The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 14. Cold Water Exposure for Fat Burning, Mood Boosts, and More | Ultimate Human Short with Gary Brecka

Episode Date: November 30, 2023

Get weekly tips from Gary Brecka on how to optimize your health and lifestyle routines - go to https://www.theultimatehuman.com/ For more info on Gary, please click here: https://linktr.ee/thegarybrecka ECHO GO PLUS HYDROGEN WATER BOTTLE https://echoh2o.com/?oid=19&affid=236 BODY HEALTH - USE CODE ULTIMATE10 for 10% OFF YOUR ORDER https://bodyhealth.com/ultimate If you’ve listened to the podcast or followed Gary, you know cold therapy should be part of every biohackers toolbox. In this episode, Gary discusses the benefits of cold water therapy such as cold showers and ice baths. There are so many physical and mental health benefits of doing cold plunges. Exposing yourself to cold water for even 1-3 minutes a day can improve mood, increase brown fat activation for fat burning, and exercise the vascular system. Listen in as Gary breaks down the benefits, the science, and how beginners can start with cold showers, working up to ice baths and cold plunges for 3-6 minutes to gain these benefits in a safe way without overstressing the body. 00:45 Benefits of cold water immersion and how to start. 02:15 How cold water exposure affects the body's vascular system.  04:00 How to get the benefits of cold therapy on a budget. 05:30 Cold water therapy's benefits for fat loss, muscle recovery and overall health.  FOLLOW Gary Brecka: @garybrecka The Ultimate Human: @ultimatehumanpod Subscribe on YouTube: @ultimatehumanpodcast Disclaimer: The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice, and no doctor/patient relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast is at the user’s own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, I'm human biologist Gary Brekka. Welcome to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I try to do a couple of these short videos each week that give you practical, real-life examples that you could put to work in your life just by watching a 10-minute video without spending a dime and things that we could do to just change the trajectory of our life. We talk about everything from longevity, anti-aging, biohacking, and everything that makes regular human beings ultimate human beings. And I'm going to spend a few minutes just talking about cold water exposure, cold immersion, ice baths, cold showers, and what have you,

because there seems to be a lot of confusion about what temperature, how long should I take the shower before exercise? Should I do it after exercise? Should I cold bath before I go to the gym? Should I do it after I go to the gym? So in the next five or eight minutes, I'm going to try to distill the real science down to a practical application you could put to work in your life as early as tomorrow morning so you can start to harness some of the benefits of what we call cold water immersion or cold water therapy. So for those of you that don't have access to a cold plunge,

but you do have access to a shower, most of the cold water immersion experts agree that starting at one minute of as cold a shower as you can take and working your way up to three minutes is adequate to get the majority of the benefits from cold water exposure. You know, there's a lot of science out there that indicates that colder is not necessarily better.

So if you're a newbie to cold water exposure, and you've never done an ice bath, you've never gotten into a cold plunge, or the thought is really daunting about getting into a cold water exposure, you've never done an ice bath, you've never gotten into a cold plunge, or the thought is really daunting about getting into a cold plunge, you can start here. So you're going to take a shower, hopefully every day. And when you're taking a shower, at the end of your shower, lather up, rinse off, use your warm water, wash your hair, rinse completely off, step out of that stream of water, put the faucet on as cold as it will go, let the water run for about 30 seconds to a minute to get nice and cold, take a nice deep breath,

and then just step right into that stream of water as you're exhaling and just deal with it. You know that I think that aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort, meaning that the faster we pursue comfort, the faster we age. So if we actually expose our body to certain stressors called hormesis, the body reacts in a way that actually makes us stronger. So what are some of the benefits you'll get from just stepping into a cold stream of water for 30 seconds to a minute and working your way up to three minutes? Well, first of all, when your body gets exposed to cold water, three things are going to happen. Number one, you're

going to have a vasospasm. Your arteries are actually going to spasm down. They're going to clamp all the blood out of your extremity and try to force it into the core and also up to the brain in an effort to really save your life. Your body doesn't know how long you're going to be exposed to this cold water, so it tries to protect you by clamping down the peripheral vascular system. This is actually exercising your vascular system. We don't think about arteries as actually being muscles, but they are. They're smooth muscle. Remember, there's three types of muscle in the human body.

We have cardiac muscle, which is only found in the heart. We have skeletal muscle, which everybody knows about because you can see skeletal muscle. Remember, there's three types of muscle in the human body. We have cardiac muscle, which is only found in the heart. We have skeletal muscle, which everybody knows about because you can see skeletal muscle. And then we have smooth muscle, which is the muscle that actually lines our arteries. And this muscle is actually capable of dilating and also contracting. So we can exercise this muscle by exposing ourselves to cold. In fact, the more often you expose yourself to cold water, the faster you will adapt to cold weather, because the faster this vasospasm will occur. So now you step into this cold water stream, you try it first for 30 seconds, work your way up to a minute, and eventually work your way up to three minutes. Getting that water all over the top of your head, down your back, over your chest, try to get as much of that water to hit your body as possible. So now these arteries are going to spasm and they're going to

