Stuff You Should Know - Does Whole-Body Cryotherapy Work?

Episode Date: January 28, 2016

Forty years after a Japanese doctor began using whole body cryotherapy to treat patients with arthritis; the technique has made its ways to med-spas and locker rooms throughout the West. But does it actually do anything? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry Rowland. So this is Stuff You Should Know. Hi, frozen body.

That's the second time I've been able to do that on the show. Do you remember the first one? Cryonics colon high frozen body. Yeah. Exclamation point. August 2011, but cryonics is not the same thing as cryotherapy.

No. So if you think, you guys are doubling up already. No, nope. Well, they could even toss out medically induced hypothermia. We did that one too. All different. Totally different.

Mostly different. Yeah. No, we're talking cryotherapy. It's specifically whole body cryotherapy. Yeah. Because cryotherapy's been around for a really long time. Have you ever had a wart?

No. Oh, you never had this happen to you. Well, actually I did have, I forgot I had the planter warts on my feet. Did you get them burned off? I did. Not pleasant. Yeah, and those are a bugger.

I used to get warts here when I was a kid. And I would go to the doctor and they would open a freezer and take out like a, this crazy metal thermos. No. Not a jar of warts that they collected. Yeah, I thought they feed them to you and that's how you get rid of your warts.

Is that an old wives tale? Yeah, I think it is. One of my mom would take me to the witch and that's how I would get rid of my warts. No, they would just take it, take a little swab of this stuff and like put the swab onto your wart and it would just burn it off.

Yeah. They burned it by freezing it. Yeah. Because they were using liquid nitrogen and it was so cold that it burns, it basically just burns tissue. You know what I actually have at home right now? What?

I have a spray can of medical freezing spray. Neat. Because I used to go to the doctor to get my skin tags removed because my body is just lousy with them here in my old age. And then you just finally just stole the can so you can do it yourself?

Didn't steal a can, I bought a can. You can buy this. Bought? Yeah, on Amazon. Bought? Yeah. Okay. And I got a little sharp clipper,

not nail clippers, but like... Scissors? No, not scissors. It's sort of in between a nail clipper and a scissor. It looks like something you get at a hardware store. Is it like scissors but then the ends bent at like a 45 degree angle? No, they look like just a pair of dykes

like in a toolbox, but they're for your toe and fingernail kit. I don't know what those are. I'll just show them to you. Okay. So anyway, I'm going to start blasting them and cutting them off myself or I'm going to have Emily do it.

He'll be... I'll let you know how it goes. Yeah, please take a video of this or Facebook Live it. Yeah, yeah. That's the new thing. Yeah, look out for that people. Facebook. It's their version of Periscope.

Yeah, I'm sure they don't really like that, but that's exactly what it is. Yeah, and we're going to try it out. Yeah, I'm sure, right? Medical burning of moles or skin tags, not moles. Bring your little clippers and your medical freezing spray on tour and I will film it and we'll just see what happens.

I don't know if I could get that through security. You just have to throw it over the metal detector and go as you go through and catch it on the other side. Is that the trick? I think so. Gotcha. That's what I learned in Boondock Saints. Oh man, what a movie.

Man, I've never seen the documentary about... Well, that's better than the movie. What's the name, Tony Duffy? I can't remember. I think it was. The bar owner turned Hollywood wonderkin turned guy who blew it all, right? Troy Duffy. The great documentary.

That's his name. It's Troy Duffy. Yeah. I want to see it. All right, so it's movie sidetracked already. Oh, cryotherapy, I'm sorry. So when you take liquid nitrogen, that's really how sidetracked I just got. Yeah.

That's not what we were talking about for a second. Cryotherapy. When you take liquid nitrogen and put it on your tissue, that's local cryotherapy. That's like a... That's... There's no question that that actually works and what it does. We understand it. Yeah.

