Modern recovery is no longer reserved for elite athletes. In this conversation from Vitality and Wellness, the focus is metabolic health: how deliberate stress, precise rest, and simple protocols can help the body return to equilibrium.
Timestamps link directly to the original YouTube video at that moment.
Hi everyone. I'm Steve here again with Dr. Robert Floyd. Thanks for being here, Doc. Yeah, my pleasure, man. Love doing this. This is really fun. All right, we're going to talk about 10 benefits of cold plunging. It's something I've kind of been involved with in health clubs for decades back into the where they had a hot plunge and a cold plunge. Those were really cool where you would go like 20 seconds or 30 seconds back and forth. And it was interesting cuz when you got in the hot right at first you get in the hot, you can't tell if it's the hot or the cold cuz it just kind of stings. Then you get back in the cold and it just kind of stings after a few seconds. After about 5 seconds or so, you can tell, oh, I'm in the hot. I mean, you know, but you can't really feel it. So, you're going to give us 10 benefits of cold plunge. I know there's a lot of benefits. We have a cryo machine that we're firing back up in one of our clubs. So, I know that that burns like 800 calories. Yeah, that's actually one of the benefits that that's Sorry, that's one of the benefits that people don't talk about. Yeah. It's actually really important for someone who like who can't work out. Maybe they're injured, right? Maybe they, you don't want to lift weights or something, sedentary, uh, you know, a 70-year - old woman who wants to figure out how to burn some calories and lose some weight. She can actually go sit in a cryotherapy machine and literally burn 6 to 800 calories. Boom, 3 minutes, done. Because what it does, it's the
thermogenic rewarming of your body that is burning all those calories. And so this is, you know, at Degree Wellness, we're that's going to be one of the things that we're going to talk about for our clients. Um, when, you know, like I said, the for the people who can't actually get into the gym and work out or don't they don't want to, but this is it's a really great thing because it's I mean, it's not free and there's no free lunch for anything, but it's not free because it's cold as hell, right? Anyway, so may maybe I stole one of your your benefits. It sounds like No, Actually, it's not even uh I mean, it's one of the things I talk about, but there's there's so many of other ones out there. All right. So, what's your first one? My first one actually increases testosterone. Dr. uh shoot, I'm totally drawn as I got his book. He started Morasco Forge. I have a cold plunge in my garage. I use every day. I use it this morning. 26 is it's a non-negotiable for me. Every morning wake up and cold plunge and do some sort of workout in my garage. Um, and I I interviewed on the Sierra Health podcast, which is coming out pretty soon, this doc, and I'm totally drawing a blank on his name right now. Sorry. But he's awesome. He's a PhD professor of engineering at in Arizona. He actually his testosterone went to over, 00. And Wow. He said he was a fat sedary. What's that? What's his age? He was 50 years old, right? Wow. So, what got him started was he had
a prostate scare. His PSA was seven. He went to the doctor. The doctor's like, "Well, yeah, we could take it out. Let's do this. Let's put you on some medication, some, you know, anti-andigroen medication." And he's like, "Nope, f that. I'm not doing that." So, he had heard about coal plunging. He actually bought a chest freezer from Sears and used that as a coal plunge cuz he lives in Arizona. He didn't want to go to the store, buy 300 lb of ice, and watch it melt every day. So he actually did that. He built himself a cold plunge and he actually his PSA dropped. Testosterone went to like 1150 at 50 years of age, like 1158 or something like that. He went back to the uh urologist and the doctor's like, "Dude, you are juicing. I know you are." He's like, "No, I'm not actually 100% I'm not doing anything except I've been cold plunging every day." And so the urologist was like, "All right, dude. I have a test to tell whether or not you are using uh testosterone replacement. Yeah. And he just he's like, I'm going to check your LH, which is luteinizing hormones, which actually comes from the hypothalamic pituitary gonatal access. And that tells your testes to make more testosterone. And if you're actually shooting testosterone, LH will be low. His LH was off the charts as well, just from cold plunging. So that's actually one of the first benefits of it. Okay. So, I'm not going to say anything because I want to see what year 10 are because I know a lot of the benefits like I just manage mentioned right out of the gate. So, I'm trying not to say
