Why Gary Brecka Changed His Mind on Cold Plunging and Sauna for Longevity
00:00I think in the sphere of people consuming content online, especially in the health world, it's like, heaven forbid someone watched something in 2015, take it to the bank and never learn again, right? I mean, like, what if they what if what if that was the bees knees in 2015 and what if we learned something that's really scary in 2024? That's we're like, hey, like, pump the brakes, but they're not willing to look at that because they're not willing to change their mind. Yeah. I mean, the same thing's kind of happened to me with coal plunging. And I wouldn't call it cold plunging because before we called it cold plunging, we just called it ice baths. Um and um I you know as a human biologist I I also sit on the board of the NFL alumni association. I'm uh the alumni association athletic. I'm their health services director. And um so the 22,000 athletes, former athletes in that or organization. And I think the prevailing wisdom including mine um or advice is soon as as quickly as you were done really intense exercise, you should submerse yourself in an ice bath. And I
01:00think I think anecdotally it feels better. Um you know, you're you don't feel as sore. You feel like you've recovered faster. But um you know now that the evidence is emerging that really you don't want to shut down the body's physiologic process and you you take a step back and you and you just look at it holistically and you say okay if I just did a big squat workout and I tore a bunch of quad muscle what's the body going to do? Well it's going to send more amino acids, more blood flow, more oxygen, more nutrients to that area. It's going to try to pull creatinin out of that area and other inflammatory factors to really repair the muscle. So why would I want to shut that down? Um, and I think there's evidence emerging now that even getting hyperothermic after exercise, y and hypothermic prior to if you really wanted to get hyper precise um or at least delaying ice baths till 45 minutes to 90 minutes after your your exercise. But I was a huge fan of um and even you know when I was my son was in high school playing varsity football made all the kids get in, you know, ice baths as
02:00soon as they were done you know intense practice. Um, so I think icing an injury but not submerging the body in in cold water, you know, the post phase. Yeah, phase. So after today's video, I put a link down below for the collagen I recommend. I've talked about it for years. It's the one that I It's literally the only one I use these days. It's the Bubs Naturals collagen. I am a huge huge fan of what this company stands for in addition to the high high quality of their boline collagen. If you've ever seen the movie 13 Hours, which was about the whole Benghazi thing with uh Glenn Doherty, well, his call sign as a Navy Seal was Bub. And Bub's Naturals was created sort of in light of this. So 10% of all profits from any Bub's Naturals order go to charity in the name of Glen Doherty. So me as someone that works with the military, I work with special operations. This is something that's really important and near and dear to me. So, any way that I can support that, I do. But I also know
03:00that they really put their best foot forward when it comes down to the product itself. This is a very high quality collagen and it is virtually tasteless and it is smooth and it mixes almost instantly. So, I can mix it along with my whey protein and it is easy peasy lemon squeezy. So, that link down below is also for a special discount. So, it's in the top line of the description underneath this video. So check it out right there and there's a code for you to use at checkout that's going to save you some cashola as well. That makes sense. And you know, but there's also there also is the perception too, right? Like I mean it's I still know a lot of highle athletes that are like no like I don't care what the literature says. Like I I feel better like right after a workout. That is true. So like and that counts for something like seriously like whether whether they're placeboing themselves into that or not. Like I mean let's just put all that aside. Like someone's perception of something if the ice bath is doing something for them again like I know a lot of people that are uh you know a couple combine guys right now that are just like nope this feels good
04:00but they also they do it before and after. What's it but hearing you say that I have personally noticed that even just 60 seconds of an ice bath prior to a run or prior to lifting is a game changer for me. I think so too. It's like I don't even need much time. Like it's just like and I mean granted I'm super lean so I mean I understand that maybe like I'm not saying that I can't sit in the thing for a long time but like I can just dunk in for 60 seconds maybe two minutes but it's like immediately any low back pain I have things like that like I get more pep to my step literally speaking when I run. So that's kind of been my thing on the days that I run. It's just like you know what I'm going to dunk first and then I'll just go run and same for me. Works out great. Yeah, I I feel the same way. And and and and I haven't seen much evidence that or any evidence really that um colder is better or longer is better. And I think, you know, a lot of these biohacks we take to the extreme. I mean, if we're not trying to become cold adaptive, we're only trying to cold shock the body. Um you know, 3 minutes minimum, 6 minutes maximum at 48 to 50°
05:00is is a great sweet spot for cold water immersion and cold plunging. And yes, maybe if you made it made made it colder, you could do it shorter, but why torture yourself? I mean, you know, 48 to 50°, 3 minutes minimum, 6 minutes maximum. I think you get um you know, the the maximum cold shark protein release. Um you you get the peripheral vasial constriction, you get the brown fat activation. Um I would argue that you get an increase in in your metabolism. I would also argue that you have um positive effects on fatty acid metabolism and and that cold plunging actually can contribute to weight loss even though there hasn't been a um randomized clinical trial on it. But if you stack all of the data up and you say well if if um brown fat activation which is exchanging a calorie for a measure of heat um so there's a caloric cost to creating heat and we don't get heat for free. We have to there's a cost to it. Even the law of thermodynamics would say that that you have to convert the energy from somewhere. So we convert it from a calorie into a measure of heat. Um you