Whole body cryotherapy is different. It's kind of this trendy new thing in like health and meta-spots where you basically get into what they call a cold sauna and are exposed to liquid nitrogen gas. Yeah. So supposedly, it has a whole range of health benefits, which should immediately set off your skeptical antenna. Yeah. If something like cures 10 ailments, it sounds a lot like snake old.

Especially when the ailments are very vague. Yeah. What I want is I want something that cures the one ailment I have. Right. Hey, it'll help with these eight things. Yeah. And I'm not faulting anybody who's saying like, well, we don't know how it works. We just know it works.

Yeah. A lot of Western medicine has no idea how their effective treatments work. They just know they do work. So there's... I have no issue with that. The problem with cryotherapy, as we should just say right off the bat, is there's really no scientific evidence that this works at all. Yeah.

It has maybe a little bit of an impact on inflammation, but we'll get to all that. I'm getting ahead of ourselves. Yeah. Don't spoil it. Sorry. I think I already did. Should we edit that part out? Yeah.

Let's go back in there. All right. But first, let's go back to Japan in the 1970s. Let's take the wayback machine, which I bet Japan in the 70s was a pretty fun place to be. Swing it. Yes. To the office of Dr. Toshima, is it Yamauchi?

And he was supposedly the first guy, the first doctor to actually use cryotherapy, and in his case, he used it to help treat rheumatoid arthritis patients. Still doing it. Oh, I'm sure. He has a clinic on an island called, I believe, Kyushu. Oh, I thought it was going to be Yamauchi Island. It might as well be, I'm sure. That guy's getting loaded these days.

I'm sure. Oh, money, not. Well, maybe both. Okay. High, high, high in Japanese scotch and money. Yeah. Japanese scotch is good stuff. But yes, it is.

Did you know, seriously? Um, Crown Royal Rye won, like, World's Best Whiskey recently. This is the second time he's told everybody. I'm just so astounded by it. I've yet to try it, actually. I know. Have you? No, but we'll try it on the road, maybe.

Okay. If we can get our hands on some. So Yamauchi was trying it with rheumatoid arthritis patients, and then it spread through Europe and eventually made its way over here, where it has become a very trendy thing. And of course, celebrities, if they're in on it, then you know it's the latest in maybe not greatest treatment. Because celebrities, they're just like us. Yeah.

Except they have more money to waste on frivolous things. So I love how it used kind of glossed over it, but how it got here. Apparently, in the Soviet bloc, they picked up on this treatment that was being used for rheumatoid arthritis in Japan, Soviet athletes. And you know, it probably wasn't by choice back then. They were forced into these things. Right. You know, like the all drug Olympics guy.

Like get down off the balance beam and get in that. Get in that cold sauna. Cold sauna. Yeah. But the whole idea that there's some sort of benefit, health benefit to cold, it doesn't lie with Yamauchi. No. It goes back quite a long way.

There's this whole idea that taking a cold plunge, cold water immersion. Yeah. Like the polar bear clubs. Yeah, in Finland, they call it Ava Tuinti. So they get in the sauna and they run out in their bear skin underwear. Yes. Because it's Finland. Yeah.

And they jump in the cold icy waters of the nearby lake and it's supposed to rejuvenate them and make them gasp for air as their body heals. Right. It's supposed to improve mood. Well. Increase your metabolism, do all sorts of crazy stuff. But this whole idea that has health benefits, I was very surprised. I figured I would find like, oh, the Finns were the ones who started this or maybe an

Iceland or something like that. I couldn't find anything that talked about the history of ice swimming further back than what this article comes up with, which is a guy in New York named Professor Sugerman. Sugerman. Yeah. Surely. Sugerman. Yeah.

Sugerman. But he is the Sugerman. Sugerman. Yeah. What was that in the 1800s when he was the human polar bear and he would get into the icy rivers in New York and he was a help guy. And so he said, this is helping my body out. You should do it.

Right. Even though you think I'm crazy. And by the way, Graham Cracker's cure masturbation. Is that a thing? Oh, yeah. Really? Dude, we've got to do like that whole road to Wellville thing sometime. Totally.

