The Hidden Power of Heat — How a Good Sweat Heals Your Body and Mind
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Summary
Bill Gifford s new book, Hotwired: How the Hidden Power of Heat Makes Us Stronger, takes a deep dive into the research about heat and what it does to our bodies, both the good and bad things. In this episode, we talk about the advantages of heat exposure over cold exposure, and the benefits of heat for both body and mind, including how it can boost athletic performance and heart health, and may even be an effective treatment for depression.
Transcript
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code manliness50off. Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the AOM podcast,
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Cold exposure has gotten a lot of attention in the past few years, with people dunking
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themselves in ice baths for the sake of their health and well-being. But good news here,
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exposing yourself to heat by sitting in the sauna or even a hot tub might actually be even better for
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you, not to mention more pleasant. In his new book, Hotwired, How the Hidden Power of Heat Makes
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a Stronger, Bill Gifford unpacks the dichotomy of heat, how it can both be a danger and a healer.
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In the first part of our conversation, we dive into that former side, discussing what happens
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when your core temperature gets too high, why some people handle the stress of hot temperatures
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better than others, and how heat tolerance can actually be trained. We then talk about the
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advantages of heat exposure over cold exposure, and the benefits of heat for both body and mind,
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including how it can boost athletic performance and heart health, and may even be an effective
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treatment for depression. We also talk about how to get the most out of your sauna sessions,
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and how Bill and I like to sauna. After the show's over, check out our show notes at awimp.is
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So you got a new book out called Hotwired, How the Hidden Power of Heat Makes Us Stronger,
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and you take a deep dive into the research about heat and what it does to our bodies,
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both the good things and the bad things. You start out the book talking about how a bike race
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in Wichita Falls, Texas, in the middle of August, led you to take this deep dive. What was going on
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there? Well, it sounds like a terrible idea, right? Riding your bike at 100 miles, 100 degrees.
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You know, I like to have a goal or a challenge that sort of then guides my and motivates my training,
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keeps me accountable, keeps me in shape. And I picked this one for some reason,
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I think because I'd always thought that I wasn't good in the heat, and that I didn't do well in the
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heat. You know, back when I was a mountain bike racer in my 30s, 20s and 30s, I always felt like
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heat was my like kryptonite. So I wanted to kind of test that.
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And so yeah, for those who aren't familiar, this race, it's pretty famous. It's been going on for a
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couple decades. It's 100 miles. And it's again, in Wichita Falls, Texas, if you haven't been there,
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it is West Texas. It is really hot in August. And I mean, people do get heat sickness. And some
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people have actually died during this race because of the heat. Yeah, a handful. And the heat is kind
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of a point. And weirdly, you know, you'd think, well, okay, nobody would sign up for this thing. But
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like 10,000 people come and do it some years. It's wild. And the year I did it 2023, this like,
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they call it a heat dome. So it was a super hot summer, 100 degrees or more, pretty much all
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summer long. And then the day we did the ride, got up to about 107 Fahrenheit. It was brutal.
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Yeah, you know, frankly, I was surprised that I made it. And we can talk more about that why.
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Yeah, I mean, one of the things you do this book is you talk about the research you did to prep for
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this race to see, well, what can I do so I don't get heat sickness? So I don't die. Right. And you
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talk about in the book, the very first thing you notice that heat can either kill us, or it can help
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us. And let's talk about how heat can kill us first. How hot is too hot for humans? Do we know that?
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We don't really know. And it kind of depends, you know, about 15 years ago, some climate researchers
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theorized that there was a theoretical upper limit past which humans could no longer
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cool themselves down. And it turns out that people were actually already getting into trouble at much
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lower temperatures. So for example, when there are heat waves in Europe, you know, it'll be like 90
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degrees. And that to you, you live in Oklahoma, or to me in Salt Lake City, that seems like a relatively
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nice day in the summer, not too hot. So heat tolerance is very variable, depending on a lot of
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different factors. But the interesting thing that I learned, is that it can be trained, it can be
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altered. So it's not something that's kind of set in stone.
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Yeah. And I mean, you talk about people in India, kind of a contrast to people in England,
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where it's like 90 degrees, and they're like, Oh, my gosh, we're dying. People in India, like they're
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living in this sweltering, it's super hot, super humid, and a lot of people do fine.
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Right. You know, I'm not saying it's fun. But, you know, I did all kinds of crazy research for this.
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But I found one big study where they compare temperature and mortality rates across like
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400 different cities around the world. And they found that each city has like an ideal temperature
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at which mortality is the lowest excess mortality. So it's not too hot, not too cold. And by the way,
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many more people die from cold than from heat, like 10 times as many, that that was a stunning
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thing to learn, because that's not how heat is framed. Anyway, so a city like Toronto, the ideal
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temperature or the minimum mortality temperature is like 66 Fahrenheit. And then for Tucson, it's like
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86. So there's differences in like, basically, I mean, there's differences in like air conditioning,
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all that kind of thing. But I think a lot of it comes down to like, heat tolerance of these
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different populations. Yeah, being used to it. Yeah, what happens in our body, whenever it does
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get too hot, because it sounds like from the research you highlighted, it's not so much the
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temperature outside our body, that's the problem. It's our internal temperature, right? That's what
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causes problems. So what happens when our internal temperature gets too high?
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Right. And we generate a tremendous amount of heat, internal heat, metabolic heat, just by being
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alive. And then when we do anything like any activity, it's almost like a car engine, you know,
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your car moves forward a little bit, but your engine is producing like four times that much energy.
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So 80% of it is heat, like a waste product of heat. When somebody gets too hot, it's kind of gruesome.
