Day two of the Ultimate Human cold plunge Challenge is where most people discover whether they are going to continue. The novelty has worn off. The soreness from day one's plunge may still be present. And the question — the real question — is whether the practice has found enough traction in the nervous system to pull you back.
Auto-generated transcript with timestamp markers. Click any timestamp to jump to that point in the video on YouTube.
e e
usually can't oh there I am the all right are we live yes all right I'm GNA give a few minutes for everybody to start rolling in here um yesterday was amazing guys I know so many of you are firsttime cold plungers and you actually no pun intended but broke the ice yesterday so congratulations this is so awesome um we have uh big special guest That was supposed to be on today but for scheduling purpos is um they got moved to tomorrow so you definitely want to be here tomorrow we got both special guests um coming on tomorrow to give you some words of encouragement I saw some really creative cold plunging on um you guys were tagging me on some amazing cold plunges who was the woman in Mexico ranada in Mexico um couldn't get one of the plunge popups so she actually went and got a beer tub and did her coal Plunge in a beer tub I saw people doing them in C cattle troughs that's what I do when I'm in Colorado I went to a tractor supply and I bought the um $ 165 cattle trough that you feed cattle out of and I just fill it up with Glacier Spring Water love the creativity guys lots of bathtubs going on um I saw Barrel coold plunges so you guys have gotten really creative so here's what I want to do in the next 24 hours at the end of the challenge tomorrow I'm going to give away a plunge XL tub so the plunge XL is the one that I use it's the 7, 000 Big Mama it's got the integrated motor um it's got this you know the um the tops so you can put it outside it's the big white one with the 45 degree slant in the back if you saw Ryan from plunge yesterday it's the one he has at his headquarters that he was in I am going to give it away to the most creative post that you tag me in cold plunging over the next 24 hours so if you get in there with your kids or if it's husband and wife for the first time or you've
and wife for the first time or you've got a funky plunge like a cattle trough or a beer tub I want to see it and the most creative cold plunge I'm going to give you a $ 77, 000 plunge XL tub and I'm going to ship it right to your house for no cost all right we got a bunch of giveaways today I want to make this as exciting and impactful as possible um I'm not just reserving this for my VIPs I'm reserving this for anybody on YouTube on the Facebook group just tag Gary Brea just my first and last name show me how creative you're getting with the cold plunge I want to see you your families your husbands your wives if you got a funk creative plunge um you know like a beer tub or a cattle trough I want to see it I'll pick the most creative I'll post and thank you and I'm going to send you a $ 7, 000 plunge XL I got a ton of Swag giveaways today I've got a ton of plunge pop-up giveaways today one lucky winner is going to get the ultimate human flexible they can't keep these things in stock on Amazon it's the hottest item in the world it's an ultimate human flip-flop um we're give a bunch of those away today too so um I got a bunch of questions yesterday I so you know I had my team kind of group them um so I just want to address what I thought were maybe the top five most commonly asked questions um about coal plunging but most of all I really want to thank you guys for giving me your time um your trust and confidence because the next two days is going to be amazing and yesterday I know we had thousands and thousands of firsttime cold plungers and then in our VIP group I got to have a lot of direct feedback with folks and I heard some really incredible stories about how cold plunging has changed people's lives remember you don't have to spend any money to be a part of this cold plunge other than if you um have a bathtub and you got to go to 7-Eleven and get a couple bags of ice um you can also do it in a cold shower if you want to start that way um I got some really interesting shower photos posted um yesterday too so I'm just excited to see so many people getting fired up to take the plunge um so we talked yesterday
the plunge um so we talked yesterday about the five big benefits of cold plunging right and one of them was about elevating mood and people said you know what's the science behind you know elevating mood and remember that when we expose ourselves when we stress our body we talked yesterday about hormesis when you stress the body and it returns by strengthening right I mean this same concept of exercise you tear a muscle it grows back larger and therefore you're stronger after exercise because of muscle hypertrophy or muscle hyperplasia the same thing happens in the human body and you know when we do these hormetic stresses we're not trying to make ourselves adapt to the stress we're actually trying to shortterm stress our body shock the body and then take the stress off that's where the benefit comes from it's like if you if if somebody HIIT around the corner and and went Boop every day that you came into the office um but you knew they were hiding around the corner every single day in the same place then it would no longer scare you but your body would no longer respond to that stimulus so with cold plunging there is no evidence that colder is better or longer is better and you know a lot of people are really excited to hear this um so 50 to to 55 degrees maybe 48 to 55 degrees 3 minutes minimum six minutes maximum that's all you need guys you do not need to be in the 30s you do not need to be in the coal plunge for 15 or 20 minutes I've actually seen cold punch challenges where they they challenge people to stay in longer you know longer is not better it's like anything else you know more is not necessarily better the longer you stay in the higher the risk of actually dropping your core body temperature and we don't want to drop our core body temperature we actually want the peripheral Vaso constriction to save our organs the way that we would if something happened natural we slipped through the ice we fell underneath of the ice um we would want our per you know our veins in our periphery and our vascular system to constrict to push that warm blood into the core force