Yeah. Which is interesting. It was at Kellogg. Yeah, I believe so. From the serial Kellogg. Kellogg, but there was a Dr. Graham who came up with Graham Crackers. Yeah. Like there was a whole bunch of crazy thinking at that time that was really interesting.

I saw that movie way back when, but it's been a while. Anthony Hopkins, right? Yeah. And I think I wouldn't Matthew Broderick in it. I feel like it's been a while. Was it made in the late 80s? Yeah. Matthew Broderick is in it.

Or maybe early in his life. That's the one that he was in the freshman. Did you ever see that with Bruno Kirby and Marlon Brando? I saw part of that just the other day, actually. Oh, yeah? Yeah. And I thought how odd that Brando would agree to reprise his role from the godfather in a comedic way.

Right. Kind of like De Niro has done to lesser success. You know what else is a good Brando movie? Don Juan de Marco. Yeah, not bad. Yeah. I liked it. Yeah.

Although I'm speaking from like. When you saw it back then. I haven't seen it in a long time. Yeah. I bet it holds up. I bet it's very relevant. Timely and topical. They mentioned El Chapo all over the place.

So like you said, they have done some studies that found that doing the ice swarms helps reduce chronic pain. But I'll just go ahead and say this about all these studies. We're going to talk about a lot of them. They're just all over the map and none of them are very controlled or very good. Yeah. So it's hard to really make a judgment call when you're not doing the good research. So the jumping in a lake as part of a polar bear club to make yourself gasp.

Have you ever done that? Not jumping in a lake, but gone into like a cold water bath? Well we, yeah. I did it in high school in a frozen lake. Oh, so you have done that? Yeah. There was a church camp that had a big like 50 foot slide into the lake in the summer. It's a lovely thing.

And in the winter, all, you know, the guys were like, well, we're going to do it. All right. And we did it. And did you go, Jesus. No, I didn't. No. No. Were you like, oh, this is, oh, I mean, how long were you in there still?

I had no idea. Well, I slid in and then quickly swam to shore and got out and got warm and ended up on the cover of guideposts. Right. Shivering in your little polar bear skin bathing suit. Yeah. And by the way, people who sent in that cover of guideposts that they thought might have been me, good investigative skills because the way I described it, it could have very

well have been me, but it was not me. Yeah. That one's yet to be found. Yeah. So the, this idea of jumping in the lake, it's, it kind of, it's somehow not sure how made its way into sports medicine where it became very big, cold water immersion. Yeah. Like you see the NFL player sitting in like an ice tub after a game or LeBron thing.

Sure. He likes his ice baths. Oh, he does. Yeah. And the whole, the whole idea behind it is that you just exerted your muscles, right? When you exert your muscles, they become basically infused and swollen with blood. Right? Yeah.

So one of the reasons your muscles ache after exercise is because they're swollen. Like their, their tissue is, is just larger than normal and it causes this ache. Yeah. When you immerse yourself in water, the thinking goes, the hydrostatic pressure outside of your body draws the fluid toward your skin. So it draws it out of the muscles and eventually back into the blood vessels. So it creates it or it lessens that aching thing. Yeah.

The problem is, if you're using cold water immersion for that kind of thing, it doesn't really make any sense because cold water immersion creates vasoconstriction, which means it makes your blood vessels smaller, which would make them less apt to accept the blood from the muscles. Well, there's some people that think it's actually has the reverse effect and is not doing what it says it's doing, but like I said, the opposite. Did you see that study that I sent you? Which one?

The one that had like, it was the discussion part had just like a couple of different. I don't think so. Well there's this one study I came across and it was basically a survey of studies and it showed like this study found that these people's cycling ability after cold water immersion, like after not jump in an ice bath and then jump on a cycle. Like the day after their cycling ability dropped from like, you know, 13% to like 2%. And the only factor involved was cold water immersion. There's another guy named Joseph Costello.

