00:03:15.840Well, it sounds like a terrible idea, right?
00:03:18.000riding your bike at 100 miles, 100 degrees. You know, I like to have a goal or a challenge
00:03:24.160that sort of then guides my and motivates my training, keeps me accountable, keeps me in
00:03:30.120shape. And I picked this one for some reason, I think because I'd always thought that I wasn't
00:03:36.920good in the heat and that I didn't do well in the heat. You know, back when I was a mountain bike
00:03:41.380racer in my 30s, 20s and 30s, I always felt like heat was my like kryptonite. So I wanted to kind
00:03:47.680to test that. And so yeah, for those who aren't familiar, this race, it's pretty famous. It's been
00:03:52.260going on for a couple decades. It's 100 miles. And it's again, in Wichita Falls, Texas, if you
00:03:57.840haven't been there, it is West Texas. It is really hot in August. And I mean, people do get heat
00:04:06.200sickness. And some people have actually died during this race because of the heat. Yeah,
00:04:09.800a handful. And the heat is kind of the point. And weirdly, you know, you'd think, well, okay,
00:04:14.180nobody would sign up for this thing, but like 10,000 people come and do it some years. It's
00:04:18.520wild. And the year I did it, 2023, this like, they call it a heat dome. So it was a super hot
00:04:24.580summer, a hundred degrees or more, pretty much all summer long. And then the day we did the ride
00:04:30.380got up to about 107 Fahrenheit. It was brutal. I, you know, frankly, I was surprised that I made it
00:04:36.720and we can talk more about, about why. Yeah. I mean, one of the things you do this book is you
00:04:41.600talk about the research you did to prep for this race to see, well, what can I do so I don't get
00:04:46.520heat sickness, so I don't die? And you talk about in the book, the very first thing you note is that
00:04:51.420heat can either kill us or it can help us. And let's talk about how heat can kill us first.
00:04:57.880How hot is too hot for humans? Do we know that? We don't really know. And it kind of depends.
00:05:05.460You know, about 15 years ago, some climate researchers theorized that there was a theoretical upper limit past which humans could no longer cool themselves down.
00:05:15.940And it turns out that people were actually already getting into trouble at much lower temperatures.
00:05:22.080So, for example, when there are heat waves in Europe, you know, it'll be like 90 degrees.
00:05:27.740And that to you, you live in Oklahoma or to me in Salt Lake City, that seems like a relatively nice day in the summer.
00:05:34.940not too hot. So heat tolerance is very variable, depending on a lot of different factors. But
00:05:41.500the interesting thing that I learned is that it can be trained, it can be altered. So it's not
00:05:48.180something that's kind of set in stone. Yeah. And I mean, you talk about people in India,
00:05:53.140kind of a contrast to people in England, where it's like 90 degrees, and they're like, oh my1.00
00:05:56.140gosh, we're dying. People in India, like they're living in this sweltering, it's super hot,1.00
00:06:00.140super humid and a lot of people do fine. Right. I'm not saying it's fun, but I did all kinds of1.00
00:06:08.360crazy research for this, but I found one big study where they compare temperature and mortality rates
00:06:15.040across like 400 different cities around the world. And they found that each city has like an ideal
00:06:21.600temperature at which mortality is the lowest excess mortality. So it's not too hot, not too
00:06:27.740cold. And by the way, many more people die from cold than from heat, like 10 times as many. That
00:06:34.260was a stunning thing to learn because that's not how heat is framed. Anyway, so a city like Toronto,
00:06:41.720the ideal temperature or the minimum mortality temperature is like 66 Fahrenheit. And then for
00:06:47.420Tucson, it's like 86. So there's differences in like basically, I mean, there's differences in
00:06:53.960air conditioning, all that kind of thing. But I think a lot of it comes down to heat tolerance
00:06:59.560of these different populations. Yeah, being used to it. What happens in our body whenever it does
00:07:06.840get too hot? Because it sounds like from the research you highlighted, it's not so much the
00:07:12.340temperature outside our body that's the problem, it's our internal temperature. That's what causes
00:07:17.700problems. So what happens when our internal temperature gets too high? Right. And we generate
00:07:22.940a tremendous amount of heat, internal heat, metabolic heat, just by being alive. And then
00:07:28.520when we do anything, like any activity, it's almost like a car engine. Your car moves forward
00:07:34.520a little bit, but your engine is producing like four times that much energy. So 80% of it is heat,
00:07:40.780like a waste product of heat. When somebody gets too hot, it's kind of gruesome. If you get to a
00:07:46.560certain point, you get into heat exhaustion territory, which is you feel wiped out, you feel
00:07:52.740confused, you feel kind of lethargic, you might pass out. So that's heat exhaustion, not usually
00:07:59.460fatal. But then the next step is heat stroke. And that is what it sounds like. It's a neurological
00:08:05.600situation. You can get aggressive, you can get confused, you can pass out, you can have like a
00:08:12.500seizure. And as you're unable to cool yourself off, as your temperature rises past like 105,
00:08:20.260106, 107, you get into a situation where like your cell membranes don't function as well.