push that warm blood into the core force the oxygen to the brain the liver the lungs the pancreas the kidneys in an effort to save our life we want to mimic that and then we just want to get out um we don't want to become cold adaptive you know again we're not trying to become Eskimos you know there there are a lot of stories out there in the public domain you can look these up where um people have actually slipped through the ice they've gone under the water in cold water and it's taken up to 3545 there's there's one that was even um documented at 90 minutes underneath of the ice and underwater obviously unconscious and they get these people out and they get them to the hospital they warm them up and they survive and they actually have no brain damage why is that how does it how is that even possible you can't go without oxygen for more than four minutes um without sustaining some mean zero oxygen for more than four minutes without starting to sustain some mild level of brain damage so how is it that people can slip under the ice be under there for 35 or 45 or 50 minutes and get taken out and somehow survive and have no um cognitive deficits thereafter the reason is cold shock proteins and the peripheral Vaso constriction the activation of brown fat that happens when you get into a cal blunch you know the body is just an amazing very resilient machine and when we understand how we can tap into some of these hormetic stresses um those of you that participated on my water fasting challenge what's water fasting it's a hormetic stress we put a stress on the body and that stress is no food no caloric intake and how does the body respond it actually switches into a state of ketosis it starts to use fat beta hydroxy berate as a fuel source and now that it's in this state of ketosis what happens the inflammation begins to drop and once the inflammation drops and you've been in ketosis for a while what else happens the body starts to release stem cells and those stem cells go around and begin to repair tissue and then when it's looking for food and we're not feeding it where does it get its food it gets its food by eating itself and it eats the the most useless
itself and it eats the the most useless portion first it eats the weakest part of our body first and what is that those are ccent cells or what we call zombie cells ccent cells are cells in your body that are no longer able to perform their function right I mean right now in your bloodstream you've got red blood cells that can no longer carry oxygen but they're still living you've got white blood cells that can no longer mount an immune defense but they're still living you got platelets that can't carry growth factors but they're still alive in your bloodstream and so we'd like to get these kinds of cells out out of the body and replace them with a younger healthier version that can actually do its job it's like having a company full of lazy employees that are still on your payroll right we'd like to get the lazy employees that aren't doing their job out and put somebody in that seat that's actually going to do their job and this is what cellular autophagy is and we use the hormetic stress of fasting to push ourself into a state where we're in cellular autophagy where we're actually consuming ccent cells and the body actually recycles itself it takes those cells that are useless and breaks them up into amino acids and feeds them to the skin it feeds them to um the heart it feeds them to our metabolism and actually creates new red blood cells um it repairs muscle tissue so a lot of these stressors and a lot of when I design these um challenges they're number one designed to be safe and they're number two designed to give you the maximum benefit I try to make them as close to costing zero as possible and I want the outcome to be really profound so that you get used to challenging the body you know if you look at one of my can you bring me one of my um my swag boxes um you know I um I have a saying it's called Aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort and I don't think that there's anything more truthful than that saying you know as a population as a society We crave Comfort we regulate our body temperature we regulate our interior temperature we regulate the temperature in our house our car our office um we we've been trained to think that we shouldn't get any sun sunlight
that we shouldn't get any sun sunlight um that sunlight is the devil and so then we put chemicals on our skin to protect oursel from sunlight and then we actually have more damage from the chemicals we put on our skin than we do from the god-given sunlight that we should be exposing ourselves to every day and so a lot of what I try to do when I design these um challenges is to teach you that sometimes these stressors that we can put on our body have profoundly positive effects you know the body is such an amazing god-given machine that when we actually understand how can tap into some of the pharmacies that are naturally inside of our body some of the abilities to improve our mood improve our emotional state strengthen our bodies improve our digestion a lot of these don't cost us anything so um I'm going to give one of these away today too by the way I don't know if you guys can see that see the ultimate human it's kind of we got like a sort of contrast there I'm really really proud of the team for building this but um if you get one of these swag boxes um you see right here it says aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort right so none of you are aggressively pursuing Comfort today we're actually pursuing discomfort right and that's going to help us with the aging process but what do we got in here um so in here um you get an ultimate human Shaker um and then this uh this the Shaker seal so you can actually really um mix up those perfect aminos you get a um an echo water bottles just all of my favorites um a little mixer here CU sometimes those perfect Dominos are a little powdery so this will help you mix them I give you some perfect Dominos I give you Baja gold sea salt that's actually one of my favorite hacks um Baja gold sea salt or Celtic salt because it's got all those minerals in it um I give you um my new Ultimate human bars that is actually guilt-free snacking um or guilt fee meal meal replacement I got them in a couple of flavors and then I'll I'll give you a um a t-shirt or um for women I've got the uh jogging bras um and whatnot so but aging is the aggressive pursuit of
aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort so none of us are going to age today because we're not pursuing Comfort but uh these hormetic stresses are just phenomenal for the body so when we learn to use every few months three or four months to use fasting when we learn to use um sunlight and breath work and grounding to improve our mood and get oxygen into our bodies and exercise our auxiliary muscles of respiration and when we learn to use cold plunging as a way to elevate our mood improve our emotional state why because I'm raising endorphins and raising the level of dop dopamine in the body remember dopamine is the main neurotransmitter of behavior right serotonin is the main neurotransmitter of mood you start to deplete serotonin you start to dramatically affect mood you start to deplete dopamine you dramatically affect Behavior because when you're dopamine depleted you engage in dopamine seeking Behavior so what's dopamine seeking Behavior anything that gives you a little dopamine reward you know Believe It or Not Apple the iPhone manufacturer St studied the release of dopamine with different um wavelengths of light and different stimuli in the phone and they actually design the phone to be dopamine addictive I know that sounds crazy and like it's a conspiracy theory but it's patently true because you know when we look at our phone we go there's something interesting in there there might be something cool in there I can see somebody get hurt I can see somebody do something really astounding I could find out how to fix my relationship I can find out how to raise my kids all of that's just in that little tiny device in your hand every time that you open it and interact with it you get a tiny little dopamine reward so imagine getting 50 times that by just engaging in cold water immersion right I mean that feeling of just Elation Joy arousal you know clear cognizant um um you know waking energy good healthy short-term recall all because you have high levels of endorphins and high levels of dopamine so again when we get into that um uh cold plunge the first thing that happens is that peripheral Vaso constriction dumping the oxygen into our core the next thing that happens happens is the liver panics and
