The question sounds simple: should you cold plunge protocols before or after a workout? The answer, from Dr. Thomas Seager, is more interesting than a protocol — it is a lesson in how to think about your own body.
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if you could have what would be called like the Thomas Seager protocol for ice bat so like for like just a normal person say me 35-year - old male like what would be the Thomas Seager protocol whatever protocol works for me is uh Irrelevant for you Mike that I can tell you what I do but that's me my body and your body are different and nothing matters more than your n equals 1 experience this is something that I've changed about my science because you know I'm a engineering faculty member at Arizona State University I got my PhD I did my dissertation I know how science works and when you come at me with uh randomized double blind controlled trial and you got the P less than 0. 1 I'm like look that's proof but I don't think that anymore Mike I've changed my view because are you in the 99% that responded to the experiment or are you in the 1% you know there's there's nothing more important than what works for you so I'm never going to be one of those guys you know on Twitter that says there's no scientific study that says the thing that you say happened to you actually happened to you so it didn't happen like that's crap what I do is I get up in the morning I do 2 to 4 minutes at 34 ° maybe that doesn't work for you maybe nighttime works for you and is that every day yeah so so you're seven days a week 2 to four minutes I've done probably more than a thousand ice baths and the funny thing is that um according to Legend I should be dead because you know if you listen to Kelly McGonagle's got this great book it's upside of stress and it talks about hormesis your beliefs about stress are more important than your experience of stress if you think the stress is good for you and going to make you stronger then sure enough it can Kelly mcgonagal
then sure enough it can Kelly mcgonagal says that the stress of an ice bath is so great that if you immerse your whole body in ice water it could kill you in a matter of minutes and this is why I say I guess I'm supposed to be dead by now Mike obviously that's false the ice bath that you choose is different than you know being on the Titanic and thrown into the North Atlantic Ocean you're choosing to get in of your own valtion you're choosing to come out and you feel wonderful because of what's happening to your nervous system and what's happening to your metabolism so for me the right amount of time is 2 to 4 minutes and the right temperature is 34 ° I'm not normal I'm tired of being normal because normal for a 52 well I'm going to be 58 this year normal for somebody in his 50s like me is sick normal is being on three different prescriptions but here's one for your blood pressure here's one for your cholesterol you know normal I'm not interested so uh I can't tell you what the right protocol for a normal guy is what I can tell you is start out so that it is cold enough to make you gasp and stay in long enough to feel the shiver if you do those two things then you're in touch with your own body and you will find like the right pathway for you you can go a little colder and a little colder as your body acclimates and then maybe the right protocol for you will be something like what I do or or what Joe does or what other people who are ice bathing every day will do and are you dunking your head every day you know not every day but most days I do I always breathe I never hold my breath that might be because I'm a wimp about it um but 11 seconds is the longest I've ever been underwater and at that point I have a panic attack so I go under and I breathe out through my nose I blow bubbles just like my mom who taught me how to swim you know uh said I'm supposed to do I try and
uh said I'm supposed to do I try and keep the top of my head close to the surface of the water uh but I really like the feeling of the ice water on my face I feel like it tightens up my skin um I I just like the sensation and of course I have a lot of magnesium in my water Epsom salt magnesium sulfate I put about six or seven pounds in mine and I like the feeling of the salt on my face and on my skin cuz again it reminds me of a kid being a kid playing at the beach so I dunk my head but I don't tell anybody to right same um and which epson salts by the way interesting fact normal chillers the salt is going to corrode all the piping that's what I've I've heard anyway I've never tested that the um the chillers are they have a heat exchanger in them that's made of aluminum and they pump the water out of the tub in through the chiller they bring it into contact with the aluminum and then they return the water back to the tub now that's not the way we work uh we have a filtration system but instead of bringing the water to the cold we bring the cold to the water so we're constantly circulating the water through the filtration system but the refrigeration coils are underneath the tub and they're maybe 5 ° fah that's what extracts the heat out of the water that's why the ice forms on the bottom the chiller units are cheap ER and easier to build but they can't get as cold because you can't pump ice so when the water comes into contact with the aluminum heat exchanger a little bit of that aluminum metal will dissolve into the water aluminum is not good for you I don't want it anywhere near my water it's used in water treatment they use aluminum sulfate to coagulate particles and clarify the water at the treatment plant then of course they add fluoride and then they add chlorine and they put it in the water distribution Network so it comes out of your tap and they tell you that it's safe to drink that's
