Why Dr. Peter Attia Changed his Mind on Sauna and Cold Plunge for Longevity
00:00okay let's let's pivot and talk oxidative stressors for a minute okay we we see everyone on Instagram jumping in cold tubs these days right because it's the cool thing to do is that true is it is it the cool thing to do or is it true on Instagram I I don't I don't I was just thinking about it today you know I spend a total of like one minute a week on Twitter probably five minutes a day on Instagram but the thing that I'm I I have to be mindful of is YouTube like YouTube is far more interesting drawn into porn iing you know videos of like how this engine works and this and this race that I missed 27 years ago and stuff like that but yeah I can't really relate to surfing Instagram I find it so uninteresting it's we call it Doom scrolling it's it's it's yeah it brings you no value to your life what's no but I feel I feel I feel bad because I understand that for some people it can be very addictive but I can't relate like there's nothing about it that I
01:00find interesting you're much better off that way I mean that's why I pick YouTube as my platform for creating too it's just like I I from the sheer aspect of context I I can't again I'm not a clinician but I try really hard to be nuanced and I try really hard to have an honest approach with things and you it's so difficult to do that with Instagram I mean every context just gets left out and this the same thing for consumption you're consuming things without context and after today's video I put a link down below for 50% off create creatine gummies yes they're gummies but they're sweetened with allulose so this is a sweetener that doesn't spike your blood sugar or anything like that but also they're one and a half gram creatine gummies which means you could low dose your creatine throughout the day so you potentially don't have as much water retention but you can also just go with a low dose like for example I find like 1 to three grams works great for brain function and for sleep and maybe a little bit more for building muscle or for other certain goals so that 50% off link is down below underneath this video so check them out after today's video
02:00they've got four different flavors that you can choose from and a big thank you to them for supporting this channel point being is I'm not really aware of the cult the C the cold plunge piece is uh yeah it think okay well I'm going to do something I'm going to do something hard I'm going to uh you know have this formatic stressor when in reality I mean like Alan Aragon just uh you know was talking recently about the paper that just came out saying that it potentially blunts muscle growth or hypertrophy I use this as an example simply because by way I agree with that I agree too toally we did an AMA on this I don't know if it's out yet um but it was it's been recorded So we looked into this in excruciating detail and I think I think the evidence is pretty good that it does indeed blunt hypertrophy uh it what wasn't clear is what the window is of that meaning like if you lifted this morning it's pretty clear to me that if you jump in the cold plunge right after you're blunting hypertrophy not clear if you do it at night or the next morning that it still is that we I I don't think
03:00I could elucidate from the data how long you need to separate the cold plunge from the session furthermore cold plunge is not a uniform term like at what temperature and what duration like it's a it's a there's a matrix of no absolutely and I just use it as an example because there's a lot of throwing the word longevity around with it right this is a hormetic stressor the reason I use it is because this is something that still although quelling inflammation and blun the hypertrophic response like that's one thing but also too much reactive oxygen species like too much stress at one point like if you take an athlete that's running 60 m a week 80 miles a week is adding a cold plch too much you know I mean I'm sure it's all relative to the individual but again the point is is sometimes we look at these hortic stressors and although they build resilience and they're good I mean there's clearly a line and we live in this world right now where we've got you know with all due respect to him I love the guy like you know Joo and guys that that are just like push harder push
04:00harder push harder push harder personally after having kids like I've had to check myself like no that's not what I want yeah like I don't sure I want resilience but I want to live my life and I want to enjoy my kids and if I look at going in a SAA at 220 degrees and then going my cold plune I'm crafting my entire life around creating stress without adequate recovery so I mean it's hard to say because it's it's again very individual like where do you draw the line but I think it's an important discussion to have like where does reactive oxygen species come into play like when is it good when is it bad no it's the classic Goldilocks phenomenon right it's a it's a not too much and a not too little and I don't think we know the answer it so so it is an inverted U um and unfortunately many things uh not all things but many things in biology are the classic inverted U and this is clearly one of them right so and it might not even just be the dose it's also the clinical context right so what you might want when you have
05:00cancer could be entirely different from what you want to prevent cancer right so um you know the role of oxidative stress or Ross in cancer prevention could be very different from cancer treatment um you know going back to what you said about the longevity component here uh I have now looked on is we do this every couple of years we'll go back and revisit our internal white papers on various topics and the first time we did an internal white paper on cold immersion was late 2019 and early 2020 this was when I was kind of just getting ready to go out to Norway for that Limitless series and obviously there was this you know big component of cold exposure in that and you know we did we looked at all the literature that was available at the time and came to the conclusion that there was no longevity meaning no lifespan benefit didn't really get into to health span that no lifespan benefit
06:00from cold exposure whereas there was a possible to probable uh lifespan benefit from heat exposure we Revisited that analysis now 3 years later so early 2023 and came to the same conclusion we were we could not find any compelling evidence that cold exposure under any Matrix criteria of frequency temperature and duration was actually geror protective now we did find evidence that it can reduce inflammation which in the setting of training would translate to less Doms yeah um and we did find evidence that it could improve mood uh and psychological well-being and I think those things can be very important um but I just think people should be thoughtful about what it is they're buying in the sense of everything has an
07:00opportunity cost and if someone says to me I only have half an hour a day to devote to my health I'm going to spend it all in a sauna and cold plunge and not exercise I would say let's revisit the strategy I don't know that that's the highest Roi use of your time maybe we we need to think more about portfolio allocation yeah yeah I think we see that a lot I think we see it's a low barrier to entry in a lot of ways to you know cold BL well it's passive not active yeah you don't have to actually move look I've never met a person who wouldn't sign up for a 2-hour massage every single day but very few people want to exercise two hours a day I love that