Cold Therapy Saved My Life: Full Transcript

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cause I had a horrible relationship with my body my lung collapsed minutes after I was born I tore my ACL LCL MCL meniscus in one shot so I basically had a number of hours before they would have to amputate my leg the doctor messed it up Nick didn't already was bleeding internally had to get blood transfusions if I make it to 30 before I'm in a wheelchair I'll be happy and somewhere

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and the thing that I the the through line if I can create a title or something that that expands across all those different Realms or buckets is that I'm a passionately curious student of life I love learning and I'm super curious I always have been my mom always said when I was younger I was always looking at the world with these you know childlike eyes and something I've I've I really strive to maintain especially as

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um so so talk about uh you know I'm I never understood I didn't even know you were so passionate into cold therapy and it's all the rage but I think you're doing something different and unique but so first of all just talk to me about why you're so passionate about cold therapy and how you got into it it's a great question it's kind of funny because I'm from I'm a kid from San Diego California like I hated the cold

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what I mean by that is I had some injuries when I was younger I mean I've been physical injuries have been part of my path of overcoming since I was born my lung collapsed minutes after I was born the doctors didn't know how long I went without oxygen to my brain so they didn't know if I was gonna be brain dead until they were doing tests wow so I it was interesting because now I'm a breath work instructor as well so

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surgery now and so did surgery thankfully it resolved a full function of my leg and I got this gnarly 12 inch scar on my quad from them doing a fasciotomy but recovering from that was something that was unexpected but and it left me just really with this distrust of my body when I got to college I had this appendicitis a typical surgery the doctor messed it up nicked an artery I was bleeding internally had to get blood

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but I took that step and I went out to Iceland and I get there and I'm doing breath work for the first time this deep breathing and I start feeling this tingle that's in my scar from my scar sight from my appendectomy and it like slowly starts vibrating on it slowly trickles Works its way up to my throat and then just start crying I just release the biggest emotional release I just started

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out to Iceland with Wim Hof you have to go in like a 10 minute submersion to get like certified or something there's some it's a that's a tougher certification than I thought yeah so I just went back I just I was in Spain earlier the spring doing um or this winter doing a my Wim Hof certification so I'm a certified level one Wim Hof method instructor and there's some things you get you do in

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look at I'm someone who's going to invest in my health and my well-being so I went to go look and all I'm seeing are these companies like morozco or blue cube or these big or new therapy these big fixed wall tubs that are 10 15 20 000 and I'm like that's that's out of my range and even if I wanted to I live in an apartment with a balcony so I can't even even if I wanted to purchase this I can't even purchase this but I'm gonna

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help me get hack a chest freezer and he's like heck of Chess freezer like what are you talking about and I said yeah so I can do my ice pass but then he's like that's silly if you want cold water let's find a way to build cold water and so we did a little cousin garage project together to find a way to to build cold water we were just starting to train for our first Ironman Triathlon together

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dollar chest freezer and a 10 to 15 000 fixed wall tub and they're doing it 5K so I'm like okay there's proof of concept there and I'd watch that group of DIY chest freezers grow from 1500 to 2000 to 5 000 to 10 000 and seeing there's a momentum around this I believe in this so strongly from the benefits I've seen and I feel like there's this push that's gonna bring this mainstream so we launched just a year ago we

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you create this and you're like I guess this is an idea let me try and you did it and so I love just hearing the the story behind it and then also I hate to say this but and this again I'm not here to throw shade on anybody I think marasco's product is beautiful and wonderful but I do think they're just missing the mark but it's such a high price point I'm like guys it's just it's cold water like I mean I think there's

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it'll it'll bring it down from tap down to uh cold freezing cold temperatures so that's why we did one horsepower compressor and the benefit of that too was that it can be used commercially so we didn't really foresee this at the time but gyms Fitness Studios we did a 30-day activation with Equinox here in Orange County we work with a lot of gyms across the country Fitness Studios holistic

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for alertness because you cool your body down then your body's working really hard through a thermogenesis process to create heat so that it can warm yourself up and through that process you're going to stimulate your metabolism you're going to get everything revved up and moving which is great for wakefulness and alertness and just promotes General General wakefulness so I do like hot tub at night

