Best Post Workout Recovery for Women Sauna vs. Cold Exposure Dr. Stacy Sims w
00:00Deliberate cold exposure. Like it, hate it. What do you think? Do you recommend it for women? I recommend it for open water swimmers who might experience that veagal response when they first dive into the cold. I prefer heat for women. Everyone's a responder to the heat. You get better adaptations. So, sauna. Yep. Sauna. Yep. Preferably a true finish sauna. Infrared doesn't It warms the skin, but not the core. We want Thank you for saying that. I'm not a big fan of infrared sauna because it doesn't get hot enough. No. Yeah, you can bring an infrared light into a traditional sauna if it can tolerate the heat. But finished sauna would be what? Something between 185 degrees Fahrenheit and maybe 210 if you're really heat adapted. Yeah, I'm still working on metric. Let me do the conversion. Oh, sorry. Yeah, you're living down in New Zealand. Yeah. So, 60 to 80° C. I need to look. Every time I've tried to do math on the fly on this podcast in my head, I know it's like, okay, times 9 in a different processing mode. Yeah. So, people can look it up. Yeah. Okay. look it up. Um, so the thing
01:00with cold water exposure is the whole conversation about ice cold ice baths and how cold it is. It's too cold for women because when we're looking at that severe immediate jump into that icy cold, it causes such severe constriction and shutdown. So women do really well and get that whole dopamine response and everything if the water is around 16° C, which is 55 to 56° F, which is chilly. It's chilly. It's not warm. No, it's Go dive in San Francisco Bay, right? And that is enough to offset that severe constriction survival, but it is cold enough to invoke all the changes that we want with cold water exposure. So, it's a temperature nuance. That's that sex difference. And like I said, when I have open water swimmers who are going to do a long swim or
02:00they're going to do a triathlon and the water is colder, I have them do cold water exposure, especially face exposure into the cold water. um to get them habituated to that initial severe constriction and sympathetic activity that we don't want to happen before a race with heat being the true like true heat that we're talking about with sauna. We see a lot of metabolic changes for women. So we're having better insulin and glucose control. We're seeing uh a better um expression of our heat shock proteins and the uncoupling and and the rebuilding of those proteins, better cardiovascular responses. And then for women as we get older and have the offshoot of hot flashes, night sweats, that kind of stuff. If you're doing heat exposure, you're sending a stronger stimulus to the
03:00hypothalamus and you're also getting a better serotonin production from the gut because we have 95% of our serotonin produced from the gut which lends to better temperature control and shuts down hot flashes. I think some people might be confused by the idea of using sauna in order to reduce the hot flashes. Um, so I'll just remind people that your brain has a set of neurons in the medial preoptic area that's sort of a thermostat, if you will, controlling core body temperature. And if you heat the surface of your body, your medial preoptic neurons say, "Oh, let's cool down the core of the body. Now, if you stay in that heat too long, you'll cook your body to core body temperature will go up." But conversely, if the surface of your body is made cold, the internal millu of your body will heat up because those medial preoptic neurons will say, "Oh, you know, this is this is like putting an ice pack on the uh thermostat, which is what um graduate students and posttos used to do in the
04:00labs I'd work in because it was a battle over the the heater, right? Some people were in hot, some people were in cold. So, it was always this this business." In any event, um, so it's not that you disapprove of the co of using deliberate cold exposure. You just recommend that women do deliberate cold exposure with temperatures that are maybe in the um low 50° Fahrenheit um range as opposed to the really uh frankly just painfully cold for anybody um you know 38 to you know 50°ree temperatures. Is that right? We did a pilot study looking cuz Wimhof has been down to New Zealand quite a bit and so you know his breathing and ice bath stuff has been making the rounds and working in the high performance people wanted to do that but we have few athletes that have really severe endometriosis. It's like well we could look at using cold exposure to help control that. And what we found over the course of this study was that if we were to do deliberate cold
05:00exposure around ovulation and then hold it for 10 days over the course of three menstrual cycles, it attenuated the endometriosis because endometriosis is an inflammatory disease. Right? So if we're looking at inflammation process and growing the tissue, if we can dampen that inflammation and create a response that learns that inflammation and dampens it, then it helps with endometriosis. Very interesting. That's another avenue that we really want to take when we're looking at cold deliberate cold exposure. Wow. Fascinating. As a cautionary note, if anyone is going to explore Wimhof type methods, um please please please do not combine cyclic hyperventilation um or hyperventilation of any kind with breath holds and water exposure, not even in the depth of a puddle. Um there have been drownings associated with people doing cyclic hyperventilation in various contexts not just related to