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If you get to a certain point, you get into heat exhaustion territory, which is you feel wiped out,
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you feel confused, you feel kind of lethargic, you might pass out. So that's heat exhaustion,
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not usually fatal. But then the next step is heat stroke. And that is what it sounds like. It's a
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neurological situation. You can get aggressive, you can get confused, you can pass out, you can have
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like a seizure. And as you're unable to cool yourself off, as your temperature rises past like 105,
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106, 107, you get into a situation where like your cell membranes don't function as well, your cells
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kind of explode, you get into organ failure, especially the liver. And ultimately, you die a
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horrible death. I mean, it's terrible. I've spoken to people who have had heat strokes, I've seen people
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having, you know, exertional heat strokes. And it's, it's not pretty.
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It's scary. Yeah. But the thing is, you can treat it. We know a lot more about heat stroke.
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Thanks to research in the military is a big place where a lot of this research is coming out of,
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as well as in athletics. So when someone gets heat stroke, how do you treat it?
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And this is really important. If somebody is in that zone of elevated body temperature,
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confusion, heat exhaustion, heat stroke, you dunk them in a tub of ice water if you can. I mean,
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that's the easiest, that stops it in its tracks, really. You know, I went to a road race in
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Massachusetts, the Falmouth Road Race, seven mile run in August. It wasn't particularly hot,
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but I sat in the medical tent with people from the Corey Stringer Institute, which is kind of devoted to
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this, you know, awareness of heat stroke and prevention of heat stroke. And we had runners
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coming in, in various stages of heat illness. And we just like threw them in the ice tub and
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they would come around, their body temperature would drop and they'd be okay. They'd walk out.
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Nobody needs to die of heat stroke. I think that's the, that's the takeaway.
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That's the takeaway. And what's interesting about heat stroke, it can come on, like,
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as you said, with this race that you went to when it doesn't seem that hot outside.
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Suddenly. Because the issue is, I mean, one of the reasons why we don't keel over and die
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when it gets really hot is humans, we are a species that can cool ourselves really efficiently.
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We sweat a lot, but for sweat to work, it has to evaporate. That's what cools you off. So you sweat
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and then as the water evaporates, it takes heat away from your body. But when you're in humid
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conditions, you don't get a lot of evaporations. So you can run a race when it's like 80 degrees
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outside, but it's really humid. You can get a heat stroke in that because your body can't cool
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Right. Falmouth was 70 degrees, 70 degrees and like 90% humidity. And that length, seven miles,
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six, seven miles. So it's like, you know, it could be around an hour, 45 minutes or an hour,
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intense effort. And your cooling system doesn't have a chance to catch up. That's why those events
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are actually more dangerous than a marathon. But our cooling system is incredible. It's this
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incredible gift that I think is one of our fundamental human traits. I mean, it kind of
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Well, yeah, because it's allowed us to basically migrate across the entire planet and live in just
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disparate climates. And then, I mean, you talk about this too. We've had, you know, the Born to Run
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guy. We've had Alex Hutchison on the podcast talking about why humans are so good at running.
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And one of the theories out there is that, well, we're really good at persistence running. And so
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the idea is like our early hunter-gatherer ancestors, they would just chase gazelle down
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and we could do it for a long time because we could sweat and we can keep ourselves cool.
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The gazelle couldn't do that. And so it just eventually had to stop and cool off. And then
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that's when we'd go in for the kill. Right. So if you think about walking your dog on a hot day
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in the summer, I mean, you can easily outlast your dog, I'm sure, unless your dog is some kind of
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endurance monster, but your dog can only cool itself by panting and you're sweating across your
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entire body, you know, and it's amazingly potent cooling. I mean, we have these sweat glands that
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basically just bring water to the surface of our skin and then it evaporates. And that takes off a
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tremendous amount of heat. Yeah. It's super, it's brilliant.
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What's interesting though, is that, and you alluded to this earlier, is that you can take
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two people and put them in the same sweltering conditions and one person could be completely
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fine and another person could have a heat stroke. What's going on there? Why the difference?
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Right. Right. I mean, you know, fundamentally it comes down to different levels of heat tolerance.
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And, you know, there could be other things going on, like certain medications, antidepressants,
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for example, it could be like a stimulant. Anyway, that plays into it. Somebody could be
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drunk or hungover, but basically people have different heat tolerance. And the interesting
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thing to me is that, like I said earlier, this heat tolerance can be trained, it can be modified.
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So I went to the Corey Stringer Institute at the University of Connecticut, and it's named after
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a football player who had passed away due to a heat stroke, a Minnesota Vikings lineman and his
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family helped found this institute. It's dedicated to basically studying heat in athletes and workers.
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And so I did a heat tolerance test. And so basically to do that, they put you in like a heat chamber,
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basically a hot room or like a large oven, which is what it felt like, heated up to a hundred degrees,
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40% humidity, put me on a bike and just had me pedal for an hour. And then they monitored
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my body temperature and watch that go up and up and up. And somebody who's heat tolerant,
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their body temperature will go up and then it will kind of plateau. If you're not heat tolerant,
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it'll just keep going up. And then, you know, eventually you'll get into trouble. And so mine just
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kept, kept going up. So they were like, okay, you flunked.
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Yeah. And then, okay, so it's trainable. You can become heat acclimated. And I think anyone who
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lives in a hot location during the summer has experienced this. Like here in Oklahoma,
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you know, in the spring, it's, you know, in the seventies, sixties, it's pleasant. And then you
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have that first day that's above 80 degrees and you're like, oh, Jesus, this is unbearable. This is
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hot. It's because you lost your heat acclimation during the winter and the spring. And then by the end of
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August, it's 95, but it feels more bearable because you've gotten used to it.
