it's, it's a misconception because that's not going to help you. It's not going to help you enough, at least, I would say. Diet first. Yeah, and exercise. Well, going back to diet, there's another habit that many people have. There's more awareness now than ever, but still, there's a lot of people that are consuming alcohol on a regular basis. How does that impact how we look?

The thing about alcohol is a toxin, right? When you intake alcohol in the body, the body will act actually in a little bit of a fight-and-flight mode, which is, it could be in other situations. It could be a good thing. But when it's alcohol, it's a toxin that's going to harm your liver and it's going to damage actually your skin. And because we are talking about the skin, so I wanted to say that it actually directly damages your DNA. And when you damage your DNA, it leads to what people also know as oxidative stress. And exactly that. And you do that on a what's called chronic alcohol

intake. So you do that on a regular basis and you intake maybe also more than just one drink. I'm not talking about one drink. I'm talking about like a chronic intake, which is also a certain amount that's going to damage your DNA and increase that oxidative stress and increase inflammation. And it seems like studies show that it increases also the speed of it. So this kind of like toxic behavior, but intake in the body will increase that inflammation and it will definitely quickly show on your skin because you cannot, with damage DNA and the toxin of the alcohol, you will have that damage and oxidative stress to your skin.

you would wrinkle very fast. And you see that by people who are chronic alcoholics. They often also have more wrinkles. You can tell on the skin. And I've seen that also in the hospital when we have worked with the patients who are chronic alcoholics. When you add all these things up, you can see how certain populations of people,

if they're starting their morning off with a big Starbucks latte with like some of these drinks, it's crazy when you look up the nutritional effects, they can have 50 grams of sugar, 40 grams of sugar, liquid sugar in particular, which is not just damaging for your skin, but damaging for your metabolism, as you've also written. And then they're eating pastries on a regular basis. We're not talking about having the perfect diet, but if your diet is based around these bad principles, bad habits at an abusive level, you can see how very quickly you have an

entire population that just looks a lot older than they should be, which looks is one thing. thing, but looks as a reflection of the internal health. Yes. Right? So we're not just talking about I'm as vain as anybody else. Sure, I want to look good. Everybody who's listening wants to look good too. But really, it's a reflection that you're healthy on the inside.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think it's horrible to see that people actually have these huge latte and with a lot of syrup in it. And then people who don't think about when you do this every day and you take this first thing in the morning, you are proning. your body for a high spike in sugar in the body. And when we look at the metabolism, so this is, this is about the inflammation again, right? So you start off the day with a high sugar intake and you

get that early spike in sugar. That's going to have a huge impact on the rest of your day, both energy-wise, but also the demand on the sugar intake later on. You have the crash and the crash and the crash in sugar will then tell your body, oh, I want more sugar. And that's where you have that crash later in the day and you want, oh, I need a new latte and with a lot of sugar again. And that's where you get into this bad habit, bad cycle. The body is just calling for this. It's addictive, actually. So this sugar that you are telling your body, you're giving you this every morning to your

brain and your body is sort of like an addiction that you are feeding into. And we don't want that because the body needs slow carbs and not the refined carbs that's going to be taking up in the cells very fine. fast. To avoid that spike and sugar, maybe just a normal coffee without all the sugar, it seems so simple, but it's like if you can get your body to almost detox or get less addicted to all this sugar in the morning, you will also be more stable, energize wise throughout the day and actually building a healthier habit. So you can start small, but just not take the latte with all the syrup or whatever in it, but just take a regular coffee.

I actually, when I was younger, I love to have a sugar in my coffee. And I remember that as being, I could not drink my coffee without that. But as soon as I, I think I was like 20, 21 or something, and I started to just avoid the sugar, now I cannot drink a coffee with sugar in it. It's just like, it just feels so wrong and it's just too sweet. So it's also about learning, teaching your body, what's actually healthy for you and when it's enough. Because the more sugar you give your body, the more it also wants going forward. So it's an addiction.

Totally. And it kind of goes back to your point of like primarily when you're making things at home. If you're going to make a pastry at home, which I know is not common. Not a lot of people make pastries at home, you know, probably in a country like yours, you're getting high quality pastries with like good, you know, wheat or. or rye or whatever they're using to make. But generally speaking, if you're going to make something that's more of an indulgent food, if you're going to make it at home, it's going to be way healthier at home than you eating out on a regular basis.

So my guess is probably the same thing with like a coffee. Like sometimes I like to put a little bit of honey in my coffee. But it's completely different if you're adding some honey at home, which I don't know, a tablespoon of honey or a teaspoon of honey, how much grams of sugar that would be inside of that? No, but it's also different. Honey is different from refined sugar. Yeah.

So in the sense that you might be getting some additional nutrients and things like that. Yes. Yes. But even if it's refined sugar, I think if you're adding in a cube of sugar at home, it's completely different than you go into Starbucks and getting a ready-made syrup, which is going to have maybe 10 times as much sugar inside of it, right? So you adding it in at home is completely different than getting it outside of the house where who knows what other additives, chemicals, dyes, other thing are included inside of it, that also probably encourage the inflammation aging process.

Yes, exactly. And I love the way you said that because it's the thing about when you go and buy that coffee and you get that syrup in it, which I think is like it's, as you said, 10 times more sweet. And you don't know how much it is. It's like one pump or two or how much sugar is that exactly. And it's so sweet it doesn't even taste like coffee anymore. Yeah.

So, I mean, a little bit of honey is actually pretty good, I would say. there's antioxidants in honey. So honey can be good. And I also prefer a little bit of honey in my tea, actually. So yeah, nothing wrong with that as long as you don't pull the whole jar in it. But honey is good, actually. I want to pivot a little bit to the area that's like your deepest expertise and see if there's any connection. Is there any aspect of contrast therapy, you know, hot and cold or cold therapy or sauna?

Is there any process of that that you've seen? seen or any research that you've come across. And if not research, anecdotal feedback, have you seen that these therapies and modalities can impact how our skin ages? Any thoughts on that? Have you come across anything that, hey, cold can help with the look of our skin or hot can help with the look of our skin or contrast therapy? Anything that you've come across?

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over 40% off. Just go to the loombox.com slash drew to get your device. That's the L-U-M-E-B-O-X.com, the loombox.com slash D-H-R-U to start stimulating your mitochondria today. There's not a lot of research, I think, on the skin health using cold and heat therapy. But there's actually a few years ago, I read some articles about, this is about hometic stress, too. And hemetic stress, we know a lot about that. But this research was done in O'Hus, in Denmark, actually, by a reason. researcher, a research group up in O'Hus University. And they have looked at how, let's see if I can remember this.

So what they did is they took skin cells and they put it in as small as like a petri dish and then they added heat to it to see what would happen. So this is about how the skin will age faster or slower when you heat, heated up to like 40 degrees Celsius. You have to like recalculate that to a Fahrenheit. Yeah. But what they looked at is how chronic exposure to the heat would age or slow down the aging process.