you that it's safe to drink that's normal and I'm paranoid so I don't drink fluoridated aluminum treated water when the aluminum comes into contact with the water in the chiller a little bit of that aluminum dissolves into the water the worst thing that you can do is have fluoride in contact with aluminum that will accelerate the dissolution of the aluminum into the water so if you're using tap water and there's a little fluoride in there yeah it will interact with the aluminum you can say well you know it's inconsequential and it probably is I just don't want it anywhere near me sulfate is largely benign that is the interaction between aluminum and sulfate not that great and this is why you can dissolve a hell of a lot of magnesium sulfate but the forge that we make will take all the Epsom salt you can dissolve in it I've done as much as 9 lbs but we can dissolve more if that's what you want the thing is when you get out and you know I drip all over my patio and it leaves salt stains behind on my patio I'm like okay I have enough I'm not running a float tank here you know I have enough salt but I can't vouch for what happens with other brands their piping or their heat exchangers that kind of thing I under the impression that they don't really last too long with the uh erosion from the salt cuz goes through the whole system and I hear it just just wears it away someday I'll test it yeah something i' I thought like I I haven't tested it either what we never do is add chloride salts I don't want them in the Morosco because I don't want chlorine anywhere near any of the people who are taking an ice path you can say well chloride like in dead seed salts um you can say chloride is not the same as chlorine and it's not but because the ozone is so powerful when the chloride comes in contact with the ozone it can change the veence state of the chloride it can make um instead of chloride minus one charge it can make a chlorine
one charge it can make a chlorine molecule with a different charge that's not what you I want anywhere near my customers and so keep the chloride salts out of your morasco not just because they're corrosive although we make ours out of stainless steel if you've if you got anything but the original morasco Forge it's made of a stainless steel tub and that's highly resistant to corrosion if you've got the original Morosco for that's made out of zinc galvanized steel and the chloride will reduce the longevity of the tub so that's another reason not to put it in but mostly I just don't want to mix the ozone and the chloride I don't want the byproducts that will come out of mixing those two so one somewhat debated Topic in the uh ice bath World should you ice bath before you work out or after you work out depends on what you're going for um if you're in training and you're trying to build muscle mass uh if you're trying to speed your recovery after a workout ice bath before even this is the counterintuitive thing people who are listening to me and listening to Joe understand that precooling will give you big gains Andrew huberman did a podcast with Craig heler who's a Stanford faculty member he's done a lot on what's called per cooling that is Cooling in the middle of your workout uh and the principle is the same you keep your mitochondria cool you get big power boost from your muscles and you extend your endurance so if what you're going for is immediate performance or anabolic gains what human calls calls hypertrophy that is growth of your muscles uh if you're going for that test testosterone boost then ice bath before but there are some special situations where you might want to ice bath after uh say you're a tennis player you're in the middle of a tournament and it's a multi-day tournament well you know after you've just done I don't know seven sets
you've just done I don't know seven sets and it's grueling that you're going to experience that muscle soreness and you want to come back fast to Performance level again ice bath after your exercise uh cycling can go on for days tour to France or whatever it is you might uh use the ice bath after the strenuous exercise to reduce delayed onset muscle soreness and to bring you back to Performance level cuz you're you're not in training anymore now you need the rapid recovery the reduction of inflammation so you can get right back up to Performance level sometimes other tournaments uh golf um I'm trying to think of other special situations Give an example when my son was playing baseball move to Arizona you got a double header it's 112 de out he's a catcher and he of course he's drinking a lot and he's dripping from sweat man if I knew I would have put him right in the ice bath between games cool him down get him ready for the next game so for the most part you ice bath before you exercise use the Sona for recovery after a workout but there are some special situations where you want to come back to your performance level fast the ice bath can help you with that that's great so yeah nuanced approach But ultimately before if you're looking for for gains but recovery get you back to Baseline the ice bath could really guess what there's no one right way to do it all the time yeah it depends upon what your goals are of course and if you so let's say you're me and you plan on having a big anabolic workout uh how how many hours before I work out should I plunge this is an open question because nobody's ever really done that study but the people who are direct messaging me they're like you know is a 20-minute Gap okay is a 30 minute Gap okay and they feel like they're still getting the benefit sometimes they got to drive to the gym and um they're going to do heavy weights when they get there and a little bit of rewarming their limbs doesn't
bit of rewarming their limbs doesn't seem to hurt the benefit that they're feeling in the gym at all but here's what I suggest let's say you have your Morosco at home it's in your garage or something do some squats uh do some pull-ups do some push-ups do some basic body weight do some lunges do some basic body weight exercises me I like to get my steel mace out you know I feel tough I swing it around my head it doesn't take a lot of exercise to boost your testosterone levels so you can do a little bit of rewarming with some light exercise and then you can go big see if you get that 20 to 30% Peak power Improvement see if you're able to do a PR you know personal record based upon your precooling and if you find that is satisfactory but you don't need to get the testosterone benefits you don't need a lot of exercise and the Japanese study they went on the stationary bike for 20 minutes that's all it took what was the study this was a study 1991 in Japan and they wanted to understand the relationship between cold exposure and testosterone so they did what everybody does they uh got these young men and they gave them some exercise and then they did the cold and sure enough their testosterone went down when they do the cold cold after the exercise testosterone goes down luteinizing hormone goes down and for some reason the Japanese in 91 they reversed the order they said first we're going to do cold stimulation and then we're going to put them on the exercise bite testosterone went up lutenizing hormone went up they weren't throwing kettle bells around they weren't doing dead lifts they just went on the exercise bike for 20 minutes just to restore the circulation to their limbs it doesn't take a lot of exercise to boost your testosterone levels have have you seen any studies about boosting testosterone levels for sauna after workout I have not it's a really good