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Yeah. So what insights did you get from this research lab about what you can do to become
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heat acclimated? Are there protocols? Do we know how long it takes to get acclimated to the heat?
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Yeah. So this sort of protocol actually dates back to the gold mines of South Africa a hundred years
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ago. The mine owners used to think that, okay, every black person is heat tolerant automatically
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because they live in Africa. Turned out not to be the case and people died. So they came up with a
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heat testing protocol. And then people who were not heat tolerant, basically the cure
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or the protocol is deliberate heat exposure over time. And so they would have these miners
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go into a tent that's like 95 degrees. They set up these tents in the hospital,
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heated them up. And these guys would just shovel rocks for an hour. And they would do that four
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or five times, test them again. Then if they were okay, they could go work. So it takes like
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four or five sessions of an hour of getting your body temperature up to a certain level. For me,
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it was going out on my bike, ride for a while, get my body temperature up to 101.5 and kind of stay
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there for an hour. So I did that. I did that like 10 times as I was training for the Hotter in Hell
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100. And, you know, I went into the ride thinking, this is like a bad idea. This is not going to go
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well. I was scared. And then I kind of got out there and got hotter and hotter and hotter. And like,
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I was fine. Like I felt great. I couldn't believe it actually. Like I built up this heat tolerance
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by deliberately working out in the heat. So again, heat tolerance is trainable.
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Yeah. I think I should make the point, you know, I made sure to be safe and monitor my core temperature
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as I did this. So I had a little device called a core and it straps to a heart rate strap and it
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senses and calculates your core body temperature. So I knew I was never getting into the danger zone.
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So it's really important for people who try this to be safe and not overdo it. And I think this also
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goes for what we're going to talk about, which is more of the sort of heat exposure by choice,
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heat therapy, things like sauna. Yeah. Something else you talk about is that there are some athletes
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who are using heat acclimation or heat adaptation, not only to prevent killing over in a race or a game,
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but also just as a performance enhancer. Yeah. So, you know, as events like the Tour de France
00:17:02.460
or the Olympics get hotter and hotter, heat has started to become, and heat tolerance has started
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to become a huge factor. And so they've had sort of star athletes and race favorites coming into these
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events and just completely bonking because they were fit, but they weren't heat tolerant and it's two
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different things. And so athletes started, started training their heat tolerance. And then they
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found out that heat training itself actually brings some performance benefits similar to altitude
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training. So your plasma volume increases your, you have more hemoglobin, more red blood cells,
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more oxygen carrying capacity. You know, after I did my heat adaptation, after I did the hotter in hell,
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I went back to Corey Stringer and I did the heat test and it was like a piece of cake. I was like
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high-fiving the lab guys and smiling and it was dramatic and it was a dramatic performance enhancement.
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Okay. So heat can be a performance enhancer and it can also have a lot of other benefits. And that's
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what the thrust of this book is about. So heat, yes, it can be bad for you. It can kill you,
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but heat stroke is preventable. You can adapt to heat and heat can actually be a big positive for
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your body and brain. Today, we don't really experience a lot of temperature variations.
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We've got climate control. So you can go from your air conditioned house to your air conditioned car.
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So let's talk about this. What are some of the benefits of being exposed to hot temperatures?
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Well, I think, I think cardiovascular is one side. If you're in hotter conditions, your
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cardiovascular system has to work harder to keep you cool. There are these things called heat shock
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proteins at the kind of cellular level. They're like little maintenance proteins, or one scientist
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I spoke to called them mommy proteins because they kind of take care of other parts of your cell,
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other machines in your cell. They take care of your DNA. They kind of clean up age-related damage.
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So those get activated as you spend time in hot conditions. And, you know, I think it's interesting
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that people, even though we live in this kind of comfort and, you know, I love sleeping in air
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conditioning. You know, I'm not going to lie, but people gravitate towards things like temperature
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extremes, things like cold plunging and things like saunas. And I think we, we kind of crave that
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variation. Yeah. I mean, humans have been doing that throughout cultures and throughout time, you know,
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so the Nordics have their sauna culture, but then other cultures have similar heating therapies that
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they do where they voluntarily expose themselves to heat. Russia has theirs. Japan has theirs.
00:19:41.480
In North America or the desert Southwest, Native Americans had, you know, sweat lodges. So yeah,
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I think there is like this, this human need to experience extremes in temperature because it
00:19:53.240
does something for our bodies. So yeah, let's dig more into these. In our minds. In our minds. Yeah.
00:19:58.180
We're going to talk about it. The mind stuff is really interesting. So let's talk about some of the
00:20:01.140
benefits of heat exposure, voluntary heat exposure. You mentioned a few. It helps our heart health.
00:20:06.880
And we know this because of some studies done on Nordic people who do sauna regularly.
00:20:14.960
Yeah. Finnish. And this was sort of my gateway to this entire topic. I'd been,
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because I'd written two books on longevity. I was aware of these really interesting studies from
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Finland where they looked at, it was really a sort of a broad heart health study. They're trying to
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figure out why Finnish guys were dying of heart attacks. And so they looked at a whole bunch of
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different lifestyle factors over decades. And so in 2015, this cardiologist and some colleagues
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came along and looked at the data and decided to compare sauna use and outcomes. And they found that
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the most frequent sauna users in this group had about half the rate or 40% the rate of heart attacks
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and half the rate of strokes and half the rate of mortality as the guys who used it like once a
00:21:04.000
week. Weirdly, they couldn't find anybody in Finland who, any of these guys who didn't use sauna. So
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the baseline was once a week. So four to seven times a week did much better than once a week.
