00:00 - Chase (Host) The following is an Operation Podcast production. You're Uber driver, you're pulling up to your spot and you have to just quickly go. Hey, this is what cold plunging is all about. What would you say?

00:09 - Kristin (Guest) Yeah, absolutely. We can talk about norepinephrine and epinephrine, which is the same as noradrenaline, and adrenaline. We could talk about the big social media stat which is like 350% push of dopamine when you do a cold plunge, which is more than cocaine. There is a cascade of bliss and neurochemicals in the body that is going to make you feel in a heightened state and an excited state and when you get out you're going to have a parasympathetic rebound. You're going to have oxytocin if you do it with other people. So there's all these neurochemical reasons to do it.

00:38 But at the end of the day, I think stretching people to their greatest capacity and if someone's listening to this right now, knowing that you can do hard things, it is a mirror to everything else you do in your life creating a stretch of your window of tolerance. It's about giving you. You're deliberately doing something that's a bit beyond. You're finding your edges and you are settling yourself into that edge so that you can recognize how much stronger you actually are than you believe about yourself and how you can show up in the world with like you get a greater capacity from it. As you push your edges, you create resilience, right? This is like the point. This is the longevity piece. This is the way we show up in the world. Piece is being more resilient. Hey, it's kristin weitzel. I'm here on ever forward talking all about cold exposure therapy and why. It's amazing for you I don't always.

01:30 - Chase (Host) the one on my front porch took like a year off for personal health matters, and so I really want the audience to just kind of think about and listen is it worth it for me? And get clarity as to what matters to you, what are your goals, and maybe here's a way to kind of add it or optimize it a little bit.

01:48 - Kristin (Guest) Yeah, yeah and a lot of what. This is all a great opener, but I think a lot of what we see in the landscape of specifically cold too is the sensational nature of it. On like the gram right, it's like Instagram and cold plunging and there's like a famous you know reel or something, where the guy is this like double headed axe and is jumping off a fjord, you know, into the cold water. That's like hundreds of feet below.

02:10 Yeah, it's like you know, and it makes it a little unapproachable to most people and specifically to females.

02:16 I work with a lot of women who are like okay, that's just like too much.

02:19 It's like the the dawn of biohacking, when ben greenfield was like I'm injecting things and red lighting my testicles and you know, and it just seemed like a lot of risk in there.

02:28 But what I really see and what I really want to say to the audience and anyone who's listening is we're going to talk about cold and we'll talk about heat, and these really are tools that have existed for thousands of years and extremely shifted the way that people did health and well-being before any of us who are alive on the planet today. And if I'm thinking about it from the landscape of your audience, it's like what makes us able to be super present with ourselves, with our lives, with our families, with our friends. And I think that there is something not just think. I know that there is something to the landscape of cold, the landscape of heat and even breath, which will come up as we talk about these modalities. That is about presencing yourself and really understanding where you are at in that moment Because, as you know, when you get in a cold tub specifically, there's nowhere else you can be Right, and so checking in and understanding how to sit in that space and get the message, get the message that your nervous system is giving you.

03:24 - Chase (Host) Yeah, yeah so honestly, uh, if you want to stop listening right now, I think that is just such a great, well-rounded, general approach to this subject matter. Um, I mean, that alone is extremely valuable, so huge takeaway already.

03:38 - Kristin (Guest) Thank you.

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04:52 You have this incredible kind of analogy. You had a social media, I think, a real or a recent post about becoming a nervous system DJ. I think that's such a great way for us to kind of wrap our head around this. Talking about nervous system resilience, you talk about tuning into your nervous system like a DJ with all the controls, the beat bop, boop, bop. You know knobs here, twisty do there it's a very technical term twisty do. So I would love for you to kick things off by kind of describing for us how can my audience really start identifying which channel quote they're on sympathetic, parasympathetic, uh what those are, what they feel like and what's your go-to strategy to switch gears in that, in that DJ?

05:33 - Kristin (Guest) system. Yeah, I love it. I love this. Yeah, Um, the nervous system DJ thing is funny, and it was meant to be funny in some way, but it's literally what we are doing when we learn to be very adept at the ways that we can breathe and be within our nervous system, right? So you hear this phrase and expression maybe some people have heard it already that the breath is the remote control to the nervous system. And when we are expanding ourselves by putting ourselves in cold and heat, we're going to be using the breath. And so how do we become? And this is?

06:04 I have over 300 coaches that have been through my certification program, and what I'm intending to teach them to do is be the nervous system DJ in the room. And that might be with their one-on-one professional athlete. That might be with, um, uh, you know a mom who's like a hundred pounds overweight, who has anxiety. It almost doesn't matter as long as you're tuning into the bio individual person who's like there. Like I say, context is king and safety is queen, Right? So what's the context of the person? How do we lean in?

06:31 And this nervous system DJ thing, I think, is like let's not take ourselves so seriously, let's not all try to be our Lord Huberman and get in the technical science all the time with like three hours of podcasting about, you know, the, the, the afferent fibers although we can talk about that stuff too but let's let's talk about what's really going to make effective and positive change, and that is the more understanding you have about how your nervous system functions. And where you get into fight or flight or freeze, or when you're down regulated, which is, you know, parasympathetic, it's rest, digest, socialize, have sex. Those things are really important in our lives. How do we get to navigate those pieces of the puzzle? And we can do that relatively easily if we understand that when we're breathing through our nose, we typically will elicit more of a parasympathetic response, and when we're breathing through our mouth, we will tend to energize ourselves or put ourselves in a more excitatory state. And so how do we play with those variables, based on what we need and what's going on around us?

07:31 And then, like I always say to people, like the coolest thing you can do if you want to see nervous systems all over the place is go to the airport a little early before your flight, right, and you can kind of see like the cooing baby that's hanging out at the gate that doesn't really care that there's a lot going on and they're just like chilling. Then perhaps that's like your parasympathetic nervous system. And then you have the person who's like the gate closes in five minutes, I have six bags and four kids with me and they're like running down, traipsing through the hallways trying to make the flight. And that's your like sympathetically charged nervous system. And just looking at that and looking at other people without judgment, just like as nervous systems in space, you start to say, ok, I can see how these people are reacting and responding.

08:10 And then the other piece that's important to know don't get lost in the science here, but I think it's important. We talk about the vagus nerve a lot social media in the news, et cetera and when we look at that, it has 80% afferent fibers and that means afferent fibers are coming from the body to the brain. So we think that we can think ourselves out of every single situation where we're mistaken. Right? If we want to really be activating our parasympathetic nervous system, if we want to understand the body and the brain and our thoughts and feelings, we need to understand actually how we feel.

08:45 Like body scan, I feel warm, my heart is racing those kinds of things we have to understand how we feel, and those are all like nervous system qualities. So we get good at noticing ourselves in the mirror, or perhaps interoceptively, which just means what does your body feel like it's going on in it inside, and I also have done that a lot, by looking at other people and saying, oh okay, I can see how this person is like absolutely disassociated right now, like in the ice bath. So how can I work with that system to bring them back to wholeness, downregulation, et cetera.

09:16 - Chase (Host) I had to do a quick fact check or a re-remembrance check for me.

09:20 I recently heard that vagus nerve is Latin for wandering, so vagal vagus is Latin for wandering roaming, which is a perfect way to just think about really how all the nervous system kind of just connects and wanders into this one place, the vagus nerve.

09:37 That then directs it to the thought process maker, the decision maker, the brain. Most people don't know this, that we think the brain is the one driving the ship, but we get so much feedback the other way. So it kind of begs the question of is our brain really in charge as much as we think about, or is it getting these signals to kind of really guide the decision-making process? Maybe more so than we might want to admit, which is just a great another segue into there are so many other things happening to the body at all times that if we learn how to just tune in and sit with it and kind of feel it, we can really understand the direction that our body is trying to to take us instead of, like, always fighting, which is then why we get into such high stress, high anxiety, panic attack, you know ulcers, you know so many different things.

10:24 - Kristin (Guest) Yeah, absolutely. And the you know it's like, if we look at the system, like one every 200th of a millisecond our body is checking in our fascial tissue, our skin, the hairs on our arms, like all of it is checking in. Our body is hey, what's going on in the environment? Hey, what do I smell? Hey, how does the eye gaze look of the person who's sitting across the table? My body's recognizing how dilated or not dilated your pupils are, my skin temperature, texture. All of that's happening every 200th of a millisecond.

10:54 So if we think that we're actually thinking through our day, this isn't to say we aren't like smart and we can't control the controllables, like Joe Dispenza would say. You know, you can shift your thoughts, you can change your, your body's ability, but our body is so beautiful and it's doing all these things autonomically. So if it's checking in every 200th of a millisecond and then maybe 50 of those check-ins are turning into me saying, oh I, I feel nostalgic, I feel sad, I feel warm, I feel happy, it's sort of the aggregation of all of those check-ins Then our environment is really going to and the stimulus that we have is really going to matter, right, our level of how safe we feel sitting in a room, like I feel quite safe sitting in a room, having a conversation with you, and my body is recognizing you know, whatever your stance, your posture, you're paying attention to me, the eye gaze, all of it and it helps with the connection that we then have. So it's like such an important piece of the puzzle. And also when we look at breath or cold or heat, these are ways that we can shift and state change the body and I've learned very early on in sort of like my breath work career which sounds so funny to even say my breath work career, my breath and cold coaching career that it's not about.

