Something You Should Know - How You Perceive Colors & The Ways Heat Can Make You Healthy

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

That eerie feeling that someone is watching you—even when no one is there—can be surprisingly convincing. It feels almost like a sixth sense. But where does that sensation come from, and can you actually trust it? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10707330/ Color is everywhere, yet it’s surprisingly difficult to pin down. Are we all seeing the same colors—or just calling them by the same names? Why are some colors calming while others feel energizing or even unsettling? Kory Stamper, lexicographer and author of True Color: The Strange and Spectacular History of Defining Color—from Azure to Zinc Pink (https://amzn.to/4boSslv), explores how humans perceive, describe, and emotionally respond to color. Heat is usually something we try to avoid. Too much of it can be dangerous. But emerging research suggests that controlled exposure to heat—through saunas, hot baths, or other methods—may offer surprising benefits. Bill Gifford, author of Hotwired: How the Hidden Power of Heat Makes Us Stronger (https://amzn.to/4lGvRnZ), explains how heat can improve cardiovascular health, boost performance, and trigger powerful adaptations in the body that many people overlook. If you need to stay sharp and focused, one simple habit might help more than you’d expect. It’s easy, inexpensive, and something you’ve probably done before without thinking much about it—but under the right conditions, it can give your brain a noticeable edge. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26075234/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS DUTCH: If your pet is still scratching and you’ve tried everything at the pet store –it’s time to stop guessing and go prescription.Support us and use code SYSK for $40 off your membership at ⁠⁠https://Dutch.com⁠⁠ RULA: Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit ⁠⁠https://Rula.com/sysk⁠⁠ to get started. QUINCE: Refresh your wardrobe with Quince! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.dom/sysk ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! SHOPIFY: See less carts go abandoned with Shopify and their Shop Pay button! Sign up for your $1 per month trail and start selling today at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Uh, where are my gloves? Come on, heat. Any day now? Winter is hard, but your groceries don't have to be. This winter, stay warm. Tap the banner to order your groceries online at voila.ca. Enjoy in-store prices without leaving your home. You'll find the same regular prices online as in-store.

Many promotions are available both in-store and online, though some may vary. Today on something you should know, have you ever been all alone, but felt like someone was watching you? What does that mean? Then, the interesting ways colors affect you. If you go into the grocery store and you go to the meat counter, you'll notice that the meat is usually lying on some kind of green background. And the reason that is is because the green and the red play off of each other and it makes the red more vibrant. Also, how chewing gum affects your brain and the emerging science of how heat, like in a sauna, can seriously improve your health. A series of studies from Finland found that frequent sauna users had about 40% the rate of fatal heart attacks, cardiovascular disease, and all-caused mortality.

That's an astonishing finding, and that changed the conversation around heat. All this today on something you should know. When WestJet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96.

Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. Something you should know. Fascinating Intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. You ever get that creepy feeling that you're being watched? What is that? Is it real?

Well, that's what we're going to start with today on this episode of Something You Should Know. Hi, I'm Mike Carruthers. So that feeling that someone is watching you is pretty common. but very often you turn around to look and there's no one watching you. Psychologists say that feeling is usually an illusion created by your brain, but it's not random. You see, humans are highly tuned to detect eyes and the direction of their gaze, even in low visibility or out of the corner of your vision. It's an ancient survival skill.

If something or someone is watching you, it could be a threat. The problem is your brain would rather make a false alarm than miss a real one. So it fills in gaps, a shadow or a movement, even just a vague sense of presence, and suddenly you think someone is staring at you. When you add in things like the spotlight effect, where we overestimate how much people notice us, and confirmation bias, that is, we remember the few times we were right that someone was staring at us,

and then the illusion gets stronger. So that feeling you're being watched is probably not true, but the reason you feel it is very real. And that is something you should know. Talking about color is a little like talking about music. You can describe it, analyze it, even debate it, but unless you experience it,

words never quite capture the whole thing. And color is stranger than we, often realize. We attach emotions to color. We have favorite colors and ones we avoid, and then there are endless shades in between. But here's the really fascinating thing. How do we even know that the color I call blue looks the same to you? Then there's the bigger mystery of how color affects us, why certain colors calm us, excite us, or even influence our decisions. So how did we come to define color in the first place, and why has it been such a surprisingly complicated thing to describe? Well, here to unravel the story of color and how we perceive it is Corey Stamper. She is a lexicographer

who spent nearly 30 years writing dictionaries for Miriam Webster, Cambridge Dictionaries, and Dictionary.com. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, New York Magazine, and the Washington Post. She's author of a book called True Color. The Strange and Spectacular History of Defining Color, from Azure to Zinc Pink. Hey, Corey, welcome to something you should know. Thanks so much, Mike. It's great to be here. So you're a word person, having written dictionaries for years, and here you are talking about colors, and words and colors, well, you know, don't often, those two words don't often show up in the same sentence. So why are you talking about color?

You would think they don't go in the same sentence a lot until you start actually talking about color, and then you realize how difficult it is to describe colors without using some kind of a color chip or some kind of a visual reference. Because not everyone can see color, not everyone has access to those visual references. So I really start the journey with color for me begins with language and not so much with color. You know, it sometimes seems that we complicate the discussion about color and the words about color. Because if I'm talking to you about something, and I say, look over there, see that blue thing over there. I don't have to say, see the aquamarine, it's just blue. And yes, it's one of many blues, but just using the word blue is good enough in that situation that you know what I'm talking about. but it seems like there are so many different shades of blue, and a lot of times they're not necessary.