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It's a huge finding. I'm like, there's no drug that does that. It's a massive effect.
00:21:20.340
So what does the heat do? Why do we get that benefit to our cardiac system from heat exposure?
00:21:29.040
Yeah. Primarily, it's like light exercise, I think is the best way to describe it. Your heart rate goes
00:21:35.740
up, your blood vessels expand, your blood pressure drops. So there's a sort of a mechanistic effect on
00:21:43.680
your cardiovascular system. So that's the first level. And I think there's more to it. I think it
00:21:49.980
may have to do with the fact that you're activating. And this is a guy who had worked in this lab in
00:21:56.340
Finland. This is kind of what they were pursuing. Sitting in the super hot sauna kind of activates
00:22:02.220
your sympathetic nervous system because it's stressful. It's the fight or flight. And then
00:22:06.420
when you get out, that sympathetic nervous system kind of withdraws. And so they suspect that some of
00:22:12.960
the benefits may have to do with how it manipulates your autonomic nervous system, which I thought was
00:22:19.100
pretty cool. That is cool. You also highlight research how sauna use or any type of other
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voluntary heat exposure can improve liver and glucose health. What's going on there?
00:22:29.640
Yeah, that's a tough one. They did find that it appeared to improve insulin sensitivity. And they
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don't know if that's because it kind of sped up, you know, your heart rate's going, your metabolism is
00:22:41.340
speeding up, perhaps. It's not clear. But there is some sort of benefit. We don't know the mechanism.
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Yeah. And, you know, some of these healthy behaviors like sauna are kind of tied together.
00:22:51.840
So it's possible that somebody who's using sauna more and maybe is healthier to begin with. You
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know, we can't discount that possibility because it's a little tough to sit through a sauna, but it's
00:23:01.560
also possible that they're doing sauna and they're doing a little bit of exercise. They're eating better
00:23:06.200
or whatever. It's hard to disentangle. They did find these Finnish researchers, they did sort of
00:23:11.380
parse that a little bit. And they did find that the guys, and this was all men in this study
00:23:16.680
originally, the guys who exercised and use sauna frequently had the biggest benefit. So they're
00:23:24.060
the ones that had the 50% drop in mortality. But the guys who didn't exercise and just did sauna,
00:23:32.040
they had about a 30% drop. So 30% effect. So that's still pretty good. And that tells you that
00:23:37.100
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AI from DuckDuckGo where AI is always optional and private. Now back to the show. Then you also
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highlight research that there might be a potential connection between sauna use or hot tub use with
00:27:01.720
our immune system. Yeah. Hot tub use is just as effective, by the way. People love sauna and hot
00:27:10.400
tubs aren't as trendy now, but any kind of like heat exposure, heat therapy, also infrared has been
00:27:17.260
found to be effective. I think with the immune thing, that's been something that has been researched
00:27:22.800
actually for decades. Back in the day, like in the 60s, these German and Scandinavian researchers
00:27:29.680
referred to it as, I think they had called it hardening. By doing the sauna and also the cold,
00:27:35.900
which was part of it, people sort of toughened themselves up and were more resistant to
00:27:41.540
infection. They missed fewer days of work and it's not clear why.
00:27:46.080
That's interesting. What about, I think a lot of people use sauna particularly because they,
00:27:52.300
well, I'm going to, I go to the sauna, I'm going to sweat a lot. So I'm going to detoxify.
00:27:55.940
Is there anything to this idea that sweating a lot detoxifies us?
00:27:59.880
Yeah. I'm going to say, I'm going to make people upset and say, probably not, you know,
00:28:06.660
officially sort of mainstream medicine will tell you that the only way we detoxify is through
00:28:12.320
our kidneys, through our liver and not really through our skin. So if you're sweating things
00:28:18.220
out, you're just kind of sweating out the liquid that's in, in your cells, the liquid that's in your
00:28:22.360
blood plasma. So if there's a little bit of like, you know, alcohol from last night, that's going to
00:28:27.880
come out, but it's not like a primary method of detoxification. You know, there have been some
00:28:33.140
studies that suggest that maybe we do put out things like heavy metals, but those aren't very
00:28:39.120
good studies. I'll put an asterisk by that and I'll say the jury is still out. It hasn't been well
00:28:45.360
studied. You know, it might be that heat exposure accelerates the detoxification that your kidneys
00:28:51.980
and liver do perhaps. That's a possibility. You know, um, Brian Johnson did a sauna protocol for
00:29:00.080
like, I think a couple months. And then he tested, uh, levels of various toxins in his body and also
00:29:05.900
microplastics and those dropped by a lot, but that's, you know, an of one and it's not a placebo
00:29:12.240
controlled study, randomized study, but he does have access to pretty good testing methods.
00:29:18.540
Okay. So I'll say the question's still open. Yeah. Still open. So potentially we don't know.
00:29:23.340
It does make you feel clean and it is a germ back to your immune point. It's a pretty clean
00:29:29.600
environment. Like not a lot of germs can withstand 180 degree sauna. And in fact, you know, old time
00:29:36.480
Finnish people, like I've met Finnish people who were born in a sauna. Like they would give birth there.