12:02 You know, thoughts do become things, but before the thoughts it's very chicken and the egg. I can breathe myself into feeling differently, which is going to breathe me into thinking differently. And if we want our thoughts to be the thing that's going to actually manifest, then like that would mean that if I breathe myself better, differently, more biomechanically correct during the course of the day, and if I tried things that stretched my window of tolerance, like cold and heat, then I actually can change my thought pattern over the long haul and feel like a different person. Yeah, is that? Does that track, all of those points you know it's like so fascinating.

12:35 - Chase (Host) Yeah, yeah. Fascinating is an understatement, Absolutely yeah. So I'd love to kick things off, like I said, with a cold therapy first. Yeah, High level. Walk us through what is happening in the body and brain during cold exposure, If you had to. Just, you know your Uber driver. You're pulling up to your spot and you have to just quickly go. Hey, this is what cold plunging is all about.

12:54 - Kristin (Guest) What would you say? Yeah, absolutely Cold plunging is about creating a stretch of your window of tolerance. It's about giving you you're deliberately doing something that's a bit beyond. You're finding your edges and you are settling yourself into that edge so that you can recognize how much stronger you actually are than you believe about yourself and how you can show up in the world with like. You get a greater capacity from it, and as you push your edges, you create resilience. Right, this is like the point. This is the longevity piece, this is the way we show up in the world. Piece is being more resilient by doing things that push your edges.

13:33 - Chase (Host) I was expecting maybe more of a scientific you know roundabout, but I think that again, just a great holistic way to look at it and I think, a way that is the most meaningful for most people and how we're actually going to get more people involved in this. So, yeah, love that answer.

13:49 - Kristin (Guest) Yeah, and I mean we can talk about norepinephrine and epinephrine, which is the same as noradrenaline and adrenaline. We could talk about the big social media stat which is like 350% push of dopamine when you do a cold plunge, which is more than cocaine. There is a cascade of bliss and neurochemicals in the body that is going to make you feel in a heightened state and an excited state and when you get out you're going to have a parasympathetic rebound. You're going to have oxytocin if you do it with other people. So there's all these neurochemical reasons to do it.

14:20 But at the end of the day, I think stretching people to their greatest capacity and if someone's listening to this right now, knowing that you can do hard things, it is a mirror to everything else you do in your life. What other practice can you do besides a two or three minute cold plunge that is going to then sort of you extrapolate it. It's a mirror to everything else you do in your life and you have so many. I put five thousand people, one on one, in cold water in my life and it's growing all the time. And those people get out many of them and they go and they reorg their company and they restructure, or they ask the girl out, or they get the divorce, or they go do the big thing that they weren't quite sure that they could do, and it's it's not coincidental. It's like, oh, I can do something that's actually bigger than I thought I can do, and I think it's a really strong reflection from coming out of the cold.

15:06 - Chase (Host) Yeah, yeah. I think that is fundamentally the most important takeaway about cold plunging is people. They're trying to find the science they're trying to find, like, what is it really happening? What is really happening to me and my body? That is going to move the needle most for me, but I think most people don't wrap their head around. First and foremost, it's you choosing to do something uncomfortable.

15:28 When's the last time most people have chosen to do the hard thing? Now, I know my audience. That's not you. You're choosing to do the hard thing or the less easy thing most days, but for the public out there general public, it really is. Just can you commit to doing something you really don't want to do, but know that after the fact you are going to feel more alive, feel more empowered because you chose that, you kept a promise to yourself and then you have the confidence to be able to do that in other areas of your life. Take away all the science, all the brown fat, all the, all, the, all the things you know, all the enhanced thermogenesis, whatever, enhanced recovery, but you know just fundamentally, that's what it is.

16:10 - Kristin (Guest) Yeah, and you get all those benefits. You get a boosted metabolism, like 200 for 36 hours. It's like a 200 plus percent boost in your metabolism where if you think, okay, well, I want to be able to increase the way that I'm burning calories, then maybe I should be doing cold plunging two or three times a week. Right, there's when I tell I have many women who come to me about like weight loss and re-comping their body and it's like they don't want to get in colds, but then they're like oh wait a second, my metabolism is being boosted and I be a trade-off.

16:44 Yeah, for sure, and it's definitely you already know this, but it's definitely um a piece of the puzzle. That's like it doesn't mean you have you can throw out your nutrition profile or that you shouldn't be lifting heavy things. It's like all important to do. It's just I I've done a lot of biohacking. I lift a lot of heavy weights, I do a lot of things right, probably more than the average bear and probably beyond what I should be doing. Just meaning I, like you know, when you're a biohacker, you test out all the weird things, you got to have some big fails and all of that, but there's no two modalities and I've tried a lot of modalities. There's no two modalities that I put together, like understanding, breath and cold, that have effectively and efficiently changed and transformed my life. And the one thing that, like I, we got to shout out is and I talked about this briefly yesterday, you know this the epidemic that's rising now and what I continue to see in the youth of America is really a lot around mental well-being and challenges in that area and loneliness, own bodies, our own being, as well as with like smaller communities and do fun activities together and bond and maybe non-alcoholic settings, the more that we are in connection, the less lonely we are, and we know because of the science.

17:52 When it comes to mental, emotional and I'm happy to talk a little bit about the last couple of years of my life, I've gone through the biggest anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation that I've ever imagined. I never imagined that I would go through and these tools were the things that continued to keep me going Right, and then the mindset of ever forward. It kept me going and so for anyone who's out there who might be struggling with those things, it doesn't have to be sub 40, freezing cold ice bath 10 minute, like. It doesn't have to be so hardcore. You could start with a cold shower just to feel better.

18:24 You know, I was coming off of a breakup. I was coming off of a lot of heartache, grief that triggered a lot of things from my childhood. And how do we navigate feeling anxious I mean, there's so much of that and giving ourselves this natural chemical boost versus medications and all those other things. Not to shun medication or whatever people are doing in the world of plant medicine, altered states, but like, how do we start with our body first? And a tool that's as easy as like cold water, yeah, yeah.

18:49 - Chase (Host) So true. Well, I'm so glad to hear you're on the other side of it, or?

18:51 - Kristin (Guest) at least navigating through it enough to talk about it. Thank you for sharing that. For sure, yeah.

18:55 - Chase (Host) Of course.

19:06 - Kristin (Guest) So I do want to get into you know, let's get a how cold exposure directly impacts metabolism, yeah, yeah. So the big thing is that that stat is like you're boosting your metabolism for 36 hours and that's like cellular metabolism and also like caloric burn. So if we are organizing ourselves to get in a few times a week, this is. This is why it's great to do a one-off, because you will get a little bit of benefit. But most people who show up to be like I just want a picture of me in a cold tub they're not long-term affecting their metabolism. So, setting up a consistent practice for yourself, which means finding a way to have cold in your life If you live in a colder climate, awesome. If you have an ice bath at your house, awesome. Otherwise, finding a way to do that so you can have a consistent practice so that your metabolism can stay boosted, can stay higher, and that's just going to help your overall body. Your cold shock proteins are going to fold better, typically around sub 40 degrees in the tub, if you're all measuring temp.

19:52 - Chase (Host) We're going to get to that. I have a specific question about cold shock proteins, so I'm glad to hear it, yeah, and then all the cellular stuff is going to happen in a better way and we get this.

19:59 - Kristin (Guest) You know, you see this litany of benefits from a cold tub. It's because the more your cells can speak to each other sweetly and, you know, easefully, the more you're going to get benefit out of doing these practices. So I see so much. I mean I've trained a lot, but in the times that I've had consequential, like day after day or five days a week of cold plunging, that is when my body sort of physically feels like it's in the best shape ever. So just your, your, the shiver response is going to burn more caloric load and you're going to get a metabolism boost every time you're doing it.

20:30 - Chase (Host) Walk us through the shiver response. What is that?

20:32 - Kristin (Guest) So the shiver response is like the money shot. Can you say that I don't know.

20:35 - Chase (Host) The shiver response is like it's a safe space yeah.

20:37 - Kristin (Guest) Yeah, the shiver. I know I coach a lot of contrast therapy events and rituals and things like that. And the number one mistake I see people making if we're looking to optimize, okay, do what you want and have fun with your friends and go going hot and cold, but if you're looking to optimize, the number one thing I see is people will be like, okay, I'm going right from the cold tub, I just like run into the sauna, right, because I'm cold. I get out, I'm starting to shiver, it feels icky or whatever people think, and then they run into the sauna to just blunt that response. But what they're actually doing is you just did this really hard thing of being, let's say, three minutes in 40 degree water and then you're missing the most important piece, which is getting out and having some sort of a shiver response. Because the shiver response is a micro contraction of the muscles which is also sending a signal to the body to get better, faster, stronger, just meaning, okay, let's have that. We have thermogenesis happening. Okay, next time Kristen does this crazy thing or Chase does this crazy thing, let's make sure that we optimize the cells. Let's get the, the cold shock. Proteins are folding better. Let's just make it. So it's all um more Brown fat. You know all the things are happening in the body that are giving us the the better, faster, stronger combo. So we want the shiver response.