It's true, but there's also times when you want to be able to distinguish between all those blues. And, you know, a great example of this would be I live in a part of the country that's near the ocean. I did not grow up near the ocean, but now I live near the ocean. And I have people who know the ocean tell me, oh, you know, when the ocean is, you know, when the ocean is, this particular kind of blue. When the ocean is really sort of a gritty gray blue, you don't want to be out in it because that means there's a lot of undercurrents that are dangerous. When the ocean is a much clearer blue, that's better to be out in. I don't know what that means because I didn't grow up in the ocean, but clearly there's two different blues that someone's talking about. And in

those cases, those blues could be the difference between someone taking a boat out and sinking and someone having just a lovely, you know, Pacific troll around the harbor. Well, it would seem that words are kind of a lousy way. You know, the best way to convey a color is to show you the color. Like, here's what I'm talking about. Rather than try to come up with words that describe it, here's what I mean. It's this color. Sure.

But what happens when someone has impaired color vision? or what happens when the color that I want to show you is on something, paper, let's say, that is going to be a different medium than the thing I need you to match it to. If I show you a paint chip and I say, I would like you, Mr. Mike Carruthers, to mix me a gallon of paint in this beautiful color that's called rejuvenate. And you say, great. Is that going on your bathroom wall? And I say, yes.

And I say, all right. Would you like that in eggshell, satin, mat, semi-gloss or gloss finish? And I say, semi-gloss. Why not? Sounds fancy. I get it home and I put it on my wall. Well, it doesn't match the chip because the chip is a different gloss. Or I get it at home and I put it on my wall and it's not that color rejuvenate anymore because the light in my house is different.

from the light in the hardware store. So even when we have color chips and examples of color to show people, it's still not airtight. The other thing that's interesting about that is we think that it's very easy to show someone a color and say, this is what I mean by Aqua. And the thing is, is some people, particularly with sort of these borderline colors like aqua or magenta. People have such strong associations with what a color is in their head that they'll argue with you about it. I used to dye my hair what I thought was purple. And I was endlessly fascinated when I would go wait at the train station or I'd be in line at the grocery

store and people would say, oh, I love your hair. I wish I could dye my hair. And then they'd come up with a color that was not the color that was on my head. And I would argue with the people say, no, it's purple. It's pink or it's blue. No, it's purple. Nope, it's pink. So people have such strong associations with what they think a color is when you give it a name or you show them a chip and say, this is Aqua. And so what is this idea? You know, I've heard people talk about there's this color psychology that certain colors affect people. Is that a real thing? It's a real thing in that colors do affect people, and marketers certainly take advantage of color names and colors to woo the consumer. There is something about color psychology, the idea that colors affect people in certain ways,

that is actually scientifically, factually true. And that part is called functional color. Functional color is using how people perceive colors in places like factories or on ships, to help differentiate between different parts. So functional color was really important after World War II in factories because people who were not well trained were suddenly in the workforce and they kept shoving their hands into gears or touching moving parts. But if you paint those moving parts a really different color than everything else,

like a red or a yellow, a color that people associate with warning, they're going to be less likely to jam their hand into it. This comes up even in an example I give in the book is there's a way if you go into the grocery store and you go to the meat counter. You'll notice that the meat is usually lying on some kind of green background or that's divided up by green plastic grass. And the reason that is is because the green and the red play off of each other and it makes the red more vibrant.

So you associate that brighter red with better quality. meet. So functional color is sort of where color psychology gets applied. But in terms of these universal ideas that reds are the color of love and that blues are the color of calm, there's not a whole lot of science that goes behind that. And that's certainly not universally true across cultures either. And what about like in logos, supposedly you see like the red and the yellow in fast food logos a lot and and like because it's supposed to do what? I think the idea there is that reds, yellows, oranges are supposed to make you hungry, right? They're warm colors and hook onto your appetites I think is maybe how a color marketer would put it.

Oftentimes, what you're seeing is just a market pattern. There's one successful fast food place that's got. yellow and red and their logo. So, you know, we'll associate with that other fast food place by also using a different yellow and red in our logo, but yellow and red all the same. There's this very interesting language of color psychology that's been built up that I think becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in some ways. So lots of people are like, oh, well, you know, I painted my kitchen blue because I wanted it to be calming and now it feels very cold and impersonal. And that's, you're, you're just repeating back what color psychologists tell you those things

mean, whether you actually feel that way or not. Yeah. Well, you know, things like earth, we hear earth tones are very, you know, earthy, I guess. Right. But that being in a room that's brown and beige, that that supposedly has an effect, And the assumption is that it has the same effect on everyone that enters it. But does it? No.

There were experiments and studies done throughout the 40s, 50s, and 60s about how color would affect people, mostly in institutional settings. So prisons or hospitals or other kinds of institutions. And these experiments went so far as to see if we paint. a barracks red, is that going to produce more aggressive soldiers? If we paint a hospital beige, is that going to mean that psychiatric patients are calmer? And the result is we just don't have enough good data to be able to say that that's the case, in part because color is not just a subjectively experienced thing, but it's also subjectively talked about. How can you have an experiment about color and how color affects a group of people without somehow people realizing that they're

supposed to be keying in on the color? If you're used to being in a barracks that's painted gray and they put you in a barracks that's red, of course you would notice that difference. And of course, you would probably have some kind of reaction to it. And maybe your reaction matches up with what your experimenter's hopes are. But it's so hard to know because these things are all such subjective experiences for us. And again, they're very culturally specific. It's hard to say, yes, red makes everyone angry. Yes, blue calms everyone down.

Well, it's all very confusing. And in a moment, I want to ask you about paint colors. This episode is. is brought to you by FedEx. These days, the Power Move isn't having a big metallic credit card to drop on the check at a corporate lunch. The real Power Move is leveling up your business with FedEx intelligence and accessing one of the biggest data networks

powered by one of the biggest delivery networks. Level up your business with FedEx, the new Power Move. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees, earn an average of over $24.50 an hour. Employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields, like software development and information technology. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca.

I'm speaking with Corey Stamper. She's author of the book True Color, the strange and spectacular history of defining color, from Azure to Zinc Pink. So, Corey, you go into a paint store and you will see so many odd, weird, different names for colors. Who comes up with those names that this one looks just like that one, but it has a completely different name. And this one is named, this color is called champagne. It doesn't look anything like the champagne I've ever drank. Where does this all, who's doing this?