He's an exercise physiologist from the University of Portsmouth in the UK. And he said that there's more evidence coming out that inflammation is actually part of the recovery process. So you don't want to stop your inflammation. You want to embrace it, I guess. Right. Well, one of the ways that your muscles adapt is by basically being torn and rebuilding themselves and they do that through inflammation.

Yeah. And that was by the way, I read an article from the Washington Post called the Big Chill. Yeah. Cryotherapy may be trendy, but does it work? It doesn't sound that way and not only does it not work like you were saying, like Costello is finding, there seems to be more and more evidence that it actually has a detrimental effect to where if you're an elite athlete, you do not want to do cold water immersion. Yeah.

All right. Well, let's take a break and we'll talk a little bit about kind of the cost and what's going on today with this stuff. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Okay. I see what you're doing.

Tell yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man.

And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yeah. We know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step, not another one, kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so

we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, Josh, a little bit of the nuts and bolts on cryotherapy these days. You will go, if you're in a big city, you probably already have a cryo spa. It's probably just some spa bought one of these machines and selling time in it. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't mean it's dedicated to cryo spotting. Well, maybe there's some. Sure. In the biggest of cities. In the biggest of cities. But you know, look it up on your internet machine and if you want to go check it out, you can. It will cost you about 40 or 50 bucks or you can get like a monthly membership.

I saw one in Minnesota, which I don't know why they just don't go outside in the winter and accomplish the same thing, but it was $450 a month for unlimited cryo therapy. And you don't want to use it more than once a day, so I did the math and that's still the savings of about 600 bucks, 550. If you win every day. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder how much it costs to buy one of those.

I'm sure it would pay for itself in 10 years. And I wonder if you can eventually just put a tabletop on it and double it as a dining table once you inevitably quit using it. Put a lamp on it. Yeah, why not? Yeah. So 40 or 50 bucks a pop and you will be in the, it's really, really cold and it's, I think that's an understatement.

Yeah. And it's gas. We need to be really clear. You're not in cold water. No. It's dry gas. And that's what saves you. Yeah.

From things like frostbite or freezing to death or getting hypothermia. Because that's right. It's gas. That liquid nitrogen when it's exposed to the warmer temperatures of the air and it's released into that thing, it immediately gasifies. Yeah. And we're talking negative 256 degrees Fahrenheit or 160 degrees Celsius, negative. That is colder than anything on planet Earth.

Right. So if you could find a liquid that remained liquid at those low temperatures, right? Yeah. You would basically immediately die when you immersed yourself in it. And the reason why gas, you can expose yourself to temperatures of gas like that rather than liquid is because liquid is, has a higher heat capacity, which means it absorbs heat more readily. Yeah.

And it's a great conductor of heat. So it wicks that heat away from your body, I think 25 times faster than air does. Yeah. So you can withstand this, this cold, cold temperatures again, negative 256 degrees Fahrenheit. Crazy. Right. That's the coldest temperature on Earth right there in that little cryo sauna. Yeah.

There's nowhere else on Earth that's even remotely close to that. No. But you can withstand it for a certain amount of time. Like, I think three minutes is the maximum time that they suggest. They say two to three minutes is, which I guess that's a plus. You pop in there, you're gone five minutes later. Oh yeah. If you own one of these things, it's like printing your own money, aside from the lawsuit payout.

And you will, like I said, two to three minutes at the most and it penetrates no more than a half millimeter below the surface of the skin in the case of the gas. And here are some of the things they say it will help with. Any time the first one is destroys toxins, then my radar is up. Yeah. Because that's such a broad claim, you know, increases metabolism. That's another one that should lose weight. So you'll actually lose weight, right?

Boost your immune system and slow aging. Like all of these sound like something you'd see on the subway ad in New York. What are the four broadest health concerns you have, human? Yeah. Well, that happens to take care of all of them. I'm surprised it doesn't say like helps you get sleep or helps you if you're getting too much sleep. Right.

There's probably a spot that advertises that. Probably so. And the reason that they can do this is because Chuck, it's unregulated. Yeah. There are some states that now offer suggestions on. I believe one state just one. Nevada. Yeah.