And what you could see is the skin cells that were not heated, they aged faster than those who were actually heated. So they could see that the hormetic stress, the small portion of the heat would slow down the aging process because it increases heat shock proteins. And that's because of hormetic stress. So that is the healthy stress. Small portions of that heat would actually increase heat shock proteins. The thing about heat shock proteins is that they repair the cells from the inside. And when we increase the heat shock proteins, we repair the enzymes in the cells, so they live longer. And that means that the skin cells in this patriotic,

dish were more, had more moist, and they also had better elastin and collagen. So a small heat, a small portion of heat could actually make your cells, your skin cells age slower. Yeah, we can actually do a human study where they use a sauna or something and then we can look at exactly the same. It might have been done. I just don't really remember if I've looked at that. But I do remember the basic science.

that I have read about that. That makes sense. And it also seems that anything that helps your body sweat, working out sauna, would be good for your skin. Yes. Yes. It would clear your pores, right?

This is just my observation. But when I look at people who I know from Denmark who use a lot of sauna, they have more like very tight skin and they just look healthier. They have more beautiful skin. It's more glowing. And I think it's because of the sweating, the rinsing of the pores and also the increase in heat shock proteins when they're exposed to to the heat. So that's why I love also going into the stona. I want to pour water on the stones

because then you also have the steam. Yes. That seems like super beneficial. Yes. Steam the skin a little bit. We already know the benefits of that from putting, you know, you know the hot towels on your skin and the dermatologists do that all the time. All the time. And it's kind of like the same process that you are doing when you sit in the sauna and there's like steam in the room. So you are steaming your skin and that is also moisturizing your skin, increasing the rate of sweating. So the more moist you have in the air.

So that's going to increase also your sweating rate, not that it's going to be easier for you to sweat, but it's definitely going to help your heart rate go up and the body wants to sweat at least. And that is helping also to moist your skin. When you make a list of the top healthy habits, let's take diet out of the equation for a second. Let's look at things like, you know, and let's take diet and let's take getting great quality sleep, right? Because those are obviously, you know, super important things. But when you look at like exercise and all the different habits that might be out there that are available to people, Where do you rank regular sauna use in terms of its impact in improving people's health?

How do you put that and help people prioritize how much attention they should give regular sauna use? I think it's still underrated, I would say. I think it's something that's important in that sense that we need it nowadays. With our lifestyle today, the 21st century stress that we have, I think we need it more than ever. So I think it's something that everybody can do and it doesn't have to be very long actually. So if we rate that, I would say, of course, quality sleep, you absolutely cannot negotiate with your sleep. You need those seven to nine hours per day and you also need a good diet. You need to look at your diet because that's how you build your body from the inside.

But you can also do something from the outside, which is with cold and heat. And mentioning heat, I think that exactly exposing yourself to that hometic stress, which you would do with the sauna or any heat for that matter, it could also be a hot top. It's just the heat exposure to the body, which will increase the heat shock proteins, the hometic stress will start, and that's going to decrease the inflammation in the body. So if you can add that together with your workout, so workout will come also before, I would say because that's going to increase your cardiovascular health more than a sauna, if we have to rate it.

But doing sauna on a regular basis, together with a workout, that seems to have an additive effect exactly on the risk of the chances of keeping yourself healthy in your metabolic health. So it seemed from these studies from Finland that if you do sauna and you also add the exercise and you do that together, you will have a 69% lower risk of cardiovascular diseases compared to if you actually only did the sauna alone. So by adding the workout, so doing exercise, but adding in a few saunas per week, that's going to definitely help on lowering your chances or risk of getting cardiovascular diseases. And it seems so small, it's just a little bit of adding that healthy stress to your body.

So I think compared to nowadays, modern days where we don't have that much time, we prioritize differently. And people are always asking me, well, how do you make room for all that? Well, then take what you can, a 10 minutes sauna, a 15 minutes sauna, doing it just once a week will help. And if you can do more, that's just super good. But one is also good enough. So anything helps.

but the sauna is definitely a super good add-on to your workout. You know, as I go deeper into learning about the benefits of sauna by reading people like yourself and seeing all your great videos, I'm just constantly blown away by how many things the sauna supports our health with. Yes. Right? Detoxification. It's cardiovascular health.

Like so many different things. And I will tell my friends that I'll send them episodes or I'll send them one of your reels. And I'm at the stage of my life. for a lot of my friends, we are focused on helping our parents live a healthier life. Oh, yes. This past year, my mom turned 70, my dad turns 75. And for my mom in particular, you know, she's starting to get into the basics of resistance training.

I was sharing this with you earlier. And it's a slow and steady process, which is fine. But at least we try to get her walking every day. And after seeing so much of the research that's out there, I'm like, okay, the days that you can't maybe get as much exercise in the week. I'm very lucky, you know, she lives with my sister and brother-in-law, and they have a sauna, a traditional sauna in their garage. Oh, fantastic. And I say, just go do the sauna for, you know, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, because it's basically the closest thing. If you're not going to work out, which we obviously want everybody to work out,

we want you at least to be getting your steps. But from me, from the outside, it seems to be the closest thing to getting some of the benefits of exercising that isn't exercise. Is that an accurate way to think about things? Yes. You can look at it in that sense because it could be for people who are older, who are not really don't want to maybe do a run or maybe don't have, I mean, maybe are not physically capable of doing a run. then a sauna is something that's going to help on your cardiovascular system as well.

So what we can see is that if you do a sauna 15 minutes per day or just once a week, it's going to help you exercise actually up to Zone 2 at Zone 2 workout. So we can see where people cannot really do the workout, then a sauna is something that mimics at least as Zone 2 exercise on your cardiovascular health. So it's so close to. So if you can even do both, do a walk, you can tell your mom, keep doing your walks, go to the sauna and sit there for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, or just 10 minutes actually, because you need to get adapted to it just very slowly. and the older you are, the more difficult it is actually to adapt to cold and heat because your basic constriction, your basalt dilation needs to get adapted as well.

And as we age, that becomes a little bit slower in process because the baser constriction and vasodilation in elderly people is a little bit slower than it is younger people. They don't have the same elasticity. Not the same elasticity because the endothelial. cells on the inside of our veins are not as good as contracting and dilating. And we don't have that many of them when we get older. So we need to increase that slowly. And in order for them not to get dizzy or pass out even, we need to make sure that they adapt very slowly. So the older you are, take it very, very slowly with the sauna. But as they do that, they will get the cardiovascular

health, to get all the workout for the cardiovascular system, which they might not get just by going for a walk. So it's really, really good for them. If they don't suffer from any heart diseases or have unregulated high blood pressure or low blood pressure, then this is something that would definitely recommend your mother and your father to do. Yeah, and I've been telling my friends, and they're like, this is great because so many of them are like, I would love to see my parent regularly resistance training.