happens happens is the liver panics and this is one of the reasons why they link cold shock proteins to the ability to survive extended periods under the water now I don't I pray that none of you guys ever fall through the ice and get stuck under the ice um but this is the reason why a lot of these people were able to survive it was the one of the first foray into the study of cold shock proteins from the liver they release these cold shock proteins um they scour the body of free radical oxidation they improve the rate of protein synthesis which is muscle repair which is why these help you repair muscle um they uh Lin 28a and 28b which we talked about yesterday actually improve insulin sensitivity and you can get all of this in three minutes of cold water um lots of questions about thermogenesis um remember there's two main types of fat there's different locations of fat around the body you have visceral fat you have body fat but you have different types of fat you have the white fat that we all know is on on our periphery you know that's what we're used to seeing around our belly and the flanks of our arms and um on the sides of our pecs and everywhere else on our body that's white fat but Brown Fat's a really special type of fat Brown fat is capable of exchanging a calorie for heat in fact the definition of a calorie is that it's a measure of heat it's the amount of energy measured in Jews that it takes to raise one cubic centimeter of water one degre centigrade so calories are a measure of heat so when heat is leaving our bodies what do you think is leaving your bod calories there is a cost an energetic cost to raising your body temperature and that cost is calories your body's going to take calories your brown fat and it's going to burn it for um energy and it's going to create heat from that and it's going to raise your body temperature beyond the ambient temperature so if you're in a 75 or 80 degree room and you get in a 50 ° coal plunge and you bring your body temperature your not your core but your peripheral body temperature down below um ambient room temperature
down below um ambient room temperature how does your body raise it back to room temperature and then push it all the way to 98. 6 it's burning Brown fat right and so you get this massive caloric expenditure this major rise in dopamine this major rise in endorphins um you get this peripheral Vaso constriction you get the release of cold shock proteins and it all costs you zero so it's it's amazing that we can do this in the mornings let's um let's get to some of the most commonly asked um questions yes yester on YouTube um I also want to give a a shout out to Michael fullwood he said I've been cold plunging for a year and a half and I was able to beat my ADHD addictive personality with plunging meditation and whm Hoff breathing I had an alcohol use disorder and I've been sober for six months wow um Michael I'm sending you a popup plunge um if you would just um if you're listening Michael fulwood um just give my uh give your information into the chat to my team or just connect with my team in the chat and they're going to send you a a popup plunge that's amazing see guys it's we we don't need chemicals we don't need synthetics we don't need Pharmaceuticals we need mother nature and what God gave us I believe so much more in what God gave us than what man makes us and I think that we become a society um based on chemicals and synthetics and pharmaceuticals we've forgotten about the ability of the human body to heal itself the power that this has over this and I just get goosebumps here here in some of these stories um Quincy linen um does anything does eating anything just before an ice bath change the effects of human biological reactions is adding salt to anything um for an ice bath either positively or negatively okay so let me handle both of those uh separately so the first question was if eating um just before an ice bath um changes the effects of human biological reactions I assume what you're asking is does it change the enzymatic reaction in the and eat um that you can affect the enzymes in the stomach and that is true
enzymes in the stomach and that is true it's not true with cold plunging remember we're not lowering our core body temperature unless you're underwater drinking the water we we shouldn't be trying to lower our core body temperature there's there's enzymes in the body um that work on basically something called a lock and key mechanism so think about a Pac-Man um and and a slice of cake right so that Pac-Man has that triangular shaped mouth and if you were to fit a perfect triangular shaped um piece into their mouth we call this the lock and key mechanism this is kind of how enzymes work in the body different enzymes have a a lock and the key the nutrient fits that lock and and that enzyme is able to degrade it those enzymes are um sensitive to temperature so if you drink ice water and eat sometimes it can affect the enzymatic capacity to break down that food so um this does not happen with cold plunging again we're not swallowing the water and we're not lowering our body temperature so it wouldn't affect our enzymes or our lock and key mechanism does adding salt to anything for an ice bath either positively or negatively um I think what you're adding you know asking me is if we add something like an Epsom salt um also called magnesium chloride um or a um uh dead sea salt or something to our ice bath would that affect you positively or negatively um I'm not aware of any negative effects um remember that it what's interesting about cold water is that the the colder the water the more gas can be dissolved in the water there's higher oxygen concentrations there's higher dissolved gas in cold water than there is in warm water um but with regard to sodium um you know using things like magnesium chloride or Epsom salt um those are fine to put in into your coal plunge check with your coal plunge manufacturer to see if adding Epsom salt to your coal plunge will um destroy the motor um because the fan and some of the rubber seals are affected by magnesium chloride it kind