anything like what athletes do and everything because I mean they ice things, right? There's got to be a benefit. Oh, yeah. So, what's number two? Um, another second one I've got a whole list, but I'm just ripping off in my head right here is heart rate variability. Everyone's heard of heart rate variability, right? You have, I'm sure, but I don't know if many of the guests have. The heart rate variability you want actually to be high. You would think you would want HRV to be low, but heart rate variability is throughout the day, even throughout different heartbeats, your heartbeats faster and slower, It's never constant, right? The more constant it is, the worse it is for longevity. So, the higher your heart rate variability, the better it is for your health, right? So when you and you can do all sorts. Let me just ask something there about that one. That's why exercise is beneficial, right? 100%. Absolutely. And so I've actually got there uh for anybody who's interested in HRV. There's the HeartMath Institute. Amazing place. You can buy a heart rate variability monitor. You attach it to your ear and you do an app on your phone and it measures and you can actually increase your heart rate variability to make it healthier. But that can also you can also stimulate your heart rate variability because you have the parasympathetic nervous system and the sympathetic nervous system. Rest and digest is parasympathetic. Sympathetic is fight or flight. Right? When you're in fight or flight, your heart rate goes really fast. So what happens is when you jump in a cold plunge, man, your paras or your
sympathetic nervous system goes wham shock. And so your heart rate goes up real fast, You start breathing faster. Everything goes faster. And so then when you come out of the cold plunge, your heart rate then slowly over time comes back down to to normal. Right? So that's another absolutely really untold benefit of cold plunging is improving your heart rate variability. So that's a really cool one. I like that a lot. Yeah, I like that too. Yeah. And it's something that a lot of people don't talk about because HRV is really really important. Then another one is improves. What's that? This is three. Yep, that's number two. So, this is number three. A better sleep quality. When I don't know the exact mechanisms of it, but as you, you know, when we go to sleep, the ideal sleep temperature in your room should be about 68 °, right? So, you want it to be cold. I cold plunge in the morning. I have a client of mine. He says, "Doc, I cold plunge at night right before I go to bed." And he said, "My sleep is off the charts." So I was like, "Wow, that's a good idea. Maybe I should try that." Because like I said, at night the ideal sleeping temperature is about 68 degrees, 67 68 degrees. Sleep is super important for everybody as we know. So if you can get better sleep, you can get better recovery. If you get better recovery, you have a better healthy life. All right, number four is the anti-inflammatory effects. Okay. So, basically there's a that this a study
from um the National Center for uh National Institute of Health showed that uh the systemic review found time dependent reductions in inflammatory markers and concluded that cold plunging may modulate inflammation when practiced regularly. I can attest to this uh anecdotally 100% for myself because training jiu-jitsu I'm doing a lot of collar grabbing and you know people are breaking my holds and you know my fingers and also as a rock climbing guide and a rock climber for many many years. So I've got really really bad arthritis in my knuckles. I mean, you could see the size. I got really fat knuckles, right? And so, what I have found personally is when I jump in my coal plunge every day, the pain in my fingers and the stiffness in my finger joints totally goes away. And it makes sense because, you know, it's just like what do you do for inflammation? Ice, right? Sprained ankle. Yeah. Ice. Yep. Absolutely. And so what it does it it can decrease the inflammatory markers like IL1 and IL6 and it actually increases the anti-inflammatory markers of IL10 which is awesome. So what what Yep. All right. Number five is um better um mood quality. And um this has been noted to be seen by uh there's studies that show uh that when you cold plunge it increases your