00:08:27.320Your cells kind of explode. You get into organ failure, especially the liver. And ultimately,
00:08:33.400you die a horrible death. I mean, it's terrible. I've spoken to people who have had heat strokes.
00:08:38.620I've seen people having exertional heat strokes, and it's not pretty.
00:08:59.520And if somebody is in that zone of elevated body temperature, confusion, heat exhaustion, heat stroke, you dunk them in a tub of ice water if you can.
00:09:15.560You know, I went to a road race in Massachusetts, the Falmouth Road Race, seven mile run in August.
00:09:21.620It wasn't particularly hot, but I sat in the medical tent with people from the Corey Stringer Institute, which is kind of devoted to this, you know, awareness of heat stroke and prevention of heat stroke.
00:09:32.700And we had runners coming in, in various stages of heat illness, and we just like threw them in the ice tub and they would come around.
00:09:41.580Their body temperature would drop and they'd be okay.
00:09:49.500way and what's interesting about heat stroke it can come on like as you said with this race that
00:09:54.260you went to when it doesn't seem that hot outside suddenly because the issue is i mean one of the
00:10:00.420reasons why we don't keel over and die when it gets really hot is humans we are a species that
00:10:06.620can cool ourselves really efficiently we sweat a lot but for sweat to work it has to evaporate
00:10:12.460that's what cools you off so you sweat and then as the water evaporates it takes heat away from
00:10:17.620your body. But when you're in humid conditions, you don't get a lot of evaporations. So you can
00:10:22.620run a race when it's like 80 degrees outside, but it's really humid. You can get a heat stroke in
00:10:27.840that because your body can't cool itself off. Right. Falmouth was 70 degrees, 70 degrees and
00:10:33.880like 90% humidity. And that length, seven miles, six, seven miles. So it's like, you know, it could
00:10:40.380be around an hour, 45 minutes or an hour, intense effort. And your cooling system doesn't have a
00:10:45.940chance to catch up. That's why those events are actually more dangerous than a marathon.
00:10:51.160But our cooling system is incredible. It's this incredible gift that I think is one of our
00:10:56.040fundamental human traits. I mean, it kind of fueled our rise to dominance, really.