21:47 That's where, that's why I say it's the money shot. It's like it's where we get the body gets the signal, and if you go into the sauna and you blunt that response, you're you're blunting the shiver, you're blunting the notion that the body gets the signal, and so that's to me like you're missing the mark. And in reverse it's the same. If you come out of the sauna and you don't give yourself a little time to sort of sweat cool off, have that you know, reverse thermogenic response, then we get in the cold water and you feel like, oh, this is easy now. Then we're missing the point Right. So I say three to five minutes of a break between cold and heat and end on cold, if you can. Suzanne Soberg would say end on cold, but I like to end on cold because I think driving home, staying cold, really forcing the body to heat itself back up over the long haul, is going to give you the biggest benefit.

22:32 - Chase (Host) So if we're again going for general optimization here, we want to make sure after a cold plunge we're getting three to five minutes of just letting our body shiver before we get in the shower and get ready for the day. Before we get into the sauna we're doing, maybe, contrast therapy before we do anything. We want our body to have that window to. Is this to maximize optimization benefits? Or if we do it, if we do a change state any sooner, are we negating any benefits or is it again just not maximization?

23:02 - Kristin (Guest) super great, it's a super question. Um, no one's done enough research to say, like, at what exact minute mark? Is it three minutes, is it five minutes? Is it two minutes? You actually are like, okay, you got the benefits, you're good to go, move on to the next phase. So I try to just from watching so many bodies and being in the space for so long it's like eight years now I've been doing this it gives me the opportunity to see sort of where a typical shiver response starts in the average human and where it falls off, and then that the shivers sort of completed its cycle enough for them to get in. And and I love, like you know, none of us would be here in this space doing as much as we are if it wasn't for Wim Hof, and Wim Hof quite often with instructors and like just modeling after what he's done. He's like climbing mountains in bare feet or flip flops or, you know, shorts and no shirt.

23:49 - Chase (Host) Honestly, I think. Do we have Wim Hof to thank or more Columbia? I didn't know who Wim Hof was until I saw him in all the Columbia ads.

23:56 - Kristin (Guest) Like they were using him to like advertise their parkas. Yeah, totally. I don't know, like 15 years ago I literally thought it was an actor.

24:00 - Chase (Host) I'm like like 15 years ago I literally thought it was an actor. I'm like. Oh no, this guy's for real. Yeah, so shout out. I forgot her name the CEO of Columbia but she was doing these amazing marketing this video is commercials with him. So he was barefoot in a loincloth, basically running through the Arctic circle.

24:15 - Kristin (Guest) Totally, and so for his crew, the people who study with him.

24:18 There's a lot of that like doing horse stance, doing movement, doing like getting unique. You don't want to get hypothermic, right, I want to go into hypothermia. So you're going to be doing a little bit of like movement. I see people get out of the cold plunge in Texas.

24:29 Where I live in Austin, it's a hundred degrees out and they're like doing pushups and sit ups and squats and it's all cool, like do that if you want and you're you're using the exercise and the heat that you're making from the movement and it that you're making from the movement. And it's blunting a bit of the response, like what I really want people to do is be like let me just stand here and like navigate what the full shiver experience feels like and just be in it. So I'm fully getting the signal. I'm not blunting anything. I just did and and I'm also, you know, playing with it, like keep not taking myself so seriously. And also, if you're on a mountaintop and you're freezing cold, then by all means please do all the jumping up and down and jumping jacks you need to do to stay warm and survive it. Exactly, exactly, yeah, yeah.

25:08 - Chase (Host) All right. So I was wondering when we were going to get into this. You know, kind of poking fun a little bit, but I do see a lot of that. I see people trying to do all they're trying to just squeeze as much blood from the stone. Whether it's for actual purposes or for social media, we'll never know, but it's.

25:24 I'm going to the cold plunge, I'm doing burpees. Right afterwards I'm running a 5k, I'm in the, the, the sauna, you know sprinting. I'm doing all of these things. I'm the hybrid athlete and biohacker on you know three minutes, the first part of my day. You're going to get some benefit, right. But again, for general optimization purposes, going from cold plunge to any exercise, are you saying we're missing the mark? And also, do we know, is it really person to person that kind of shiver response timeline? Is it really just the obvious physical cue of my body stopped shivering, so therefore I'm kind of done with it? Is it a just general sensation? How does the average person really know when that experience has ended for them so they can go into whatever next thing they want to do?

26:09 - Kristin (Guest) Yeah, yeah, awesome.

26:10 I think it's like you may, you may like it may stay a bit cold in your body and you might have a light shiver response, but I think you want to wait through the let's call it the worst of it.

26:20 You know the worst, best of it, you, you know the worst, best of it. You're going to wait through sort of the heaviest part of the shiver to get to the other side and then you'll know that you might feel a little cold or you might be cold as you go into your day, if you like. Even if you take a quick shower, get dressed for work, put on your clothes and then go to the office, you're like I'm a little chilly in the car still because your body's still navigating that shift. So I think it's waiting through that, that best, worst part of the shiver, and feeling into that and then going on with your day. And then the whole other question is like what are we doing after? Yeah, there's a big conversation, especially in like workout culture, where it's like pre cooling before you train, which is like it's awesome and I think it really. You know there's some it's smaller sample sizes, but showing specifically for men, boosting testosterone, um, and going from cold going to a workout, yeah.

27:03 Yeah and that, and he will talk about this as well but it's like blunting, blunting hypertrophy. If you go in the cold right away after a heavy strength training session and Dr Mike T Nelson has done a bit of study around it it's like if you're like I'm sweating, I'm exhausted or it was such a tough workout I just want to like throw myself in and out in 1520, 20 seconds, it's not detrimental to the hypertrophic effects.

27:27 - Chase (Host) But isn't that so? Um, I had sell to Stefano on the show, I think like a year or two ago and we were talking about this, and he was flat out just saying, like the actual negative net effects of a hypertrophic response, of cold plunge after a workout, and particularly a like high rep hypertrophy focus workout, is so minuscule again for the general public it's really not worth warranting, unless you're a professional bodybuilder or your primary goal is I'm trying to just get as as big and dense and grow as much muscle as possible, then maybe increase the window, but that's not really the case. Am I hearing correctly?

28:00 - Kristin (Guest) Yeah, you're hearing me correctly and also, like you know, recognizing that 80% of the people that I work with one-on-one in the space are females that are getting to the gym to train on heavy weights at the best they can, two to three times a week, and I just don't want anything that's going to like pull from them. But yeah, if you're not in clear heels or, you know, super tan on a stage flexing all your muscles and parts and glutes for an audience, men or women, men or women, yeah, men, in clear heels I'm ready for that, Then I think it's like it's a less of a worry or concern, it's just, it's a.

28:29 Really I get that question a lot.

28:32 - Chase (Host) The number one question I get asked when people are standing by the cold tub is so, like we're learning today with Kristen, cold exposure or cold thermogenesis is more than just a trend. It actually has real lasting health benefits and, particularly for us guys, we're actually seeing how it's helping boost testosterone. And speaking of guys, are you feeling flat, low energy or like your drive just isn't what it used to be? If so, listen up, because Joymode's testosterone support complex might just be what you need. See modes testosterone support complex might just be what you need. See their. Testosterone support complex is a scientifically formulated blend that supports natural testosterone and free testosterone levels. It also improves vitality, boosts strength and muscle and even enhances energy. With clinically supported doses of KSM 66, ashwagandha, boron, dim, magnesium and zinc, You're giving your body all the right tools, it needs.

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29:57 - Kristin (Guest) Is it going to be cold, which I think is so funny. It's a to be cold, right. I'm like, yeah, you're doing it right. Um, and then people do ask a lot about the before and after training. It's just a. It's a big question Cause I think there's concern from people who are like I'm putting in all this work. I really don't want to have an issue, but yeah, it's like a professional athlete or professional team or collegiate team, we're going to do more cold plunging in season and less cold plunging out of season because we want, like all the training and all the, the big heavy lifts, the building muscle, the, the things we're doing out of season, prepping for the season, to be the focus. And then when you're like on the road like I was mentored by Dan Garner, that works a lot of hockey teams. When those hockey teams are on the road, they're doing game after game. They're like tired, they're, you know, sort of giving them cold to be able to get them to recover, sleep better, and all those things, yeah.

30:51 - Chase (Host) And then, what about the world of contrast therapy? No-transcript minutes to an hour, yeah, um, is that a swing and a miss? Do we need to be allowing the shiver response time in there? And also, then, how do we, uh, how do we get the the club to give us our money back for that waste of time?