There's an entire industry devoted to naming consumer colors. And it's called color marketing. And it is a blend of psychology, color science, and marketing. And there are hundreds, possibly thousands of people who are involved in color marketing. Paint stores are the thing that we think of the most, because of all the colors are right there. And, you know, there seems to be thousands of colors in front of you, and all of the names seem to be very of the moment. Color naming is so specific, and the thing that is so fascinating about it is there are different fields of color naming specialists. So you have people who work in paint stores, and they talk very specifically about how paint, is a particular product that can only have particular kinds of names. If you talk to someone who does fabric dyeing, they will talk about how commercially fabrics are all named particular things for particular markets. So if I'm shopping at, you know, Macy's or something like that,

I'm going to get the same colors as someone who's shopping at a very high-end coatwork. but those color names are going to be different because I'm in a different consumer bracket than the people who are shopping at the high quaterier store. Well, it does to an outsider like me, seem unnecessarily complicated. You go to a paint store and say, I want white. Well, my God, I mean, there's a million different whites, but you would think white would be white. I would probably guess that there are more whites and grays and even blacks than there are more chromatic colors, reds, oranges, yellows, greens.

Because whites can tip in any chromatic direction. You can have a white that's got a little bit of a yellow undertone or a little bit of a green undertone or a little bit of a purple undertone. You can't have a purple that's got a green undertone. That's a different color. So there are white is not white. Is all this confusion and bizarreness deliberate? Or is it just so many people are doing so many things with color? It's just a big mess or what? It's a little of both.

Color is very much like language in that it's very elastic. So the way that we talk about color, changes depending on our context, the way that we encounter color changes depending on our context. And one of the great things about both color and language is that it's flexible enough to accommodate all of that. So a painter can talk about their palette and a scientist can talk about enamel coatings for your refrigerator. And color and language can accommodate both of those fields. But what gets murky is that we're not all in all of those fields. So it's hard to say, okay, sure, titanium oxide is, that's that white. But over here, the painter calls it titanium

white. And both the painter and the color specialist argue and say, no, no, no, no, no, the other one's wrong. Or that's right. And when I just say, well, that's just white, All of these things are so complicated in part because the way language grows is through iteration. So I've got blue. I've got one color blue. It might get 15 different names over the course of the English language's reckoning with that color. It doesn't mean that that color is 15 different colors. And it doesn't mean that we need to get rid of all of the redundancy.

in language. It just means that's what an elastic living, breathing language and discipline do. It iterates. Well, it's interesting to me that the name of a color can influence what you think about that color. And I have, I think, a really good example of that. I remember many, many years ago of painting a room and I saw this color and it was called Harvest Gold. And I thought, Well, how lovely. How wonderful. It looks great. I looked at the paint chip and I said, great. So I painted the room, harvest gold. It was just gas. It looked like vomit. It was horrible. But it sounded great. And the little chip looked great. But on the whole room, it was terrible. I have done the same thing. I have repainted whole rooms because of that. Color names are so fascinating because because they are meant, all language, all words, evoke a feeling in us, whether we want to have that feeling evoked or not. We have a reaction to them. Now, color marketers take advantage

of that reaction. And that's one of the things about color names and talking about color that gets so interesting is that the language we use for color affects our response to it. There have been studies done on how names, particularly in commercial contexts, affect a person's willingness to buy an item that is that color. And they found, these various groups found, that a fancier color name brought in more dollars because people expect something with a fancy name to be more expensive. So calling your wall color brown is not going to make anyone buy it or calling your wall color yellow. Well, that doesn't sound very exciting. But if you call it harvest gold or sunrise, well, now, now that's evoking a feeling in me, even if it's the same color. But maybe

I don't know enough about color science and illuminants and things like that to realize that harvest gold in the paint catalog in the paint store is actually going to turn out to be this really gross puky color on my wall because I don't take into account the fact or I don't know to take into account that the light is going to be different and the space itself is going to change how I see that color. And even things like, oh, I have brown wood trim. And I didn't realize that that brownwood trim would make that color go less yellow and more brown. And now it just looks gross and dull. These are all things that the feeling that a color name gives us and the feeling we have about a color is so context specific. And language is very much that way too. So color names, yeah, they're,

meant they're meant to make us do a thing with that color. And often it's to buy that color and put it on our wall. Well, you know what's interesting. For as long as we've been doing this podcast for several years now, I have tried to find a really good expert on how color affects people. And it's been very difficult to find anyone. And you've pretty much explained why, because color is so subjective and is so confusing that I guess it's hard to know how color affects people. And I appreciate your explanation through the eyes of a word person about how color works. I've been speaking with Corey Stamper, who for 30 years wrote dictionaries at Miriam Webster, Cambridge Dictionaries, and Dictionary.com.

And she's author of a book about color. It's called True Color, the Strange and Spectrature. It's a spectacular history of defining color, from Azure to Zinc Pink. And you can find a link to that book in the show notes. And Corey, thank you. Thanks again. Appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me, Mike. It's been great. Of the Regency era, you might know it as the time when Bridgeton takes place, or it's the time when Jane Austen wrote her books.

The Regency era was also an explosive time of social change, sex scandals, and maybe the worst king in British. history. Volker history's new season is all about the regency era, the balls, the gowns, and all the scandal. Listen to vulgar history, regency era, wherever you get podcasts. If Bravo drama, pop culture, chaos, and honest takes are your love language, you'll want all about TeriH podcast in your feed. Hosted by Roxanne and Chantelle, this show breaks down Real Housewives reality TV and the moments everyone's group chat is arguing about. Bracanne's been spilling Bravo T's since 2010, and yes, we've interviewed Housewise Royalty

like Countess Lewann and Teresa Judice. Smart Recaps, Insider Energy, and Zero Fluff. Listen to All About Tierage podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. New episodes weekly. We've all heard the warnings about heat. On a hot day, it can dehydrate you, cause heat exhaustion. And in extreme cases, heat can even be deadly. But what if heat isn't just something to avoid?