It's tough for them, especially if they're in the same sort of environment. We've interviewed an expert on habit change on this podcast previously. I've met him a couple of times. Really sweet guys. His name is BJ Fogg. He's at Stanford. And he's written about this whole methodology of tiny habits. And one of the things that he talks about is that the best way to get somebody to change

their habits is actually taking them out of their existing environment. Oh, yeah. And being in a new environment, which is often not. not realistic for everybody. But I'm very lucky that right before the pandemic, my parents moved down to San Diego. They're down with my family over there. And just them being in a new environment, they were open to new habits that they previously were not open to. But that's not realistic for a lot of people. So some of these tougher things like Zone 2 training or resistance training, you know, I've had friends who have been honest and said, it's not working out.

My parents are not doing it. Even if I've gotten a trainer or other stuff, it's difficult, which obviously it is difficult, especially if you don't have community support. But at least this idea that they can go to maybe the YMCA or they can go to maybe a friend's house who has a sauna and do a sauna maybe once or twice a week, there's going to be some amazing benefits. And not just to mention about, you know, skin and detoxification. Like if I understand correctly, and maybe you can share with the audience, like the improvement in all-cause mortality is just incredible. Can you share some of that data? And I think this is super important because.

is you will not get too old to take a sauna. This is just something you can do at almost all ages, I would say, down to 18 or something, or 14 even. But this is something that is helping people actually age slower. So we can see from data, and this is from studies that are published from Finland, where they followed more than 2,000 sauna bathers. And these sauna bathers do saunas. once a week, twice a week, three times a week, or up to every day actually.

So one to seven times per week. And what they can see from sequencing and they can see by following them for more than 25 years, they could see that those who did sauna more than one time per week, so two to three times per week, they had a 40% lower risk of dying early, you can say, compared to those who only did once a week. So it's not compared to just a random control group, which you would definitely think about who are they measuring this up against. It's an unhealthy group.

But it's actually not. It's the same phenotype, we would say, in science. So the same phenotype means they actually do the same to just do less. So one time per week is also good for you. But if you could do two to three times, you will have that 40% lower risk of cardiovascular diseases and lower risk of dying early. And if you can go up to doing this almost every day,

so four to seven times per week, we almost saw a 50% lower risk of dying early. That's crazy. That's crazy, right? This is just a sauna and it's not long. Better than any medication that's out there. Yeah, if you could put it in a pill, everybody would take that pill.

Yeah. Yeah, right? Yeah. I would take it. But then I would prefer to enjoy the sauna. I like it now. Yeah, but that's the thing. So many people actually say, I think this is a barrier for many people,

like, oh, but I don't like the heat. I feel terrible sitting in the heat and I feel miserable. And so it's definitely a barrier for many people. It's actually not always the cold. We often talk about that. But getting too hot and have that feeling of almost like a suffocation when you sit there in the heat and you have to like breathe through and just sit there, It's difficult for people who are not adapted.

So this is the key. So if you are new to this and you're thinking, I would like to have that lower risk of dying too early, then just remember that it's not going to be super enjoyable in the beginning. It's a phase. You need to adapt very slowly. And this is because of the increase in endorphins in the brain. So we can go now a little bit into the brain because this is just to make people mindful

about how to get a lot of the brain. started with this. So the increase in endorphins happens to all people who goes into the sauna. But there could be a difference whether you are new to this or adapted. So new people will feel this miserable feeling. And then's because of dynorphin. And dynophon is when we feel this awful feeling. Oh, almost the opposite of of endorphins. So indofines is our happiness hormone, but that's the opposite. The duneorphine makes us feel miserable. Yeah. So that's why new people in the sauna, they feel like, oh my God, I cannot stand this anymore. I feel miserable. Never do it again. But just know that every time, for every time you go, you actually get your endorphin receptors in the brain more sensitive to taking that endophin in. And that's where you build that sensitivity up. And then you feel better and better. The more you do sauna, the more you like to do sauna. Yes, exactly. You almost get a little bit addicted to it.

I feel a rush. Like I get so excited to do sauna. I actually feel the same way with cold too, right? It's a little bit more challenging sometimes. I understand with people with cold and we can talk about cold in a little bit. But you get addicted to that feeling. You do get addicted. But that's because of that slow increase in sensitivity to the endorphins in the sauna.

In the cold, it's a bit different. That's something else. Another pathway. But in the sauna, I feel that there are many people telling me, oh, I cannot stand the heat. And I think it's a, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, I think it's just an important message to say that everybody can get adapted to it. You just need to be a little bit patient and you don't have to overdo it, especially in the beginning.

Just take it slowly and build those sensitivity to endorphins up. And eventually you'll be able to sit there 15 minutes, 20 minutes at 80 degrees Celsius, even with a little bit of water on the stones and you'll feel that steam and you will increase your sweating rate because that's the purpose of it, right? the more you sweat in the sauna, the better you are at sweating in the sauna very early on when you sit there, the better you also are at getting that cardiovascular exercise for your heart. And that's the key to getting back to the Finnish sauna study. That's where you get that heart health because you increase that heat shock proteins in the cells.

You increase also something a little bit nerdy word, but it's nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is fantastic molecule. And we can increase that in many ways, but it definitely also happens in the sauna. So you want to be able to sit there just a little bit longer than just a 10 minutes. You can get up to 15 minutes, but you don't have to like sit there for a very long time. I mean, more than 30 minutes is not necessary at all. Yeah. So you're saying regular sonar use is also a great way to increase nitric oxide production in the body.

Yes. Yeah. That's fantastic. We've had on this podcast, he actually lives in Los Angeles, Dr. Lu Ignaro, are you familiar with his work at all? Lou Ignaro, he was one of the team that won a Nobel Prize for his work showing that nitric oxide was a vaso dilator. Yes. And ultimately that led to a lot of different findings, including Viagra and other things like that. But he was the one as part of the team that figured this out, that it was this gas that has very short-lived plays a huge role.

in our heart health and ethyllium and other things. And some of my most viral episodes have been people asking about, well, what types of foods can we eat for nitric oxide or other things? And yes, there might be some things, some nitrates and beads and other stuff, things that you can be eating. And also maintaining good metabolic health is important, but also not enough people have talked about the role that sauna can play.

In a similar way, just to like exercise, sauna can help you increase your nitric oxide production is what I'm hearing from you. Yes, exactly. And as you just mentioned, I think those are the studies that I've been reading. So going into the sauna, you would have that increase in nitric oxide and building up that endothelial layer inside your veins is going to make it more elastic. And you do want that because then you can have a better transportation of oxygen in the body. And when you have a better oxygen transportation, you get more oxygen to all your cells, of course, and an increase in red blood cells. And that is exactly what you want. You want to have a better oxygenated body,

and you want that nitric oxide to increase. And the production actually happens when you're exposed to heat. Powerful. You know, this episode could really be titled, you know, six ways that your diet can make you look older and infinite ways that sauna can keep you young. You know, another area that a lot of people are concerned about, I'm sure you've seen this, is the amount of microplastics that are now in our environment. They're in our air. They're in our food system, primarily in ultra-process foods. They're in our water systems.

Definitely here in the United States. We don't have, I don't know how it is in Europe, but I can't imagine. that they have the technology yet to remove microplastics. One of the problems in the U.S. is that everybody wears polyester clothing. Oh, yeah. Polyester has microplastics inside of it. When you wash it, it ends up, it goes down to the filtration. We don't have the ability to remove those things.