31:26 - Kristin (Guest) It's funny, this is how I lead my classes at Kuya in Austin, texas. We both love Robbie from other ship and other places. I think there's two things at play there. Number one when we're in this club for 45 minutes to an hour of a quote-unquote class or session time et cetera, I always give guidance to people to take the break between, and they can sort of fit it in between a couple of sauna rituals and a little bit of space and a little bit of chatting with their friends or whatever's happening. And the other piece is that I am such a big advocate of those hour long, 45 minutes to an hour contrast therapy sessions, because the other thing that happens is the neurochemistry from cold and hot makes us talk to other humans. We don't have our phones, we're in connection, we're in community and we're like collaborating, networking, falling in love, all the things. And so I want, I want that for humans.

32:14 - Chase (Host) And so.

32:14 - Kristin (Guest) I think how do we, how do we have more joy and connection and community? And those are ways we can do it and people can just like mess around and find out and be like in and out of the cold all they want. You know you're not breaking anything really. But also when I'm coaching those things, I'm trying to suggest to people to take the space between and for the most part people like listen, I feel like I'm a good, I'm a good guide and there's always like a couple of the really like big brutish guides guys or a couple chicks that are like meh, I cold plunge all the time. I don't need to listen to Kristen and like that's what agency is about, that's what you know. People can do what they want.

32:47 - Chase (Host) Yeah, Okay, so then what about Cold plunging for immunity? What immune enhancing immune system benefits do we have in cold plunging?

32:57 - Kristin (Guest) Yeah, we see we say this a lot with like some of the research that has been done literally on Wim Hof and um. You know, over time people ask me should I get in the cold plunge Cause I'm like I'm feeling sick or the flu and it boosts your immune system and like the reality is we want because this isn't a hormetic stressor, which just means like we have eustress and we have distress. So we're giving a little bit of a positive stress, right, a stress stress deliberately to create an outcome that's positive for the body, versus like distress, which would be like when Joe Rogan gets in the ice bath for 21 and a half minutes live on social media. It's like at some point it's diminishing returns, you're doing a detriment to the cells, so there's no need to go in that long. Let's get the signal and let's get out.

33:41 You know depends on the temperature and I know there are plenty of people that are going to say I want to stay in for 15 minutes or whatever. It's fine. But really understanding how we navigate all of that from an immunity standpoint or from a response standpoint, because we want to get in when we're relatively healthy and feeling okay so that we can get this response from the hormetic stress to get the body stronger, faster and more immune. You know savvy and if we are going in when we're sick or ill, we're not feeling well, there is a potential that you're distressing the body. So going in and you feel healthy can, over time, help you boost your immunity and understand your body's like. Oh, I understand here how to navigate temperature change and shiver response and sickness and just things that are going to come up in the body in general. And so many of us are used to sitting in air conditioned rooms on couches watching TV.

34:42 - Chase (Host) I mean hopefully not your audience, but there's so many people out there that are doing that that you know we need to give, we need to make it a little bit more challenging for our bodies to thrive, so that they thrive even more. Barring, obviously, you know, having the flu or just being on your ass for whatever reason. Is there any scenario where you would not recommend someone to get in the cold plunge? That would you know it'd be more detrimental. Basically, if you're, if it's just, oh, I got a little cold or I'm just feeling under the weather or maybe I'm a little jet-lagged, If you're feeling anything other than your perceived normal, would you recommend getting into the cold plunge.

35:07 - Kristin (Guest) Yeah, I love it for jet-lag. I love cold for jet-lag, especially if you're going through a big time change, because it just helps a little bit with that nervous system reset and circulation. When it just helps a little bit with that nervous system reset and circular circulation, when you just sat on a plane for like eight hours and you get a big shunting of the blood microcirculation, all of that's super beautiful, I think, like the biggest contraindications I worry about. I worry less about pregnancy than most people because there've been so many women who are pregnant who've been having a cold plunge practice and then cold plunge practice through their pregnancy.

35:36 - Chase (Host) I'm sure we can get a lot of data from like Norway, finland Totally, and it's it's all it can be so safe.

35:41 - Kristin (Guest) And also I, whenever anyone shows up and if they are pregnant or think they're pregnant and they're working with me, I say to them, like I'm happy that you're here, this is. You have to understand that this is your own autonomous choice, because it's really just, with hormone fluctuation, all the things that are going on, I'm never going to tell someone to get in. It's hard to harder to get pregnant nowadays than it ever was, so maybe why take the risk? If you never had a cold punch practice before? Maybe just wait it out. Maybe don't you know. If you're not drinking, you're not cold plunging and you you do it after.

36:08 - Chase (Host) I'm curious if there's any data of, maybe women that were doing it for months and didn't even know they were pregnant.

36:13 - Kristin (Guest) I'm sure, and there are plenty of women doing it on Instagram, and again in Finland, in Norway and all the places where they would have said you know, cold plunging was started.

36:20 You know the Finns always want to take credit for it, all that and sauna culture. But women have been doing it since the dawn of time. And Lindsay, who runs birth, fit she in her pregnancy even, and just like researching it pretty deeply in the last trimester she was like, um, it's 110 degrees out and I'm huge and like so she would sort of set the temperature to kind of what the local rivers might be. So maybe it's like 50, 52 degrees, it's not as cold.

36:46 And it was a chili plunge, chili plunge and like a little more refreshing and then feeling safe for her system as well. You know so, really. You know having the agency to choose for yourself working as well. You know so, really. You know having the agency to choose for yourself working with your doctor. So I do talk about pregnancy as a potential contraindication, but it's also been done for a long time.

37:02 Western medicine would say Renaud's, don't get in. I have. I disagree with that. Again, I don't have letters behind my name and I'm not telling anybody to do something against their doctor's orders.

37:11 But I've worked with people who have very severe cases of Renaud's over several sessions, four to eight weeks of cold plunge therapy where I will never use the word cure, but we've completely mitigated all of their symptoms right. So it's boosting microcirculation, it's teaching the body how to shift in a way that is not giving them pain or tingling sensation in the extremities. So those are like the two big ones. And you know, I think many people might listen to this podcast and say, well, cold, I hate the cold and I it's just. I want to say like, give yourself a shot at stretching a little, because once you learn how to do it and how you use your breath to be able to control the variables, control the controllables. You can breathe yourself through a couple minutes in cold water and it really will change your life, change your perspective, change your, your understanding of your own greatest capacity we mentioned this earlier, but I want to kind of highlight it specifically.

38:02 - Chase (Host) Brown fat, yeah, what is it? Why is it important for general fat burning and thermogenesis?

38:08 - Kristin (Guest) yeah, so brown fat, white fat, beige fat brown fat is typically converted from beige fat. White fat is the stuff that everyone's like. I want to lose weight, we don't want to lose weight, we want to lose fat, and typically it's white fat. That's the stuff that we're like. Meh, brown fat is the most mitochondrially dense tissue, which means that it's going to help your engine run, more so than any other kind of fat on the body, and this is what the research was originally done at. We used to think that when we were uh, we stopped making brown fat at 20, around 20 years old, and now we know that that's not true, that if we have enough temperature fluctuation, we create more brown fat, and typical certain parts of the body have more than others, and we see it on baby shoulders and up, yeah, and so it's controlling temperature change and it's making us more. It's like making us harder to kill. So we want to build a little bit more of that, if that's a possibility, in our, in our system.

38:58 - Chase (Host) And I think even I don't know the study or know even what I'm referencing exactly, but I've heard that I think the old school thought was not only did we stop making it after around age 20, maybe 25, but then it even like began to diminish.

39:12 - Kristin (Guest) Yeah, that it would just be gone. I wouldn't have any more. Yeah, yeah, and we know that's not true now.

39:16 - Chase (Host) Yeah, okay. So then, what is the correlation here between cold plunging and brown fat, and why? Why is it good for brown fat, or is it?

39:23 - Kristin (Guest) Yeah, more mitochondria, more ability to make energy, more. The more we can make ATP, the more we can burn calories. There's just so many. It's. It's going to build back to our metabolism and it's going to make it so that we can navigate temperature changes much more easily as we go out into the world, you know, for our day-to-day lives.

39:40 - Chase (Host) So you're saying cold plunging stimulates brown fat.

39:43 - Kristin (Guest) Cold plunging yes, production and maintenance yeah, yeah, thank you for clarifying great, because you're a good host. The um, the cold plunging will change and stimulate beige fat to turn to brown fat, and this, this is what we want to have happen. We want more mitochondria, we want more powerhouses in ourselves that are going to do the work of building more energy in our system. So this is this is a key piece of it. Like people will say, I've done a cold pruning practice for X amount of time and I can feel that I have more clarity, focus, energy in the body, and some of that is coming from that.

40:11 That brown fat activation and other parts of it are coming from the notion that everyone stepped into this world with an amazing ability to do monumental things and everything they want in the dreamscape that they set up.

