Jesse Coomer says it plainly: "Cold exposure could be the cure to cancer." I understand why someone says that. There is genuine, peer-reviewed research behind the intuition. But I want us to sit with that sentence for a moment before we run with it — because the science here is both more interesting and more nuanced than that framing suggests.
What the research actually shows is this: cold exposure activates brown adipose tissue, and brown fat is a voracious consumer of glucose. Tumors are also voracious consumers of glucose — cancer cells running on the Warburg Effect can consume 10 to 100 times more glucose than healthy cells. The hypothesis emerging from animal studies, including work published in Nature, is that cold-activated brown fat essentially competes with tumors for fuel. Starve the tumor's glucose supply, and you may slow its growth. That is a genuinely fascinating idea. It is not a cure.
Where I think Coomer is on much firmer ground is the insulin resistance argument. Chronically elevated insulin — driven by decades of processed carbohydrates and sugar — creates a metabolic environment where glucose is perpetually available and cells are perpetually stimulated to grow. That is not cancer-specific. That is a systemic condition. And it does create conditions that favor cancer cell proliferation.
Cold exposure improves insulin sensitivity. This is well-documented. When you expose your body to cold, you activate GLUT4 transporters independently of insulin, and over time, cells become more responsive to the hormone at baseline. Less insulin circulating, less glucose available, less fuel for cells that are running on aerobic glycolysis.
Oncologists are appropriately cautious here. Mouse models of cancer metabolism do not always translate cleanly to humans. The studies showing cold suppressing tumor growth used sustained cold exposure — not a daily cold shower. We do not yet know the optimal protocol, the cancer types most affected, or how cold interacts with existing treatments. Anyone managing a cancer diagnosis should be talking to their medical team before treating a plunge pool as adjunct chemotherapy.
Use cold exposure for what we know it does: improve metabolic flexibility, increase insulin sensitivity, reduce systemic inflammation, and activate brown fat. These are the mechanisms that make the cancer hypothesis biologically plausible in the first place. You do not need to believe cold cures cancer to benefit from the metabolic environment cold exposure creates.
The breathwork sequence Coomer leads at the start of this episode — his headache protocol — is actually doing something related. Stress raises cortisol, cortisol raises blood glucose, elevated blood glucose drives insulin. The breathwork-cold combination is addressing metabolic health from two directions simultaneously: one through the nervous system, one through direct thermal adaptation. That integration is where the real power lives.