pull that blood and all of that oxygen into your core. So now I'm going to feed extra blood to my liver, lungs, pancreas, kidneys, and I'm going to push oxygenated blood right up to my brain. By the way, the only other time that there's a secondary oxygen transfer to the brain is during deep delta wave of sleep. You're also going to get an endorphin rush, a nice flood of dopamine, which is proven to last several hours longer than using other methods of enhancing dopamine. So you're going to get a nice dopamine elevation. So it's going to elevate your mood. It's going to improve your emotional state, try to be in a bad mood getting out of a cold shower. And then secondly, if you get cold enough, your liver is going to release something called a cold shock protein. And these are proteins that you have in your liver, they're released when you

expose yourself to thermal stress, both heat and cold. And these cold shock proteins when they hit the blood, they scour the blood of free radical oxidation. Free radicals are what cause cellular damage. And they've been known to even increase the rate of protein synthesis, which is muscle repair. Hey guys, as you know, I do not push products on my podcast or my social media, unless I use them in my everyday life. This is one of those products. Most of us have a very difficult time meeting our protein needs and certain protein sources like whey protein and others can be as little as 20% absorbable. This is 99% absorbable and it has

all of the essential amino acids that the body needs to build lean muscle to recover to improve our exercise performance and most importantly to repair after we have intense exercise so this is called perfect amino by body health it's like i said 99 absorbable it only has two calories eventually the caloric intake has virtually no caloric intake it will not break a fast it tastes amazing you mix it in water i take this literally every single morning if you're working out in a fasted state you have to take a full spectrum amino acid prior to your workout to preserve your lean muscle and make sure that you're recovering properly and again it will not break your fast so the caloric impact is virtually zero you get all of the full spectrum amino acids.

It tastes wonderful. I use it every single day. You can go to bodyhealth.com forward slash ultimate. That's bodyhealth.com forward slash ultimate and look for the perfect aminos. They actually come in capsules if you're on the go or it becomes in several flavors that they make in a powder, which I love.

It's flavored with natural um uh means of flavoring so there's no artificial sweeteners in here so this is one of my absolute favorite products give it a try if you're working out at all you need a full spectrum amino acid go to bodyhealth.com forward slash ultimate that's bodyhealth.com forward slash ultimate I love their lab tested products you can actually see the absorption rate for all of their products they've got great electrolyte protein combinations my favorite is the perfect aminos bodyhealth.com forward slash ultimate and now back to the ultimate human podcast now the question i get a lot is should i do cold plunges before i exercise

or after exercise well recent research really indicates, should I do cold plunges before I exercise or after exercise? Well, recent research really indicates that we should be cold plunging prior to exercise. If you ever watch my morning routine videos, you'll see that I get up in the morning, I walk right down the hall, I get myself a cup of black coffee, I go out on my balcony, I do three rounds of 30 breaths, I breathe first, and then I walk back inside. I hydrate and I go right back into my bathroom and I submerse myself in cold water for three minutes minimum, six minutes maximum. Try it. I promise you will not be disappointed. It will quickly become your drug of choice. The third thing that cold plunging does is it activates something called brown fat. Brown fat is our thermostat. Remember that we measure calories

by measuring heat. A calorie is actually a definition of a measure of heat. It's roughly the amount of energy that it takes to raise one cubic centimeter of water, one degree centigrade. So if calories are a measure of heat, then when heat is leaving our bodies, we can say that calories are leaving our bodies. This is why there is nothing that comes close to cold water immersion in terms of stripping fat off of your body. Activating brown fat, this special type of fat in the human body that turns on our thermostat to restore our natural body temperature, is one of the best ways to burn fat, visceral fat, in the body body so you're going to get a cold

shock protein release you're going to get an elevated mood an elevated emotional state you're going to get the activation of brown fat and you're going to get this beautiful peripheral vasospasm forcing all this healthy blood into our core and up to our head when you do take the step to actually getting immersing yourself in cold water, remember that water is about 29 times more thermogenic than air. This means that water releases heat from the body at 29 times the rate that air does. This is why you can get hypothermia in 72 degree water, but you can't die in 72 degree air. There are plenty documented cases of people, you know, being on capsized boats and what have you that met their die in 72 degree air. There are plenty documented cases of people, you know, being on

capsized boats and what have you that met their demise in 72 degree water, but your body can handle the thermoregulation in 72 degree air. So when you get into 50 degree water, for example, 50 degree water is removing heat from the body at 29 times the rate that 50 degree air is removing heat. So when you go and get into a cold plunge, the research says that colder is not necessarily better, especially when you're starting out as a cold plunger, 48 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit, three minutes minimum, six minutes maximum is plenty. So if you're new to cold water exposure

and you're gonna get in a cold plunge for the first time, remember, colder is not necessarily better. It's safe to start at 48 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit and do three minutes minimum, six minutes maximum. I promise you will get all of the benefits of cold water therapy. Welcome to your new drug of choice. It's just science. If you haven't had a chance to connect with me on theultimatehuman.com, head over there now and sign up for my free newsletter and all of the exclusive content.