00:11:03.740Well, yeah, because it's allowed us to basically migrate across the entire planet
00:11:08.020and live in just disparate climates. And then, I mean, you talk about this too. We've had
00:11:12.740you know, the born to run guy. We've had Alex Hutchison on the podcast talking about
00:11:16.600why humans are so good at running. And one of the theories out there is that,
00:11:20.920well, we're really good at persistence running. And so the idea is like our early hunter gatherer
00:11:27.480ancestors, they would just chase gazelle down and we could do it for a long time because we could
00:11:33.660sweat and we can keep ourselves cool. The gazelle couldn't do that. And so it just eventually had
00:11:38.040to stop and cool off. And then that's when we'd go in for the kill. Right. So if you think about
00:11:43.200walking your dog on a hot day in the summer, I mean, you can easily outlast your dog, I'm sure,
00:11:49.700unless your dog is some kind of endurance monster, but your dog can only cool itself by panting and
00:11:55.100you're sweating across your entire body, you know, and it's amazingly potent cooling. I mean,
00:12:00.980we have these sweat glands that basically just bring water to the surface of our skin and then
00:12:05.600it evaporates and that takes off a tremendous amount of heat. It's brilliant. What's interesting
00:12:11.920though is that, and you alluded to this earlier, is that you can take two people and put them in
00:12:17.440the same sweltering conditions and one person could be completely fine and another person could
00:12:22.980have a heat stroke. What's going on there? Why the difference? Right, right. I mean, you know,
00:12:27.820fundamentally it comes down to different levels of heat tolerance and, you know, there could be
00:12:33.260other things going on, like certain medications, antidepressants, for example. It could be like a
00:12:39.580stimulant. Anyway, that plays into it. Somebody could be drunk or hungover, but basically people
00:12:44.820have different heat tolerance. And the interesting thing to me is that, like I said earlier,
00:12:50.760this heat tolerance can be trained. It can be modified. So I went to the Corey Stringer
00:12:56.180Institute at the University of Connecticut, and it's named after a football player who had passed
00:13:02.240away due to a heat stroke a minnesota vikings lineman and his family helped found this institute
00:13:07.720it's dedicated to basically studying heat in athletes and workers and so i did a heat tolerance
00:13:14.720test and so basically to do that they put you in like a heat chamber basically a hot room or like
00:13:22.580a large oven which is what it felt like heated up to 100 degrees 40 humidity put me on a bike
00:13:29.560and just had me pedal for an hour. And then they monitored my body temperature and watch that go
00:13:35.900up and up and up. And somebody who's heat tolerant, their body temperature will go up and then it will
00:13:41.020kind of plateau. If you're not heat tolerant, it'll just keep going up. And then, you know,
00:13:46.560eventually you'll get into trouble. And so mine just kept going up. So they were like, okay,
00:13:52.180you flunked. Yeah. And then, okay, so it's trainable. You can become heat acclimated.
00:13:58.140And I think anyone who lives in a hot location during the summer has experienced this, like here in Oklahoma, you know, in the spring it's, you know, in the seventies, sixties, it's pleasant. And then you have that first day that's above 80 degrees and you're like, Oh Jesus, unbearable. This is hot. It's because you lost your heat acclimation during the winter and the spring. And then by the end of August, it's 95, but it feels more bearable because you've gotten used to it.
00:16:00.680Like I built up this heat tolerance by deliberately working out in the heat.
00:16:06.220So again, heat tolerance is trainable.
00:16:08.840Yeah, I think I should make the point, you know, I made sure to be safe and monitor my core
00:16:14.420temperature as I did this. So I had a little device called a core and it straps to a heart
00:16:19.560rate strap and it senses and calculates your core body temperature. So I knew I was never getting
00:16:25.080into the danger zone. So it's really important for people who try this to be safe and not overdo it.
00:16:31.560And I think this also goes for what we're going to talk about, which is more of the sort of heat
00:16:36.660exposure by choice, heat therapy, things like sauna. Yeah. Something else you talk about is
00:16:41.720that there are some athletes who are using heat acclimation or heat adaptation, not only to
00:16:47.280prevent keeling over in a race or a game, but also just as a performance enhancer. Yeah. So,
00:16:53.420you know, as events like the Tour de France or the Olympics get hotter and hotter,
00:16:59.500heat has started to become, and heat tolerance has started to become a huge factor. And so
00:17:04.840they've had sort of star athletes and race favorites coming into these events and just
00:17:10.820completely bonking because they were fit, but they weren't heat tolerant. And it's two different
00:17:16.700things. And so athletes started training their heat tolerance. And then they found out that
00:17:23.620heat training itself actually brings some performance benefits similar to altitude
00:17:29.780training. So your plasma volume increases, you have more hemoglobin, more red blood cells,
00:17:36.540more oxygen carrying capacity. You know, after I did my heat adaptation, after I did the hotter
00:17:41.740in hell, I went back to Corey Stringer and I did the heat test and it was like a piece of cake.