06:00see that there are cold shock proteins. I mean I think it's lin 28 and 28A and lin 28b which are related cold shock proteins but both have a positive effect on insulin resistance. Um so if you have a positive effect on insulin resistance, you raise your metabolism. We know that it improves your your mood and your emotional state. We know we know that it raises enderins, dopamine specifically, um, two and a half times what the level of of of dopamine and you get a brown fat activation, you get this peripheral vaso constriction. I mean, it's there are immense benefits from it. But then we take it to the extreme and we're like, well, if 3 to 6 minutes is good, then 12 minutes is better. And if 48 degrees is good, 37 degrees is better. And I've seen videos on on on Instagram quite often actually where people get in 37 degree water and go underwater with a snorkel um for 12 minutes. And I'm like, you know, you got to remember your brain is this far inside the surface of your skull, right? It's really not good to freeze it and it's not good to bake it. So, you know,
07:00prolonged very high heat exposure um or prolonged very cold uh exposure is, you know, in my opinion not not necessary and shoulding. No, I mean I want to, you know, double click on that for a second because that's like with the it's interesting, man, because the uh the cold stuff uh first I want to back up for a second. I do think obviously a lot of this stuff there's opposing sides. Everyone likes to have their fight with it. I notice if I'm on a cold plunging game that my mental willpower is stronger. I have the ability. That is one thing that I don't think people can really deny is like if you have the ability to withstand something that's just uncomfortable, those things definitely translate into other aspects of your life. If it's sort of like I used to tell people, you know, back in the day, like I'm not worried about counting calories, but if you just write down what you eat, the simple act of having some discipline with it, that translates into other areas of your life. You know, we used to talk about
08:00that with like, okay, you want more success in business. Well, you know what? Maybe you need to just get priorities in order in other places and it allows you to kind of think better different way, right? I've noticed that with cold plunging, right? It's just it's something where it sucks and being able to deal with something that kind of sucks helps you resist temptation. Totally agree. So that's like for me it's just it's a gut check for myself. It's like Thomas like come on get out of your element for a second and like get down to earth for a second. This is going to suck. Let's do something that sucks because working out doesn't really suck for me anymore. I enjoy it. I love it. I'm addicted to it. So it doesn't really suck. So I can't do that anymore. So now well I can still do that but I can't look at that as my like suck dosage for the day. subtos. I don't know if you work out hard enough. It's why I used to like CrossFit cuz I like I felt like at some point if you didn't want to quit, you weren't doing it. Yeah, but this the suck with like CrossFit and that's kind of how I train in No, it for the average person. I'm saying compound Olympic movements for soccer moms. We could go down that
09:00rabbit hole, but like I I guess I'm not I don't even do official CrossFit, but I look at like the CrossFit thing and I say it's so frustrating because if you talk to like an orthopedist, they're going to say like, "Oh yeah, CrossFit keeps me in business." Like, "Well, how many other people do you see from football, from ski, from this, and then what percentage is actually?" So, it's like the only issue I have with CrossFit is maybe telling someone to do, you know, submaximal lifts after they've run 400 repeats or something. That's right. But that being said, the thing with a sucky workout that makes you want to quit, you're still loving it. There's some deep down, right? There's something about a cold plunge. I don't love it. Everything about it. No. There's never a part of it where I'm just like That's so true. Like, so like a workout I'm just like, "Ah, this is cool. At least there's an ego drive. At least there's like you're sitting in a cold pump in the mirror. There's no ego drive. You're sitting there like a little pathetic like wimp like you know, like so it's just it doesn't it's not the same. But it's uh but what I wanted to touch on was the uh hot water immersion versus like sauna for a second because this was
10:00interesting because I talked to uh Rhonda Patrick about this and she she's definitely hasn't pivoted. She's obviously very pro sauna as am I. I'm huge on like you know getting hypothermic and uh being able to do that. But then Dom the Augustino last week was telling me too, he's like, "Yeah, like I've shifted much more towards just doing a hot tub and like he's like when you look at being able like like a nice hot hot tub, right? So like sitting in a hot tub and uh it's kind of wild because they're talking about heating the brain, right? and they're like, you're you're heating your CPU, you know, you're you're like like this is people are talking about, you know, potentially frying your CPU. So, your immune system is out of whack and you're talking about the pituitary as being this like, you know, tuner for everything else, right? Um, and it's so hard to look at data when you've got like the fins and the danes and whatnot and they, you know, they sit in saunas. They're also wearing wool hats that are protecting their head like they're creating an extra an extra layer. I've got one of those now and I think that's super important. Yeah, but Dom had mentioned and I haven't double checked it, but he's like the literature
11:00is actually saying to heat the brain in a proper way to create that intraraanial pressure and the glimpmphatic sort of drainage and clearance that you want. He's like the evidence actually suggests that hot water immersion like sitting in a hot bath in a hot tub might actually even be better sitting in a sauna because it's actually creating a pressure sort of. So there's a pressure gradient essentially. So this is really interesting. So um there's no real way for me to test it out other than just my own experience. I think, you know, when you go anecdotally off just how you feel. Um, but I bake in a hot bath. And that's the thing is you can sit there. I don't get out of a hot bath and go, "Wow, I feel amazing." Like I want to Yeah. No, it's Well, I'll usually speak on the world. Crank it up. I mean, it's not to the point where I'm scolding, but it's hot, right? And then I'll go in there and I'll I'll meditate for 15 minutes or something. And it's like trying not to move when you're that it's uncomfort. It's more uncomfortable than sitting in a sauna. In a sauna, I'm kind of like, "Oh, you're talking really hot." Yeah. Well, not not to again not to the point where I'm like right completely like never going to have kids again kind of thing, but it's to the
12:00point where it's uncomfortable. I'm I'm sweating significantly. And I'm like, you know, I could see like cuz immersing yourself in water, hot or cold, is going to change your internal temperature much faster than ambient cold air. 29 times the rate of air. 29 times more thermogenic than air. So, I'm I'm I'm kind of making not that I'm anti- sauna. I have a sauna like everywhere I go I try to have a sauna set up but I'm starting to see the benefits of a hot bath a lot I have to dig into that I don't know if I I didn't have a stance on it so I couldn't have changed my stance on it right but definitely changed it on cold punching