The one where a lady died doing it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's go ahead and talk about her. Okay. Because we're not laughing at her tragic accident because it was awful. We're laughing at the ridiculous lack of oversight on this extraordinarily dangerous machine. Exactly.

This is in July of 2015 at a place called Rejuvenate. Rejuvenice. Are they for real with that? Yeah, I think so. Maybe that's an all cryo spa. It's a med spa in Henderson, Nevada, and this lady who worked there went in one day and noticed that the machine was already on. And then on the floor next to the machine, she saw.

No, in the machine. Oh, she was still in the machine? Yeah. With it on. Oh, I didn't think you could lay down on this thing. I thought it just set you up with your neck sticking out. I think she crumpled. Okay.

Yeah. So this thing is kind of shaped like a barrel. Yes. It's not like a bed that you lay down in. No. I remember that one, or unlike old timey cartoons, where like a guy's taking a schvitz, like they go into that machine and like their head sticks out, but inside is basically like a wet sauna.

I don't know of what you speak, but I can picture it. Okay. Say you got into an iron lung and then they stood you up. Okay. Looks like that. Well, at any rate, she found her coworker, Chelsea, I have no idea how to pronounce this. Or Aiki? Aiki, Salvesian, found her frozen solid, dead, obviously.

And what they think might have happened was, because this lady knew how to work the machine, she used the machine on herself, worked there and was an advocate. So she knew the dangers. So they're thinking is it maybe she bent down to pick something up, got too much nitrogen in her body because you need that proper mix of oxygen and just passed out and then froze because they found that she died from aphyxiation, not from being frozen. Right. And she was, had she taken one, maybe even two breaths, it would have been virtually

pure nitrogen. And at that concentration or that lack of oxygen in the air she was breathing, it would just take one or two breaths for her to immediately lose consciousness. When she lost consciousness, she was using this thing alone, there was no one to see her. Which is why she didn't die of being frozen, she died from aphyxiation, it's that inert gas asphyxiation that we talked about in the lethal injection episode. Like it just takes one or two breaths and that's it.

Yeah. And now the state of Nevada has some recommended, they basically said, hey, why don't you just say you've got to be over 18. You've got to be taller than five feet, no history of stroke, seizure or high blood pressure, it's almost like to ride a roller coaster. Yeah. Except for the age thing. Not be pregnant and not have a pacemaker.

And these are just suggested guidelines in Nevada at this point. And they also said it'd also be good if in your office you knew CPR and you had defibrillators and a working phone that could call 911. Yeah. But again, all just recommendations at this point. And they also, Nevada also recommended that spas who offer cryotherapy post signs that say there's no scientific evidence that this does anything. So we'll talk about it.

And you've got to sign a waiver too that says I could die. Right. You want to talk about the signs after a break? Yeah. Okay. Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new I hard podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road.

Okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear.

And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush, boy band or each week to guide you through life step by step, not another one, kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye, listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. So Chuckers, um, there's again, there's a lot of people who are like, this is all whoey, which is weird that it doesn't do anything beneficial. But the only thing that it's been shown to even remotely have an effect on is inflammation. There's very little, um, discussion about whether it affects inflammation.

Um, and that's why Yamauchi originally was using this stuff to, to decrease the inflammation in a rheumatoid arthritis suffers, right? Yeah. So it definitely does decrease inflammation, but other than that, everything else is, um, kind of a bogus claim or at the very least, it's a claim that's not backed up by any real science. Yeah. And again, there, um, supposedly is mounting evidence that inflammation, uh, you don't

want to reduce necessarily as an athlete, right? And that could be a vital part of the process of healing and regenerating. That's right. Uh, so in 2015, there was one study, um, that only had 64 participants. And what I found was that they basically picked like young fit white dudes. Yeah. Uh, for the study and you just can't do that if you're going to get an accurate, uh, result. And I think that's what happened.