affected by magnesium chloride it kind of cakes around the seal and it can actually um damage the seal over a couple of months so that's the only downside um when I'm in Colorado I will sometimes take magnesium chloride and epsom salt and put it in the ice bath and kind of stir it around because I'm not worried about the motor um Newton Gary I'm all in if I'm currently in Cypress Gree even a cold shower is too hot no cold plunges facilities either what is the closest thing that I can do um see if there's a restaurant that'll give you a bucket of ice see if the hotel will give you a bucket of ice see if they sell ice at a they got to have their version of uh 7-Eleven in Cypress Greece so see if you can actually get um ice and put it in a tub you know the interesting thing about buying a bunch of bags of ice and putting it in your tub believe it or not if you guys have ever done this is it's good for three or four days and it doesn't stay you know as cold as the first day that you plunged your first plunge will obviously be um the coldest but you'd be surprised how a tub actually insulates that cold water and and it can actually stay nice and cold for three or four days again depending depending on the amount of heat but see if you can get ice from a restaurant see if you can get ice from a hotel or see if you can get um buy ice bags at a um uh whatever the Cypress grease version of 7-Eleven is but by the way I'm very jealous grease is one of my favorite places in the world my dog Madison is actually um in mikinos right now and so she keeps sending me pictures of her and all of her girlfriends having fun in mikinos santarini I love that part of the world um As A Firefighter in terms of Sonic cold plunge combo do you have any me research any more research on the Toxin and mental benefits yes so um this might be a long answer but remember there's uh two types of sweating that the body goes through right we have passive sweating and we have active sweating passive sweating is where we sweat to reduce body temperature so if you got out of your chair right now and you went for a brisk walk and you started to sweat that's your body trying to lower your body
your body trying to lower your body temperature active sweating is where you sweat to eliminate waste so if you've ever actually had the cold sweats when you had the flu you're in a cool room um under the covers and you know 65 degrees in the room but you're still shivering and you're sweating that's active sweating this is where your liver begins to use the skin as a secondary route of waste elimination and um so we've you know unfortunately experienced active sweating because we at some point in our life we probably have uh the flu or the seasonal allergies and we start to um we start to actively sweat this is the difference between infrared saunas and dry saunas cause passive sweating infrared sauna some research shows that it can solicit um active sweating so you actually eliminate slightly more waste in an infrared sauna than you do in a dry sauna I still encourage you to sauna if you can cont therapy is where you go from hot to cold so again we don't want this temperature gradient to be super dramatic right this is why I don't encourage people to go from high heat saunas saunas that are over 180 degrees Fahrenheit to really low temperature cold plunges below 40 degrees that temperature gradient is too much for our cell membrane to handle and can actually crack and Fracture the cell membrane remember if you actually look at a cell in the wall of the cell surrounding that cell is what's called a phospholipid bilayer it's a fancy way of saying an outer and inner layer made of phospholipids fats for a lact of better word so imagine this cell surrounded by a thin layer of fat and through these ion channels in the cell wall we move nutrients in and out right and so if that fat were really really warm and sort of liquidy for lack of better words and then you submerged it in ice and froze it the rapid change in that temperature can fracture the cell wall so if you do contrast therapy I recommend 20 minutes in in a dry sauna
recommend 20 minutes in in a dry sauna followed by a minute to no more than three minutes in a coal plch interestingly when we did our sleep challenge um some of the people that actually reported having the most active mind at night they were able to do contrast therapy even with your home shower and it dramatically improved their sleep score and what was the contrast therapy they got into the shower um they ran it warm they stood in there and they did their whatever their shower business is then they turned the shower as hot as they could stand it they ran it on the back of their neck and down their spine and then they stepped out of that water stream turned it as cold as the shower would go and stepped back into the water for one minute and ran the water all over their body they dried out and then they went off and got in bed that broke that cycle of what we call catacol amines which are the really active neurotransmitters in the mind causing our mind to kind of race ruminate on thoughts overthink things things you know a lot of you have the same um uh condition that I used to have where you lay down to go to sleep at night and your mind wakes up and your brain just starts clicking through the day just thinking about the most innocuous little thoughts depriving you of getting into deep sleep so contrast therapy before bed is one of the um one of my favorite sleep hacks um it's one of the Sleep hacks that I use when I'm on the road and I'm trying to adjust to a new time zone um and you're you're trying to get on to that time zone so you're either putting yourself to bed very late according to your normal sleep schedule or you're trying to put yourself to bed early um according to your normal sleep schedule because you're somewhere in a different time zone um I find that contrast therapy is one of the best ways um to to break the cycle of the day and start your your sleep routine um huge shout out to Kyle morenka um today oh was my 255th consecutive plunge I thought it said 255th birthday was like you definitely won the C challenge today was my 255th consecutive plunge Kyle we would love to send you some swag this was amazing so um connect with my team give them your
um connect with my team give them your size and uh I'm G to get you out some ultimate human swag gear um Ken gal oh ken ken galad galad Gad Yana Ken gadana I hope I'm saying that right Ken I apologize my team's holding it up behind the camera Kem galad um can I put chlorine in my 110 gallon portable plunge so I don't have to change the water every day um try dead sea salt or magnesium chloride um try that before you use chlorine remember chlorine concentrations are higher in cold water than they are in warm water there's less evaporation in cold water than there is in warm water um and therefore the concentrations of those chemicals Stay High um we talked yesterday about the experiment I did showing how quickly chlorine goes transdermal um so my preference would be that you don't use chlorine that you use something like a dead sea salt or magnesium chloride Epsom salt um high amounts of Epsom salt will keep algae and other contaminants from growing the other thing that you want to do if you're outside is cover your cold plunge if you can right because light um and the warmth from the sun will actually help grow algae faster than if you have a cold plunge that's that's protected from the light um how many bags of light will you ask estim is needed for the popup um to get to 50 de I used six um and I think they were six 10B bags I'll have to ask my son when he comes back in here but I think it was six 10 pound bags that I got in yesterday there were three of them in there at first we swirled them around and then I put three more in um right when I got in so my understanding is six so that would be what 60 pounds um we have our plunge set at 50 degrees and it says around 51 to 52 with the Sacramento heat should my goal um be to get the temperature lower or to stay in longer than 3 minutes hubby wants to drop the temp and maybe we need that because it doesn't take my breath away but I do