dopamine release by 200%. About you know give or take, right? And dopamine is the feelgood hormone, right? Everybody wants dopamine hits. When you're scrolling, you're getting a dopamine hit every time. When you see something nice that you like or you eat something nice that you love the taste of, you get a dopamine hit. When you do things that you enjoy doing, you know, skiing a sick line or riding your dirt bike and you're just having a great session, it's a dopamine rush and dopamine makes you feel good. So that's number five. Number six is another study by the National Institute of Health showed increased alertness and energy. And this study showed that increased alertness and energy contributing to a better self-reported daytime functioning. Again, this is it can be traced to a multitude of factors, right? You got the testosterone increase, you have the dopamine increase, you have decreased inflammation. All of this can help your brain function better, right? A lot of brain fog is generalized inflammation affecting your brain, right? So, when you're cold plunging, you're decreasing the inflammation, you're increasing testosterone, and you're increasing dopamine. So that's going to help your brain function marketkedly better throughout the day. Number was that five? That was six. Number five is getting rid of brain fog. Oh, that was six. You're on seven. Okay. All right. So number seven is increased resilience. There is a small portion of your brain called the
anterior mid singulate cortex. It's this little tiny piece of your brain inside really deep inside in the middle of your brain. And it actually they've done functional MRI studies that show when you do things that you don't like to do. And I will be the first to admit I freaking hate jumping in my coal plunge every single time I get in. I hate it. I don't like it. But I do it because I know of all of these benefits I'm getting, right? And this one benefit is more resilience. This is number seven. more resilience because the anterior mids singulate cortex actually has been shown to grow a little bit larger. And that little piece of the brain, it grows larger when you do things that you don't like to do or you were forced to do, but you do it involuntarily, right? So like, you know, nobody wants to go, you know, run out when it's snowing outside, right? But you look at people like Cam Haynes, he's a nut or David Gogggins, right? These guys will be they'll run 15 20 miles in the snow. David Gogggins will run 80 miles in the snow. Cam Haynes puts a a rucks sack on and runs uphill in the dark in the snow. It's doing things that you don't like or don't want to do, but you get over that hump. Like, you know, like Rogan says, tame your inner right? This is actually sciencebacked evidence of what taming your inner actually does to your brain. It makes it gives you more resilience and makes it so that
you are stronger to do things that you don't want to do again in the future. Does that make sense? Yeah. How long do you stay in the cold? I cold punch 3 minutes every day. Right. And there's uh some studies and my water is 40 °, right? So I don't have ice in my water and I've heard that uh there's it's actually could be a little more difficult because at 40 ° it doesn't really freeze the temperature receptors on your skin. like it doesn't like numb them up real quick cuz when you jump in ice water it's like instantly numb. When I jump in it's really freaking cold and then I start shivering after about a minute. And so when I cold plunge I I do three minutes every day. But there's also I wanted to say there's studies out of Sweden and Norway, the Icelandic areas that 11 minutes a week is all you need and it will decrease your moridity and mortality by a huge percentage point. It just basically helps you live longer. Those people up in Sweden and Norway who coal plunge regularly, they are tending to live longer and healthier with less disease. Yeah. And I that reminds me, you're on number eight, but I want to ask you about sauna combined with that. They do sauna too in these countries big time. Absolutely. And their heart disease is like minimal compared to ours. So what's number eight? Number eight is let's talk about heart disease. Potential cardioabolic conditioning. There's some early data coming out of Harvard that shows favorable acute hemodynam dynamic responses basically vascular tone changes and adaptations with regular
exposure through large trials but they're showing that just like sauna they they can see a decrease in cardiovascular disease. A lot of people don't know but inside your blood vessels you have the inside lining of the blood vessels is what's called the endothelium. And the endothelium is like an actual little organ of itself inside the blood vessels and it helps relax and constrict the smooth muscles of the blood vessels. When your endothelium is healthy, you have a much healthier cardiovascular system. when it's unhealthy, say from smoking, eating junk food, having really bad dysipidemia, like this is a whole another thing we could talk about is how the standard lipid panel is complete We should do a podcast on that. That's really important. Talking about lipids, cholesterol, and all that. Yeah. Like like the standard cholesterol panel that the doc your doctor does, it's total cholesterol, triglycerides, LDL, HDL. Those are the four things that the standard lipid panel does. And it's complete right? And it doesn't matter. It's completely fake. More than 50% of people talking about what kind of LDLs you have, which exactly the size of them. Are they oxidized? Are they inflamed? Are they pissed off? Are they tiny little ones? Are they big fat ones? So, that's another podcast we could talk about because it's really important. And this is what I check on all my patients, but more than 50% of people who have a heart attack or stroke have a normal lipid panel from their doctors, which is