00:17:47.140I was like high-fiving the lab guys and smiling and it was dramatic. It was a dramatic
00:17:53.500performance enhancement. Okay. So heat can be a performance enhancer and it can also have a lot
00:17:59.460of other benefits. And that's what the thrust of this book is about. So heat, yes, it can be bad
00:18:05.340for you. It can kill you. But heat stroke is preventable. You can adapt to heat and heat can
00:18:10.380actually be a big positive for your body and brain. Today, we don't really experience a lot
00:18:16.540of temperature variations. We've got climate control. So you can go from your air-conditioned
00:18:20.860house to your air-conditioned car. So let's talk about this. What are some of the benefits of being
00:18:26.720exposed to hot temperatures? Well, I think cardiovascular is one side. If you're in
00:18:32.560hotter conditions, your cardiovascular system has to work harder to keep you cool. There are
00:18:37.640these things called heat shock proteins at the kind of cellular level. They're like little
00:18:42.600maintenance proteins, or one scientist I spoke to called them mommy proteins because they kind
00:18:47.620of take care of other parts of your cell, other machines in your cell. They take care of your DNA.1.00
00:18:52.360they kind of clean up age-related damage so those get activated as you spend time in in hot
00:18:59.940conditions and you know i think it's interesting that people even though we live in this kind of
00:19:05.460comfort and you know i love sleeping in air conditioning you know i'm not gonna lie but
00:19:09.780people gravitate towards things like temperature extremes things like cold plunging and things
00:19:14.980like saunas and i think we we kind of crave that variation yeah i mean humans have been doing that
00:19:20.740throughout cultures and throughout time yeah you know so the nordics have their sauna culture but
00:19:25.460then other cultures have similar heating therapies that they do where they voluntarily expose
00:19:31.680themselves to heat russia has theirs japan has theirs in north america or the desert southwest
00:19:38.020native americans had you know sweat lodges so yeah i think there is like this this human need to
00:19:44.200experience extremes in temperature because it does something for our bodies so yeah let's dig
00:19:50.240more to these. In our minds. In our minds, yeah. We're going to talk about it. The mind stuff is
00:19:52.840really interesting. So let's talk about some of the benefits of heat exposure, voluntary heat
00:19:57.840exposure. You mentioned a few. It helps our heart health. And we know this because of some studies
00:20:03.720done on Nordic people who do sauna regularly. Yeah, Finnish. And this was sort of my gateway
00:20:10.760to this entire topic. I'd been, because I'd written two books on longevity, I was aware of
00:20:17.040these really interesting studies from Finland where they looked at, it was really a sort of a
00:20:22.860broad heart health study. They're trying to figure out why Finnish guys were dying of heart attacks.
00:20:28.940And so they looked at a whole bunch of different lifestyle factors over decades. And so in 2015,
00:20:36.340this cardiologist and some colleagues came along and looked at the data and decided to compare
00:20:41.960sauna use and outcomes. And they found that the most frequent sauna users in this group
00:20:47.840had about half the rate or 40% the rate of heart attacks and half the rate of strokes and half the
00:20:53.740rate of mortality as the guys who used it like once a week. Weirdly, they couldn't find anybody
00:20:59.480in Finland who, any of these guys who didn't use sauna. So the baseline was once a week. So
00:21:05.480four to seven times a week did much better than once a week. It's a huge finding. I'm like,
00:21:10.720there's no drug that does that. It's a massive effect. So what does the heat do? Why do we get
00:21:17.580that benefit to our cardiac system from heat exposure? Yeah, it's primarily, it's like
00:21:24.400light exercise, I think is the best way to describe it. Your heart rate goes up,
00:21:29.640your blood vessels expand, your blood pressure drops. So there's sort of a mechanistic
00:21:36.040effect on your cardiovascular system. So that's one. That's the first level. And I think there's
00:21:41.960more to it. I think it may have to do with the fact that you're activating. And this is a guy
00:21:47.840who had worked in this lab in Finland. This is kind of what they were pursuing. Sitting in the
00:21:53.740super hot sauna kind of activates your sympathetic nervous system because it's stressful. It's the
00:21:58.820fight or flight. And then when you get out, that sympathetic nervous system kind of withdraws.