They got a result that most legit scientists have just had to throw out basically. Right. Well, the 2015 study was a survey and it pooled all of the, like all of the available studies and all the available studies together only came to a population size of 64. And yeah, like you said, they were homogenous basically. Yeah. So that's not good. There's not a lot of investigation about this stuff.

There's not a lot of oversight. Yeah. They found another 2012, um, study that said they found no difference between cryotherapy and just the regular ice bath that, um, like an athlete might take in the locker room. So why pay all this money to go to a cryotherapy session? So the people who say that say, well, your chances of hypothermia are a lot less. Because you're wet. Yeah.

Which makes sense. Yeah. Well, you're not wet in the cryo sauna. Right. So you're going to, your body's going to, um, maintain its, its temperature a lot longer. It's not going to lose its temperature or heat as quickly. Right. So it's not as dangerous as what some proponents would say unless you're wet going in.

Yeah. Which has happened. Yeah. And the story just is mind boggling to me. Which one? The guy, um, the sprinter? Yeah. Who, who really should have known better, right?

His name is, um, Justin Gatlin. He's an American sprinter for Team USA. Yeah. World famous world class sprinter. Right. Um, and he was training down in Orlando for, uh, Korea, the world games, I think the world championships. And it was hot because it's almost always hot in Orlando.

Right. Sure. And he goes straight from his workout to the cryo sauna. Yeah. Like what I want to know is why don't they have people with towels saying the one thing you don't want to do is get in here wet. Yeah. I just don't understand.

I don't understand it either. Like there's a difference between oversight and just being dumb. Right. And, but you can make the case that he was very dumb. He walked right into the cryo, um, sauna wearing his wet socks still. And I think possibly his wet shoes and they, he immediately got frostbite. Yeah. He got frost and he ended up getting, uh, uh, he was hobble basically, couldn't even

put on his running spikes. Right. So I think he had to withdraw. No. Or no, he actually ran and got, and lost to Usain Bolt of course. Yeah. Lost big time. Yeah.

But apparently he's back to form according to this, but the problem was he got frostbite from wearing his socks and his shoes and the, the blisters and the scars that formed after them were perfectly lined up with the tops of his socks and his running spikes because that's what he was wearing wet in the cryo sauna. So that's what, at least one person's died. You can get hobbled from it even if you're an elite athlete, if you're not using your noodle. Yeah.

What else? Uh, well, this one lady sued a company because, um, she got frostbite on her hands because they recommended she wear wet gloves. I have no idea why they would say this, but the recommendation was to wear wet gloves and she ended up getting frostbite in her hands. Wet gloves. So that was, it, it wasn't like accidental. They said you should wear wet gloves.

Yeah. So here's in, in this article, it's pretty great what the, um, spas reply was to this lawsuit. They said that, um, hey, she signed a liability waiver and she wasn't ensuring her own safety. So apparently she should have been smart enough to not listen to them when they told her to wear wet gloves is what this spas, um, reply to the lawsuit was. One of the thoughts on why this might help is that it might just be a placebo effect. Well, okay.

Yes. So now we really, I, I, it's been kind of obvious we're both a little skeptical of this. I think it's fair to say, right? That's right. I'm not being judgmental though. Like if you, um, want to try this and you feel like you're getting some sort of benefit from it, knock yourself out, just do it safely and smartly, please, um, but the, the skepticism is largely centered around the idea that this is a placebo effect, especially with things

like pain relief. Anything that goes beyond inflammation, uh, is, is probably a placebo. Yeah. They did a study in Australia in 2014. They had 30 young men, uh, put them through a, what they call it high intensity workout. I said they'd get sore and then they divided them up. They had, um, 15 minutes in one of three tubs, uh, very cold water, uh, and nothing like the cryotherapy even just cold water.

Okay. I think it said 50 degrees. Um, one body temperature water and then one tub with body temperature water with magic soap. They basically said this soap will be beneficial for your recovery. Yeah. The results showed that they all had equal benefits from the cold bath and the magic soap bath.