workout I have not it's a really good idea there are studies about um exercise and then Sona for Recovery now I haven't gone deep into them like I'm a cold guy but Mike mutell is really good on this stuff if you go on his YouTube channel he'll read some of the studies for you and Sona turns out to be a terrific way to recover from a strenuous workout what nobody has done is ice bath exercise Sona there's been studies of ice bath and exercise which works great there's been studies of exercise and Sona which works great and there isn't a single study of this sort of triple stack ice bath exercise then Sona what happens right interesting yeah I'd like to hear from the people who are trying it yeah same um so then so of course contrast therapy then is sitting in the sauna then ice bath then back to sauna Unlimited Loop what's your thoughts on contrast therapy the advantage to contrast therapy is that you get vasil constriction in the ice bth and then you get vasod dilation in the Sona both the ice bath and the Sona are really good for your cardiovascular system you can get your heart rate up in the Sona for example and that's like an exercise mimimic they're really good for your circulatory system they improve circulation especially in the extremities the capillaries but what you got to avoid is ice bath Hot Tub it feels like it's thermal contrast you're like hey I'm doing cold I'm doing hot people don't understand the way the hot tub works though your body knows when your skin is wet in the dry Sona you're sweating like crazy and it's the heat of evaporation so when the sweat evaporates off your skin it takes a lot of the heat with it that's how your body is designed to stay cool when you get in the hot tub your body understands that you're skin is wet there's no point in sweating in any part of your body that it's not going to evaporate so in the hot tub you'll sweat
evaporate so in the hot tub you'll sweat through your scalp and if your arms are not in you'll sweat through your arms but everything that's underwater in the hot tub will not sweat to defend your core body temperature and to prevent you from overheating in the hot tub your body does Vaso constriction so if you're in the ice bath for Vaso constriction and then you get in the hot tub you're getting double Vaso constriction and you're missing the Vaso dilation benefits of thermal contrast therapy I mean you can do it but it's not thermal contrast therapy in the way that we think of it for circulatory and cardiovascular benefits yeah that makes perfect sense so you're you're just not getting that pumping and you're not really getting that blood flow that you get from from a cold ponde you're just cutting off that whole aspect yep of it but hot tubs man they feel great so I you know I can't tell people don't do something that feels great I'm in the business here of marting a product that feels like crap like when the first 30 seconds you get in there you're like what was I thinking and then when you get out it feels great yeah yeah and I'll tell you what for me anyway like hot tubs make my skin feel terrible like I feel like the pores are all open I feel dry when I get out of a cold Pune my Skin's tight you know I feel electric I feel like I'm Aging in Reverse in the hot tub you can't disinfect the water you can't sanitize it without chlorine this is why most of the boards of Health require chlorine disinfection for public hot tubs now they sell ozone units for hot tubs the problem with ozone is it has a very short halflife so it's highly reactive and highly unstable it's just three oxygen molecules but those three oxygen molecules will break apart into regular O2 and it happens fast the hotter the water the higher the temperature the more quickly that is the shorter the half life of the ozone that is the faster the ozone degrades back into oxygen so to maintain an O an ozone concentration in the water has
concentration in the water has to be cold most of the ozone generators that are built for hot tubs they don't work at all I tested like 12 different varieties and they were all essentially cosmetic like they weren't putting out the ozone that they advertised and even if they did at the warmer temperatures the ozone wouldn't last so we had to settle on one brand that was really freaking good when I was first testing it since then they've improved and a couple other brands have come in to make ozone because that works at colder temperatures we get just enough life to the ozone so that we can keep the water from uh allowing infection to spread then we get super concentrated ozone at the point of injection so that we can deactivate Ebola virus in like less than a second with the ozone concent ations that we've been able to achieve the EPA knows about this ozone has been used in water treatment plants in Europe for years there's some water treatment plants in the United States that use it too but they still add chlorine because they need that long-term residual they need to keep the pipes disinfected and ozone will degrade before it even gets to your faucet that would leave the water distribution Network vulnerable to an invasion of pathogens and they can't have that so forget why chlorine is in your tap water and ozone never will be but chlorine will never be in your Morosco because ozone is the ideal disinfectant for cold temperatures yeah and that's one thing that I've just was not ready for and super impressed by with just visiting your facility is just how much you guys are testing ozone non-stop like it's like you've never you're not even com like you're not even comfortable with your solution like you're just always finding more and that's something that I was definitely not expecting and one thing that I've also like notice just being in the ice bath industry for as long as I have is that like every everyone has their preferred ozone and everyone says this one doesn't work and that one doesn't work and you
