Video·1 min read·June 2026

Cold Plunge for Metabolism, Mood, and Recovery

Ryan Duey breaks down the metabolic, psychological, and recovery benefits of cold water immersion—and how to build a sustainable practice.

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Cold Plunge for Metabolism, Mood, and Recovery: Full Transcript

0:00

ryan welcome to the podcast great to be here thanks for having me i am excited to chat about cold because this is something i've been getting a lot more into this past year but before we jump into that i have a note in my show notes that you broke your back running with bulls and i have got to hear this story yes so after my early 20s i moved to

2:00

what i want to really go deep with you on today so to start broad i'd love to hear how you got into the world of cold therapy i got into it uh in 20 well i first learned of it in 2016 or actually 2015 when the um wim hof documentary came out on vice and i remember seeing that i had no clue who wim was cold water wasn't really

4:00

benefits are something that we're still figuring out it's it's one i could speak for myself with the benefits of you know why why i do it it is the mental resiliency it's the consistency of doing something hard daily and i really think there's some power in the consistency of it and rewriting like neural pathways in there so though getting into the cold the big thing that

6:00

they've turned to a lot of different things like we just recently this is one that just happened recently we had a person that had cove coven they had coveted long-haul and they were you know had tried everything they were in studies they were taking all the medications out there and we get a text and the the guys had the unit for a week and his recovery score

8:00

the contrast is so first like for cold one of the main mechanisms if you're just doing cold is a lot of people do it are really attracted to it right now for metabolism increase and so the cold is really phenomenal to get in and stay cold it's the body kind of adapting um [Music] strictly to the cold so if you're going

10:00

now he's he did the deep dive onto metabolism um and he his big thing is taking us to it's you really want to take yourself to a shiver and that shiver response sends is some sort of trigger into the body to um [Music] on the metabolism side and there's the

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start to get the benefits and how long um because i've read for instance some data that even in like in the low 50s you're getting that tangible benefit you're hitting shiver response and then maybe there's no need to push it into the 30s to actually get those benefits absolutely i i actually encourage anyone that you know any of our people that get a plunge

14:00

yeah i think of it a little like fasting where there's certainly physical benefits as well but i feel like the resiliency and that building that mental toughness is a huge advantage of the cold and especially i was so resistant to it i've it's been really fun to see my ability to stay and go up over time i also am competitive so i know in myself i've pushed it a few times just to prove i could and stayed in for too long and

16:00

and i heard even tim ferriss 10 years ago talk about this that there's a special benefit to cooling kind of the brain stem back the neck area for the metabolism side and for burning fat and for that brown fat creation there seems to be a signaling mechanism connected to the hypothalamus they think um because he even recommended you know you can put an ice pack on the back of your neck and get some of the effects because of that

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um to what that's the pure intention that we're doing of getting into the cold waters to stress our body out um so you know if you have heart issues that's definitely one to monitor whether it's talking to your health practitioner or just easing in you know starting out your first time and it's a new way to learn your body so

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um um just encouraging people like it's kind of a self-exploration thing and then on the data standpoint i don't have anything to really bring forward there for a lot of our listeners um most people listening are mom so another question i know we're gonna get is what about kids and i'll say on a personal level again not medical advice but i

22:00

tell them to get out but it's fun to watch my kids because especially the younger ones their responses are so natural they usually start laughing which speaks to all the release of all the neurotransmitters and dopamine that's happening when you get in cold water um yeah it's a lot of fun to watch another tip i have personally is when i was trying to do like work up to five minutes a day i would put on

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on our workouts but like i was talking to dr kelly starrett about this he's kind of a recovery expert and his big thing is i would he said if i had a client i would that they're a bodybuilder or some professional athlete yes i would recommend them probably not to get in the cold right after their workout

26:00

understand it um there's really good yeah that's a it's a unique one online where there's there's probably a lot of other things under the surface that's happening that we don't even quite realize yet and like i mentioned most people listening are parents so i'm curious if you've heard any specific kind of cool unexpected things from families specifically who

28:00

out of uh man there's got to be a way to make this more affordable than the few options where that were on the market at the time and we did come up with something that we thought was you know is both men and women really enjoyed it it looks good it's effective it's clean it's cold it's on demand whenever you want it

30:00

like cold plunge is one part of many many things we can do for health and i'm a huge fan i'm curious for you what some of the other things that are your non-negotiables when it comes to health or maybe your own 80 20 of things that you feel like give you the biggest bang for your buck and when it comes to staying healthy i mean to me it's it's simple i mean i have a list of supplements and products that i

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monkey mind so when those start to separate we get that those moments of clarity those moments of peace um so floating is a big a bit a big advocate of that um you know whether that's once a month twice a month however you can get in that's it that's a huge huge tool yeah i've done some floating in the past as well and it's amazing how it both seems like you're in there forever and