New research suggests that when use the right way, heat can actually be good for you, improving your health, boosting athletic performance, and even helping you live longer. From saunas to hot baths to heat training, scientists are discovering that exposing your body to heat may trigger some powerful benefits. My guest, Bill Gifford has been exploring this fascinating science.

He's a veteran magazine writer and editor who covers cutting edge health research. He's author of a book called Hot Wired, How the Hidden Power of Heat Makes Us Stronger. Hi, Bill, welcome to something you should know. Hey, thanks for having me, Mike. So this idea that heat is good for you. I mean, I've heard, you know, put a heating pad on it if it's sore or something. But this idea that overall health can be improved with heat is news to me. What is the argument here?

Yeah, so it actually surprised me as well because I am not somebody who instinctively likes hot weather, heat waves, summer, even. I didn't even like sauna five years ago. And we're told that heat is kind of the devil, that heat will kill us. And it's true that excessive heat can be dangerous, but there's sort of an emerging strand of scientific research and athletic knowledge that's now showing. that heat can be healing as well and it can even improve performance for athletes. And when you talk about heat, what is it you mean? What kind of heat? Like heat from a heater, heat from the sun, heat from going to a hot climate?

Like, what kind of heat are we talking about? I'm really talking about targeted, controlled, safe, emphasis on safe exposure to temperatures higher the normal, let's say. So, for example, the sauna, which is an ancient tradition in Finland, but also in many cultures around the world, they go into these spaces that are extremely hot, and they derive social, communal, just basic cleanliness-type benefits, but also health benefits. And so a series of studies from Finland, actually, from about 10 years ago, found that frequent sauna users had about 40% the rate of fatal heart attacks, cardiovascular disease, and all cause mortality. So your chance of dying is reduced by half if you go to sauna every other day. That's an astonishing finding.

And that changed the conversation around heat from something that's inherently dangerous to something that is dangerous in some situations and potentially healing in other situations. I've never gotten the sauna thing. I never understood it. I've, I've been in one and I thought, well, you know, it's really hot. It's really hot. Right. Can I get out of here? Can I get out of here? Because I don't like the heat. I mean, I don't see the pleasure in it. I, and I thought that's why people did it. Like, yeah, there was some vague health benefits to maybe doing it but that the vagueness of it all didn't didn't counter the fact that it's hot in here and I want out yeah and that's a natural reaction to any extreme environment I mean

it's the same reaction these people who go into cold plunges right it's like an instant panic and you want to leave and once you kind of fight through that there are some benefits that happen but interestingly I like a hot tub I mean I like a hot there you go I like hot water, but I don't like hot because then I sweat and then it's uncomfortable and sticky. You're sweating in the hot tub as well. What do you mean? You sweat when you're in hot water. Your body's natural response as your temperature becomes elevated is to try and cool yourself down

because we have this idea of homeostasis. We want to stay at a stable, within a stable temperature range. So your body is fighting to stay cooler. whether you're in a sauna or a hot tub. Oh, I didn't know that. It's just washed away in the, yeah. Well, that's kind of gross. I hope I didn't ruin the hot tub for you.

Well, it's just that now I know I'm sitting in a pool of everybody else's sweat. So I don't know. Maybe you just did ruin it for me. You know. Oh, sorry. Yeah, that's all right. But interesting point, though. The hot tub is actually more effective at raising your core body temperature than a sauna is.

And is raising my core temperature a good thing? Yes. Weirdly. You know, we're told that having a fever is bad and raising your body temperature is bad. But some good things happen when you get your body temperature slightly, slightly elevated. So we're talking like 101 Fahrenheit and some adaptations take place, which I can get into later. Well, let's get into it now. What are those benefits?

For starters, there are cardiovascular benefits. So your heart rate increases as your body, like I said, is trying to stay cool. So you send more blood to the skin, right? And so you have more blood flow. And then that in turn, in addition to the heart rate elevation, you get your blood vessels are dilated. So your circulation improves. So that's a good thing.

And then if you go a little deeper, even down to your inside your cell. There are these things called heat shock proteins. I call them like the maintenance department of your cells, but they're also like some scientists I talked to who said they're like the mommy proteins and they kind of take care of the other proteins, basically the machinery inside your cells and they clean things up and they keep your DNA intact and keep that from breaking down. So it makes you more stress resistant essentially on a cellular level. Pretty cool.

So you said earlier that people in sauna, the research shows that they have a lower mortality rate, that they, their health benefits. Because what's going on? Like, what is it that if I didn't go in that sauna, I might have died from that now the sauna is protecting me from? I mean, you're actually literally on point when you say protecting you from something you might have died from. this research started in Finland back in the 80s, and Finland had a huge problem with middle-aged men dying of heart attacks, sudden heart attacks, dropping dead. And so they did this huge study of cardiovascular risk factors,

and they asked them about all aspects of their lives, including sauna use. And so 30 years later, these researchers looked at the data and found that the men who said they use sauna the most, that 60% reduced rate of those fatal heart attacks. So it is literally protecting, it protected those guys from dying of a heart attack. So it's hard, it's heart, it's cardiac, it's cardiac issues.

Yeah, it starts with cardiovascular health. And then a lot of benefits radiate out from there. For example, they looked again at the data and found that the guys who use sauna every other day or every day, at about one-third the rate of Alzheimer's disease, that gets your attention. Well, this is surprising to me. I've never heard this about men in saunas before, but are there other ways to heat up or must you create a sauna-like experience in order to get these heat benefits you're talking about? Well, they're infrared saunas, which have a different kind of heat, but also have been found in Japan to have some cardiovascular benefits and have

been used actually to treat patients with serious heart conditions. But also just taking a hot bath has been found to have very similar benefits. So again, in Japan, a huge study found that people taking hot baths every night had reduced their cardiovascular disease risk by about a quarter, by about 25%. Are there other things? diseases or conditions that this is good for like does heating you up like inhibit cancer growth or I mean is there anything else or is it mostly cardiovascular stuff it's interesting so the Finnish studies which are the best sort of long-term studies of heat exposure in humans found that there was no effect on cancer but it kind of helped with everything else so not only heart stuff stroke Alzheimer's potentially psychosis.