work and that one doesn't work and you go on Amazon there's like a $ 20 ozone there's a $ 150 ozone so not all ozon are created equally and I love that you guys are just constantly testing running your own experiments and just always just trying to make that better because disinfecting a a coal plunge is like one of the most important features of the coal Pune you want a sanitary and it's true that as a first approximation none of the ozone gen works like we just threw two more out today uh two different brands and it turns out that they don't operate unless you keep the voltage like super precise if you allow the voltage to vary and there's going to be voltage variation if the compressor comes on at the same time that the ozone comes you're going to get a voltage variation or there could be a surge that goes through the circuit in your home and if that fries the ozone then it's no good so the best ozone generator if you got a hot tub or you're doing a DIY at home is made by Dell ozone I know this because I've tested all of them Del ozone's also the most expensive one and it kind of makes sense there are less expensive Brands and we would love to save a little bit of money but we submerge them to make sure that they'll operate if they still get wet we ensure that they cannot introduce stray electrical currents we uh will make sure that if there's a backflow of water into the ozone gen that after the water is drains back out the ozone gen will still work and of course we measure how much ozone they put out I've heard of people Cole plunging and their testicles like shoot up into their cavities uh sometimes get lodged up in there uh is that dangerous what what's your thought on that I don't know uh that's not been my experience um I know me neither I've right I'm not a medical doctor and I wouldn't know uh you know will you tell me though a little bit more about what you've heard like you know somebody went in the ice bath and then his testicle never dropped back down correct he had to like dislodge it
down correct he had to like dislodge it back down wait mean he had to poke on it himself yeah well then it did come down well it did yeah it came down but like it it was I mean it definitely jarring to hear that it's a possibility that you could get in and your testicles could shoot up and like you have to like jar them back down I mean I understand why men would be sensitive about what happens with their testicles um and so I can see how that would feel like a bad experience it's not been my experience I haven't read any studies about it uh so I don't know yeah however there's a lot of jokes about you know the Seinfeld episode with the shrinkage and what happens to male anatomy when they're in the ice paath there was this really funny was a catchy song uh called I lost my penis in an ice bath it was circulating around Instagram it's pretty funny but I couldn't repost it because my experience is different Ben Greenfield wrote that an ice bath is like Viagra for your whole body and you really got to understand the science behind it to understand where he's coming from the endothelial cells that surround your blood vessels they are responsible for making nitric oxide that will signal Vaso dilation in the smooth muscle tissue that will either cut off the blood circulation or open up the blood circulation phasal dilation is essential to an erection because you've got to connect the penis straight up to the heart increase the blood pressure in the penis to maintain an erection so those endothelial cells that trigger the erection they use mitochondria to make the energy to synthesize the nitric oxide that causes the relaxation in the smooth muscle tissue like there's whole Chain Reaction erectile dysfunction is one of the first clinical markers of metabolic disorder it means your met mitochondria aren't working right and so now a guy goes to the doctor and he reports he's having difficulty with erections and the doctor's like this is
erections and the doctor's like this is a metabolic disorder it can also be psychological but it's a clinical marker now the doctor has to test his insulin sensitivity see where his metabolism is at Viagra works by overcoming insulin resistance not by healing your mitochondria but by overcoming the insulin resistance in the endothelial cell that is actually trying to protect the mitochondria from further damage Viagra it can work for women as well as it works for men women have erectile tissue it operates the same way but nobody really thinks about it because it's not essential to the sexual function of a woman but this effect of overcoming insulin resistance Works throughout the body it can also be used for example to treat traumatic brain injury in infants because they need the additional circulation they need the mitochondrial function for their brains to heal so Viagra works systemically by overcoming insulin resistance and ice bath works systemically by eliminating the insulin resistance by stimulating myio biogenesis to so it heals your mitochondria so you no longer need to be insulin resistant in this way an ice bath will improve male sexual performance that has nothing to do with where your testicle are suppose it's just the irony of these jokes about you know lost your penis um yeah that's never happened to me uh so I don't worry about it so much yeah same and I obviously agree with what Ben says that literally Viagra for your body I mean for me that was like one of the first things like if you were to ask me like what do you why do you ice bath as you actually did last night at dinner I I said well for one makes me horny as hell and that's just one one thing amongst many so AJ made me promise that I would not do anything intentionally that would further raise my testosterone she says she's tired you know it's in a
she's tired you know it's in a monogamous relationship it could be hard for people to keep up so I sometimes I get text messages like I say men don't talk enough about this but uh there might be a guy a little older than me and he says you know Professor Seager I'm starting to get those nighttime erections again is that normal and it's it's okay for to darn right that it on the one hand it's not normal because guys your age are all sick it's healthy I can tell you that and most of the men are pretty happy with the results yeah MH for sure um cool so I have seen you talk about cold plunging in regards to our hunter gather ancestors topic that I love so like in what respects do you think our hunter get gatherers would have cold plunged like I can't imagine they did it for the same reasons as we are like I can't imagine our hunter gatherers as biohackers but maybe they were inherent biohackers where they went in the water bathed in it thought it was good what do you think they didn't have to hack anything you know it was all there for them they didn't have like heated leather seats and central air conditioning and things like that things just happened to them because that was the environment that they lived in but it's a really interesting question why are our bodies why do we respond so well to cold plunge therapy and there are sort of ancestral origins of what happens to our body it requires some thought there's something it's kind of a misnomer but it's called The Aquatic ape hypothesis it has other names and I should probably refer to it by other names but it's this idea that human beings lived at the water's edge and there's a lot of evidence for it the Aquatic ape hypothesis meant to explain these strange anatomical features of the human being we share like 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees or bonobos they're very close relatives in like a metaphorical