We're good at removing bacteria. We're not good at removing things like microplastics. And I'm sure you've seen these studies, but microplastics have now been found in arterial plaque in the heart. they've been found in the plaque. There was an Italian study that we covered previously with my cardiologist we talked about. They're finding it in the major organ systems of the body, the brain. Really? They're even finding microplastic.

Yes. They're finding it in testicles of men. No. Yes. You can literally look it up. Microplastic in my balls. It's a running joke that my friends have is like, hey, you better change your underwear. You don't want any microplastic in your balls.

And time and time again, we've had. some deep dives of some podcasts that you've been on, like Huberman, Huberman's podcast, big fan, and also individuals like Dr. Rhonda Patrick have talked about this, that, you know, right now at least there's no great way that we know of to remove these microplastics, but one of the best ways is sauna, to slowly remove them from the organ systems. It would seem that it would contribute to that. Anything, well, I would ask you in a two-part,

are you concerned about microplastics? and do you think that sauna could help us detoxify from some of these plastics in our environment and in our body? Regarding sauna and microplastics, I don't know. I don't know. Do you think there's any research on it? I don't know if there's any direct research, but that it seems to be, and we'll link to the two episodes, Dr. Andrew Huberman did a deep dive and Dr. Ronna Patrick, that it was like, hey, any toxins we have in our body, we know that sauna is good at removing toxins.

in a gentle, in a gentle way, not flooding. Gentle and general way. Gentle and general way. So that the assumption would be that even if we don't have studies, that microplastics could also be falling in that category and that heat in particular sauna could potentially help us remove those. Yeah. I don't think there's any research of somebody measuring that.

But I do think, and we'll look it up after this and I'll put it inside of the show notes. Maybe you can look around and see. I would like to look that up if, yeah, if, if if if it's possible because it's like it seems like big molecules to and I'm not, I'm not sure that sweating can remove it like that. But in general, we have looked at there's a lot of research showing that many different kinds of toxins can be removed from the body with heat. So with a sauna. So I wouldn't be surprised if this is also one of them. But I think that I like to like. have the facts. Right. So maybe we'll look into it a little bit and we can let our audience know.

Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Separately from sauna, are you concerned about some of these toxins that we're seeing in our environment and that we're all being exposed to? Is that something that you think about in your daily life? Oh, I think about it a lot. I think about especially those that I think that we can also control and to get away from. So it could be even what toothpaste I use or it could be what kind of food that I buy. Where do I buy it from processed food, even like cereals for my kids? I think a lot about what kind of toxins that I, that I'm putting in my basket. Beauty products. Beauty products, especially. Yeah. So organic. I always make sure that I buy something

that is not from a brand that I have found out. They might use some chemicals, which I don't want to put in my face because it goes into my body, into my organs. So I definitely think about. a lot about it, but that's also what we started talking about from the beginning. It's not about only, of course, what you put on your skin, but what you eat. It's all connected, of course. It's all connected. So the toxin could also be something that you drink. So alcohol, for example, we mentioned that earlier. So any toxin, anything that's going to kickstart the oxidative stress in the body and increase that inflammation, I think that is kind of. it's not possible to completely avoid toxins because we are here.

The air is polluted anyway. So it's like you are living. We, of course, can avoid some of them by being mindful. But there's also just going to be environmental and time. Time is also just going to age us anyways. But we can slow it down by being more mindful about it. The things that are put into our food, I think that is something that we can do something about. I really find it mind-blowing that I come from Europe and I get to the U.S. and stay here for one, two, three weeks or whatever.

But I can feel that my body is changing when I eat the food here. I can feel that, of course, it's jet lag also, but my sleep is not as good. Yeah. But it's also how my body digest the food here. And I even go for the healthy food. I try to. But even that is different. Even the oils they put on the salad.

So I think that people should look into what do they actually expose their body to? And in that sense, they could change this epigenetics or so, so the function of our genes. That the function of our genes is determined for how fast we age. And it's a reminder that for most of us, there's really only a few things that we have to pay attention to. It can feel overwhelming because every week some new headline comes out about the way that our toxic environment is making us more sick. But I've really boiled it down to in my life just a few things. You've already covered a few of them. Number one is, of course, just minimizing your level of dependence on ultra-process foods. Yes. Because the other thing that people don't

realize is that separate from the ingredients that are in there, ultra-processed foods are usually made in massive factories. Yes, exactly. Those factories have very complex machines. machinery, those machineries are sprayed down with different coating and other things that are, quote unquote, food safe, but have PFAs in them or have other sorts of chemicals, additives that don't even necessarily get labeled on the food that you're getting just because they're part of the manufacturing process. They're maybe going through multiple stages of being exposed to different plastics that are there.

It could be heat that's exposed to plastic. So just having ultra-processed foods be minimizing your diet is a huge step. Yes. The next things that are fairly pretty easy is there are a lot of great brands that are out there that people can get a good quality water filter. Ideally not like a Brita filter, which is a very common brand here in the U.S., that just really focuses on making the water taste better by removing chlorine. There's obviously plastics,

PFAs, there's all sorts of things in water. And our piping system, especially here in America, is being degradated. People have heard like Flint, Michigan. Did you ever hear about Flint, Michigan? It's where they were having corrosive rocks that were going through the piping. And it was exposing all these kids to lead in the water. Yeah. And it was a massive scandal.

Okay. Because this one researcher, this individual, this Indian woman who was, I believe, a pediatrician, was seeing all these kids that were coming in with high levels of lead. And she was like, what the heck is going on? And she became a whistleblower. And she started saying that we have lead in our water, which at a very young age reduces the IQ of children.

That's how damaging lead exposure can be. It permanently, for the rest of your life, can lower your IQ when you're exposed to lead at a very young age. It's not good at any age, but especially when you're young and the brain, is developing. And the government tried to say that this wasn't an issue. She's fearmongering, everything. She finally raised enough awareness that the local government had to relinquish their authority. The state got involved and they looked into it and they found out that she was correct.

And they found that the city was getting its water from a different source. And because that was coming from the river, all the sedimentation that was coming with it was damaging the pipes and was unlocking lead in the water. It was a massive scandal. But anyways, the takeaway from it, and there's been some activists, one in particular, Aaron Brockovich. There's a movie made about her that Julia Roberts played in. She's basically saying that there are so many Flint, Michigan's around the U.S. We just don't know yet that our water is not as high quality. So you can get a pretty decent reverse osmosis filter at home. And I think that's a great recommendation for people. There's tons of brands that are out there. They can just put them on? Usually it's under the

sink or there's some that are countertop based. You can fill it with water. It has like a filtering process and then you have clean water. Obviously, if it's reverse osmosis, sometimes you might have to add some minerals back in. You know, you can do that a couple times a week. So that's one thing that we can do. Of course, it costs money. But in the long term, if you look at it, a filter is way more cheaper than buying bottled water, which obviously has plastics and other things inside of it. Yeah. On other explorers you can do, especially in a city like LA, where the air quality is not that great, is you can find an affordable hepa filter for your home. Again, I'd rather spend money on that than spending money on, you know, some fancy toy or whatever it might be.