doesn't take my breath away but I do have uh to do breath work when I get in for the first 10 to 15 seconds so 51 to 52 is is fine if you can get the Cal plunge down um 48 to 50 degrees a little bit better and it will take your breath away but remember um three minutes minimum six minutes maximum so you can stay in for the full six minutes um and that's fine it does not have to be painful I don't know when cold plunging became like this contest of of willpower to see how cold we could get the water um you know I really worry about people that get in 35 37 degree water I mean might but that that plunge cold plunge that I use will will go down to 35 37 degrees um I just don't put it down there but I have seen all over Instagram people in 35 to 37 degree water just a few degrees off of freezing um get in and even take a snorkel and go underwater and breathe underwater for 12 minutes that is in my opinion very dangerous um we talked about it yesterday your brain is only this far inside the surface of your skull it is not good to bake it and it's not good to freeze it remember we're trying to hor medically stress the body three to six minutes and get out and we're going to do that every day and you will not adapt to it every day it's like the person that was scaring you every day was in a different place every single day you would still respond to that hormetic stress but if they were in the exact same place every day you would eventually adapt to that hormetic stress it would no longer scare you so again there's a difference between becoming cold adaptive and cold shocking the body interestingly some of the research that people put forward to uh pooo coal plunging and say there's uh it lacks good scientific basis are um studies that were done on cold water swimmers well cold water swimmers are already cold adaptive right I mean if you're used to swimming and very cold water and then you start a cold plunge routine you're talking about a human that has already adapted to the cold environment that is not cold shocking themselves now
that is not cold shocking themselves now if they swm swam in warmer Waters and started a cold plunge routine well then you would see the physiological adaptation you would see the hormetic stress so I think sometimes um you know we have to look at the study design that's giving us our information and you know there are people that that will speak positively or negatively about just about anything and that's why I'm trying to cut through all the noise and give you guys the you know the sound research and the the best benefit with the least amount of time um is cold plunging uh for a menstruating woman during menstration okay yes um you know obviously um you want to protect yourself from from having that you know from menstrating into the water but um yes from during your menstrual cycle it's perfectly fine to Coal plunge again I think this is a very good um reminder that coal ER is not necessarily better right um we're cold shock the body 3 minutes minimum 6 minutes maximum and get out but it's fine during any time of the menstrual cycle I haven't seen any scientific evidence um there is some evidence against fasting During certain stages of the menstrual cycle but I haven't seen any evidence against um pole plunging during your your cycle so it doesn't matter if you're folicular ovulation or luteal um Adam um kandasamy um what's your opinion of just putting your hands in a large bowl of ice and water if people are not able to cold punch you know what's interesting is I saw Dave asprey talking about this just putting your face in a bowl of ice water um I personally haven't seen any valid science either way so I can't say that that doesn't work um it certainly would activate What's called the Maman dive reflex um which is when you you your face is exposed to cold water the neurons in your face actually communicate with your brain and shift you from a sympathetic State fight ORF flight into a parasympathetic state which is rest and digest the mamalian diet reflex is extraordinarily well documented in in mammals we are mammals
documented in in mammals we are mammals human beings are mammals um we have a spine and so when when dolphins or when whales dive deep into the ocean um not only does the pressure increase um every 33 ft the atmospheric pressure doubles but the um the water temperature also drops that cool water passing over the uh neurons in their face actually does slow their heart rate and calm them down so I'm sure that there are some benefits to putting your face Andor your hands in cold water um I don't think that you would get a massive peripheral Vaso constriction I don't think that you would get um a release of any substantive amount of cold shock proteins and I don't think that that would activate Brown fat so um it might raise the dopamine and it might improve your mood um and it certainly would be exhilarating exhilarating um but my preference would be rather than just to put your hands in your face in cold water that you um try a cold shower if you're not in Greece where it's 80 degrees um Jenny I'm guessing you can get the same results from just being in cold uh being in a cold environment but what makes emerging in water more effective Jenny that's a great question so water is 29 times more thermogenic than air what does that mean that means that water removes Heat from the body at 29 times the rate of air it is much easier to adapt to cold air than it is to adapt to cold water so for example if you walked outside and it was 50 degrees you didn't have a shirt on or you were in a pair of shorts or you know woman if you're in a bikini or something you had a lot of skin exposed you walked out much more um easily to the loss of heat in 55 degree air or 50 ° air than it can in 50 ° water now I assume you're talking about really cold air so yes if you walk out in really cold air you would get some of the same uh some of the similar benefits but water will will take heat from the