06:00hoff breathing but um basically people who are not skilled um and even some who are skilled combining cyclic hyperventilation breath holds and water in any form cold or warm water. Just don't if you're going to do any kind of cyclic hyperventilation breathing and my lab's actually published on this in a clinical trial do it on dry land or don't do it at all. And if you're going to do deliberate cold exposure, um, limit your breathing to slow, deep breaths, make sure that you're, um, well supervised and, um, just stay alive, please. Yeah. So, we didn't incorporate any of the Wimhof breathing. We just incorporated the deliberate water, cold water exposure. Cold and temperature generally is such a potent stimulus and it's exciting that people are starting to explore this, especially the in my opinion the the sauna work. Uh one thing I suppose that we should um discuss very briefly before we move on since we've been talking about resistance training. We've been talking about deliberate cold exposure. There is evidence that doing deliberate cold exposure not so much in
07:00the form of a cold shower but in the form of a um submersion up to the neck post strength or resistance training say in the four but probably the 8 hours after resistance training because of the attenuation of the inflammatory response which sounds like a great thing. it actually can inhibit some of the strength and hypertrophy gains that one would otherwise experience. So if you're going to do deliberate cold exposure, best to not do it in the 8 hours or even on the same day after resistance training geared towards developing strength and hypertrophy increases. No problem to do it first. In fact, maybe even some performance-enhancing effects of doing it first. There's some athletes that stand for doing that, but just want to throw that out there. Is there anything else you want to add to that? Um which is different from heat exposure because heat exposure you want to do afterwards because the vasoddilation. Yeah. Because it extends that training stimulus and also the passive dehydration from training will stimulate greater blood volume improvements. Oh, interesting. So after a good weight
08:00training session, if one has the luxury of doing it, get into the sauna for up to 30 minutes. Make sure you're hydrating. You want slow rehydration because part of it is that dehydration and the decrease of oxygen at the level of the kidney to stimulate more EPO. So with more red cell production, you have natural increase in plasma volume. So it's a blood volume expander. So now we're getting into real performance enhancement. Is this true for men and for women? Y uh let's walk through this protocol. I like I like this. This is uh this has not been discussed on this podcast. So, um, somebody does their resistance training. Mhm. Finishes up, drinks 8 or 16 ounces of water with a little salt in it, maybe. Mhm. And then hops in the sauna. Yep. For how long? Up to 30 minutes. Okay. No longer. No longer. No longer. Yeah. They'll probably be a little bit thirsty in there. You're looking for a little lowle dehydration. Is that right? Yep. Okay. Um, the ranges
09:00that I've seen published in the Finnish studies are, as I recall, and I'll double check these numbers, 186 degrees Fahrenheit up to about 210 Fahrenheit. Um, and the higher end only being for those that are heat adapted. Yeah. One can cover their head with a towel and actually feel more comfortable because the brain is insulated. This surprises people. They think putting a, you know, something on their head would make it excessively warm, but you actually are protecting your brain from some of the heat. And people will put a towel over so that they when they breathe it doesn't burn the inside of their nose and their mouth either. Um, I'm always like, if you're going to be in and it's that hot, just move down a level. Mhm. So, on the floor. Yep. Um, and this stimulates the production of more red blood cells. Mhm. Okay. Which then translates to what? In terms of athletic performance, you have an increase in your cardiovascular effort and because you
10:00have greater amount of blood volumes, you you have greater amount of pretty much blood circulating. So you have more available for um muscle metabolism, heat loss. Um so it's akin to going to altitude. So people will go to altitude to get that blood volume boost, but not everyone responds to altitude because you have responders, non-responders, over responders. Okay. This is why when I go to Colorado, I'm gasping for air while I do a walk, but then I come back to sea level and I feel better. My endurance is better. But some people might not experience that effect. True. This is I was telling the guys before we started that I've been in our sauna at home in preparation for going to Park City because I live at a beach town and going to Park City I am a significant responder to altitude and I won't be able to have coherent meetings at altitude if I am not adapted. So, okay. Yeah. So, this explains why when I've gone to meetings in Colorado at altitude, some people can have a drink that first night and they're perfectly
11:00fine even though they normally live at sea level. And I'm trying to trying to see the stairs correctly even though I don't drink. Yep. That would be it. Very interesting. So you can use postresistance training sauna exposure to improve performance. Yeah, you can use it um postcardio as well. So anything that is giving you that passive dehydration from training because you're not because you will become passively dehydrated when you're training, right? You can't keep in as much fluid. So, I'm saying passive as in you're not able to stop that dehydration. And then you go in to the sauna and you are extending that training stimulus because your heart rate is elevated. You're putting your body under stress from dehydration and the body responds in kind of we need more blood volume. So, let's let's jump start that. I love it. Logically, watertight and um I'm going to give it a try. Yeah.