close relatives in like a metaphorical sense why do our nostrils Point down and there's point out why are we practically hairless and they're covered with fur there are good reasons for this because when we dive into the water downward facing nostrils keeps the water from going up our nose because we are aquatic creatures why do we have subcutaneous fat that is fat right below our skin and fairly high body fat composition compared to a chimpanzee or a bonobo which is like in the mid single digits typically wow we are built to be in the water in some cases we have more in common with dolphins or whales or the manate with these aquatic mammals then we have and these certain inexplicable atomical features with chimpanzees so this aquatic ape hypothesis it's meant to explain why we have the anatomical features of aquatic mammals rather than land-based mammals here's the biggest most important one our brains are larger and it takes a lot of DHA is a good example it takes a lot of these omega-3 fatty acids to make a big brain like human beings have where are you going to get that you get it from the water you get it from the fish you get it from the shellfish you get it from foraging in the water the hunter gatherer that we have like sort of in our mind is maybe you know in the Kalahari Desert and they run down the antelope or the wilderbeast or something like that because those are the societies that the anthropologists go to if they want to study you know human beings and hunter gatherer nomadic lifestyle but that's not the way it started out you could say well the oldest fossils of human beings are found in East Africa AFA East Africa is on the equator you know it's really hot in East Africa how the heck could we be so cold adapted and then remember where does Vim Hoff take his trainees of Mount kilamanjaro where's Mount kilamanjaro
kilamanjaro where's Mount kilamanjaro it's in East Africa it's right on the equator like during the Ice Age the East Africa was covered with ice because of the mountains there the human beings and there weren't a lot of them let's say 12 15, 000 years ago Ice Age there were maybe 10, 000 human beings it's called a population bottleneck and they were all stuck between the glacier and the ocean the waters that they foraged in were cold because they were melting off the glaciers in the mountain nobody who couldn't adapt to the cold water survive the Ice Age and you say yeah but it's been 10, 000 years of evolution right like what do we really have in common with our ancient ancestors besides you know 10 fingers and 10 toes and the answer is we have mitochondria in common my answer is everything right I mean we are anatomically not that different than the human beings that were here you know in in the Genesis of time if you believe in the Garden of Eden you know then the waters that Adam and Eve bathed in were cold and we have a lot in common with them not necessarily in a nucleic de DNA but in our mitochondrial DNA nobody explained to me in freshman biology that mitochondria have their own DNA and you inherit it exclusively from your mother that means there's no sexual reproduction of mitochondrial DNA that means that I have the same mitochondrial DNA as my great grandmother did now there are mutations and so there are certain Hypes but because the mitochondrial DNA evolve much more slowly than the DNA in the nucleus we have a hell of a lot more in common metabolically with the ancestors that survive the Ice Age then we might think our bodies are built to expect cold water immersion and if you don't
cold water immersion and if you don't get it it's no wonder you lapse into a state of disease cold water is like sunshine and exercise it's what your body is built for you got to give your body the things that it's built for and you could say well all that sounds a bit farfetched and then I got to ask you this why are human babies born with an instinct to swim and not walk because you know you've seen National Geographic and the baby giraffe like falls out of its mother and then it's running around in the grass like two minutes later they have an instinct to to run to trot like for us it would be walking but babies don't know how to do that they it takes months for them to learn how to even crawl right and after that tentative steps maybe they're a year old but human babies are born with an instinct to swim yeah why would that be because they were born in the cold water because our ancient grandmothers would seek out the relief of a water birth and when that baby comes out in the water it's going to find its way up to the surface that's how it stayed alive we are aquatic creatures we're just so far from the water which is really our origin yeah the hunting and the Gathering is important because we needed those food sources back then but it's the human birthing in the water that I think really goes to like our deepest most instinctive responses born in the cold yeah and I have also heard that when babies are born and they're attached to the umbilical cord they don't even need to breathe they can inherit get the oxygen through the umbilical cord so they can actually be in water for a while and that's what happens with home births all the time so it's I guess based off what you're saying it's almost very possible that the babies were in submerged in cold for even longer than maybe we think I have I