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important signaling mechanism and it skin exposure to me is very important but also it's people don't realize there's sensors in our eyes that respond very drastically to natural sunlight so even just 10 minutes of being outside on a break on lunchtime go for a walk it makes a huge difference in your hormones over time um just like we've talked about with cold that like hormetic stress from cold can make a huge

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it actually tends to make people less afraid of actually dying and more content in life i love that you brought that up that's the key i really take from i mean the book really hammers at home but it's like the more we're open to our death you know the more we're going to openly live life and it's this paradox that they dance together and i

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yeah just the coldplunge. com it's our site there we have great blog with the cover even more of these topics that we've discussed has our products there um so the coldplunge. com awesome well ryan thank you for your time thanks for all that you do and for spending time educating us today likewise katie appreciate you having me on

Transcript auto-generated by YouTube. Verbatim — duplicates intentionally preserved.

Key Insights

Metabolic activation through brown adipose tissue and thermogenesis

Mood enhancement via dopamine and norepinephrine release

Recovery timing matters—cold blunts hypertrophy signals post-strength training

Sustainability comes from gradual progression and ritual

"The body adapts to what you consistently demand of it—controlled stress builds resilience when applied deliberately."

Wim's Wise Words

A second take, from someone who's lived it.

🧊 Wim's Wise Words

Ep. 524: Ryan Duey on Benefits of Cold Plunge for Metabolism, Mood, and Recovery

Ryan's Origin, and Mine

There's a detail in this conversation I find quietly remarkable. Ryan Duey first encountered cold exposure through the Vice documentary about Wim Hof—my namesake—back in 2015. That documentary sent him down a path that led to founding Plunge, one of the most recognized cold immersion companies in the country. And now here we are, years later, talking through mechanisms that were barely articulated when that documentary aired.

The knowledge base has several Ryan Duey conversations. What strikes me across all of them is how his thinking has evolved. His earlier framing was personal and experiential—the mental resiliency, the consistency, the neural pathway rewriting. This episode goes deeper into mechanism, and that's where things get genuinely interesting.

The Shiver Is the Signal

The core claim here is more specific than it first appears. It isn't simply "cold is good for metabolism." It's that the shiver response is the metabolic trigger. That distinction matters enormously.

When your body shivers, it's recruiting thermogenic mechanisms—brown adipose tissue activation, increased norepinephrine, the whole cascade. But here's what Duey gets right that many practitioners miss: you don't need extreme temperatures to hit that threshold. Low fifties Fahrenheit can trigger the shiver response. No need to push into the thirties. The benefit lies in reaching the biological threshold, not in maximizing suffering.

This aligns with everything I've seen across the knowledge base. A full episode with Ciaran Flan covers cold exposure and immunity from a different angle—and the same pattern holds there. The body doesn't optimize based on how miserable you were. It optimizes based on whether you crossed the threshold that demanded adaptation.

The body doesn't care how cold the water is. It cares whether you've crossed the threshold that demands adaptation. That's where the work happens.

Where the Experts Actually Disagree

Recovery timing is where things get genuinely contested. Cold water immersion immediately after strength training blunts the inflammatory signaling that drives hypertrophy. The mechanisms are well-documented. If your primary goal is muscle growth, cold plunging right after your lifts may be working against you.

But here's the nuance Duey navigates carefully: most people aren't competitive bodybuilders optimizing for maximal hypertrophy. For general health, mood regulation, and metabolic function, the tradeoffs look entirely different. The inflammation cold suppresses post-workout is the same inflammation that causes delayed onset soreness, that slows tissue repair in athletes doing repeated daily efforts, that accumulates over weeks of hard training.

The practical answer is simple: for strength adaptations, separate your cold work by at least four hours or move it to the morning before you train. For everything else—metabolism, mood, recovery from sport—the timing is yours to design.

The Ritual Is the Mechanism

What I find most valuable in Duey's framing is the emphasis on sustainability through ritual. He talks about the consistency of doing something hard daily, and the neural pathway rewriting that follows. I'd put it this way: the habit loop is itself therapeutic.

When you commit to a daily cold practice, you're not only activating brown fat and spiking dopamine. You're building evidence, day by day, that you can approach discomfort deliberately and come through the other side. That's the psychological adaptation that no mechanism study fully captures—and it compounds in ways the physiology data doesn't measure.

The recommendation is this: find your threshold, not your limit. Water cool enough to trigger the shiver response, two to five minutes, three to five times per week. Build the ritual before you build the intensity. The dose matters less than the consistency. That was true when Wim Hof said it in 2015. It's still true now.

Cold, Mood, and Metabolism