40:24 And we spend an entire life sometimes selling ourselves short and saying, oh no, I can't do the thing, oh, that's too scary, oh, I don't believe in my ability, and I just again it's like yes, build the brown fat and get healthier and have a better immune system and have a better mental wellbeing in many ways, and also do the thing that you take three minutes and you can step backwards into the person you were born to be, and that, to me, is like where all of these things come together. You know, it's like how lucky are we to have a lot of people just like it's just cold plunging. Like I go to the gym and a lot of times it's the other notion is I'm going to get in and I'm like do the cold plunge. And there is a notion that I think people miss, and a lot of times this is not to slight the CrossFit community, but I see it a lot in CrossFit gyms when I'm training.

41:06 It's like, hey, I'm going to get in here and I'm going going to do it because it's hard and I can do it and it's. It's not about that. It's like how could you surrender enough into the real present moment to say I know that there's physiological benefits here. I know that there are benefits to like my head, my heart, my being. I can be super present in a way that it's so hard for us to sit in stillness and presence. I can be hyper aware because there's nowhere else. I can't be in my grocery list, I can't be thinking about that girl I like at the gym or whatever, because I'm right here in the cold and when I get in the cold plunge, I really think to myself.

41:43 The very first thing I think of and now it's like you know, I don't have a lot of shock response and stuff when I get in but the first thing I think of is like I'm checking in where I am and I will sometimes say out loud, whether on my own or someone's around, something that's really coming to me in that super present moment like wow, you're being really hard on yourself right now and it's like a notion of knowing where I am in my life or I'm overworking right or I'm not taking enough recovery, or I'm not facing something that's coming up in feelings, my heartache or my grief, or while you've really been neglecting connecting with other people and you've been, like you know, stealing yourself at home, and so those are just examples of things that come up for me and then I can know exactly where I am in that moment and really be able to address it.

42:25 And there there aren't. In my meditation practice sometimes that comes up, like so many places in our lives where we're just going, going, going and we don't get a chance to like in and I would imagine that resonates with you too, like a new child at home and all of that. It's like how do I just have a moment for myself to be like I love my kid and it's great, and I'm on two hours sleep and I'm just feeling into all that. So it's like a prime opportunity to use our understanding of this practice and our really being instead of doing our being being and say, okay, great. A lot of physiological responses and ways that I can improve my health overall in a relatively easy, short time and I really get to see who I am. You know the combination of the two.

43:07 - Chase (Host) Beautiful. Yeah, absolutely yeah, thank you for that. Um, I also had something else just popped into my mind about brown fat. I've also heard some discrepancy in the cold plunge world of people going it's like submerging up to like the neck at least, versus staying upright, you know, kind of maybe like above the chest. For some people I think it's more of just maybe you're not quite there yet. Fully submersing, you know, under your head or getting down to the shoulders is not there. You're not there yet, basically, so what you can do is just sit at it, you know, at waist level, chest level. Are we again missing the mark for general optimization purposes? To hit that more brown fat stimulation experience by, we have to go at least up to the neck, kind of getting to the shoulders where predominantly most of the brown fat lives, or we can activate more of it. Again, general optimization here.

43:52 - Kristin (Guest) Yeah, hell, yeah, good, really good question. Here's the answer. When I say to people, when I'm coaching people to go in, I say I have, I have them breathe with me for like 30, 60 seconds beforehand, just to ground themselves before they get in the water, to connect to their breath, and the way that I want them to breathe, especially beginners, because, as we know, nobody on the planet can get into cold for the most part and not be like what's happening. So let the body do the thing it's going to do. But after I breathe with them, I say without hesitation or expectation I want you to step in, step in all the way up to the neck. And then sometimes people hesitate and I'm like three, two, one go. And then they listen to me. I'm not sure why, but people really like a three, two, one go countdown.

44:32 But when they get in, when you get into the cold plunge all the way up to your neck, a couple of things are happening. What my goal is is I want the human being in the cold tub to have the most optimal experience. Getting up to your neck or even your chin line is going to activate mammalian dive response that's going to slow your heart rate down so that you are actually autonomically calming down just a little in this in the system, at the same time that your mind is like, oh my goodness, this is really cold, what's happening? And thank goodness we have that response right. If someone throws you in a cold body of water and you want to get out because you don't want to have hypothermia and die, so mammalian dive reflex slows our heart rate because it's thinking well, it doesn't know that we're doing this deliberately. And what happens if face goes in the water? We better slow down the heart rate so we can make the oxygen last as long as possible. And what I want to see and what we get to see, I would say 30 seconds at the short side.

45:24 Typically it's like 45 to 60 seconds and anyone who's doing cold plunges with other people, this is a key point. And if it's your first cold plunge, don't think about how long you have to do. Just get through the first 45 to 60 seconds, because if you get in up to your neck and you breathe through your nose, you will slow your heart rate. You will calm into presence. I mean, when you first get in, have a moment, take a breath, curse whatever you need to do, but then breathe in and out through your nose, long exhales, and within a minute's time you're going to have this thing called the turnover.

45:59 Some people will call it the bliss point, and that is when your physiological body is shifting to. You've told it by breathing correctly or well or nasally, that everything is okay and you're actually okay. In this moment you are controlling the controllables. Your mammalian dive reflex is kicked in to match, set your heart rate to slow down, and then your brain is either looking around or having your eyes closed and thinking, holy shit, I'm doing this. I'm doing this really hard thing. And when those three things connect together, your body can go all right, I'm doing this, I'm winning, I'm successfully in this cold plunge, and it begins to surrender and calm down and feel like, okay, I have a little more time.

46:33 - Chase (Host) So, like Kristen is talking about today, there are a lot of different benefits that we can get from cold plunging and the beauty of this thing is it is pretty damn immediate. You know right away, right away, during and right after that cold plunge, that ice bath. You feel the difference. You know what you just went through. Now imagine if you could take that qualitative measure of tracking and get some data behind it as well. Of course, I'm talking about Whoop here and their brand new 5.0 physical activity tracker. See, whoop isn't just a fitness tracker, it's a 24-7 performance coach that measures your recovery, strain and sleep. So after logging your ice baths or any other type of workout or physical activity, whoop shows you how that directly impacts your heart rate variability, hrv, your sleep quality and overall recovery score. So you know if what you're doing is really moving the needle for you.

47:28 I use it every day. I've been wearing WHOOP on my wrist for pushing five years a little over five years. I love it. It is so easy. I love the data it gives me, Not to mention it's helping me optimize my training, recovery and even my bedtime routine. Joinwhoopcom, slash everford to get this guy on an exclusive deal. They got so many amazing bands and colorways to pick. You're going to love all of them. I promise Joinwhoopcom slash everford to get this exclusive deal today In real. Joinwhoopcom slash ever got to get through this and then through nasal breathing you can see just this insane drop off a cliff to go almost from uh like 125 beat per minute heart rate down to my lowest.

48:28 - Kristin (Guest) yesterday was 72.

48:28 - Chase (Host) Yeah, Just awesome. Yeah, we're not not that bad. I mean, it's a huge spike up and you're still in cold water. So exactly, yeah, so, uh, yeah, it's it, it's, it's very real. The data shows that I was just like. I have a. I have a example like to share with you.

48:39 - Kristin (Guest) Yeah, it's so perfect and you can see it in people's eyes and you can see it in their tissue and you can see it in their structure and where they're holding, how they just soften. And some people have someone in the at conferences all over. I'll do this with you. Know 100 people or something in a conference and someone will get in in the first 15 seconds and be like I don't know, I don't know, I have to get out. I have to get out and I can get them. This is why coaching is a beautiful piece. You can get them to stay with it and get to that minute mark and the next thing you know they'll be like let's do five minutes and it's a whole shift of understanding what they can control in their bodies.

49:10 - Chase (Host) Yeah, it's kind of hard explain, but for some reason, like six minutes is easier than two on most days. Definitely some days my body's like nah get me out of here. But um, yeah, six minutes is sometimes easier than two.

49:24 - Kristin (Guest) Yeah, and you're building adaptation in your system time after time and sometimes it's good to like fall off from that, like take a few days off. And you know I tend to be more conservative with female you know physiological females as well Like just the same as with fasting. I'm like, okay, every single day, hammering yourself with cold, especially different parts of your cycle, might be a little bit of a watch out. You know a little bit of this like showing up with a lot of hormone dysregulation. Probably you don't want to like hammer every day of cold plunge, whereas men on a 24 hour sort of testosterone hormone cycle have do show better capacity for like doing a daily, every single day, because there's a bit more structure in their hormonal profile.

50:00 OK so I do and for anyone who's listening, it's like can you get in cold three times a week? You win. Like you know, if you want to be hardcore and go every day, like by all means, but like three times a week is sufficient as plenty as is, you know all you need to do to like, lean in to make those shifts.

50:16 - Chase (Host) Yeah, I wanted to also talk about duration and frequency. So is there a magic number? I'd always, I think I mentioned six minutes or six minutes earlier. You know, in a week that's what I always heard of you know collectively, within a week time period, if you can get six minutes total. One minute here, three minutes there, two minutes, you know, another day. I don't know if that's good, but you know, is that still the case? Can we get all the benefits from chopping it up one minute for six days or do we need to do one day at six minutes? And also, does it matter duration and frequency more for men than it does women, and why?