00:29:43.320
Yeah. Yeah. It was the most sterile room in the house. That's interesting. So you mentioned this
00:29:48.560
idea of heat shock proteins. I've seen this research before. It's like, Oh, when you expose
00:29:53.620
yourself to heat, you activate these heat shock proteins and that can be good for muscle recovery
00:29:59.660
and strength and muscle gains. Is there anything to that? Possibly, but I think it has more to do with
00:30:07.700
cellular resilience. And going back to our heat tolerance conversation, you know, there is a
00:30:14.560
military study where they exposed, I think mice to repeated, you know, intense heat stress,
00:30:21.520
almost like putting the mice in a sauna again and again and again. And they tested their heat shock
00:30:26.840
protein levels and they were through the roof. And they found that these mice were extremely resistant
00:30:32.400
to heat stroke. So it's a protective mechanism. I think as far as muscle gains, I think the increased
00:30:40.240
blood flow, I think plays a bigger role. And that's why sauna, I think is, in my opinion, preferable
00:30:45.440
as a, like a recovery or as like a post-workout tool to a cold plunge.
00:30:51.220
Well, let's talk about cold plunges. Cause those have been, that's been the rage now. We'll say like
00:30:55.400
the past five, 10 years, everyone's cold plunging. You got the cold plunge, bro.
00:31:00.000
Talking about it. Yeah. How do you know some guy cold plunges? Well, he'll let you know that he
00:31:04.500
cold plunges. And there's all these benefits that are touted, increases dopamine, helps with muscle
00:31:10.040
inflammation, reduces inflammation. But you talk about those benefits are probably overhyped and
00:31:15.000
cold plunges actually might be hurting your gains. Yes, certainly in terms of muscle growth, this has
00:31:22.600
been pretty well studied and they found that, you know, intense cold exposure slows down like muscle
00:31:30.620
protein synthesis. So after a workout, they actually did one crazy study where they, they had guys do
00:31:36.760
leg work or subjects do leg work. And then they would put one leg in a, in a warm, basically leg
00:31:44.360
container and the other leg in a really cold thing. And then they had them drink a special drink,
00:31:51.100
blah, blah, blah, or they could see what was happening in each leg. And the warm leg muscle
00:31:55.700
protein synthesis was happening. Cold leg, it wasn't happening. So it tells you that you're not
00:32:00.920
getting the muscle gains. However, you know, it may help with inflammation. It may increase dopamine,
00:32:06.920
norepinephrine, all those things. It does that in the blood. We're not sure about in the brain
00:32:12.900
because you have to kill the person to test that. So we haven't done that. Also, you know,
00:32:17.940
it can give you, if you're talking about jumping into like a cold body of water,
00:32:22.060
you're getting into territory where, you know, drowning is not impossible. You know, if you suck
00:32:28.080
in a big breath of water because of the shock of jumping in the cold, I mean, that can be dangerous.
00:32:34.960
Yeah. The, uh, the cold plunges for after a workout, like, well, it reduces inflammation. It's like,
00:32:41.180
well, if you strength train, your body needs inflammation for that. That's what causes your muscles
00:32:45.280
to grow. It's that inflammation. So if you, if you eliminate the inflammation, you're just going
00:32:49.980
to kill your gains, but you do highlight, it could be useful. A cold plunge could be useful. If you're
00:32:56.340
an endurance athlete, it can help with recovery. And it also just feels good. You know, going from
00:33:00.800
the sauna to the cold plunge and back again, that can feel great. And it's okay to just do it,
00:33:05.840
you know, do the cold plunge and hot sauna together just for that. Cause it feels good. But yeah,
00:33:10.640
if you're focused on building strength and muscle mass, maybe just stick to the sauna.
00:33:15.140
Yeah. And you know, you, you want to go in the cold plunge because you've built up all this heat
00:33:19.260
in your body and like, you know, sitting in a sauna, you're hot. The idea of jumping in a
00:33:24.220
Lake Superior sounds like the best thing, you know, 40 degrees sounds like the best idea anybody ever had.
00:33:30.920
And, you know, I've done it too. It's just, I think the science of cold is, is way behind
00:33:36.120
the science of heat. But you made a great point about inflammation. Like inflammation
00:33:40.220
is not always bad, especially in the exercise context. Inflammation is part of what drives those
00:33:47.340
adaptations. And it's also a healing mechanism. Yeah. And the other thing you point out too,
00:33:53.120
is when people do cold exposure, they probably get too cold. They get in a cold plunge. That's like
00:33:59.200
35 degrees when it really needs to be just like 50. I mean, it doesn't have to be as cold as you think
00:34:03.960
to get the benefits. Yeah. Yeah. This is like competitive cold plunging, right? Who can do the
00:34:09.100
coldest cold plunge for the longest? And, you know, it's obviously it's more challenging. I think,
00:34:14.760
you know, people like it because it's a mental challenge, but yeah, this is very satisfying to
00:34:19.660
learn from some of the experts I talked to that, that actually the ideal temperature for
00:34:23.840
the physiological benefits is really in the fifties. Yeah. I mean, I, I, uh, after I read that
00:34:30.240
research about how cold plunging blunts muscle protein synthesis, I stopped doing cold showers
00:34:35.680
after workouts, but I still do cold showers. I don't do it for any health benefits. I just do it
00:34:41.100
because it's sort of like a, an exercise in willpower. It's like, all right, I know this is
00:34:45.880
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.
00:34:49.440
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it makes anything else, you know, whatever else you have to do that day seem
00:34:54.620
easier. Right. And so, you know, I'll do a cold plunge. I'm kind of like, Oh God, do I have to do
00:34:59.640
this? I won't do it alone. But like, if I'm at the sauna with my son, like we like to have little
00:35:04.800
cold plunge duels. It's social. Yeah. It's a great father-son bonding activity. Yeah. Instead of
00:35:11.660
playing catch, do some cold exposure. So going back to the, the heat exposure, getting the benefits of
00:35:18.300
it, what temperature do you need to get to in a sauna? And for how long do you need to expose your
00:35:24.540
self to that temperature to get the benefits we've been talking about?