but water will will take heat from the body at 29 times the rate I mean it's literally stripping heat from your body in fact if you've been in the cold plunge and you've ever stayed really still you actually know that your body actually um when when you get goosebumps and those hairs rise one of the things that those hairs are doing is kind of trapping water close to the skin and when you trap it close to the skin it warms up and if you've ever sat in a coal punch for like 30 seconds and then kind of moved your body around and you feel the Cold Water contact you again that's because that water is 29 times more thermogenic than the uh than the same temperature air you can die in 72 Degree water there are plenty of documented cases of people that have got hypothermia in 72 Degree water you cannot die in 72 Degree air right your body can actually keep that thermal um temperature regulation so my my preference would be uh cold plunging rather than exposing yourself to cold air unless you're getting in a cryotank and now you're getting way below zero and you're kind of making up for the difference between the water and the air temperature and that Thermo regulation um Alex pone um how are heat shock proteins different from cold shock proteins be beyond the obvious implication in their name so what's interesting is um the cold shock proteins seem to have a lot more research that I'm able to find um there seems to be a um a longer list of cold shock proteins um if you were to Google um total number of cold shock proteins or total number of heat shock proteins you'll see that there are more cold shock proteins than heat shock proteins um in general they do relatively the same thing um they scour the body of free radical oxidation um they do improve the rate of protein synthesis one of the reasons why um I tell athletes to get hyperthermic after exercise never cold plunge after exercise to get hyperthermic so raise the body temperature after exercise if you're going to do sauna and cold plunge my preference is you do cold plunge prior to exercise and sauna after
prior to exercise and sauna after exercise I've seen dramatic improvements in recovery in athletes that do it in that sequence um interestingly if you just look at basic human physiology right um you know when we go into the gym you know one of the the whole objective if we're lifting weights is to tear muscle right it's actually damage the muscle so it repairs itself and and strengthens um so let's say we did a big squat workout right and we tore a bunch of our quad muscle what's the body going to do after we tear that quad muscle it's going to increase the blood flow to that area it's going to deliver more oxygen to those muscles it's going to strip the creatinin the waste product away from those muscles one of the inflammatory factors it's going to bring more amino acids to that site so it can actually repair the myof fibral tissue so why would we want to shut that process down so think about it I mean there used to be an old ad and there still it's still a very pervasive um um attitude in in sports medicine is that after intense exercise we should get into an ice bath um my son when he was playing High School football um you know after every intense practice they would put these guys in in um in ice baths and um I used to argue with the coach and say look I want my son to do the ice bath beforehand um and I want him to I don't want to strip the blood out of the areas that he's just damaged I want more blood flow to the that the areas that that have just damaged so we want to sort of embrace the natural physiologic process not fight it right so if the body's going to send more blood flow there I'm not going to constrict it and strip the blood flow out I'm G to enhance what the body's trying to do um the exception to that is injuries right icing and injury after exercise is obviously a very good thing so if you have a lateral epicondilitis if you have a medial kn issue if you have a hip or rotator cuff or you know an elbow issue then by all means ice that area of the body after exercise but ice bath um post exercise is is not proven to be really effective for recovery so 10 minutes until we get ready to take the plunge together guys
ready to take the plunge together guys if you're just joining us remember I am actually going to give away um at the end of the challenge tomorrow I'm going to give away a $ 7, 000 cold uh uh plunge XL it's the one that I have with the integrated motor and the cover that you can put outside it's fully insulated it Heats it cools you can run it from your app you can turn the motor on and off it's got lights in it I mean it's it is the granddaddy of all cold plunges all you have to do is tag me in a post I will repost these tag me in the post I want the most creative Cal plunge I want me to show you show me that your family's doing it husband wives are doing it give me a a really creative Cal plunge if you didn't you know buy a popup plunge but you're using a a beer tub or a cattle trough or or something else to De your coal plunge I want to see it I want to just get people excited about plunging so give me the most creative Co PL plunge post tag me at Gary Brea and I'll select at the end of the day tomorrow and I'll announce it and I'll send you a $ 7, 000 um plunge XL uh cold plunge so um you know uh Don says I participated in a whm Hoff Workshop I I've done that Workshop too congratulations and did my first cold punch in March it resulted in an epiphany if I can wrap my brain around getting into cold water then what can't I do this was very emotional for me and I noticed that a lot of participants yesterday were commenting on being very emotional can you speak to this yes you know this is first of all Don I just got goosebumps from your um from your post because you know sometimes when I talk about these things um you know that the haters come out online and on Instagram they say there's no science behind that and and uh either they say that you're fear-mongering or they say that you're making things up um I can tell you that I am a big believer in large data we have 150, 000 patients um that we have um treated at 10xl so very often when I put thousands of patients on a certain
thousands of patients on a certain supplement and I see their blood vastly react the same way I start talking about that big data um so I don't know that I can point to a specific randomized double blind Placebo controlled published peer-reviewed clinical trial um to prove what I'm about to say but you can't point to one of those on parachutes either and I sure as hell wouldn't jump out of an airplane without a parachute but you see a vast majority of people report a dramatic improve Improvement in mood and emotional state and why is that because when we expose ourselves to cold water one of the things that the body does to create a sense of alertness and calm is it raises dopamine dopamine is the main driver of behavior when dopamine Rises the body tries to stay in homeostasis what does that mean the body likes to be inbalance right so when our dopamine levels rise generally the levels of other endorphins will rise and what does this mean it means that it improves the entire spectrum of emotion sometimes people will get out of a cold plunge and they will experience Joy Elation arousal an increase in libido um they'll they'll experience these I call them the hell yeah one the lottery emotions right Elation passion Joy arousal like and sometimes for a lot of people it's been so long since they feel those emotions that they actually weep they actually cry I've seen this happen um before I took a group of people to my uh Colorado uh Retreat and we did cold plunges and hiked in the mountains and I noticed that sometimes after getting out of cold punches people will get emotional um in a good way it's like a happy type of crime again I don't have a scientific study to back this up I've seen it hundreds and hundreds of times um but the science behind this would be that this raising dopamine and riseing endrin you know a