They have fewer episodes, psychotic episodes in their life. But I'm going to go back to cancer, if you will, because it's an interesting topic. In Germany, for decades, they would use what they called whole body hyperthermia. So basically heating up cancer patients in a kind of infrared, little mini infrared sauna contraption, appeared to help their chemotherapy treatments be more effective. So that was a whole thing in Germany, heating up cancer patients.

Is it still? Well, now there's something called focused ultrasound, which is kind of an exciting new area of cancer treatment that's being sort of pursued here in the U.S., where you used focused ultrasound to, It's essentially administering very localized heat treatment on cancer tumors. And I think the idea broadly is that the heat sort of weakens the cancer cells and allows the medicine to penetrate them more effectively.

There are other ways to get hot other than sitting in heat. Like you can go to the gym and the gym is 72 degrees, but you could work yourself up into a sweat. Does that count? Yep. Oh yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting, you know, when we exercise, this is an astonishing fact. When we exercise, you know, we're producing all this energy in our muscles and our mitochondria. Only about 20% of that energy that we create is translated into motion or effort or lifting. The other 80% is heat. It's like a byproduct. There are, obviously, there are similar benefits to exercise,

but as we work out in that 72 degree gym, we get quite hot and we sweat, right? And our body's trying to cool us down. Athletes have found that there are adaptations that take place as we work out in hot conditions that sort of improve and extend on the benefits, on the inherent benefits of exercise. So you get a sort of a force multiplier effect if you work out in a slightly hotter situation. It's called heat adaptation. And it's very similar to the effects of sitting in a sauna or sitting in your hot tub or sitting in a hot bath. Well, it's interesting because there's been a lot of talk lately, and you mentioned it before, about, you know, the cold plunge of taking a

cold shower, putting your face in cold ice water. And that's just the opposite of what you're talking about. But they must be related somehow. If you dig into the science, The data supporting cold plunging is actually quite a bit weaker than the data supporting this targeted heat exposure than I'm talking about. And so that's not to say that you shouldn't do it, but I think the expectation that cold plunging is a great thing to do after like a strength workout, I think that's incorrect. There's a lot of research showing that jumping in cold water after you lift weights actually blunts your muscle growth. So you're blunting the benefits of the workout you just did.

Well, I can't say I'm sorry to hear that. I'm not a big cold plunge guy. I'd rather be in a heated pool, frankly. I want to ask you about, like, so what do we do with this information about targeted heating in just a moment? I'm speaking with Bill Gifford. He's author of the book, Hot Wired, how the hidden power of heat makes us stronger. And so, Bill, I want to get a sense of of like, what's the prescription here? You've talked about the benefits of a sauna, but not everybody has access to one or is likely going to sit in a sauna every day or every other day.

So what can you do? I mean, you can just take a hot bath, too, honestly, like, if that's where you're at. The hot bath, again, has been found to have many of the same benefits as sauna, if not greater, in fact. What about a hot shower? Not quite the same thing. Because you're not getting as much of a heat transfer to your body.

You're just kind of sitting in the sprinkling shower. But if you're actually immersed in the hot water in the tub, then you're getting your core temperature is going up. And you're getting those benefits of heat. You know, I think one of the things about sitting in a sauna is, I've never, I've been in a sauna once, but it's kind of boring. Like there's not much to do.

There's this interesting sort of cultural phenomenon that's kind of developed. I think it started in Germany, but they actually do these performances in a sauna. They'll have these sort of attractive performers come into the sauna and there'll be like 40 people in there. And they'll play music or they'll kind of dance around and they'll wave these towels like blasting heat, moving the heat, the hot air around the room. in your face. It's very intense. And then that's called Alf goose. It's crazy.

It's like a whole culture. There's competitions. There's costumes. There are people who do like miniature plays and skits in the sauna. I once sat in a sauna and listened to a singer, belt out an aria from the opera Tosca. And there wasn't a dry eye in the room. And we were all sweating, but like, it was powerful.

And so that cures the boredom problem. So just you're not just sitting there stewing in your own juices. You know, you've got something to sort of divert your attention. You're making it sound so appealing. It's very cool. Is there a benefit to when you're done and you step out back into the cool? Like, is that a rush or is that not why people do it? That's kind of like hitting yourself with a hammer and then stopping.

There's a little bit of the hitting yourself with a hammer thing. I won't lie, but there's a phenomenon. You almost get sauna drunk or sauna high. So if you go in to the hot room and then you either you cool off or you do a quick cold dip, you do that a few times. Many people have noticed. I noticed you get almost like sauna drunk, like you're, You're just a little bit euphoric.

You know, you don't really care about the things that were bothering you before you went in. And honestly, I noticed that. Well, it's certainly interesting, but does modern medicine typically, like if you were to ask people in the medical profession, they would, oh, yeah, we know about that. Or is this all fairly new stuff? You know, I think medicine is starting to take some notice of it. I mean, your doctor might or might not prescribe you sauna sessions. But one thing that I found that was really interesting is that what they call, again, whole body hyperthermia, basically heating you up to a certain level, is being actively researched as a potential treatment against severe depression. And there have been some like pretty striking. results. For example, there was a study done initially in Germany by, you know, German and American researchers where they put people in these same devices that I talked about for that they used to use for treating cancer patients. So they put very depressed people in these things,

heated them up to 101 Fahrenheit for an hour, which is, you know, not fun. I tried it myself. It's not fun. But then afterwards, their depression symptoms were cut in half. And even more, which is way better than any antidepressant drug. Antidepressants only work in about 20 to 40% of patients. Even better. They went back a month later thinking that the antidepressant effect would have evaporated, would be gone. And they found that they were still not depressed, still less depressed. and again six weeks later. So it lasted six weeks. And so that got some attention.