00:35:27.760
So this is interesting. Those Finner studies, they asked the subjects about how hot was their sauna?
00:35:34.380
How long did they stay in? But it was just a one-time questionnaire. So it's not super reliable.
00:35:41.500
It did seem that the people who stayed in like 20 minutes at above a hundred, I think 176 Fahrenheit
00:35:49.640
did the best. I mean, having been to Finland, there aren't any saunas that are cooler than 176
00:35:56.280
that's on the cold end. I'm not sure we can definitively say that there is one protocol and
00:36:01.840
certainly not one protocol for everybody. However, it does appear that a lot of the benefits that I've
00:36:08.060
talked about and then also some of the mental health benefits. So the heat adaptation, the heat
00:36:13.180
shock proteins, those things, those happen when your core temperature gets up to 101.5 Fahrenheit.
00:36:19.620
So I think that's like 38 Celsius. So you have to get up to a certain core temperature. That's kind
00:36:25.280
of what it's all about. Gotcha. And there are ways you can, you had this device that measured your core
00:36:30.540
temperature that doesn't involve sticking up a probe. Yeah. No rectal probe. No Vaseline required.
00:36:37.240
Yeah. And I did endure the rectal probe a few times. It's just a thing that they do.
00:36:43.600
Right. Yeah. My sauna protocol, I have a sauna in my backyard and I like to do it. I get it up to
00:36:50.520
190 and I'm in there for 20 minutes. Yeah. Solid. That's what it is. And then if I have friends over
00:36:58.280
for a sauna session, we want to talk, I'll put the temperature lower and turn it more into a sweat
00:37:03.700
lodge. So it's like 120 and it allows us to talk for a long time. And then we just sweat a lot. And
00:37:11.080
then at the end, we'll crank it up and get it really hot and then jump into the pool. Yeah. You know,
00:37:16.460
I think going back to our heat tolerance conversation, you know, nobody should jump into
00:37:20.440
190 degree sauna for 20 minutes out the gate, right? Just pay attention to your sensations and,
00:37:28.060
you know, pay attention to your body. I kind of go in for, I do 10 minutes at first and then I kind of
00:37:33.560
check in and like, okay, am I bored? Am I too hot? Am I not feeling it? Then I'll get out. If not,
00:37:41.140
stay a little bit longer. I kind of stay in past the point when I think about leaving. So I push that
00:37:45.840
a little bit farther and you have to make sure to give yourself enough recovery. Don't just go out
00:37:50.800
for like two minutes and hop back in. You got to let yourself cool off. Yeah. I drink a lot of fluids
00:37:56.540
after. Yeah. Key and electrolytes by the way. This is where, you know, most of us, you know,
00:38:02.340
in our French fry filled American diets, we don't really need a lot of extra electrolytes. Like we
00:38:08.500
get plenty, but if you're intensively sweating or if you're doing like hot yoga or the hotter than
00:38:14.660
hell hundred, yeah, you need some electrolytes too. Yeah. As I found the hard way. How'd you find out
00:38:20.640
the hard way? Oh, I went to a sauna festival in Minnesota and I was doing saunas all day long and,
00:38:27.800
you know, hanging out and I had a couple beers and I wasn't really paying attention to hydration or
00:38:34.680
salt. And then the next day I woke up and I just kind of felt miserable and I felt achy. Like I'd
00:38:40.300
run a marathon. Like I was just super beat up. And then I talked to somebody and they were like,
00:38:44.060
oh yeah, like, did you have any electrolytes? Like, no. Got to get those electrolytes.
00:38:47.460
So I didn't drink enough. Didn't have enough electrolytes.
00:38:49.760
Yeah. And so you also mentioned earlier that you can get these benefits from heat using a
00:38:55.020
traditional sauna, like a Finnish sauna that uses wood or an electric stove to heat things up,
00:39:00.780
an infrared sauna, hot tub. You can get the benefits with any of these things.
00:39:04.700
Yeah. So one of the interesting sections that you have in the book, you talk about the
00:39:10.480
mental health benefits of heat exposure. And there's some researchers who are using heat
00:39:18.140
exposure as a potential treatment for depression. This is coming out of a lab run by a guy named
00:39:23.040
Charles Rizon. We've had him on the podcast before.
00:39:26.720
Yeah. That was episode number 585. This is a long time ago. So for those who haven't heard that
00:39:31.400
episode and don't know about this research, what do we know about heat therapy as a treatment for
00:39:37.600
Well, Chuck is great. He's a real sort of intellectual explorer and he looks at all kinds of things that
00:39:44.700
might sound extreme or kooky. He's done a lot with like Eastern traditions. So the heat piece of it
00:39:53.860
is interesting. He was involved with a study. I think the first study was in Switzerland and they
00:40:01.180
put these severely depressed people into kind of a heating device. So basically like an infrared sauna
00:40:08.140
that you lie down in and they heated these people up to, again, 101.5 Fahrenheit. And they found that
00:40:14.480
basically their depression symptoms were wiped out, cut in half or more, in some cases completely gone.
00:40:21.380
So really potent effect against severe depression, which is that really surprised me because, you know,
00:40:28.460
you think of like a heat wave and really hot weather and people can get kind of grumpy,
00:40:34.160
but this appeared to have this powerful effect against depression.