dopamine and riseing endrin you know a lot of people I feel like so many of us have accepted good which is the enemy of great when our life is just okay or when our relationships are just okay or when we're just all right we stay in this sort of mood numb band sometimes for decades I want to break people out of that right I I want people to feel passion Elation Joy arousal you know happiness I want them to feel that Rush of of endorphins and sometimes people have not felt that in so long that cold plunge gives them a glimpse of what they were missing and it causes an emotional reaction so um I have literally seen this so many times it's unbelievable aable i' I've seen it at these big events that um they host here in Miami people getting out of cold plunges and drying off and just starting to weep with joy and you ask them why are you crying they go I don't know but I feel great so I think that's uh you know the explanation behind I hope it answered your question um so we got time for one more question um before we take a little break and we get back to uh the cold plunge so Kelly B should I be shivering during a cold plunge yes or no sometimes people um shiver um and that's a really great sign that's a normal um reaction sometimes they tell you to stay in the co plunge until you start to shiver I don't think that we use shivering as a measure of anything some people shiver some actually don't um when I first started cold plunging I used to get that little shiver when I would get in now regardless of the temperature or the duration I don't um I don't shiver so again shivering is actually a really good sign um your body is reacting properly to to cold water it's also trying to raise your body temperature and trap um uh trap more water and actually when when you're shivering too you see the Goosebumps are really really prevalent it will raise all the hairs on the surface of your body to try to trap more heat so it's a normal physiological response but don't use it as the only measure of having a successful Cal plch some people are like
successful Cal plch some people are like I think I got to stay in so long until I start to shiver and then they stay in there for a prolonged period of time um that's unnecessary because they actually don't don't get to that point where they shiver but if you do if you're one of those people that shiver every time you get in a cal punch it's a great time um so don't be afraid of that um all right I think we got time for one more question and then uh I'm gonna uh break and we're going to do the actual Cal punch can my pregnant wife Cal punch if so what would the protocol be uh would the protocol be any different I apologize if you have already addressed this no I actually haven't addressed it that's a great um that's a great question my preference would be that um pregnant women do a cool shower um you know the sad thing about pregnant women is that nobody wants to do testing on pregnant women right so just about everything that you see from toothpaste to laundry detergents to um different food sources to every supplement Under the Sun says if you are pregnant or lactating um consult your physician before you you know take this supplement or or use this detergent or what have you the reason for that is there's just no data on pregnant women nobody wants to launch a clinical study with pregnant women on on anything that could potentially damage um a growing fetus so my preference would be um that you do cold shower and not cold plunge because the rapid loss of heat I'm not sure what that transmission would be um into the uterus and into the fetus so to air on the safe side I would say uh take a cool shower um during pregnancy you'll still get a lot of the benefits you won't have the risk of lowering the body body temperature inside the uterus um all right so okay we're now going to to transition to the ice bath my favorite part um so I'll be off camera for one minute um I'm going to wake my way to the uh cold plunge and then we're going to um um you know shoot out on on my balcony so if you're going to do the plunge with me let's get into our plunges and I'm going to cut the camera and I'll see you back in one
minute e e all right guys we're back live um so if you're doing the plunge with me um we're getting ready I'm going to add a little bit more ice um somebody asked me how much ice i put in this so we had about three bags it's a little toasty out here you know we're in Miami um so I know a lot of you guys are in other parts of the world so it might not be as hot we're just gonna we're just GNA get a little bit cooler there that around nice and chilly um so we're gonna go for three minutes today if you want to go for six minutes please feel free to go for six minutes I didn't feel like
to go for six minutes I didn't feel like you guys wanted St at my face for 6 minutes in a cold blun but um but I'm going to go for 3 minutes today um maybe do a little bit of positive positive affirmations I am powerful I am wealthy I am strong my body's gonna get a lot of benefit out of this I deserve this I am doing something good for my body and here we go so my favorite thing is the four breaths before I get in um obnoxiously deep breaths remember we want to engage those intercostals right those auxiliary muscles of respiration those are the muscles we use when we Sprint right and a lot of us haven't Sprint in years so we can mimic sprinting by engaging our auxiliary muscles of respiration so we're going to do four obnoxiously deep breaths and on the fourth breath we're going to breathe all the way in we're going to hold and then we're going to step into the plunge and breathe out until we sit all the way down to our neck at some point I'm going to dunk my head get that mamalian dive reflex let myself calm down um in the plunge after that cold water hits my face so here we go four deep breaths ready that is refreshing as Ron Burgundy would say that is an instant state of euphoria so all the way down to my neck there we are I'm gonna get you can leave your hands out uh sometimes I'll put my hands in a lot of people have a hard time with fingers and toes so you can just leave your hands out on the edge of the cold plunge um or you can put them in