50:52 - Kristin (Guest) Great Men. Women tend to have less of a shiver response in the daytime. Um, men, you have a peak testosterone right before noon, ish or so, and again, I'm speaking in generalizations everybody bio-individual. There's so many context changes here, um, and also what your goals are, right, um, but, um, so the morning might be slightly different, um, than the evening, especially for women who tend to have more shiver at night. Um, the so three part question you have to remind me all the three parts to make sure I hit them.

51:22 The duration of time Um, suzanne Soberg wrote a book based on her research which talks about the 1157, which means 11 minutes a week in cold plunge over the, you know when you add it all together, and 57 minutes a week in a sauna. Okay, I think that's great and all respect to her work, and I think, yeah, there's a range that's close to that and it's a bit like 57 minutes versus 60, 11 versus 15 minutes. It's all about your adaptation. Like, are you getting out and having a shiver response? Like there is a small percentage of the population that has some gene that makes it so you can't shiver. You don't ever shiver, which is super fascinating to me, but for the average bear it's like fascinating to me, but for the moment, for the average bear it's like I wonder, sorry, um, is that the CompT gene?

52:03 Yeah, yeah, I think, uh, I have that, I don't shiver. Okay, there you go.

52:16 - Chase (Host) Yeah, I mean I'm like, oh, it's a little ago and yeah, I have the CompT gene Interesting Okay.

52:21 - Kristin (Guest) So when we're looking at time or duration, it's like get a shiver response if that's something that your body can do. And that minute marker is really important to me as a coach and working with people, whether it's like again, university athletes or people are really navigating anxiety or change in their life, big transitions, because at a minute you're going to have that shift, you're going to have that turnover and then staying in everything you stay in past that minute is something where you're sort of building capacity. So I would say you know, start where you need to start from a time and temperature standpoint. If you're on your own and you're like I could only do 30 seconds and that's the best I got that day, then like let that be a success. Don't shame yourself for doing less time. But most people in general good health. I can put through a 40 degree cold plunge for two minutes without any issue. I rarely have runners, runners or people who are like they're in and they're like ah and they get out and they just run away and you're like what happened?

53:15 I can count on one hand the number of runners I've had and again, 5,000 plus people in cold. There are so many ways to be able to do this and utilize the breath and 11 minutes Cool and also the more you adapt like if you're like you and me and we can do five or six minutes, I may do that three times during the week. I don't think that it is giving me a negative effect because I have grown my adaptation over time. So, um, that that's like the duration piece and then the temperature piece. I trained with Laird Hamilton in the early days and Gabby Reese, xpt and and when you talk with like Patrick McEwen and breath and we look at the research, uh, pj advantage that.

53:53 Patrick McEwen is oxygen advantage. I've like studied with him as well and it's like when you look at the research around a little bit of around the breath space, but also all the temperature, it's all over the place, like cold water therapy. Research is literally it's the left arm, it's the whole body, it's like a, a wild, you know, running river, but they didn't track the temperature every day. Or maybe you get the temperature and it changes all the time. It's all it's cold water immersion with a tub at 50 degrees, at 38 degrees, it's just all over the map. So it makes it more challenging. And when we look at the general average of the research cold shock proteins function better it kind of looks like this, like 40 degree mark, maybe just sub 40 degrees Fahrenheit. So I've always played with that number for that reason.

54:35 - Chase (Host) Sub 40.

54:35 - Kristin (Guest) Yeah, sub 40. And again, this is the big controversy that just happened with Stacey Sims going on Mel uh, mel's podcast.

54:44 - Chase (Host) Mel Robbins.

54:45 - Kristin (Guest) Yeah, mel Robbins podcast was like well, women should be doing it at warmer. And there's another contingency of people just said we're going to speak to the audience from Chinese medicine that are like it's not good because of cold womb, and like I've had all these people on my podcast, I've had conversations with Chinese medicine practitioners about ways that you can mitigate that and what's going on in a woman's system, why, um, systemic cold is different than like targeted cold and the fact that Chinese medicine perhaps was talking more about longer duration and we're talking about a couple of minutes, um, and then also we look at um Stacy Sims is insight. It's all beautiful. This is all beautiful that we're having these conversations. It's always going to come down to context. Now, stacey tends to train triathletes and so if they're in the water for their swim and they're training around 50, 55 degrees, they're building adaptation to that temperature so that they don't slow their heart rate down or have too much mammalian like the muzziness of mammalian dive reflex while their face is in the water. Because you're trying to swim a mile you know what I mean as fast as you, as you can, and so some of that is like the when everything, when you, all of you has a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And that's not to slight her, because she's I've followed her, trained on her programs online and love her. And also, what I don't like is when all of this information is is having specifically females, but even humans in general, be like, ah, I'm not going to go cold, because it's like that's not good, because people are saying it's not good. It's like you don't really know unless your doctor saying don't do it and that's not you know, that's your choice, but you don't really know until you've like tried some of these things and dabbled in them. And it's already.

56:17 The thought process of getting in a freezing cold tub of ice cubes is hard enough. So how do we? How do we do that for ourselves? So I would say start at 45, do two minutes, you know, get to that space. Nasal breathing, sit down. I have on sherbertbreathandcoldcom forward slash, listen. I have both a cold, a cold plunge guided audio track. That's three minutes for a beginner that you can do. And I have a breath work track too. That's great for like unwinding after or if you're really nervous before. You can do the breath work to calm down and just like get ready to chill out.

56:46 - Chase (Host) yeah, um so many things and what you just said made me think of um so many follow-up questions. Let me wrap my head around it. So I wonder one kind of talking about you know you brought, you brought up Chinese medicine. I wonder, in other approaches to healthcare, you know Eastern versus Western medicine, chinese healthcare, ayurvedic medicine. I thought about you know in Ayurvedic there's Vata, pitta and Dosha Kapha Kapha excuse me, yeah, I've not tried Doshas, the three Doshas excuse me.

57:14 So you typically kind of run hot, you run cold or run I think in Chinese medicines. You run, you're moist or you're dry kind of thing.

57:23 So I wonder if there's a unique approach, you know, is there an optimization protocol for cold plunging based on Ayurvedic medicine, based on Chinese medicine? They all have their lineage and they all have clinical and anecdotal evidence to support a lot of things when it comes to optimization and general wellbeing. But you know, it's cold plunging. Are we splitting hairs? Basically, Are we getting into too much of the minutia when just looking at okay, you're not a triathlete, but maybe you're trying to get the triathlete mindset, You're trying to get the triathlete benefits of a practice like cold plunging. Are we splitting hairs too much? When looking at all right, look, you just chose to do something hard. You got in the cold water for a couple of minutes. This week it's 30 seconds longer than the week before. Maybe next week you'll get 30 seconds more than this week, kind of thing. Is that really what we should be looking at, more so than you know? What's my blood type? Do I have the ComT gene? What does my Chinese medicine practitioner say? Am I Vata Pitta?

58:20 - Kristin (Guest) What you know, are we just getting too nuanced? Basically, yeah, and then you know it's like there's so much discourse Nobody's ever like mean to me, but there's definitely like practitioners that drop into my DMs and my inbox sometimes that are just like they're just it's a bit of like the I want to, just I'm going to hold onto this, you know, until you pry it from my hands. Philosophy I think people need to understand what their bodies feel like and behave like and medically and their level of wellness and what they need from a mental wellbeing or nervous system standpoint, and make some decisions for themselves. Right, the agency to decide for yourself what you'd like to try and also know that like be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid.

58:56 And it's not to say be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid.

58:59 - Chase (Host) That's like. I think that's like Anthony Hopkins quoting like that. That's a clip. I think that's like anthony hopkins quoting someone else quoting someone else everything's a remix.

59:05 - Kristin (Guest) But like, be a little bold, right, dare to kind of take the leap and the net will appear, like all of these things we've put out in the world, and what does it feel like to do that with your body? So have some agency to make the choice to do those things and then also have some reverence for the fact that you have a strong intuition and maybe something doesn't feel good to you If you're heavily involved. I'm not an Ayurvedic expert by any stretch. I'm not a Chinese medicine doctor. If you have reservations based on, like, a cultural landscape or a philosophy that you have, then, like you, people get to make the choice and I'd like to see more people cold plunging and trying it on so that they can say I tried it. For, you know, four weeks I did these things and I like hated it, it didn't work, whatever, and then great, then you formed an opinion.

59:48 But like, really trying it first makes sense. And then, when you talk about, like the athletics piece or someone's wanting to be a triathlete, even if it's just, you know, a non-professional landscape, it's like I put collegiate swimmers on the block. You know they go down the block to go have their race and they're navigating stress in competition, and so the cold plunge can mimic what it's like for them to behave in a heightened state of stress. And they're practicing that over and, over and over again. And if what we practice, you know, if we get into the heightened state of real competition, if we're not practicing that all the time in the exact way we need to be, then we're not going to be able to get the W's on the board.