even longer than maybe we think I have I don't know how long they kept them down there but they can get oxygen through the umbilical cord for a while they can yeah there is a story John Huntsman was an entrepreneur one of the things that he invented was the clam shell fast food container you know that got a really bad environmental reputation but he was an entrepreneur in chemicals and uh the chemical industry he's from Utah and he wrote a book his Beginnings were very modest so this is an autobiographical tale of his life he worked in the Nixon Administration he faced bankruptcy a couple of times and then he made a fortune and endowed the Huntsman Institute at the University of Utah which is dedicated to researching cancer some reading his book cuz I care about cancer right and a couple of my friends who live in Utah recommended it to me and right in the beginning he talks about when he was born he wasn't breathing when the doctor and he was born on like the edge of the Native American reservation there was a doctor and there was a midwife and this was like a this is almost 100 years ago now so you got to imagine the medical equipment that they had it was none he wasn't breathing and so you know you slap the baby on the butt or something see if you can like bring the baby to didn't work the doctor gave up on the baby because the doctor had to attend to huntsman's mother and try and save her life this was a difficult birth but the Midwife is there and so the Midwife took John Huntsman senior and brought him to the kitchen they had just had Plumbing installed right and how did she like bring this baby to life contrast therapy she alternated him between hot water and cold water until he came to life and began to breathe wow it's almost like CPR right I mean you're not forcing air into the lungs but and I don't really
into the lungs but and I don't really understand the mechanisms but the way that Huntsman explained you know the story of his birth as it was told to him was it was the thermal shock of going back and forth between the hot and the cold that brought him as a infant to life Wow Huntsman later on he's diagnosed with prostate cancer and he tells a usual story of you know so glad he you know got it caught early and early detection leads to better survival he had his prostate removed he talked about some of the side effects incontinence erectile disfunction and of course he gave a billion dollars to the Huntsman Institute to research cancer what he forgot was the health that this midwife's wisdom had when he was born and I wish I could go back in time I didn't know you know I I've never met John hman I don't know who he is he's passed on now but I wish I could say to men who are facing that try the cold water first you don't have anything to lose it you know brought Huntsman to live when he was born I wish that he had tried it when he was older and he had this cancer diagnosis maybe it would have been the right thing for him then too interesting yeah I mean it's a story right and nothing matters more than what has happened to you you so Gary Brea went viral a couple months ago he was talking about how people who do ice bass underwater and they put the straw up through the ice so that they can be in the ice water for extended periods of time and Gary was sort of saying that the brain is not really protected by fat it's just really the skull so he was sort of saying that cold water immersion could be dangerous for your brain if you're underwater for too long what are your thoughts I don't snorkel in the ice bath although I did try it once um and I had an extreme emotional flashback uh it was only 50 ° and I can stay in 50 ° water for what feels like indefinitely so a friend of mine said well you should try a snorkel so he gave me one and I went underwater
so he gave me one and I went underwater and I'm breathing through the snorkel like I used to do as a kid but um I had this memory of being at Children's Beach and my mother teaching me how to swim and her teaching me how to back float and then Dead Man's float with my face down and I don't know it just brought up so many like childlike emotions I couldn't stay in there the ice bath is really good for your brain but when you do it in short periods that is Don't Go Brain Freeze yourself there are some good studies on the metabolism of the brain when you improve your insulin sensitivity Chris Palmer wrote a whole book on the brain metabolism called brain energy and mental health when your brain's getting the energy that it needs it can lift your mood it can give you the energy you need for cognitive reframing or to make your therapy useful it can resolve depression and other mental disorders so Chris Palmer is really the expert on metabolism and mental health but there's some other good stuff on how improving your metabolism can reverse cognitive decline another thing that Gary Brea says is that Alzheimer's is type three diabetes and he didn't make that up Alzheimer's dementia originates in metabolic disorder and then I got a message from a guy who's on Instagram he's an opera singer and he says he uses his ice bath to improve his practice he will go through his practice look Opera is all in a foreign language he needs to know what the words mean not just how to sing them so he's got to learn the music he's got to learn the lyrics he's got to learn the blocking and he's got these intensive practice sessions and then he hops in the ice path he says it improves his memory so I had to look that one up and sure enough there's some good science behind how you can get the cognitive boost by doing an ice path but he doesn't go all the way to brain freeze and he doesn't snorkel while he's in the ice path so I don't know Gary I've never met Gary I haven't seen the video that you're talking about I know that when you go up to your neck and
that when you go up to your neck and you improve your metabolism increase your insulin sensitivity you also activate your brown fat and brown fat is more than just for non - shivering thermogenesis Brown fat is also an essential secretory organ Brown fat will convert T4 to T3 T3 is the more active form of thyroid hormone Brown fat is in constant communication with your thyroid to regulate your metabolism and brown fat will produce something called brain derived neuroprotective Factor it will produce fgf fibro fibro blast growth factor 21 these are neuroprotective factors that will help keep your brain from experiencing damage and bring your brain back if it has been damaged so a shortterm ice bath remember I only do 2 to 4 minutes is a really good thing to do for your brain I don't know anything about the snorkeling with the straw or something like that yeah I agree I mean I I can't see how it could be good good but there's probably a lot of things that you could do in an ice B that aren't any good um and but I'm not fooling around with those I don't know what they are and I haven't tested them yeah sometimes people will overdo it one of the risks that people talk about is hypothermia Rick Rubin went on Joe Rogan and he said he did 30 minutes in freezing cold water and Joe's like weren't you afraid and Rick rubin's no because he kind of built up to it Joe goes but why would you do that Rick says well it was covid it was something to do it's not dangerous the world record for being immersed up to your neck in ice cubes is like an hour and a half or something it takes a long time for hypothermia to set in and I'm not suggesting anybody go for a new world record I'm saying 30 minutes is probably overdoing it but it's not dangerous you