plunge um or you can put them in you're still getting a benefit keep your wrist in keep your chin down right down on the water and then oh you see my feet in there um so keep your chin in all the way up to your neck and then here's some of the techniques that I like to use hey can you guys stop drilling over there I'm I'm running a live cold plunge Challenge and they don't care um so I use two breath work techniques one is called box breathing which is a 4 second inhale followed by a 4sec hold followed by a 4sec exhale oh I just got shiver right there um Follow by a 4-c hold so it looks like this and you just keep tracing that Circle we're over a minute and a half we got a minute and 18 seconds to go guys um the second one this is what Ryan from plunge uses um where he just does a deep inhale and exhales out at twice the length through an imaginary straw so just a deep deep inhale exhale through a straw by now you should be fully used to the cold water guys you are Way Beyond the hardest part most of you should feel that not overwhelming urge to get out we've got about 35 seconds I'm going to do my take my uh blue blockers off and do a little um Mamon dive reflex
that is refreshing all right five seconds four three two one and we're done congratulations you guys that amazing we just got 2, 000 people or so through their first cold Pune or maybe their second Co punch that was amazing you should feel incredible and as the day goes on this feeling will not go away for hours and hours I mean it's basically free if you just did it in a cold shower or your tub with with some ice or one of these $ 120 plunges you just got a mood Improvement elevated your emotional state I'm letting the Sun hit my body right now is just so good guys we can do this every single day Elevate our mood Elevate our emotion access Brown fat access cold shock proteins get that peripheral vasil constriction my hands are not uh and fingers and toes are not even that cold um so that was a successful cold Punch Remember guys um you can sign up to be a VIP we're going to take a 15 minute break and then I'm gonna um spend an hour with my VIPs just directly answering more questions trying to have a one-on - one reaction with with you but if you want a shot at winning the XL Co plunge the $ 7, 000 Big Mama cold plunge I'll send it right to your front door do the most creative Cal plune post tag me I'm going to repost these I want to get as many people into Cal plunging as possible so the most creative post is going to win tomorrow announce the winner and I will send that cold plunge XL right to your front door so guys thank you so much for participating today please join the VIP group go to the ultimate human. com and just sign up to VI VIP I promise you I'll give you more value um than what you're spending every month to be a part of my membership group other than that I will see you guys tomorrow to Big special guests I'm actually gonna have two cold plunges tomorrow and I've got two special guests joining us so you definitely want to participate tomorrow meet the special guest you can ask him
meet the special guest you can ask him questions oh oh I just said that it was man uh you can ask questions directly um but I will see you guys tomorrow and that's just science
Transcript auto-generated by YouTube. Verbatim — duplicates intentionally preserved.
For Gary Brecka, day two is the most important day of any multi-day cold challenge. Not because the physiology changes dramatically from day one, but because the decision to return — made in the face of remembered discomfort — is where the habit actually forms.
Cold adaptation is real and measurable. With repeated exposure to the same cold stimulus, the acute stress response moderates. Heart rate spike diminishes slightly. The cold shock response — the involuntary gasp and rapid breathing — settles more quickly. The time to reach a calm, controlled state shortens.
This is not the body becoming indifferent to cold. It is the body learning to navigate cold more efficiently. The training effect is on the nervous system's response pattern, not on the temperature receptors themselves. Cold continues to register as cold — but the system that receives and responds to that signal becomes more capable.
By day two, the first traces of this adaptation are visible. The entry is still difficult. The first thirty seconds still demand full attention. But the recovery — the transition to parasympathetic dominance — happens faster, and the post-plunge clarity arrives more reliably.
One of the most significant aspects of the Ultimate Human challenge is its deliberate democratization of cold practice. Brecka's community includes people plunging in cattle troughs, beer tubs, converted chest freezers, and bathtubs filled with ice. The diversity is intentional.
Cold exposure does not require a premium plunge unit. The physiological requirements are simple: water cold enough (below 60°F) and a container you can sit or stand in safely. The creativity that challenge participants bring — whether improvising from a ranch supply store or filling a stock tank from a mountain stream — reflects a practical truth: the practice belongs to everyone.
The infrastructure can come later, if it comes at all. The protocol begins wherever you are.
Brecka describes the goal of the challenge not as a three-day achievement but as the beginning of a five-year relationship with deliberate cold. The challenge provides the ignition. The daily practice provides the compound interest.
What accumulates over years of consistent cold practice is difficult to measure in a single session but becomes unmistakable over time: a different baseline relationship to discomfort, a more resilient nervous system, a practiced capacity for voluntary stress followed by voluntary calm.
Athletes who build this capacity report that it transfers to performance contexts — the composure available in a decisive moment of competition is the same composure cultivated in thousands of the science of cold plunge entries. The training is specific, but the capability is general.
Brecka's protocol for the challenge is deliberately simple: cold water, two to three minutes, every day. No complicated sequencing, no elaborate breathing preparation, no temperature monitoring beyond knowing it is cold enough.
This simplicity is not a compromise — it is a design principle. A protocol complex enough to require significant setup creates resistance. A protocol simple enough to do anywhere, with any equipment, in any state of energy, gets done. And a practice that gets done produces results that a theoretically superior practice that never gets done cannot.
The best cold protocol is the one you will return to tomorrow. Brecka has built a challenge around this insight.
Day two is where the habit actually forms. The novelty is gone, and you have to decide: is this mine?
The best cold protocol is the one you will return to tomorrow. Simplicity serves the practice. — Gary Brecka
Cold adaptation is the nervous system learning to navigate intensity more efficiently. The cold stays cold. You become more capable. — Gary Brecka
If you miss day two, you lose the habit. The return, made in the face of remembered discomfort, is where the practice takes root.
Equipment does not need to be expensive or elaborate. Cold enough water and a container you can safely sit in is the complete requirement.
Think in years, not sessions. The three-day challenge is an ignition. The five-year practice is the destination.