And so even just having cleaner air at home, cleaner water you breathe, being mindful about the products that we put on our face in the United States. There's a place, there's a nonprofit called EWG. It's called the Environmental Working Group, and they have an app on the phone where you can scan a product before you buy it, and it'll give you a ranking of how clean it is. Really? Yeah, for a lot of beauty products. It's called the Skin Deep Database. It's a nonprofit that runs it.

They do some incredible work. So just doing simple things like that. And then focus on your sleep, exercise. And if you can, try to go to a sauna every so often. Those basics are enough because you mentioned we're all going to be. exposed to toxins. Yeah, we cannot really avoid it. We cannot avoid it. There's stuff we can do. There's stuff that we can do. Anything else you want to add to that list that's important for you? Small things. It could be, which I actually just recently, I took all my pants at home.

Oh, yes. All the teflans just went out. Oh, that's a great one. Yeah. That's a great one. Just because it's actually, it's actually a lot. You use these pans and we make a lot of home cooking. So we need to make sure that these teflon pans are not in our home anymore. Because teflon pans is definitely something that we have seen in research now is a toxin for your body. And it comes off in just so small amounts that you would never ever see it. It's just in your food. And you're sitting there eating and you're thinking, I'm eating a home-cooked meal and it's super healthy. And now I'm eating actually a bit of my pan.

You are not thinking about that, right? But it's something that I think is an important small thing. it's a one thing time thing that you can do, just get rid of those. Yeah, get rid of Teflon pans. Yeah. Yeah. Especially if they have a scratch on them. Yes, it's the best. I've read some studies that we had Dr. Yvonne Burkhard, who's a toxic psychologist,

come on the podcast. She was saying one scratch in one study showed that a Teflon pan was leaching 10,000 nanoplastics inside of there. That's like crazy to think. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So what did you opt for?

Did you go for stainless steel? Stainly steel. Yeah. That's a great, affordable, cheap thing. Yeah. It's easy and you don't have to worry about the scratches. Yes. So, and one other thing I also think is important is something that I don't know if you have

talked about this on the pocket, but mold is some mold in houses. I think there's a tendency that people know that, oh, I have a little bit of mold in my house, but I don't worry about it because I'm not allergic to it. Or having symptoms. or having symptoms, but that doesn't mean that it's not affecting you. It's not affecting your sleep. It's not affecting your body. I think that that is something that if people know that I have mold in the house,

that's something they should do something about it and get rid of it because it is so toxic for the body to live in that mold. Yeah. No, that's a great list. And again, there's so many things that we could be doing. But if we all can just double down on the basics, that's all that's needed. You know, the goal of. living a healthy life is not health for health sakes.

It's that you have health, in my opinion, so that you can give love and attention to everything else that matters. Yeah. Playing with your kids, playing with your grandkids one day. Yeah. And feeling like you have the strength to run around and chase them, you know, living a healthy life so you can start that new business or volunteer at your church or whatever it is.

So while I love to look at new health information, because I also have a podcast and I get to interview great people like your and I'm just passionate about it. When it comes to my daily life, I just focus on a lot of the basics because then I don't have to think about things too much. Exactly. Yeah. And I can give attention to everything else.

Yes, community is another great. Yeah. Family, like enjoy them. Love not being lonely. Loneliness is a big killer, actually. So we know that people who are very lonely, those are actually factors that have a huge impact on our longevity and also on our health. So we can see the people who are not reaching.

out to family or have less friends or not having a community, they tend to get lonely and that's actually also decreasing their health on a general level. So I would say that if you are lonely, you can look into where can you find a community, of course. But a small thing as just getting a pet is actually a very good and affordable for many people thing to do. So getting a pet will increase your level of oxytocin. And that's the love hormone. And it's been shown that that's also going to increase your longevity because oxytocin is like a basic thing.

Like you said, we need to cover the basics. And love and feeling connected with other people and feeling important in this world is something that's like very basic to us. We need to have a purpose. We need to have something to do every day. And an animal or people being dependent on you is giving you that essential purpose, a basic purpose. It could be also a job, but it's not, it's seen in studies that it's not as purposeful

for people as feeling connected and important to a living human being or a pet. or so I think that there's, this is also something that people should look into if they had to do something about doing something for longevity and slow aging, then finding people to connect with and getting a pet. I mean, I have a dog. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome.

I also have kids and my husband. But I mean, the dog is also very important. Your husband's smiling over there. He said, I'm glad I was mentioned as well too in addition to the dog. So I want to make a little bit of a hard right. We can't have the world's foremost expert in cold therapy and winter swimming here on the podcast without touching on it a little bit. And I'd like to start off with just reminding our audience. You know, we talked about sauna.

What is the primary reasons that somebody would even want to consider, including cold exposure, which is a range, everything from cold plunging to winter swimming to, cryotherapy, to cold showers, right? We'll talk a little bit about those. Why should somebody consider having that a part of their protocol? As a co-plunching winter swimming, we can call it many things, many modalities to get those health benefits. It's not like all the health benefits applies to all the modalities, but you would definitely get some essential benefits. And those are the increase in healthy stress, haematic stress, which I just mentioned earlier when in connection. with the sauna. So cold plunging is good for you who wants to get more energy in your life. You want to feel more energetic. You want to feel more fresh. You also want to do, that's the acute response,

you can say. So there's something to get on the acute response of the cold plunging, but there's also something on the long run. And now I'm just going to touch upon the acute ones, right? So you get more energetic actually immediately. That's the main part. It feels like you just took a shot of espresso. Yes, exactly. Yeah, we talked about that. Yeah, we talked about last time.

Yeah. So it's kind of like if you wake up in the morning and you are maybe a person who wants to usually drinks three cups or four cups of coffee just to wake up, then that's a little, that might be a lot. So you could consider do something else. And a cold shower, cold plunge could be a substitute for at least, yeah, maybe all of those coffees or at least a couple of them. And it's more healthy because you activate dopamine in your brain to get that energy,

you get that motivation for the day and no adrenaline, which would give you exactly that energy and drive and you would get out the door and feel more fresh. That is a good substitute for the coffee. You would also have that increase in brown fat activation. So this is on the metabolism side. That will increase immediately. you will activate the brown fat cells immediately, which will then use the sugar and the fat from the bloodstream

and decrease those levels. Cleaning it up means that you are further away from getting type 2 diabetes on a long run, but right here and now, you will also have a clearance of that from the bloodstream. And that is really good because you want to lower your blood sugar levels and cold plunging or cold showers will do that immediately for you. And some people would say, well, it's only for maybe a few minutes that you do this cold plunge or the showers. But people should remember that the metabolism, just like when you go and work out in your fitness facilities,

you would have that aftermath, after workout. And you also have that with the co-plunching. So when you get out of that shower or plunge, the body will work hard to reheat your body. So the main thing is actually getting your body out of that comfort zone temperature-wise that will force the body to get back to the normal temperature. And that takes a lot of energy for the body. Just like when you go and exercise and afterwards, the body wants to get back to that normal state.