overdoing it but it's not dangerous you can rewarm get yourself a blanket get yourself a Sona if you live in Phoenix like I do park your car in the sun it'll be up to 180 degrees in the parking lot before you know it just sit in the warmth if you happen to overdo it when you come back when your core body temperature has come back and the circulation is restored to your limbs you're going to sleep great so uh I guess pretty much last last question so this one's for the haters out there Steelman the argument for who shouldn't ice ice bath the number one most important contraindication to the ice bath is not wanting to do an ice bath the people who should not ice bath are the people who don't want to do it so let's get that out of the way there's no coercion no bullying I don't care if Joo wilnick calls you up and says that you're a because you you know won't get in or something like that tell Joo that you don't feel like it and you know that's not Rogan's approach and you're probably not going to get that phone call from Joo but I'm not here to shame anybody or bully anybody or coer anybody into the ice path David goggin he might be the toughest man alive you know he's got all the willpower in the world he also suffers from renod syndrome and he just posted this on Instagram where in rods it's an interaction between the psychological and the physiological it's an overreaction to the cold and it's Vaso constriction in the extreme so you get no circulation in your fingers and he posted a photo of his fingers and they were chalk white because there was no blood flow if you don't want to get in the ice bath then don't and don't let anybody talk you into it now sometimes it helps to have a guide or a coach or a little encouragement you know Joe says he's going to kill his inner and he's going to get in when goggin was on the huberman podcast huberman said when you do the things that you don't like that are really hard it grows a part of
that are really hard it grows a part of your brain called the enterior mid singulate cortex and that part of the brain huberman says is the seat of the will to live so you can build up your willpower I'm not saying I mean you might hate ice baths but do them anyway and good for you just don't let anybody talk you into it because it kind of takes away from that feeling of accomplishment that feeling that I did something hard today that that will build up your willpower because you've accomplished something that's number one number two is hypertension or high blood pressure here I've read and heard heard of a couple or three reports of people who have been hypertensive and had a really bad reaction to the ice now this is a medical contraindication when you put your whole body into cold water vasal constriction in your limbs will force the blood into your core and up into your head because your head isn't cold this increases your blood pressure you've decreased the volume that your blood has to occupy inside your body and the pressure goes up if you're already hyper intensive then your high blood pressure could go up too high to the point where you have an acute episode don't do it um oh was that well to the if you already are hypertensive so you have high blood pressure before you do the ice bath The increased blood pressure that you experience while you're in the ice bath could put you into an acute hypertensive attack so you got to watch your blood pressure if you know that it's already high start at a temperature that isn't so cold go more Gra grual there are other contraindications one of the best sources for this is a book written by a French gastro enologist hardly a bestseller you know I found it on Amazon I think it's called Cold Water swimming so he's a physician and he' been swimming in the Mediterranean for 20 years and he talked about over the 20 years what are some of the medical reactions that he's seen the only super
reactions that he's seen the only super serious one is this hypertension this uh excess blood pressure this high blood pressure pressure reaction but there are some other ones there's a lot on Wikipedia about heart attacks and most of it comes from the research out of University of Portsmouth Mike Tipton he's got what's called an extreme environments lab he's got a huge cold tank and he can study cold exposure he really cares about drowning and so he's published some papers which I've paraphrase because most of his stuff is behind a pay wall about some precautionary protocols if you're worried about heart arhythmia heart attack breathe go in feet first instead of face first don't immerse your face this is going to give you some dive reflex and some gasp reflex at the same time go in feet first and allow your body allow the gasp reflex to subside and your body to go into dive reflex and this will bring your heart rate down the dive reflex slows you down it strengthens your parasympathetic nervous system so this is the rest and digest division of the central nervous system whereas the sympathetic that's the gas reflex that's the fight or flight so Tipton's got some good advice on how to keep yourself safe take care of yourself when you're going into the cold water the rest of the stuff that you read on Wikipedia about the dangers are grossly exaggerated cool I think that's great Tom Seager we're uh where can people find you I'm at Morosco forge. com everything in the book is already published for free on our website you know I'm a professor and so I'm like knowledge should be free I already get paid a salary you know you can read all the articles but people really wanted the book because they wanted it like in one place without the repetition in a format that they could write in so you can go to Morosco forge. com we have a
can go to Morosco forge. com we have a few copies of the book left like 50 of them left you can find it in the store and you can buy it at pretty much our cost which is 30 bucks shipping is free you can find me on substack where I write on a lot of different topics besides cold Seager TP on Twitter on Instagram I'm one of those guys that uh doesn't hide very well it's great thank you so much thank you you Mike this is the cold plunge podcast with me Mike Gorman be sure to check out the video version of this podcast on our YouTube channel and check the show notes for any references studies or links to anything I spoke about on our website at plunge reviews. com SLP podcasts if you have a question you want answered or comment about the show feel free to reach out in our official Facebook group which is called cold plunge community
Transcript auto-generated by YouTube. Verbatim — duplicates intentionally preserved.