00:22:04.260And so they suspect that some of the benefits may have to do with how it manipulates your autonomic nervous system, which I thought was pretty cool.
00:22:24.380They did find that it appeared to improve insulin sensitivity, and they don't know if that's because it kind of sped up, you know, your heart rate's going, your metabolism is speeding up, perhaps.
00:22:40.180And, you know, some of these healthy behaviors like sauna are kind of tied together.
00:22:45.380So it's possible that somebody who's using sauna more maybe is healthier to begin with.
00:22:50.700We can't discount that possibility because it's a little tough to sit through a sauna, but it's also possible that they're doing sauna and they're doing a little bit of exercise, they're eating better or whatever.
00:23:02.200They did find, these Finnish researchers, they did sort of parse that a little bit and they did find that the guys, and this was all men in this study originally, the guys who exercised and used sauna frequently had the biggest benefit.
00:23:16.640it. So they're the ones that had the 50% drop in mortality, but the guys who didn't exercise
00:23:23.960and just did sauna, they had about a 30% drop. So 30% effect. So that's still pretty good. And
00:23:30.100that tells you that the heat does do something. We're going to take a quick break for your words
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00:32:47.660But you talk about those benefits are probably overhyped
00:32:50.540and cold plunges actually might be hurting your gains.
00:32:53.900yes certainly in in terms of muscle growth this has been pretty well studied and they found that
00:33:01.340you know intense cold exposure slows down like muscle protein synthesis so after a workout they
00:33:09.320actually did one crazy study where they they had guys do leg work or subjects do leg work
00:33:15.060and then they would put one leg in a in a warm basically leg container and the other leg in a
00:33:22.440really cold thing and then they had them drink a special drink blah blah blah or they could see
00:33:28.360what was happening in each leg and the warm leg muscle protein synthesis was happening
00:33:32.780cold leg it wasn't happening so it tells you that you're not getting the the muscle gains however
00:33:37.880you know it may help with inflammation it may increase dopamine norepinephrine all those things
00:33:44.180it does that in the blood we're not sure about in the brain because you have to kill the person to
00:33:50.360test that. So we haven't done that. Also, you know, it can give you, if you're talking about
00:33:55.180jumping into like a cold body of water, you're getting into territory where, you know, drowning
00:34:01.400is not impossible. You know, if you suck in a big breath of water because of the shock of jumping
00:34:07.720in the cold, I mean, that can be dangerous. Yeah. The, uh, the cold plunges for after a workout,
00:34:14.660like, well, it reduces inflammation. It's like, well, if you strength train, your body needs
00:34:18.860inflammation for that that's what causes your muscles to grow is that inflammation so if you
00:34:23.020excellent point if you eliminate the inflammation you're just going to kill your gains but you do
00:34:27.280highlight it could be useful a cold plunge could be useful if you're an endurance athlete it can
00:34:33.500help with recovery and it also just feels good you know going from the sauna to the cold plunge
00:34:37.660and back again that can feel great and it's okay to just do it you know do the cold plunge and hot
00:34:43.180sauna together just for that because it feels good but yeah if you're focused on building strength
00:34:48.000muscle mass, maybe just stick to the sauna. Yeah. And you know, you want to go in the cold
00:34:52.620plunge because you've built up all this heat in your body and like, you know, sitting in a sauna,
00:34:57.940you're hot. The idea of jumping in a Lake Superior sounds like the best thing, you know,
00:35:02.94040 degrees sounds like the best idea anybody ever had. And you know, I've done it too. It's just,
00:35:09.000I think the science of cold is way behind the science of heat. But you made a great point
00:35:14.340about inflammation. Inflammation is not always bad, especially in the exercise context.