So the adaptation process afterwards is exactly where your metabolism is working. Your neurotransmitters in the brain are working, giving you that boost, giving you that drive and you will feel for hours afterwards. We call it a winter swim high. You can say it after the aftermath of feeling energetic, but also in the long run, if you do this on a regular basis, you will have the benefits on a metabolic place also. So increase in insulin sensitivity,

so you're a further way of getting type 2 diabetes and lowering that inflammation. And now we're back to the inflammation state, right? That's the root cause of everything. everything bad. You don't want to have an increase in inflammation in the body. But doing these kind of healthy stressors, cold plunging, sauna, workout. So the exercise part is very important. But the exercise happens in the cold as well. That helps you on your metabolism, lowering that inflammation. So last time you were on the podcast, you did a deep dive on this. So we can link back to that if anybody's new to this subject. We're going to pick back up because since the last time that

you've been on, there's been a lot of questions just out because cold exposure has become way more popular and you've been a huge part of getting it out there and people like Andrew Huberman and some of the incredible biohackers. I think you're going to be on Kayla's podcast soon, Kayla Barnes. Yes. And so people have some questions because they've seen some mixed sort of thoughts about how to make sure that they include the benefits of cold without sacrificing something else. One of the number ones that I would love to start off with. It could be a myth. It could be truth.

You're going to tell us is I've heard multiple people talk about that don't do cold right after a resistance training workout. Is there any truth to that? Is that a myth? What are your thoughts? It's a question that I get a lot. And I think it depends on what you want, of course. So when you do a workout and you want to build muscles and you,

Of course, you want to do that, but not all people go and do a workout to get every little small inch of muscle mass growth. So if you're not very concerned about that little inch that you want your muscles to grow, a co-plunge right after is not going to hurt that much. I mean, hurt that much, meaning also that it takes away your pain. So getting rid of that soreness right after your workout actually means that you can go again already maybe the next day. And then you will have an increase in your performance, meaning you would then have more muscle mass growth.

So the net of all that would mean that you would just get rid of the pain. So if you don't do the cold plunge, you would just have to, I mean, have that soreness maybe, and you will have the pain and you will have to work a few days and then work on some other muscles in your body. And you won't be able to maybe do exactly that muscle group again. So when you then look at it in that way, I think that the cold plunge maybe a few hours after or right after, it's not going to hurt that much. And the science on it, I don't think, shows that it has that big a difference for people. But if you are very concerned about muscle growth and you're a bodybuilder, then I think you should wait. So it depends on your outcome.

What do you want from this? So if you're a bodybuilder and it means a lot to you, then you could wait a few hours, four hours maybe after. And or even doing it on another day. So, but it could also be that you are a competitive athlete or they, they often do the co plunge right after. And that is to get rid of that soreness. So what happens is that when you get into the cold water, you would increase TNF alpha, which will then activate the inflammatory process.

So you won't have that pain, right? So the soreness goes away and they can go and compete again. the next day and have a peak performance. They can run faster. They can jump higher or what they do. But the muscle will not be that sore because they just stop that inflammatory process. And that's a good thing because then they can perform better. So it really depends on what you want to get it out.

It depends on your goals. Yes. So I'm not a bodybuilder, but I'm somebody at the age of when I turned 40, right before I turned 40, 39, I had my dear friend Dr. Gabriel Lyon come on the podcast. And she really helped me understand that, you know, I really, really, really needed to focus on building lean muscle mass. I grew up a skinny Indian vegetarian kid. And I never really got so into working out because I felt like even when I would go hard and I played sports, I played tennis, soccer and other things. So I was active. When I go hard in the

gym for like about of like six weeks, I would see my friends at like 14, 15. They're putting on so much muscle and I'm like not putting on anything and I didn't realize at the time I'm just not eating enough protein. Oh, right? I'm going to be working out, but you need the protein piece of it too, right? Especially for a growing young boy or young girl or anything like that. So now I'm trying to make up for that. So I'm not a bodybuilder, but I'm taking my strain training seriously.

So what I'm doing in particular is I tend to work out in the afternoon around like two or three or four o'clock with my trainer who's just down the street from here. and because I am trying to increase my muscle mass and he weighs me regularly and does my body composition and then I get a dexasan a couple times a year to see if I'm improving. Yeah. Which knock on what I am. I will usually do my cold exposure, cold plunge or cryotherapy earlier in the day. Yeah.

I have a few hours. I get the benefit of it. I get to drink less coffee, less tea to kind of keep me up. And then I have my workout a little bit later on. So I get the best of both worlds. Yeah. That great plan. Nothing wrong with that.

Nothing wrong with that. Absolutely not. Actually, it will give you that energy to go and do your exercise even more efficiently because you have the energy. You have already the dopamine spike to go and give it all. So you have awakened the body to your prone it a bit, I would say. Yeah. It's a good thing.

Great, great. Okay, great. We have a few more myths that we're going to tackle in. And we're going to get your thoughts on them on the topic of cold exposure. So actually, before I go into my list, let me ask you, What is one of the, you're active on social media. You see a lot of things that are going out there. One is one of the top myths that you've come across since you've put out your work,

but you see trending especially on social media that might need to be corrected a little bit when it comes to cold exposure. Yeah. I think there's a top, top one and two. So the longer is better. So the longer you go through cold is better is the myth that's out there. I think that there's a mistake there, that people do longer exposure, do compete a lot. I see this in Facebook groups where people are, yeah, Facebook groups where people are joining

and can talk to each other about how long did you do? And then it sort of becomes a competition. And it sort of builds up even more and more that people think that the more is better. Now I can do longer. If I do this, I can do longer. And I just keep thinking that they have no idea what they're actually doing to their body. It doesn't, longer doesn't mean better. So actually, shorter is better because it's activating that homatic stress in the body.

You don't need to go longer. You don't need to cool your deep tissue. So this is the science on it. You have to activate your co-receptors, which are located in your skin. So just a trick question, do you need to cool down your inner tissues to activate your cold receptors? No. And it actually shows that cooling your deeper tissues has no benefits at all.

There's no signs showing that cooling down your deeper tissue gives you any benefits when it comes to health. The health is there when you activate the co-receptors on the skin and, um, giving you that activation of your fight and flight system and activation of your parasympathetic nervous system. So the autonomic nervous system is activated immediately as you go into the cold and within a few minutes, it's there and it's activated. You get the health benefits and activation of your metabolism.

But cooling down the deeper tissue has nothing to do with health. Actually, I would say the opposite, because you are maybe exposing your cardiovascular system to too much stress, too much damage and you are pushing that cardiovascular system. Which could impact your HRV for the negative. Yes, exactly. Got it. Okay, great.

That's awesome. Well, another one that goes along with it is colder is better. You see that when people get into cold exposure. Yeah. They're like, oh, how cold did you go? Yeah. Which again, is a very American thing, the bravado. Maybe guys are doing that more than girls.