And then there are various studies happening right now. Other studies have come out since then kind of confirming this result, which is great news, I think. I would think one of the concerns, if you're using heat for the health benefits that it supposedly produces, that one of the concerns would be hydration because heat will evaporate water and that you could get dehydrated from doing the kinds of things you're talking about. You know, everybody walks around with a water bottle now everywhere, right? On the airplane, in a theater, in a restaurant, everybody's got their sort of emotional support water bottles.

And I was kind of shocked and amazed to discover that drinking too much over hydration, and again, this is related to heat in the sense that you need to hydrate to replace the water you lose from sweat, et cetera, overhydration can actually kill you or make you sick. So how does that work? Seems like you'd have to drink an awful lot of water for that to happen. If you drink too much water, these mechanisms in your body that regulate your fluid level and your salinity and all this kind of stuff, you can essentially dilute your body to a situation called hyponetremia, which basically means you're not salty enough.

you don't have enough sodium so that your cell membranes and neurotransmitters and things like that kind of stop working. It's a very serious situation. It's relatively rare, but it happened to Brooke Shields about a year ago, a year and a half ago. She nearly died. So we need to be careful around the hydration situation. But I think the big takeaway is that, you know, targeted, limited exposure to heat can actually have some benefits in terms of our physical, mental, emotional health. Well, you know, when I hear about heat, I think, well, that's something to avoid because, you know, heat can be dangerous and people get sick and die from exposure to heat. But I've never heard of all these health benefits you're talking about, and you know,

you're a well-regarded writer that clearly has researched this. I find it fascinating. I've been talking to Bill Gifford. He is a veteran magazine writer and editor who covers cutting edge. health research, and he is author of a book, Hot Wired, How the Hidden Power of Heat Makes Us Stronger. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Bill, great. Thanks. Appreciate the info. Thanks, Mike. This is great. I loved all your questions. This is great. It sounds too simple, but research shows that chewing gum can improve alertness and help you

stay focused, especially during long or repetitive tasks. In studies, people who chewed gum perform better on tests of attention and reaction time, particularly as tasks went on and mental fatigue set in. Scientists think it works because chewing gum increases brain arousal and keeps you mentally engaged, almost like giving your brain something small to do so it doesn't drift. There's even some evidence that mint flavors like peppermint may add a slight boost, possibly because they stimulate scent. But here's the catch. Chewing gum won't make you smarter or better at complex thinking. What it can do is help you stay in the zone longer. So if your focus starts to slip,

you might not need more coffee. You might just need a stick of gum. And that is something you should know. This program is produced by Jennifer Brennan and Jeff Havison. Executive producer is Ken Williams. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know. We've all heard the warnings about heat. On a hot day, it can dehydrate you, cause heat exhaustion, and in extreme cases, heat can even be deadly. But what if heat isn't just something to avoid?

New research suggests that when use the right way, heat can actually be good for you, improving your health, boosting athletic performance, and even helping you live longer. From saunas to hot baths to heat training. Scientists are discovering that exposing your body to heat may trigger some powerful benefits. My guest, Bill Gifford, has been exploring this fascinating science.

He's a veteran magazine writer and editor who covers cutting-edge health research. He's author of a book called Hot Wired, How the Hidden Power of Heat Makes Us Stronger. Hi, Bill, welcome to something you should know. Hey, thanks for having me, Mike. So this idea that heat is good for you. I mean, I've heard, you know, put a heating pad on it if it's sore or something.

But this idea that overall health can be improved with heat is news to me. So what is the argument here? Yeah, so it actually surprised me as well because I am not somebody who instinctively likes hot weather, heat waves, summer. even, I didn't even like sauna five years ago. And we're told that heat is kind of the devil, that heat will kill us. And it's true that excessive heat can be dangerous, but there's sort of an emerging strand of scientific research and athletic knowledge that's now showing that heat can be healing as well. And it can even improve performance for athletes. And when you talk about heat, what is it you mean? Heat, what kind of heat? Like heat from

a heater, heat from the sun, heat from going to a hot climate. Like, what kind of heat are we talking about? I'm really talking about targeted, controlled, safe, emphasis on safe exposure to temperatures higher than normal, let's say. So, for example, the sauna, which is an ancient tradition in Finland, but also in many cultures around the world. They go into these spaces that are extremely hot and they derive social, communal, just basic cleanliness type benefits, but also health benefits. And so a series of studies from Finland, actually, for about 10 years ago, found that frequent sauna users had about 40% the rate of fatal heart attacks, cardiovascular disease, and all cause mortality.

So your chance of dying is reduced by half if you go to sauna every other day. That's an astonishing finding. And that changed the conversation around heat from something that's inherently dangerous to something that is dangerous in some situations and potentially healing in other situations. I've never gotten the sauna thing. I never understood it. I've been in one and I thought, well, you know, it's really hot. It's really hot.

Right. Can I get out of here? Can I get out of here? Because I don't like the heat. I mean, I don't see the pleasure in it. And I thought that's why people did it. Like, yeah, there was some vague health benefits to maybe doing it. But the vagueness of it all didn't counter the fact that it's high.

in here and I want out. Yeah and that's a natural reaction to any extreme environment. I mean, it's the same reaction these people who go into cold plunges, right? It's like an instant panic and you want to leave. And once you kind of fight through that, there are some benefits that happen. But interestingly, I like a hot tub. I mean, I like a hot. There you go. I like hot water, but I don't like hot because then I sweat and then it's uncomfortable and sticky. and you're sweating in the hot tub as well. What do you mean? You sweat when you're in hot water.