00:35:20.580Inflammation is part of what drives those adaptations and it's also a healing mechanism.
00:35:27.040Yeah. The other thing you point out too is when people do cold exposure, they probably get too
00:35:32.900cold. They get in a cold plunge that's like 35 degrees when it really needs to be just like
00:35:37.64050. I mean, it doesn't have to be as cold as you think to get the benefits.
00:35:40.360Yeah. This is like competitive cold plunging, right? Who can do the coldest cold plunge for the longest? And, you know, it's obviously it's more challenging. I think, you know, people like it because it's a mental challenge. But yeah, this is very satisfying to learn from some of the experts I talked to that actually the ideal temperature for the physiological benefits is really in the 50s.
00:36:03.560Yeah. I mean, after I read that research about how cold plunging blunts muscle protein synthesis, I stopped doing cold showers after workouts. But I still do cold showers. I don't do it for any health benefits. I just do it because it's sort of like an exercise in willpower. It's like, all right, I know this is going to be hard. I don't want to do this, but I'm going to do it anyways. So that's why I do it.
00:36:25.080Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it makes anything else, you know, whatever else you have to do that day seem easier. Right. And so, you know, I'll do a cold plunge. I'm kind of like, oh God, do I have to do this? I won't do it alone. But like if I'm at the sauna with my son, like we like to have little cold plunge duels. It's social.
00:36:43.960Yeah. It's a great father-son bonding activity. Instead of playing catch, do some cold exposure.
00:36:50.640So going back to the heat exposure, getting the benefits of it, what temperature do you need to
00:36:56.320get to in a sauna? And for how long do you need to expose yourself to that temperature to get
00:37:01.580the benefits we've been talking about? So this is interesting. Those Finner studies,
00:37:06.320they asked the subjects about how hot was their sauna? How long did they stay in? But it was just
00:37:12.200a one-time questionnaire. So it's not super reliable. It did seem that the people who stayed
00:37:19.420in like 20 minutes at above 100, I think 176 Fahrenheit did the best. I mean, having been to
00:37:28.080Finland, there aren't any saunas that are cooler than 176 that's on the cold end. I'm not sure we
00:37:34.440can definitively say that there is one protocol and certainly not one protocol for everybody.
00:37:39.160However, it does appear that a lot of the benefits that I've talked about and also some of the mental health benefits, so the heat adaptation, the heat shock proteins, those things, those happen when your core temperature gets up to 101.5 Fahrenheit.
00:40:40.420Yeah. So one of the interesting sections that you have in the book, you talk about the
00:40:46.200mental health benefits of heat exposure. And there's some researchers who are using heat
00:40:53.860exposure as a potential treatment for depression. This is coming out of a lab run by a guy named
00:40:58.740Charles Rizon. We've had him on the podcast before. Oh, have you? Okay. Yeah, that was
00:41:02.920episode number 585. This is a long time ago. So for those who haven't heard that episode
00:41:07.580and don't know about this research, what do we know about heat therapy as a treatment for
00:41:12.480depression? Well, Chuck is great. He's a real sort of intellectual explorer, and he looks at
00:41:18.720all kinds of things that might sound extreme or kooky. He's done a lot with like Eastern
00:41:26.240traditions. So the heat piece of it is interesting. He was involved with a study. I think the first
00:41:34.120study was in Switzerland and they put these severely depressed people into kind of a heating
00:41:41.420device. So basically like an infrared sauna that you lie down in and they heated these people up
00:41:46.760to, again, 101.5 Fahrenheit. And they found that basically their depression symptoms were
00:41:52.200wiped out, cut in half or more, in some cases completely gone. So really potent effect against
00:41:59.940severe depression, which is that really surprised me because, you know, you think of like a heat
00:42:05.660wave and really hot weather and people can get kind of grumpy, but this appeared to have this
00:42:11.820powerful effect against depression. Do they have any ideas of why that is?