00:40:40.900
They have some theories. People who are depressed appear to have a difficult time regulating their
00:40:47.900
body temperature in general. Like they don't sweat as much. Their body temperature is elevated. So
00:40:53.760
there's something going on with the whole thermoregulation system in these folks. But one theory that
00:41:00.900
these folks are working with is that if you heat up your brain to a certain level, that stimulates
00:41:07.940
a brain region, I think it's called the dorsal raphe nucleus, to start producing serotonin. So similar to
00:41:14.980
what a SSRI drug might do. So that's one possible reason.
00:41:20.400
Yeah. If I remember correctly, another theory that Charles put out there is that, you know, using the sauna,
00:41:26.340
or exposing yourself to heat, it is an acute stressor when it causes an acute amount of
00:41:37.920
Right. It's sort of like hair of the dog. You give someone... Because like I say, I think depressed
00:41:41.900
people, they have a lot of inflammation in their body and in their brain. So exposing yourself to
00:41:48.020
an acute stressor, it helps dissipate inflammation in the long run.
00:41:53.600
Right. And exercise does the same thing. And exercise also has a potent antidepressant
00:41:58.200
effect, potentially for the same reason. This IL-6 inflammatory cytokine goes up, spikes, and then
00:42:10.600
Yeah. And then you highlight this, and I think Charles talked about this in our interview. He says
00:42:15.260
this heat therapy for depression, it doesn't work for everyone.
00:42:19.860
And I think the reason is like depression can be caused by all sorts of things. It's not just
00:42:25.200
because your body doesn't know how to thermoregulate or you have inflammation. It could be other stuff.
00:42:28.880
So if your depression is caused by something else, the heat exposure is not going to do anything for
00:42:33.860
Yeah. The way they discovered this is really interesting. Or one way they discovered this,
00:42:38.660
they found that they were experimenting with this microbe that they found in the soil in like
00:42:44.700
Uganda. And they were trying to use it to help build up people's immunity to leprosy. And it gives
00:42:51.280
you a slight fever, but a fever is kind of a healing mechanism. And they found that people who had been
00:42:57.280
injected with this microbe were happier. They got happier, really, after having this like slight
00:43:06.020
Yeah. And you talk about in the book, you've had a dealt with a melancholic disposition throughout
00:43:17.860
Did heat therapy do anything for your melancholy?
00:43:22.100
Oh, it was amazing. You know, it's actually why I started gravitating towards heat in the first
00:43:28.420
place. I started going to the sauna in my gym, which, you know, was kind of dark, dank, not the best,
00:43:35.400
but it was warm and comforting. And I said, I felt good being in there. And I couldn't,
00:43:40.620
I was going through some difficult work stuff. And, you know, prior to that, sauna was not on my
00:43:45.920
to-do list. And so I kind of took that and was like, hmm, I felt better. I wonder why. Then I came
00:43:53.180
along and I met Chuck Rezon and did a little bit of a dive into that research. And then I actually
00:43:59.840
volunteered to be sort of a guinea pig in a study that he and his colleague, Ashley Mason,
00:44:06.220
were doing in Colorado. And basically they stuck me in this infrared sauna, you know,
00:44:12.420
lying in a hospital bed, you know, again, with the rectal probe, but, you know, anything for science.
00:44:18.620
So they heated me up for like an hour and it was totally miserable. And I was like, why did I do this?
00:44:25.580
But, you know, I was like kind of bummed out. So we did this and then I hopped in a cold plunge
00:44:32.620
and I kind of went home to the hotel thinking, why the heck did I do that? But then like the next day
00:44:39.620
it was like the skies opened up and the angels were singing. It was like, I hadn't felt this good
00:44:44.180
in months. I couldn't believe it. It was like euphoric. It was amazing.
00:44:50.060
Yeah. That was the thing that drew me to sauna. It was the mental health benefits. I'd go there,
00:44:55.200
I'd have like this, this natural drive to go to the sauna whenever I was feeling really stressed
00:45:00.700
out. Yep. And that's why I started it. And if it helps my cardiac health, great. And if it helps
00:45:06.020
heat shock proteins, fantastic. But I do it primarily because it just makes me feel better
00:45:11.480
mentally. Yeah. There's something about it. And I do the same thing. I go to the sauna place kind
00:45:17.080
of near my house and spend an hour going in and out. And then I'm just driving home and I,
00:45:21.700
I don't care. Like somebody cuts me off. Don't care. You know, I can tackle the work things that
00:45:28.220
I've been putting off. I'm just better to be around. Yeah. Afterwards. It's great.
00:45:33.880
So I think when a lot of Americans in particular talk about hitting the sauna or doing heat therapy,
00:45:39.360
we typically talk about it as a biohacking tool. Like we're like, well, I want to improve my heat
00:45:44.220
shock proteins and I want to improve my cardiac health, whatever. But you argue that taking this
00:45:48.800
sort of like, it's a really reductivist view of heat therapy can miss the bigger benefits of heat
00:45:53.880
exposure. What can Americans learn from Nordic sauna culture and heat therapy about some of those
00:46:02.320
intangible benefits of exposing yourself to the heat? Right. And you know, those mechanistic benefits
00:46:07.480
are real, but I think it comes down to how do you approach, how do you think about time? And so
00:46:14.940
here we're like, everything we do has to have a purpose and a payoff, right? It has to have like
00:46:21.300
a concrete, okay, I'm doing this and I'm checking this box and I'm taking down my blood pressure and
00:46:26.980
I'm activating my heat shock proteins. I think in more traditional sauna cultures and heat bathing
00:46:33.620
cultures, it's really about taking time to, as one person told me to slow down. So you're going to like
00:46:40.720
a third space. You're not thinking about work. You're not thinking about status. You're not
00:46:46.120
necessarily there for a concrete health benefit, but it's just like, you're just, you're taking time
00:46:51.460
for yourself or to be with your family or your friends and to do something that doesn't necessarily
00:46:56.140
need to be quantifiable or productive. Yeah. And in those Nordic cultures, like sauna-een is,
00:47:04.720
it's a social activity. It's social. Yeah. I mean, the benefits, I think the social benefits are
00:47:09.860
tremendous, but I think if you're doing it by yourself, it's almost like a meditation.