I don't know. It happens in general. Yeah. So tell us. us why that's a myth. Yeah, I think that it's both men and women, actually. I tend to see the competitive side more in male groups doing this, but the colder is better is a misconception for both genders. So colder is definitely going to activate your sympathetic nervous system faster. So the intensity of the cold is doing its work, but then you don't have to do as long, right? So you can

decrease on timing if you decrease the temperature. You can say that. But colder is better. At some point, you can almost not get it colder, right? And that's not going to help on your adaptation. It's not going to increase the benefits. But maybe actually increasing the temperature is going to help also because then you are getting out of that zone of getting just colder and colder and the body needs to adapt to a new

temperature. So it's all about like changing the weights of your cold exposure. And that could also meaning going a little bit warmer. So if you look to nature, so in Europe, in the Nordics, we have the sea. We have the nature and we just follow the seasons. And that means that we get this adaptation flow and we just follow the nature, follow the temperatures. And that goes down and up, of course, but that keeps our body and our brain constantly in the adaptation mode. You don't want to get too comfortable at zero degrees Celsius because that's expected from the body at some point. So you don't want to just decrease the temper and get colder and colder because, I mean,

at some point, you would be so good at contracting your veins as well that the cold, the skin would be like a shield. So it's just about having an appropriate challenge. Yeah. That's there. I'm not going to lie. I do with my group of friends. You've met a couple of them last year at the dinner that we had in honor of your book launch.

But we do like to challenge each other. We go to cry out therapy sometimes or cold plunge. And we'll like to say like, oh, it's more out of a sense of like, hey, we haven't done this in a little while. So like. Encouraging. Encouraging. Yeah.

It's encouraging. Yeah. Yeah. But we're not like fixated on just going. super long or going super cold. It's more just to nobody after having not been cold for some time, nobody loves the cold initially. No, exactly. So it's a little bit of a nudge to kind of push each other and have some accountability. It's encouraging. And I think that that is, that's the underlying course. I think why people are like for fun, like competing with each other.

It's like an accountability thing to do, encouraging each other. But it can also just get over there people think, oh, we have to do it this way. Sure. And encouraging people can be in many ways, it doesn't have to be on the timing and on the temperature. It could just be on just doing it. Because there's no health after a certain amount of minutes or at a lower, lower degree. So it's just about activating those cold receptors.

And they are activated already as soon as your, the water is colder than your skin. That's great. We have a couple more here that we want to touch on as we're winding down on today's interview, which has been fantastic, by the way. Thank you. Another one is you need to be shivering after cold to get the benefits. Can you talk about that? That's something that I often get asked whether you have to shiver to get the benefits. Shivering is good because that's your muscle contracting, right? So they are working and that increases your metabolism and it burns calories, just bottom line. It's super good for you. If you can do that, but you don't have to shiver for hours or anything.

If you are new to cold exposure, you would be shivering more than when you are adapted. The funny thing is just that as you get adapted to the cold, you would not feel the shivering as fast and as much as you did in the beginning. And that could become a problem because then people are sitting in the cold plunge and waiting for the shivering. So I've had people reach out to me and writing me long letters almost telling me that they didn't shiver anymore. So now the question is, are they getting any benefits or should I wait until a shiver? And some of them have like sit there for maybe too long and they could almost not get out of the cold plunge.

And that's a precaution I want to say. Don't sit and wait for the shivering because at some point you won't see the shivering. The mitochondria in the muscles are also increasing as you adapt to the cold, which is a good thing for your health. but that means that you won't shiver as visually. You cannot almost see it, but the body is working hard to keep your temperature up. And that's brown fat activation and the muscle shivering. But the shivering will be less visual, what do you call it?

You're not going to be seeing it externally in that same way. Yeah, in the same way. But you will still have it. And your muscle contraction of the veins will be so good that you are almost like a shield to the cold. But that doesn't mean you are not exposed to the risk of nerve damage. So that is one thing that I have seen. People get accidental nerve damage and that won't reverse.

So they will have maybe toes where they cannot feel anything in the toes anymore because they have set for an hour in cold, cold water. So please don't do that ever. It's not healthy in any sense. So just for saying that you still get the health benefits, even though you are adapted and you are not shivering, you should not wait until you shiver. It's not a point where you want to reach before you go up from your cold plunge.

So don't make it a goal. The shivering is good, but it should not be a goal because you have the activation far earlier when you're adapted. and you have that increase in metabolism anyways, but it's just not as easy to see it when you are adapted. Great. I have one more myth that I want to touch on. But before that, I actually had a question for you of something that I was interested in.

We've done a few episodes on the dangers of visceral fat and how as we age, if we don't watch our ultra-processed foods, if we're drinking a lot of alcohol, liquid calories, our visceral fat is going to increase, and that's extremely damaging to our body. Yes. Is there any evidence, or anything that you've come across where cold exposure can help with the reduction of visceral fat

inside of the body? The direct link to that, I don't think I've seen that, no. The research is not there yet. No, it's not there yet. But what we can see, and I think my research has also helped putting some insights into that, that when you co-plunge, you will activate your metabolism, and meaning that you will increase your insulin sensitivity and you will clear out glucose and fatty acids from the bloodstream.

And you want to have that because that clears out the calories you don't want there. And also that decreases or activates the brown fat, which then decreases the amount of white fat. So it's sort of like saying, can you lose weight or can you get rid of the white fat with co-plunching? In a sense, you can. But just as a workout, it's about a balance. So when you go and do a workout, when you go and do a plunge or if you do a sauna, you will have an increase in your energy expenditure. And spending more energy means you would get faster hungry or you would even get cravings.

So if you do something that gets rid of your calories or your energy very fast, which you would do with a cold plunge, you are prone to get a craving afterwards. So what people sometimes do wrong, if they're not mindful about it, they go home and then they eat something, probably something with high sugar or lots of fat or something. And then they are not seeing that weight loss. So it's all about being mindful about that. If you want a fast increase in metabolism, be mindful that you don't go and it just fill up your fat depose with something new with high sugar or fat. But try to actually avoid giving into your cravings because it is going to happen when you are spending more energy. You want new energy to come into your body.

Great. All right. The last myth that we want to touch on, which is huge for my audience, because there's a lot of different people that are maybe sharing this on social media, is the idea of women should not cold plunge. That's a myth that I see out there often where I guess I'm asking you. Yeah. not just as a researcher as a woman. What are your thoughts when you hear people saying things like that? Women should not co-plunge.

I've heard that and I've been asked about that. I cannot find the research saying that this is a bad idea and have looked a lot into it because I wanted to figure out, is it different for women to co-plunge that it is for men and how do we defend our temperature compared to men? And there's a lot of saying about that because, yeah, we can talk endless about it.

women, just to make it short, women defend the cold differently than men would do because we have less muscle mass. That doesn't mean that we are not getting the health benefits from doing the cold plunge. We definitely do. We just defend the cold in a different way. So having more white fat, less muscle mass, we would be better at constricting and dilating our blood vessels, meaning that if you and me, we did a cold plunge, I would be. better at constricting my veins than maybe you would, but you would have more muscle mass

to increase your temperature, but I would have a shield that is better than yours. So when it comes down to whether you or a woman or a man would increase their metabolism, we would do that exactly in the same way. There's research about that. And we would defend it differently, but the outcome would be the same. We would spend the same amount of energy on it, but we would have more, the women would have more brown fat to increase that temperature in the body and less muscle, meaning that if we then did, say, more than two minutes of cold plunging, then I would get colder as a woman compared to a man. So we would not need to do as long, but nobody would need to do more than a few minutes anyways.