00:42:16.280They have some theories. People who are depressed appear to have a difficult time regulating their body temperature in general, like they don't sweat as much. Their body temperature is elevated. So there's something going on with the whole thermoregulation system in these folks.
00:42:34.580But one theory that these folks are working with is that if you heat up your brain to
00:42:41.040a certain level, that stimulates a brain region, I think it's called the dorsal raphe
00:42:46.460nucleus, to start producing serotonin.
00:42:49.820So similar to what a SSRI drug might do.
00:44:09.680The way they discovered this is really interesting.
00:44:12.300Or one way they discovered this, they found that they were experimenting with this microbe that they found in the soil in like Uganda.
00:44:20.880and they were trying to use it to help build up people's immunity to leprosy and it gives you a
00:44:27.220slight fever but a fever is kind of a healing mechanism and they found that people who had
00:44:32.860been injected with this microbe were happier they got happier really after having this like slight
00:44:39.320fever kind of a crazy story yeah and you talk about in the book you've had a dealt with a
00:44:44.740melancholic disposition throughout your life and that's why i'm a writer you know yeah yeah same
00:44:49.960Same. It's required. I'm, I'm an Eeyore too. Um, did a heat therapy do anything for your
00:44:56.180melancholy? Oh, it was amazing. You know, it's actually why I started gravitating towards,
00:45:03.060towards heat in the first place. I started going to the sauna in my gym, which, you know, was kind
00:45:09.140of dark, dank, not the best, but it was warm and comforting. And I said, I felt good being in there
00:45:15.240And I couldn't, and I was going through some difficult work stuff. And, you know, prior to that, sauna was not on my to-do list. And so I kind of took that and was like, hmm, I felt better. I wonder why. Then I came along and I met Chuck Rezon and did a little bit of a dive into that research.
00:45:34.500And then I actually volunteered to be sort of a guinea pig in a study that he and his colleague, Ashley Mason, were doing in Colorado. And basically, they stuck me in this infrared sauna, you know, lying in a hospital bed, you know, again, with the rectal probe, but you know, anything for science.
00:45:53.900so they heated me up for like an hour and it was totally miserable and i was like why did i do this
00:46:01.280but you know i was like kind of bummed out so we did this and then i i hopped in a cold plunge
00:46:08.340and i kind of went home to the hotel thinking why the heck did i do that but then like the next day
00:46:15.320it was like the skies opened up and the angels were singing and was like i hadn't felt this good
00:46:19.900in months. I couldn't believe it. It was like euphoric. It was amazing.
00:46:25.780Yeah. That was the thing that drew me to sauna. It was the mental health benefits. I'd go there,
00:46:30.980I'd have like this, this natural drive to go to the sauna whenever I was feeling really stressed
00:46:36.420out. Yep. And that's why I started it. And if it helps my cardiac health, great. And if it helps
00:46:41.740heat shock proteins, fantastic. But I do it primarily because it just makes me feel better
00:46:47.200mentally. Yeah, there's something about it. And I do the same thing. I go to the sauna place kind
00:46:52.800of near my house and spend an hour going in and out. And then I'm just driving home and I don't
00:46:57.860care. Like somebody cuts me off. Don't care. I can tackle the work things that I've been putting
00:47:04.980off. I'm just better to be around afterwards. It's great. So I think when a lot of Americans
00:47:11.260in particular talk about hitting the sauna or doing heat therapy we typically talk about it as
00:47:17.360a biohacking tool like we're like oh i want to improve my heat shock proteins and i want to
00:47:21.300improve my cardiac health whatever but you argue that taking this sort of like it's a really
00:47:25.180reductivist view of heat therapy can miss the bigger benefits of heat exposure what can americans
00:47:33.020learn from nordic sauna culture and heat therapy about some of those intangible benefits of exposing
00:47:40.040yourself to the heat. Right. And you know, those mechanistic benefits are real, but I think it
00:47:45.600comes down to how do you approach, how do you think about time? And so here we're like, everything we
00:47:52.660do has to have a purpose and a payoff, right? It has to have like a concrete, okay, I'm doing this,
00:47:59.080I'm checking this box and I'm taking down my blood pressure and I'm activating my heat shock
00:48:04.660proteins. I think in more traditional sauna cultures and heat bathing cultures, it's really
00:48:10.940about taking time to, as one person told me, to slow down. So you're going to like a third space.