Seager, a PhD engineer at Arizona State University and co-founder of the Morozko Forge ice bath company, has done more than a thousand ice baths. He holds the research carefully, but he holds individual experience more carefully still. This conversation with the Cold Plunge Podcast navigates both.
200–300% Increase in norepinephrine from a single cold immersion session 34°F Dr. Seager's personal cold plunge temperature (1°C) 1,000+ Ice baths completed by Dr. Thomas Seager
The most consequential finding Seager discusses: the timing of cold relative to exercise has opposite hormonal effects depending on order.
Cold after strength training suppresses the post-exercise testosterone and growth hormone response. The inflammatory cascade that cold blunts — the inflammation many seek to reduce for recovery — is also part of the anabolic signal. Cold too soon after training intercepts that signal.
Cold before training does the opposite. The cold-induced increase in luteinizing hormone — the signal that drives testosterone synthesis — arrives before training begins, and the exercise itself amplifies it further. Seager's case studies show meaningful testosterone increases in men who adopt a pre-training cold protocol.
Seager's most compelling contribution to this conversation is his explicit rejection of the idea that population-level research always supersedes individual experience. As a scientist, he respects the randomized controlled trial. As a practitioner, he has learned its limitations.
"Whatever protocol works for me is irrelevant for you," he says. "What I do is what works for my body. Your body is different." This is not anti-scientific; it is a sophisticated understanding of what science can and cannot tell a specific individual.
Population studies reveal averages and trends. They cannot tell you whether you are in the 1% that responds differently, or whether your particular combination of genetics, training history, and lifestyle makes the average finding inapplicable. The invitation is to treat yourself as an experiment — to track, observe, and adjust based on your own response.
When pressed for his own routine, Seager is characteristically precise: two to four minutes at 34°F (1°C), every morning, seven days a week. Over a thousand sessions and counting. No rest days for the cold practice itself.
This frequency reflects his conviction that adaptation is cumulative and that the hormonal signaling benefits of cold are most robust when the practice is consistent. Sporadic cold exposure produces acute effects; daily cold exposure produces baseline changes in the hormonal environment.
The temperature — 34°F — is lower than most recommendations, which sit in the 50–59°F range. Seager's Morozko Forge operates at this range by design. This is a personal choice, not a universal prescription. He is explicit about this.
For those without a strong preference, Seager's default recommendation is morning cold, before any training. This timing captures the luteinizing hormone stimulus before the workout, allows the testosterone response to support the training session, and places the post-plunge norepinephrine window in the most productive part of the day.
For those who train early and want to keep cold nearby, the alternative is to separate cold and training by at least four hours. This preserves the anabolic signal from training while still accessing cold's benefits on a different schedule.
The principle that runs through all of this: intentionality. Knowing why you are timing your cold practice the way you are, and tracking whether the outcome reflects the intention.
Whatever protocol works for me is irrelevant for you. Nothing matters more than your n-equals-one experience.
Cold before a workout, not after — if testosterone is the goal. The order changes the entire hormonal outcome. — Dr. Thomas Seager
I've done more than a thousand ice baths and I should be dead, according to some. I've never felt more alive. — Dr. Thomas Seager
For testosterone support: cold plunge before training, not immediately after. Pre-training cold stimulates the luteinizing hormone pathway; post-training cold blunts the anabolic signal.
If you train in the morning, consider: morning cold, then exercise. The norepinephrine window from the cold enhances focus and drive through the workout.
Track your own response. Population averages are a starting point. Your n-of-one data is the calibration.