Uh, and they reported, you know, they all reported less soreness basically equal between the cold bath and the magic soap bath and the magic soap. Yeah. All three baths basically being equal. No, I think the, the normal bath didn't show as much improvement as the cold bath and the, oh yeah. You're right. Cold bath and magic soap bath.

Yeah. Cold or warm non-magic soap bath was whatever. Yeah. But that strongly suggests that there's a placebo effect in, in effect. Yeah. I kind of bungled that. It's okay, man. You get it.

Everybody still loves the Chuck. Okay. So, um, yeah, this one, this was a, this is weird. Do you have anything else? Uh, one more study from a lady named Dan LaRouche, uh, from the University of New Hampshire, uh, 2013 study. He found no difference in soreness of strength, uh, or strength between runners who iced and who didn't.

Um, and like you said, there was a slight drop in inflammation, but, uh, muscular benefits were actually, they, what they did was would ice one leg and not the other. Right. And they actually found muscular benefits from exercise were greater in the leg that didn't get iced. Right. So maybe having the opposite effect. Right.

Which makes sense. Again, like number one, they're finding out that inflammation in the muscles is part of recovery. It's something you want. Like you said, right? Yeah. And to, to work against that seems like that would reduce recovery and hence reduce performance afterward.

Like it, it might make your muscles ache less because they're not inflamed or engorged with blood. Right. But it's not helping your performance. Right. And that's ultimately what all the elite athletes are after. They're, they're looking to be better the next day rather than, you know, like, oh my muscles ache.

I don't want to feel them anymore. Yeah. I wonder how many things we are going to look back on today. Like we look back on ancient medicine. This is just like that road to Wellville stuff. Yeah. And think, can you believe that in the, in 2016 people would get into nitrogen gas chambers and freeze themselves?

Yeah. And I think that's why it's kind of like what, like this, this, I thought this was behind us by like a hundred years or something, but we're still doing it. You know why? Because I think as long as there are humans on the earth, they're going to be looking for that fountain of youth and they're going to pay and try things that seem silly. Yeah. But I will continue to keep an open mind about the possibility that this does have some sort

of overlooked effect that we're not, we don't understand yet because it is pretty serious. Yeah. Exposing yourself to that. Like that's just too pronounced of a difference than our norm. I bet at the very least it sucks to go through. I'm never going to try it. Yeah. Okay.

And I don't even mind being cold. Yeah. I think even if you don't mind being cold, you would mind this. It's probably like torture. Maybe so. It looks like it. Yeah. Yeah.

If you want to know more about cryotherapy, you can type that word into the search bar at howstiveworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for a listen and mail. I'm going to call this a painful shot. Hey guys, my name is Emily. Recently discovered your show and have been binge listening, walking around campus. I'm a freshman at Harvard University and she drops the H-bomb. The Crimson.

I recently listened to Anesthesia and loved it, but one thing stuck out. One of you, I believe it was me, said something along the lines of getting an injection into your gums is a worst experience. But I think I can debunk this. Oh no. When I was in my sophomore year of high school, I broke my nose in a high jumping accident. During track practice, I'm definitely afraid of needles. But when I went in to get it reset, I got five injections right up my nose.

Oh. Can you imagine a needle in your nostril? No, dude. No. I had to be pinned down because I couldn't control my hysteria. Not only that, they didn't even numb it high enough in the nasal bridge and I still felt my nose being reset. Plus, my nose is still crooked.

Man. I think it gives my face some character. Emily, I haven't seen you, but I bet it does. I think the lesson here is no high jumping. Yeah. She says, I think this feature gums thing. Sorry if it made you squirm, but I've heard you cover enough things that made my skin crawl to convince that you two are not squeamish.

Not true. No, that one's pretty bad. That is from Emily with a Y. Well, thanks a lot, Emily, with the Y. Well, I guess we kind of appreciate that. Yes, we do. Let's just go ahead and come out and say it. That was awesome.

If you want to see if you can make our skin crawl, give us your best shot. You can try it on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast.com and you can go type whatever you want into the home page of stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.