00:48:17.600You're not thinking about work. You're not thinking about status. You're not necessarily
00:48:22.320there for the concrete health benefit, but it's just like, you're taking time for yourself or to
00:48:28.160be with your family or your friends and to do something that doesn't necessarily need to be
00:48:32.420quantifiable or productive. Yeah. And those Nordic cultures, like
00:48:38.560sauna-ing is, it's a social activity. It's social. Yeah. I mean, the benefits, I think
00:48:43.760the social benefits are tremendous, but I think if you're doing it by yourself,
00:48:48.760it's almost like a meditation. You're slowing down. You're away from your phone. You're away
00:48:53.940from work. Yeah. For me, you know, I mostly sauna by myself, but when I'm in there, it's like no
00:49:00.620phone's allowed yeah and i'm just just gonna phone doesn't work anyway right i've taken my phone in
00:49:06.160a sauna before and you'll eventually get this warning saying yeah your phone's too hot take it
00:49:10.280out but i just go in there just close my eyes and just really relax and just don't think about
00:49:15.220things but i do think it's an even more enjoyable experience when you can do it with friends yeah
00:49:21.400it's nice it's a good little bonding thing you know there's something about it like
00:49:25.980we're in this space that is kind of too hot and kind of slightly panicking a little bit
00:49:34.060or it's stressful, but you're together. So it breaks down inhibitions I find also.
00:49:39.920So like in New York where people walk around with their guard up, these social saunas are
00:49:45.400hugely popular. And you go in and you talk to people. It's crazy.
00:49:50.460Yeah. You mentioned that in that study with the people about depression and sauna treatment.
00:49:55.420one of the things they noticed talking yeah people just start talking and they're just
00:49:59.080yapping yeah yeah yeah and you did the same thing you just started yapping to this yeah i was just
00:50:04.360babbling like like like a madman yeah that's really funny and i'm not you know i'm not the
00:50:09.200chattiest person typically but it somehow like broke down those those inhibitions what are your
00:50:16.360sauna sessions look like these days so i there's a couple places in town that i go to one place is
00:50:22.760super, super hot. And so I like debate with the guy, like, I think your sauna is too hot, but
00:50:27.840anyway, the cold plunge is awesome. It's like clean, which is I think an important quality in
00:50:33.840a cold plunge, especially a public cold plunge. So yeah, it's real basic, right? One thing I know
00:50:38.460is cold plunges and I've been worried about doing cold, like public cold plunges. Whenever I've done
00:50:43.080cold plunges, I have to pee. Like you immediately, like there's some response. I think there's some
00:50:47.680response in your body. Once you hit cold, like you're just like, I need to pee. Yeah. Yeah. So
00:50:51.400But I couldn't imagine doing a public cold plunge because the only thing I'm thinking is like people probably just ruined it for me, I think.
00:51:21.400So, yeah, that's going to be the afternoon. I go in the afternoon. I go at like four. So I'm kind of done with any kind of productive writing I've had to do because it's so relaxing that, that like I want to go to sleep afterwards.
00:51:35.500Yeah. For me, I, I have a sauna in my backyard. It's one of the best purchases I've ever made.
00:51:40.500It's fantastic. You just go in, I go in after a workout for 20 minutes, but it's awesome. I love it.
00:51:45.760Yeah, you know, I feel like I should get one now, but I haven't pulled the trigger. But, you know, I like, I don't necessarily want to always sit in there by myself.
00:51:54.340Yeah, you like the social aspect of it.
00:51:57.140Yeah, so maybe that's a trigger for inviting people over and having sauna days.
00:52:02.740Yeah, inviting your friends. Well, if I'm ever in Salt Lake, I'll hit you up while we can do a sauna session.