00:47:15.600
You're just slowing down. You're away from your phone. You're away from work.
00:47:19.440
Yeah. For me, you know, I mostly sauna by myself, but when I'm in there, it's like no phones allowed.
00:47:26.300
Yeah. And I'm just, just going to... Your phone doesn't work anyway.
00:47:29.240
Right. I've taken my phone into a sauna before and you'll eventually get this warning saying,
00:47:33.220
yeah, your phone's too hot. Take it out. But I just go in there, just close my eyes and just really
00:47:37.460
relax and just don't think about things. But I do think it's an even more enjoyable experience when
00:47:43.760
you can do it with friends. Yeah. It's nice. It's a good little bonding thing. You know,
00:47:49.040
there's something about it like, we're in this space that is kind of too hot and kind of slightly
00:47:57.160
panicking a little bit or it's stressful, but you know, you're together. So it breaks down
00:48:01.920
inhibitions I find also. So like in New York where people walk around with, you know, their guard up,
00:48:08.220
these social saunas are hugely popular. And you go in and like, you talk to people. It's crazy.
00:48:14.740
Well, yeah. You mentioned that in that study with the people about depression and sauna treatment.
00:48:20.300
One of the things they noticed... Yeah, they started talking.
00:48:21.580
Yeah. People just start talking and they're just yapping.
00:48:25.780
And you did the same thing. You just started yapping to this.
00:48:32.140
And I'm not, you know, I'm not the chattiest person typically, but it somehow like broke down
00:48:39.980
What do your sauna sessions look like these days?
00:48:42.560
So there's a couple of places in town that I go to. One place is super, super hot. And so I like
00:48:49.140
debate with the guy like, I think your sauna is too hot. But anyway, the cold plunge is awesome. It's like
00:48:55.260
clean, which is, I think, an important quality in a cold plunge, especially a public cold plunge.
00:49:02.220
One thing I know is cold plunges. And I've been wary about doing cold, like public cold plunges.
00:49:06.660
Whenever I've done cold plunges, I have to pee. Like you immediately, like there's some response.
00:49:11.360
I think there's some response in your body once you hit cold, like you're just like, I need to pee.
00:49:15.520
So I couldn't imagine doing a public cold plunge. Because the only thing I'm thinking is like,
00:49:20.940
Right. I'm sorry. Okay. So you do the sauna, you do the cold plunge. And how often are you doing
00:49:26.800
Oh, I do like once or twice a week at this point. So I'm like the control group in those
00:49:31.620
finished studies, you know, but it's enough. And, you know, I, I go when I can take the time. It
00:49:40.400
And so, in fact, I'm going to, I'm going to try to go today and get my kid to go. He's home from school.
00:49:45.620
So yeah, that's going to be the afternoon. I go in the afternoon. I go at like four. So I'm kind of
00:49:51.020
done with any kind of productive writing I've had to do. Cause it's so relaxing that, that like,
00:49:59.760
Yeah. For me, I, I have a sauna in my backyard. It's one of the best purchases I've ever made.
00:50:04.780
It's fantastic. You just go in, I go in after a workout for 20 minutes, but it's awesome. I love it.
00:50:10.480
Yeah. You know, I, I feel like I should get one now, but I haven't pulled the trigger,
00:50:13.900
but you know, I like, I don't necessarily want to always sit in there by myself. So
00:50:21.420
Yeah. So maybe that's a trigger for inviting people over and having sauna days.
00:50:27.020
Yeah. Inviting your friends. Well, if I'm ever in Salt Lake, I'll, I'll hit you up. We can do a
00:50:32.420
Bill, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your
00:50:36.480
Yeah. The book is called Hot Wired and I'm on Instagram and the site formerly known as Twitter
00:50:43.400
at Bill Gifford. I'm also on things like threads. So you can go there.
00:50:47.340
Well, Bill, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:50:52.620
My guest today was Bill Gifford. He's the author of the book Hot Wired. It's available on amazon.com
00:50:56.220
and bookstores everywhere. Be sure to check out our show notes at awim.is slash heat,
00:51:00.140
where you find links to resources that delve deeper into this topic, including a very helpful
00:51:03.880
article we've got that covers the frequently asked questions that people have about how to sauna.
00:51:07.800
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AON podcast. If you haven't done so already,
00:51:19.020
I'd appreciate it. If you take one minute to give us a review, not a podcast or Spotify. It helps
00:51:22.700
out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend
00:51:26.440
or family member who you think made something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued
00:51:30.340
support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay. Remind us on the AON podcast, but put what you've
00:51:34.560
heard into action. Before you go, here's another episode worth adding to the queue. In episode
00:51:58.360
number 821, we explore why routines, especially over rigid ones, can actually make life harder,
00:52:03.340
not easier. We talk discipline without obsession, structure without rigidity, and where real growth
00:52:08.400
comes from. You can find it at aom.is slash routines. That's aom.is slash routines. Go check