crazy. But anyway, back to coal plunging. cold plunging can actually improve the endothelial health of your cardiovascular system. Another thing actually that it does is there they're there's thinking that it could be because of the release of nitric oxide from the mitochondria. Just like in saunas, the cold plunging and the saunas are very very similar. You have heat shock proteins and cold shock proteins. Those heat and cold shock proteins are actually what can help make you healthier. There's a term called hormesis. Basically, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? So, you know, when you're lifting heavy heavy weights, you know, it's tearing your muscles apart, but guess what? Your body then goes back and rebuilds them. So, that's number eight. Okay? And then number nine, let's talk about um uh potential enhancement of immune function, which I love, and that's another reason I cold plunge every day because I try to stay as sick free as possible. Although last week I got the snot kicked out of me. I got what was going around. And so there are some benefits to cold plunging that it it can increase your immune system. There's actually studies that show that it actually does decrease the amount of sick days. The uh large randomized control trial of about 3, 000 people who took daily cold showers showed a 29% reduction in sickness absences compared with control. So, right there alone, that tells you something. It's a randomized controlled trial of 3, 000
people who take cold showers, almost a 30% decrease in the amount of sick days between them and the control group. So, what it does, what the cold plunging does, it improves your you have cell mediated and humoral immune systems. Humoral is antibodies like your B cells make antibodies to viruses, bugs, bacteria, other pathogens. But the cell mediated is TE-C cells and the TE-C cells actually go and attack tumors and other specific toxins and kill those. And so when you coal plunge, it increases both your humoral and your T - cell mediated immune system, giving you less sick days, which is awesome. And then number 10 is Okay, let's let's see what number 10 is. It just feels good afterwards. Yeah. So when I get out, I feel great again. I hate getting into it. I literally I step in. I hate it. I take a big deep breath and then I do some breath work while I'm in it. But when I get out, I feel like a million bucks. My inflammation is down. My pain is down. My mood is up. And I and you know what, dude? There's something to be said about feeling better about yourself. That's one of the reasons we work out, right? You lift weights because you like how it makes you feel. It makes you feel good. It makes you feel better about yourself. And that's one thing that a lot of us Americans
really need to get back into is doing things that make us feel better about ourselves. Unfortunately, like we were talking about earlier before the podcast, a lot of people are doom scrolling, that makes you feel like about yourself because you're like, "Oh, I just spent 45 minutes on Instagram. I wasted my life. What a loser." No, you need to go out and do stuff that actually makes you feel good about yourself. So, again, we're opening Degree Wellness here in Reno. We're going to have cold plunges and infrared saunas in the same room. Call it contrast therapy. And so, you go cold to hot, cold to hot like you were talking about earlier. And, uh, the benefits of the cold plunge, we just went over the top 10. And then uh we our next one we can talk about the benefits of infrared. Yeah, I have an infrared sauna in my house. Cool. Awesome. Use it all the time. And uh yeah, it's pretty amazing. And it's different than a regular sauna. I've heard most reasons it's better. But real quick before we go touch on is there an additional benefit but by doing the hot first and then the cold or vice versa? Well, um, if you want if you're interested in losing weight, it's be it's always best to end with the cold because then your body has to rewarm itself and there therefore it has to burn those calories warming you up. So, I don't think I think that's the biggest difference for that. I don't think it matters just for the general public. But if you're actually wanting to increase your calorie expenditure,