Your body's natural response as your temperature becomes elevated is to try and cool yourself down because we have this idea of homeostasis. We want to stay at a stable, within a stable temperature range. So your body is fighting to stay cooler, whether you're in a sauna or a hot tub. Oh, I didn't know that. It's just washed away in the, yeah. Well, that's kind of gross. I hope I didn't ruin the hot tub for you.

Well, it's just that now I know I'm sitting in a pool of everybody else's sweat. So I don't know. Maybe you just did ruin it for me. You know. Oh, sorry. Yeah, that's all right. But interesting point, though. The hot tub is actually more effective at raising your core body temperature than a sauna is.

And is raising my core temperature a good thing? Yes. Weirdly. you know, we're told that having a fever is bad and raising your body temperature is bad. But some good things happen when you get your body temperature slightly, slightly elevated. So we're talking like 101 Fahrenheit. And some adaptations take place, which I can get into later. Well, let's get into it now.

What are those benefits? For starters, there are cardiovascular benefits. So your heart rate increases as your body, like I said, is trying to try to, to stay cool. So you send more blood to the skin, right? And so you have more blood flow. And then that, in turn, in addition to the heart rate elevation, you get your blood vessels are dilated. So your circulation improves. So that's a good thing. And then if you go a little deeper, even down to your inside your cells, there are these things called heat shock proteins. I call them like the maintenance department of your cells, but they're also like some scientists I talked to said they're like the mommy proteins and they kind of take care of the other proteins, basically the machinery inside your cells and they clean things up and they keep your DNA intact and keep that from breaking down.

So it makes you more stress resistant essentially on a cellular level. Pretty cool. So you said earlier that people in sauna as the research shows, that they have a lower mortality rate, that they, their health benefits. Because what's going on? Like, what is it that if I didn't go in that sauna, I might have died from, that now the sauna is protecting me from? I mean, you're actually literally on point when you say protecting you from something

you might have died from. This research started in Finland back in the 80s, and Finland had a huge problem with middle-aged men dying of heart attacks, sudden heart attacks, dropping dead. And so they did this huge study of cardiovascular risk factors. And they asked them about all aspects of their lives, including sauna use. And so 30 years later, these researchers looked at the data and found that the men who said they used sauna the most, that 60% reduced rate of those fatal heart attacks. So it is literally protecting, it protected those guys from dying of a heart attack.

So it's hard. It's heart. It's cardiac. It's cardiac issues. Yeah. It starts with cardiovascular health. And then a lot of benefits radiate out from from there. For example, they looked again at the data and found that the guys who use sauna every other day or every day at about one third the rate of Alzheimer's disease. That gets your attention. Well, this is surprising to me. I've never heard this about men in sauna. before. But are there other ways to heat up or must you create a sauna-like experience in order to get these heat benefits you're talking about? Well, they're infrared saunas, which have a different kind of heat, but also have been found in Japan to have some cardiovascular benefits and have

been used actually to treat patients with serious heart conditions. But also just taking a hot bath has been found to have very similar benefits. So again, in Japan, a huge study found that people taking hot baths every night had reduced their cardiovascular disease risk by about a quarter, by about 25%. Are there other diseases or conditions that this is good for? Like, does heating you up, like inhibit cancer growth? I mean, does there anything else, or is it mostly cardiovascular stuff? It's interesting. So the finished studies, which are the best sort of long-term studies of heat exposure and humans, found that there was no effect on cancer, but it kind of helped with everything else. So not only heart stuff, stroke, Alzheimer's, potentially psychosis. They have fewer episodes, psychotic episodes in their life. But I'm going to go back to cancer, if you will, because it's an interesting.

topic. In Germany, for decades, they would use what they called whole body hyperthermia. So basically heating up cancer patients in a kind of infrared, little mini infrared sauna contraption, appeared to help their chemotherapy treatments be more effective. So that was a whole thing in Germany, heating up cancer patients. Is it still? Well, now there's something called focused ultrasound, which is kind of an exciting new area of cancer treatment that's being sort of pursued here in the U.S. where you used focused ultrasound to, it's essentially administering very localized heat treatment on cancer tumors. And I think the idea broadly is that the heat sort of weakens the cancer cells and allows them the medicine to penetrate them more effectively.

There are other ways to get hot other than sitting in heat. Like you can go to the gym and the gym is 72 degrees, but you could work yourself up into a sweat. Does that count? Yep. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting, you know, when we exercise, this is an astonishing fact, when we exercise,

you know, we're producing all this energy in our muscles and our mitochondria. Only about 20% of that energy that we create is translated into motion or effort or lifting. The other 80% is heat. It's like a byproduct. Obviously, there are similar benefits to exercise, but as we work out in that 72 degree gym, we get quite hot and we sweat, right? And our body's trying to cool us, cool us down. Athletes have found that there are adaptations that take place as we work out in hot conditions that sort of, improve and extend on the benefits, on the inherent benefits of exercise. So you get a sort of a force multiplier effect if you work out in a slightly hotter situation.

It's called heat adaptation. And it's very similar to the effects of sitting in a sauna or sitting in your hot tub or sitting in a hot bath. Well, it's interesting because there's been a lot of talk lately, and you mentioned it before, about, you know, the cold plunge of taking a cold shower, putting your face in cold ice water, and that's just the opposite of what you're talking about.

But they must be related somehow. If you dig into the science, the data supporting cold plunging is actually quite a bit weaker than the data supporting this targeted heat exposure that I'm talking about. And so that's not to say that you shouldn't do it,

But I think the expectation that cold plunging is a great thing to do after like a strength workout, I think that's incorrect. There's a lot of research showing that jumping in cold water after you lift weights actually blunts your muscle growth. So you're blunting the benefits of the workout you just did. Well, I can't say I'm sorry to hear that. I'm not a big cold plunge guy. I'd rather be in a heated pool, frankly. I want to ask you about, so what do we do with this information about targeted heating in just a moment?