01:00:26 And we watch swimmers not only with like breath control changes, taking one less breath across the laps of the pool is a W on the board, it's a win versus a loss, and we see swimmers having a split second like a one half of a second difference off the blocks makes all the difference in where they qualify. So why would we not, you know, work to adapt these things if we're doing some sort of sporting as well?

01:00:50 - Chase (Host) You were also kind of hitting on earlier about, you know, male, female differences and also I think I heard you kind of briefly touch on like, maybe where a woman is in her cycle. Are there preferred times during a woman's cycle to cold plunge, to not cold plunge? And again, for general optimization purposes, should it be general blanket statement If you're in this phase of your cycle, absolutely cold plunge to maximize benefits.

01:01:14 - Kristin (Guest) Great question. For sure, I think there are plenty of women out there and there are definitely, culturally, choices women are making which I think are absolutely what women should be making for themselves around. I don't cold plunge on when I have my period and it does cause it doesn't feel good intuitively or cause there's a cultural piece or there's a cleanliness thing or whatever they want to do. I will say that if you look physiologically and you look at the research and you look at the different times of the cycle, we breathe less Well, we're less connected to our pelvic floor, we have less sleep and we are, um, just a bit more like tired and uh, disconnected the five days leading up to our period.

01:01:50 So I'm not saying don't I will plunge at any given point in my cycle, but the five days leading up to your period for most women are going to be the most uncomfortable time. It's going to feel a little bit more of the cold hit you. You're going to feel a little bit less connected to your breath, your pelvic floor, all of that and that's because of like shifts in progesterone and things that are going on in the body generally during that, that window. So that's like five days before your cycle, luteal phase and again some women are like I don't want to plunge in my period. But I always like to check in a second time with women to say, are you just saying that it's like day three of your cycle and you have your period and you don't want to get in because it looks really cold today, or is it really real for you, right, and then letting people decide from there? Okay, yeah.

01:02:31 - Chase (Host) Another thing I see running rampant in the cold plunging, cold exposure therapy world is a cold plunging with friends. I have a cold plunge at my home. I do it by myself, there's also one at my gym and so sometimes I could be in the cold plunge next to somebody. Could be a friend, could be a stranger. I have my own kind of personal take on the community aspect. But I'm curious do you have any kind of personal experience or can you share any? You know clinical evidence maybe of solo cold plunging to group cold plunging. Is there any? Again for general optimization purposes, any benefit to solo versus group?

01:03:07 - Kristin (Guest) I think it's really going to like introverted versus extroverted. If that's really a thing, I think it depends on like, let's say, I'm in like a high stim environment all week with work and clients and whatever. I just might want to get in the cold plunge and be like left, I'll like leave me the F alone.

01:03:22 I need some. I want some time and space and I really want to feel into it and have this moment to myself. I know that there is a when we're group cold plunging, we do have more of an oxytocin release and they would call that the like, the love chemical and like being connected and bonded with other people and feeling in community and wanting to chat. And you know, have the hear from the peanut gallery, everybody's got their own. You can tell when, like, people start getting out of the cold plunge and then I'm like plunging someone new and there's a group of 10 people and everyone's like, oh my God, and they're telling stories and like singing Disney show tunes. That's all the oxytocin and that's all the parasympathetic rebound happening. So there can be so much fun and joy and also introspection and reverence in both types of scenarios.

01:04:01 I don't think that there's one that's like worse or better. I just think it really depends on like where you are in your body and if you want to be reflecting or you want to have like it's really nice to do a solo cold plunge, you have experience. If someone's doing their first time cold plunge, number one, if you're doing it in outdoors, nature, in wild water. Please don't ever do it alone. But number two if you're out and you're doing it and you're nervous because you're new, then it's, it's. I tend to find that people stay in longer when other groups are there.

01:04:27 - Chase (Host) They're going into a tub together that's my take on it as well. It's kind of, whether you realize it or not, you know, humans were naturally a little gamified.

01:04:34 - Kristin (Guest) You know like oh you're doing two minutes.

01:04:35 - Chase (Host) I'm gonna do two minutes, 10 seconds, kind of thing.

01:04:37 - Kristin (Guest) I'm not getting out to you, get out, kind of thing oh, you gotta see, I mean, when I put husbands and wives in, the wife will always be like I mean not always, but you know it's like a woman will be like I'm gonna let my husband go first and then she's. All she wants to do is know his time and time so she can go longer or colder and it's just so funny.

01:04:52 - Chase (Host) I've had it for two and a half years now. She hasn't touched it yeah, she's not.

01:04:56 - Kristin (Guest) It's not her jam, not yet, not yet, which also brings up another thought I had when you're talking about all the things postpartum though.

01:05:02 - Chase (Host) Yeah, postpartum, I think would be great, but also, um, she's iranian. So I also have this theory of. I think I don't know if it's epigenetics or just cultural, but I do think there's something to be said about just a natural state someone is in. Yeah, probably from an epigenetic standpoint, yeah, uh, ethnicity, that kind of like like I'm, I love the cold because I run hot all the time. Uh, her not so much. I mean, she's middle eastern. So I'm wondering is there some kind of, is there something there that kind of propels us more so to be naturally inclined to it, to have a higher, you know?

01:05:37 - Kristin (Guest) like less acclimation time. Yeah, exactly like grew up in iceland versus growing up in like yeah.

01:05:42 - Chase (Host) Yeah, I think that I mean I don't have the real answer none of her family will ever get the cold lunch with me. Yeah, so I'm like is it an iranian thing? Is it like crazy american? Yeah, also, none of them drink water either. That's my whole other theory of like. They don't need it.

01:05:53 - Kristin (Guest) Yeah, not as much as me they're used to like navigating, holding on to water and heat or something like that. Yeah, I mean, listen, all of this stuff is. I think it's so interesting to ponder. I certainly don't have like the perfect answer or something that's like evidence or research backed, but it's like this is we can. We can shift our entire system to be like, adapted to the cold or not, adapted to the cold, adapted to the heat or not. Like I've gone to Burning man 14 times and I will go yeah, I know, wow, we need a sidebar, um.

01:06:24 And so, like I quite often would go do like crazy hot yoga or sit in the sauna, like daily weeks leading up to it, because I'm acclimatizing myself to the heat, so when I go out into the desert, it's something that I can handle, right, and so it's like there's a really beautiful way that our body will respond to those things and adapt to those things that we can like. But again, again, that's contextual, right. It's like and so, yeah, many people would be like I hate the cold, I'm never going in the cold, and that's their prerogative. And also I feel like you're missing out. Like just try it for a little while, like, even if it's a little bit of time, I don't disagree which also makes me think about so from epigenetic perspective.

01:06:56 - Chase (Host) Right If, epigenetic perspective, right If right now, this whole general, not the whole generation, but right now I'm sure you would agree that there is a higher volume of people doing coal plunging because it's trending, because it's cool, because we have scientific evidence, whatever the reason, more people are doing it. So I'm curious what are your thoughts on the next generation, the next two generations? Because when we look at epigenetics it's really two generations down that we see like kind of like not diminishing return, but like up to two generations of whatever we do now, whatever, especially from like a protein binding perspective of trauma response resiliency. That's where we kind of see it go. So do you think in two generations from now we're going to see just the most elite, highly optimized everyone's running around with a CompT gene, you know just, you know higher immune system, less ill. You know, what do you think is going to happen in one to two generations from now from people just developing this resiliency from cold plunging?

01:07:49 - Kristin (Guest) Yeah, it's such a good thing to ponder, I think.

01:07:52 You know I want to believe that this generation that's growing up right now will be, like, more aware of themselves, will have unpacked more trauma, including ancestral, generational challenges, that they will be more resilient, that they will just show up to the world like these old souls and really young bodies as they begin to expand and perhaps even epigenetically just be harder to kill.

01:08:13 And then I also think that that's going to weigh very strongly against, like what happens with AI and video gaming and not being able to speak and having four years wearing a mask and being on zoom, and like I think that the deal breaker for us is if we don't get in community and we don't have conversations and we don't, we got to stop othering each other, like you know, yes, find the others who are your people and like-minded and maybe even not like-minded, but they're like hey, find the others that you love and be around them and learn from them and grow from them, and then stop othering people, like pushing across the aisle. I think that there's like a really big correlation there, even though it doesn't feel like a natural, easy one, like how we take care of ourselves in society and how we accept everybody's differences, even if we don't agree with them. And that's like I mean, that's the divide that's so hard to cross right. And so as we get better, faster, stronger, smarter, more adept, more you know understanding.

01:09:05 - Chase (Host) You know all the woo, all the science, all the soul leopards, yeah exactly.

01:09:10 - Kristin (Guest) And then what happens to us from a, from a communal standpoint, right like I? Just I think there's so much separation and othering that's happening that just doesn't feel like. It's why I love the communal plunges and spaces and saunas, because people can get in community more and you're like in your swim trunks or whatever you in and you don't. There's no cell phone, there's no distractions, and maybe you can have some more real conversations with, like your brain lit up from the cold or from the heat. Yeah.

