This conversation keeps coming back to two numbers: 11 and 57. Eleven minutes of cold per week. Fifty-seven minutes of sauna. These aren't arbitrary figures — they come from Dr. Susanna Soberg's research, which identified the minimum effective dose for meaningful physiological change. And what I find fascinating is how modest these numbers actually are. Eleven minutes. Split across four or five sessions, that's barely two to three minutes each. The barrier to entry is almost embarrassingly low.
The dopamine claim is where this gets really interesting. A 2.5-times increase in dopamine after cold exposure — and crucially, it's not a spike that crashes. It's a sustained elevation. This isn't the same as the dopamine hit from caffeine or sugar, which peaks fast and drops fast. Cold exposure seems to create a more durable neurochemical shift. You can feel it in the hours after a plunge: a quiet alertness, a sense of groundedness. That's real biology, not placebo.
The catecholamine data in our knowledge base adds important depth here. A study on whole-body cryostimulation found a 76% increase in plasma norepinephrine — the focus and attention neurotransmitter — following cold exposure. That's not just mood. That's cognition, reaction time, the capacity to stay present under pressure. When Rogan talks about the dopamine rise being "real," the norepinephrine data is the missing piece that explains why the effect feels so clean and functional rather than euphoric and scattered.
On the heat side, the heat shock protein research is where I'd push back slightly on the framing here. The article positions sauna primarily as a recovery tool. And yes, cellular repair is part of it. But the more profound story is about protein quality control — the kind of maintenance that, over decades, may determine how well your brain ages. We have papers in the knowledge base linking UCP1 activation and mitochondrial function to cold exposure. Heat and cold are working on some of the same underlying machinery, just from different directions.
The sequencing debate is real. Rogan mentions the Soberg principle — end with cold for maximum metabolic effect — and the science supports it for metabolic adaptation specifically. But if your goal is muscle recovery after a hard training session, ending with cold may blunt some of the inflammatory response your body needs to rebuild. The research on cold and hypertrophy is clear: wait at least two hours post-lifting before you plunge. The protocol depends entirely on what you're optimizing for.
Start with the minimum. Eleven minutes of cold per week. Four sessions of two to three minutes each, water cold enough to be uncomfortable but not dangerous — somewhere between 50 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Add sauna if you have access. If you don't, the cold alone will give you most of the neurochemical benefits. Build consistency before you chase intensity. And end with cold, at least on the days when you're not training for muscle growth. Let your body learn to warm itself back up. That thermoregulatory adaptation — your brown fat activating, your metabolism firing — is the hidden prize hiding behind the discomfort.
The surprising connection I keep coming back to: the Othership model, which we've covered extensively here, understood this intuitively before most people had read a word of Soberg's research. Community, breath, alternating heat and cold, intentional sequencing. They built the protocol into the experience. The science caught up to what practitioners already knew. That happens more often than we admit.