I'm speaking with Bill Gifford. He's author of the book Hot Wired, How the Hidden Power of Heat Makes Us Stronger. And so, Bill, I want to get a sense of like, what's the prescription here? You've talked about the benefits of a sauna, but not everybody has access to one or is likely going to sit in a sauna every day or every other day. So what can you do? I mean, you could just take a hot bath, too, honestly, like, if that's where you're at. The hot bath, again, has been found to have many of the same benefits as sonnet, if not, if not greater, in fact. What about a hot shower?

It's not quite the same thing. Because you're not getting as much of a heat transfer to your body. You're just kind of sitting in the sprinkling shower. But if you're actually immersed in the hot water in the tub, then you're getting your core temperature is going up and you're getting those benefits of heat. You know, I think one of the things about sitting in a sauna is, I've never, I've been in a sauna once, but it's kind of boring. Like there's not much to do.

There's this interesting sort of cultural phenomenon that's kind of developed. I think it started in Germany, but they actually do these. performances in a sauna, they'll have these sort of attractive performers come into the sauna and there'll be like 40 people in there and they'll play music or they'll kind of dance around and they'll wave these towels like blasting heat, moving the heat, the hot air around the room in your face. And like it's very intense. And then that, that's called alfguz. It's crazy. It's like a whole culture. There's competitions. There's costumes. There's people. There are people who do like miniature plays and skits in the sauna.

I went sat in a sauna and listened to a singer, belt out an aria from the opera Tosca. And there wasn't a dry eye in the room. And we were all sweating, but like it was powerful. And so that cures the boredom problem. So just you're not just sitting there stewing in your own juices. You know, you've got something to sort of divert your attention. You're making it sound so appealing.

It's very cool. Is there a benefit to when you're done and you step out back into the cool? Like, is that a rush or is that not why people do it? That's kind of like hitting yourself with a hammer and then stopping. There's a little bit of the hitting yourself with a hammer thing. I won't lie, but there's a phenomenon. You almost get sauna drunk or sauna. a high. So if you go in to the hot room and then you, either you cool off or you do a quick

old dip, you do that a few times. Many people have noticed, I noticed, you get almost like sauna drunk, like you're just a little bit euphoric, you know, you don't really care about the things that were bothering you before you went in. And honestly, I noticed that. Well, it's certainly interesting, but does modern medicine typically, like if you were to ask people in the medical profession, they would, oh yeah, we know about that, or is this all fairly new stuff? You know, I think medicine is starting to take some notice of it. I mean, your doctor might or might not prescribe you sauna sessions, but one thing that I found that was really interesting is that what they call, again, whole body hyperthermia,

basically heating you up to a certain level, is being actively researched as a potential treatment against severe depression. And there have been some pretty striking results. For example, there was a study done initially in Germany by, you know, German and American researchers where they put people in these same devices that I talked about, for that they used to use for treating cancer patients. So they put very depressed people in these things,

heated them up to 101 Fahrenheit for an hour, which is, you know, not fun. I tried it myself. It's not fun. But then afterwards, their depression symptoms were cut in half. And even more, which is way better than any antidepressant drug.

Antidepressants only work in about 20 to 40% of patients. even better. They went back a month later thinking that the antidepressant effect would have evaporated, would be gone. And they found that they were still not depressed, still less depressed. And again, six weeks later. So it lasted six weeks. And so that got some attention.

And then there are various studies happening right now. And other studies have come out since then kind of confirming this result, which is great news, I think. I would think one of the concerns, if you're using heat for the health benefits that it supposedly produces, that one of the concerns would be hydration because heat will evaporate water and that you could get dehydrated from doing the kinds of things you're talking about. You know, everybody walks around with a water bottle now everywhere, right? On the airplane, in a theater, in a restaurant, everybody's got their sort of emotional. support water bottles. And I was kind of shocked and amazed to discover that drinking too much overhydration, and again, this is related to heat in the sense that you need to hydrate to

replace the water you lose from sweat, etc. Overhydration can actually kill you or make you sick. So how does that work? Seems like you'd have to drink an awful lot of water for that to happen. If you drink too much water, these mechanisms in your body that regulate your fluid level and your salinity and all this kind of stuff, you can essentially dilute your body to a situation called hyponetremia, which basically means you're not salty enough. You don't have enough sodium so that your cell membranes and neurotransmitters and things like that kind of stop working. It's a very serious situation. It's relatively rare, but it happened to Brooke Shields about a year ago, a year and a half ago. She nearly died. So we need to be careful around the hydration situation.

But I think the big takeaway is that, you know, targeted, limited exposure to heat can actually have some benefits in terms of our physical, mental, emotional health. Well, you know, when I hear about heat, I think, well, that's something to avoid because, you know, Heat can be dangerous and people get sick and die from exposure to heat. But I've never heard of all these health benefits you're talking about, and you know you're a well-regarded writer that clearly has researched this. I find it fascinating. I've been talking to Bill Gifford. He is a veteran magazine writer and editor who covers cutting-edge health research,

and he is author of a book, Hot Wired, How the Hidden Power of Heat Makes Us Stronger. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Bill, great, thanks. Appreciate the info. Thanks, Mike. This is great. I loved all your questions. This is great.

It sounds too simple, but research shows that chewing gum can improve alertness and help you stay focused, especially during long or repetitive tasks. In studies, people who chewed gum perform better on tests of attention and reaction time, particularly as tasks went on and mental fatalities. set in. Scientists think it works because chewing gum increases brain arousal and keeps you mentally engaged, almost like giving your brain something small to do so it doesn't drift. There's even some evidence that mint flavors like peppermint may add a slight boost, possibly because they stimulate scent. But here's the catch. Chewing gum won't make you

smarter or better at complex thinking. What it can do is help you stay in the zone longer. So if your focus starts to slip, you might not need more coffee. You might just need a stick of gum. And that is something you should know. This program is produced by Jennifer Brennan and Jeff Havison. Executive producer is Ken Williams. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.