So do you see where I'm going? It's like we would defend it in, defend the. cold differently, but we will have the same outcome if we are not overdoing it. So, meaning we would have the same activation of the brown fat and of the muscles, but probably we will activate the muscles faster than men would do. So it might be that in two minutes, we would actually have become a little bit colder than a man would do in the same amount of timing. but nobody needs more than a few minutes anyways.

Then there's about the cycle, women's cycle. In their reproductive years. Yes, exactly. And I think that it's important to think about it as there are a period of time where we have our period. And during that phase, we would also have feel colder, our temperature drops in the body. and we are easily prone to stress. And I would say in my later years, I can feel that when I was younger.

I didn't feel anything. It was just same thing every day. But I feel a difference now. So if a cold plunge just before my period, I can feel that my temperature in the body is just dropping and I cannot stand the cold as easily as I could after my period or two weeks before my period. Then I'm fine.

Then I can actually stay there for a little bit longer, but I feel more stressed right up to. And this research supports this. So you would have a lower temperature, meaning your starting point would also be different. So if you are in that situation where you want to avoid getting more stressed in that period, then avoid those week before your period or during your period.

It's a little bit different from women to women where they feel more stressed or more sensitive. So it could be sensitive to stress. It could also be that they feel just colder. Some women feel it. Some don't. And I think it's important to ask yourself, how does this feel to me? That's great. That's fantastic advice.

Like a lot of things, it's personalizing it. A bit, yeah, a bit. There's general rules. You can say, or general rules, there are general recommendations of which we can see from the science. This is also a myth that I want to get into, actually, that just follow your own body. And just the rule of thumb is just that you don't need to know anything. Just feel your way through it.

And that's not how the body works. It's so decisive. It's that the word. It's just the body is not always telling you what's right. Yeah. And a lot of people don't even have good interoception to even know necessarily. Exactly. Right.

So, I mean, don't always listen to your body or your body. brain because it's definitely not always giving you the best advice. Or always listen, but that doesn't mean that your interpretation is the correct interpretation. Exactly. You know, what it reminds me of a little bit when I hear the blanket advice that women should not cold plunge or they should not do this, not do that, for a long time, they told women in society like, don't lift weights. You're going to get bulky.

Yeah. Or the modern version of it is, and I've even had some people on this podcast that have said this before. and they mean well, they're just not educated on it, but they would say women in particular should be careful about resistance training and lifting heavy weights or doing like a hit workout because these intense workouts increase cortisol. And they would just leave it at that. And they would say cortisol is the biggest driver of belly fat. And yes, as I looked into it and talked to it, a couple more people that who are truly subject matter expertise, yes, there is a

connection between cortisol and belly fat, but there's all these other things that you get from working out that completely counteract that. Yes, exactly. It's not as simple as don't work out because you're going to have high cortisol and that's going to lead to belly fat. That's not true. That's not true. You're missing out on all these benefits that are there. And so same thing when we blanketly say, oh, women are so, again, I think it's well intentioned, but people are maybe speaking from a place of not fully being aware. It's kind of like, oh, women are so. Women are so fragile, don't do anything to stress yourself out during this period. And it's like, women are literally bringing babies into this world. I was just going to say that. I think that they're

not as fragile as we think they are. I think they can handle some stressors that are there. Yeah. Yeah. And of yes, don't overdo anything guy or girl because that can impact your HRV. Too much of anything can be a bad thing that's there. So don't be about it. But women are not these dainty creatures that need absolute protection from the stressors of life that can come with good benefit. No, exactly. I mean, there's definitely things to learn. When is, when is a good timing for us to expose ourselves to an external stress? But I don't think that we need to make it like a rule of thumb that women should not do this at all. I think it's just about getting to know the research around it and getting to learn, well, stress to the body is good for both men and women

if you do it in a short amount of time. It's all about how to do this. It's not, it's just like when exercise came around, I think it was in the 60s, 70s where everybody was starting to jogging and running around and using that as exercise, something healthy. And people were like one camp or saying, oh, it's just a trend. It will go away. Nobody should do this because it's just harmful for the body. And even the police were chasing them. I read papers about that.

It was like, even here in California, it's very funny. And the other group was saying, well, this is something that could actually be very healthy for us in the long term. And it didn't take many years to figure out, well, there are actually, it's not only about just go. It's also about how you do it. So lifting weights. If you lift weight, then put on more weight or less weight or doing in another way.

So different protocols for different outcomes. So we have learned now that you can do all sorts of different kinds of exercise with different kinds of outcomes. And I think we are going to learn that with the cold and with the heat as well, that we can increase our mental health, we can increase our physical health. if we do it in different ways. And there might be actually a better way for women to do this kind of exercise with cold and heat. And for men to do it this way or this way, if the outcome is, for example, mental health or physical health,

it might be that we figure out that there might be a little difference where some would enjoy this better than this protocol. And I think we will know in the future. Well, when we do know in the future, we'll have you back on the podcast to discuss about that too. Susanna, this has been great. It's been awesome to have you back for round two to talk about some new things that we haven't talking about before, but also go a little bit deeper into some of the stuff that we have talked about. You know, when I look at your work from the outside, you've been part of this incredible

trend where I see for my friends that especially have kids that are around like the teenage years, it's like cool to be healthy. They're like actually interested. And I know I live in a bubble a little bit being in Los Angeles, but there is. into sauna and cold plunge and people want to eat healthier. And there's just a growing awareness of individuals saying like, hey, our body is a temple. We want to take care of it.

And sometimes the best way to take care of it is we've got to kick ourselves in the butt a little bit. We've got to challenge ourselves with some healthy stresses that are there. So I super appreciate your work. I also appreciate the fact that you do research, but you're also an educator. Your social media is a great source for people. You also have a newsletter, which people can sign up to. we have the link below.

If you want to just mention, it's on substack, I believe. Yes. People can sign up for that. Yeah, it's on my website. So on Soberg Institute.com where they can just press newsletter or blog and then they will get to it to the substack and they can read my papers. And I believe you mentioned, and if we can't talk about this, we can cut us out, that you have a second book that's going to be translated into English. Yes, actually.

So sometime next year? Yes. It's coming out soon. Everything is coming together in it. And I think it's going to be a pre-sale like early 2025. So we're going to set that up and people can go and have a, yeah, a pre-sale link. Okay. Great.

Well, we'll add it into the show notes when we have it. So thank you so much for coming back on the podcast and sharing your knowledge with the audience. Thank you for having me on.