01:09:36 - Chase (Host) I love that answer, yes. So I realized I need to kind of wrap this up here and I lied at the beginning. We're not going to get to heat exposure therapy today.

01:09:44 - Kristin (Guest) I think Cole was really good to unpack this was amazing.

01:09:47 - Chase (Host) I want to kind of put you on the spot. I know you're here for a few more days. Maybe we can look at getting you back for part two on heat exposure.

01:09:54 - Kristin (Guest) I'd love to talk about heat and sauna and the crazy towel waving aroma and the weird hats like the breathing in the heat, the guys who like sauna culture, where people are like half naked or not or sweating all over you.

01:10:06 - Chase (Host) Sauna culture is way more wild, in my opinion, than cold plunging culture. It's. It's pretty crazy, but I do want to. Before I get to my last question, I want to ask a couple more questions around cold plunging for mental health and brain boosting benefits more of that cognitive performance enhancement? How does cold exposure increase dopamine and mental focus? Do you think?

01:10:27 - Kristin (Guest) So over 300% 350% dopamine increase, which is just like this is the chemical right, that's like on the journey right. We know that dopamine is the thing that we're like chasing down the road. It's not the thing that hits us when we, when we get the prize, so it's keeping us, you know, in alignment with the show, it's keeping us moving forward. It's keeping us from like sort of chasing what's next and bringing in all the things that we want, calling in the things that we want, and I think that that really gives us an opportunity to, yeah, like step forward into more joyful living and more capacity for our growth, you know what about from a mental focus perspective?

01:11:04 - Chase (Host) Are there?

01:11:04 - Kristin (Guest) Yeah, good morning For sure, yeah, I mean, good morning, get in a cold punch, get out and like, you get crisp and you get clarity and especially if you're like shutting your mouth and breathing through your nose, you're oxygenating your system more. And we, when you, you know many people are living different, many different ways in the world today. But when you get out of the cold and you have a parasympathetic rebound, you are living and putting yourself into the best opportunity to be in flow state possible and so it's anxiolytic. We know that there's plenty of research on depression and anxiety and PTSD. I wrote a protocol for an organization that's putting vets with PTSD through cold plunging to sort of measure against you know SSRIs and things they're doing, and these are vets that are like navigating you know suicidal ideation and all of this. And this is we just continue to keep seeing like lowering anxiety, lowering depression, being as good. Again, this is not about going off your medication if you're on it or all the things, but it's like being as good of a catalyst for change as a medication might be so that we can keep ourselves in a much more positive state of being, and if it's going to save people's lives and just from a mental wellbeing standpoint.

01:12:16 We know that even a cold shower and cryo show up as giving us more like a mental wellbeing, feelings of joy, feelings of wanting to have more connection, feelings of ease. So if we can have that in our body, then why wouldn't we use these tools that are, again like so, so, accessible? You see, like Dave Asprey and all these people like women, sometimes whoever on social like, fill a big bowl of ice. Someone just wrote me and said oh, we created this specific thing with your face shape to put. I'm like just get a bowl, put some ice cubes in it. I know commercialism is ridiculous, but consumerism but it's like get a bowl, put some ice in it in the morning. If that's all you have, what a great place to start and put your face in it.

01:12:53 Just like stick your face in it, make sure you got a lot of ice cubes in there a couple of minutes, do a few face dunks and tell me that you don't feel better Like you. Just you will, we will. We'll get that response in the body and it's like is that the difference between your day being like hey, I really had a decent day today. I feel a lot better than yesterday? It's like if that's going to be the case, then we should all be getting up and doing that, you know.

01:13:13 - Chase (Host) What about um for sleep quality? Have you found cold plunging improving or decreasing sleep?

01:13:19 - Kristin (Guest) quality? Yeah, beautiful question. Because sleep is like this is the first frontier of our health and wellbeing. So we find, and you see in research and a lot of the evidence that you get, people are getting more deep sleep, better sleep, um, because you are coming out of the cold, parasympathetic rebound Like my favorite time of day to plunge is around sunset, so you can get like low level light rays.

01:13:41 You can plunge in and out like an outdoor tub, then I can, that's what I have in my building and then I can be like, oh, I'm really kind of starting to get my hunger on, like metabolism boosting, shiver response.

01:13:50 I cut up some veggies, make a nice dinner and then by the time I'm like, oh, I'm starving. I get to eat and then like everything is just unwinding so I'm setting myself up for like the best night of sleep. Maybe two hours later I'm going to bed. The one thing I would say is like probably not cold plunging like two or three hours before bed great, an hour before bed, like it's going to keep you like jacked up for a little while. So, just like making sure people are mindful about when they cold plunge, like not too close to sleep. But we see, yeah, one of my very close friends is Molly Eastman and she talks to. Sleep is a Skill, her number one sleep podcast, and so we talk a lot about how getting her clients into cold really can make a big difference in getting them out of rumination, getting them out of stress and having them sleep much better.

01:14:31 - Chase (Host) Okay, yeah, okay. Is there anything we didn't get to in the world of cold exposure therapy, cold plunging, that you feel the audience member absolutely needs to walk away with knowing?

01:14:42 - Kristin (Guest) No, I don't think so Monumentally. I just want to reiterate the fact that I think, if you're out there and you're listening to this, and I said for many, many years in my life, I don't really have this mess to masterpiece story and like I'm coaching athletes and I'm coaching women in these like health optimization containers for 12 months, one-on-one, and I don't really have a mess to masterpiece story, sort of, aren't I lucky? And the last couple of years of my life really taught me about what it means to navigate the hardest times in my life and I cannot. It may sound simple, but cold water and understanding how to use my breath through cold water exposure was the thing that just naturally boosted and changed my brain chemistry enough to keep going. And so for people who are listening, who are going through, you know, divorce, or they lost their job or they can't.

01:15:30 You know hard times happen and things can change over 24 hours, like everything is changing even now. Tomorrow can be a whole, a whole different day, a whole different thing happening. How do we use cold to be able to feel better? And I just want people to know that it's a resource, it's there for them. Like I answer all my DMs when people write me to say like what and how and why, and it's definitely there's been moments when someone's like can you, can I set up my phone? I had a woman call me from Bali and say could I set up my phone on the ice plunge and could you just walk me through a cold plunge? And I was like I'm a hundred percent here for it yeah, yeah, yeah, totally yeah.

01:16:03 - Chase (Host) Yeah so well, my last question. I ask everybody to bring it back to the theme of the show which you clearly embody and this has been a great lesson for me and my audience to kind of extract value and very practical tactical ways to enhance our wellbeing, uh, to move forward in our life.

01:16:18 - Kristin (Guest) But I want to ask you directly what does ever forward mean to you, those two words? How do you live a life ever forward? Yeah, I think two years ago two, two and a half years ago my answer might've been a little bit different, because I think moving forward is the thing we all so it's a very much this keep going philosophy and mindset. But and I also I have a sweet reverence for this question because I know it comes from your dad and I was very close with my father and so a couple of the hardest things in my life are losing my dad eight years ago and then the last couple of years of my life going through a really challenging breakup. That again, it's not ever about one person. It's about all the experiences and the traumas we have in our life.

01:16:55 So for me, when I think about ever forward, it's really about not the times that I'm at the top of the Eiffel Tower with a glass of champagne in my hand and a beautiful dress to say I'm going to move ever forward. Tomorrow's coming. I'm so excited. It's beautiful to have those moments. And also, I think the moments that we really show our character as human beings and the courage that we bring to the world are the moments where we think we can't go forward, that we can't move on, and then we remind ourselves that we can and we must and that it could just be right around the corner the next big success, the next big love, the next big understanding, the next big realization on why something may have affected us, so that we can sort of soar into our greatest capacity. So for me it's about like challenging ourselves to move when it feels like the struggle.

01:17:45 - Chase (Host) Love that answer.

01:17:46 - Kristin (Guest) Thank you, there's never a right or a wrong one, just your interpretation.

01:17:49 - Chase (Host) So thank you. Um well, of course it will be linked in the video description box here on YouTube and the podcast show notes. But where can my audience go to connect with you a little more about your, your protocols, your coaching? You know remote experience, in-person experience. You're just your world.

01:18:02 - Kristin (Guest) Yeah, absolutely so. Sherpa breath and cold uh certification program. This is where I work with coaches and athletes, either one-on-one, in teams. Um, I have a podcast called well-power, which I'm going to make chase come on and talk about his life to turn the microphone around. Um, and yeah, and I do. Through wellpower, through Sherpa, through Kristen Weitzel Official, I answer all my DMs. That's where most of my clients come, through Instagram. It's interestingly enough to just like cut corners and not have to email me, so it works.

01:18:27 - Chase (Host) Yeah, reach out and.

01:18:29 - Kristin (Guest) I'm here to set the stage.

01:18:30 - Chase (Host) Amazing. Thank you so much For more information on everything you just heard. Make sure to check this episode, show notes or head to everforwardradiocom.