end on cold because it's going to require your body to warm itself up, which can, like you said, burn 6 800 calories. So, you wanted you were going to you you had a bunch of benefits. What were some of the benefits that you pretty much named them all. I would have copied them. But um is there I mean a lot of the getting in the sauna or a steam room or heat is going to be the same benefits as the cold, right? Very much a a lot a little bit different. Like I said, you have heat shock proteins and cold shock proteins, right? They're they're different. They work on a different pathway, but it's super similar. like the list of um these the top 10 of cold plunge and the top 10 benefits of sauna are very similar. I mean they're super similar, but basically again it's it has a hormetic effect on you. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. There's stress plus rest equals growth, right? I'll say that again. Stress plus rest equals growth. Just just like you man lifting heavy heavy weights, you're stressing the crap out of your muscles. You let it rest and guess what? Your muscles grow. Same thing with all of the systems in your body. Your immune system, your cardiovascular system, your mental health, it all plays into that stress plus rest equals growth. All right. So, yeah, we've got a lot of talk a lot to talk about. Doc, if people want to reach out to you and talk to you, uh, how do they get a
hold of you? Again, it's empowerment MD em. com. It's on Instagram. It's on Facebook, YouTube. I got a good YouTube channel. Lots of cool videos on there. And then also at Degree Wellness in Reno. That's where we're going to be opening up in the end of April or May hopefully. Uh had some construction delays, which is ridiculous. Um, and but if you want to if people want to come in and try the coal plunge, I mean, coal plunges cost 10 grand. An inexpensive one is $ 10, 000, right? A good one is $ 20, 000. So, if someone wants to come in and start trying cold plunge and infrared sauna, but they don't want to drop a huge chunk of change, they can come to Degree Wellness South Reno. They can sign up. We're doing a founding membership drive right now. 15% off plus a bunch of discounts. And so we're kind of using this to make it accessible to the masses. All right, Doc, thanks for being with us. All right. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it.
Transcript auto-generated by YouTube. Verbatim — duplicates intentionally preserved.
22 minutes of conversation 85 Reacher quality score
The body adapts to the signals it receives. Heat, cold, compression, strength work, breath, and nutrition all ask a slightly different question of the nervous system. Used well, they create a rhythm: brief stress, clear recovery, better readiness.
Sauna (as explored in this deep dive) raises heart rate, expands blood vessels, and increases thermal load without the joint impact of training. In plain terms, the body practices moving blood and regulating temperature. Many people experience that as easier relaxation, deeper sleep, and a steadier sense of calm after the session.
Cold exposure creates a short, controlled sympathetic response. Breathing slows the reaction. The result is not toughness for its own sake, but a trained transition from alarm back to control. That is why a well-dosed cold plunge can leave the mind clear and the body awake.
Chronic stress is not only a feeling. It changes sleep, pain sensitivity, attention, and the ability to downshift after work. Recovery rooms and short reset protocols matter because they give high-demand workers a reliable way to exit survival mode.
Food timing, protein, fiber, cold, and movement all influence how the body handles energy. The useful frame is not punishment. It is metabolic flexibility: helping the body move between fuel sources while still protecting sleep, strength, and hormonal stability.
The strongest message is restraint. More heat is not automatically better. Colder water is not automatically wiser. A useful protocol has a purpose, a dose, and a recovery window. It should leave you more capable, not depleted.
Recovery works best when the signal is clear, the dose is honest, and the body has room to adapt.
Choose one recovery input at a time, then notice how sleep, mood, soreness, and focus respond.
Keep the dose precise. End sessions while you still feel composed and able to recover.
Pair stress with support: hydration, protein, minerals, breath, and unhurried rest.
The deeper lesson is simple: recovery is not passive. It is a practice of creating the conditions where the body can do its best work.