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do you need how does it feel when you do this how can you be your own coach and give yourself what you need because every day is different everybody's different so that's a little bit of the approach that I like with the cold yeah something too that you mentioned I just started doing cold shower I had I I was you know I got into the Rage of cold showers when a couple years ago like you said when it kind of became the raid

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eat the frog or do the one thing the hard thing especially first then we feel great and so that's that's the that's referred to as the dopamine Loop Continuum and we're closing that Loop so you're doing that and then you're feeling this Rush of you're getting adrenaline it's and it's a really good high quality dose of adrenaline and people are worried about adrenaline and cortisol spiking but because it's it's

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they're just they they're just they're on like red red lining and putting them into such a high dose of stress could have negative effects so but I recommend everybody starting with cold water immersion so there's cool water immersion and then there's cold water immersion cool water immersion is like 70 degrees you're still getting the effects of cool water immersion which is that does something yeah it still does

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activation which is a whole rabbit hole that we can get into we don't need to get into but incredible things and and the brown fat Brown adipose tissue was just linked to shrinking tumor sizes in in a mice study and also in one human study as well so there's incredible stuff that's going around this but to back back up to the original question and the point of our conversation here is I would introduce the cold water

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let's just slowly build up so there's no need to like prove that I'm a man yeah and so but I love that but and and we were just talking before so unless on that note talk a little bit about and like you you just highlighted the studies and I was talking to you about a professional bodybuilder who I just interviewed and Brad row amazing guy and he's like Joel like I want it to be like 32 degrees like on the point and

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run hot water and it actually made it worse oh yeah I was like oh my God it's like burning my hand yeah there's a story I'll be able to tell you offline legally I can't say it on this podcast but there's a story um involving yeah we would take a cold plunge later yeah I'll tell you something you'll appreciate remember bring me back to this but I've seen grown men cry and I've experienced it

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put warm clothes back on you confuse your body because your body's like your body's getting receptors from your skin saying okay my Skin's warm so we're good so I'm going to dilate my my vascular system and open back up but then all this cold blood is going to rush to my core and I'm going to get shivery so we learn the value in getting out and that third chapter if you will and getting back to horse stance and getting back to

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day so two to three minutes a day at sub 60 degree is scientifically the minimum effective dose now what happens is when you can start there you start to adapt really quickly because our bodies are beautiful and they adapt to what we throw throw their way and so you might notice that after a week of doing 55 degrees at two minutes you're like okay I can handle this I want to go a little bit colder and that's when you start to

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getting more of your mass into the water it helps it brings your body's core Body temp down much quicker so if you feel really confident like sitting on the edge of the tub like this and bring your arms in and then that next level is full body merge which is the goal to get everybody to which is scooting down getting your hands in your shoulders in so you're up to your neck or your chin ideally in the water and that's you're

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difference when I let the cold water hit my face versus hitting my chest I'm getting my whole body cold with the chest but when you hit it with the face there's something going on different yeah there is a very suit you picked up on it it's it's something that's referred to as the mammalian dive reflex okay I've heard it now this is really fascinating I learned this from from Sam our director of coaching and

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temperature gauge because it feels good but in order to get direct access and it's just it's a way of the it's based on how the the arteries and the the blood vessels line up and without getting too much detail around that just think of the sink of these areas as like portals to your Core Body temp so if you want to cool your Core Body temp down very quickly and there's an amazing study on pull-ups and core

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that protocol but yeah do you like it and uh is there do you know if there would be any reason why I was I felt actually more comfortable in the cold not having gone to the sauna here I am heating my body after I'm doing this great stuff and yeah it's it's a great protocol the contrast therapies that's often referred to hot and cold alternating and the reason why it's fantastic for our bodies because cold is

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five minutes out before going into the cold it makes it a lot harder but it makes it more beneficial in my opinion okay yeah and so that's I I mean what I do is I do a quick I have a kind of a gritty ankle so I've been mobilizing that for two minutes then I go I should do a quasi medium temper shower just to like because I don't want to take a cold shower washing myself yeah yeah I actually do want some heat and then I go

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beliefs on our fears on the stories that we're telling ourselves most people the idea of getting in the cold or they see people getting cold I could never do that why why is why why do you think that your body is literally built for this before we became the thermostat generation of having everything at 72 degrees you know thermostat controlled car to office space to this we we were forced to adapt

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life are you is that message coming through to you I should be here I should be there you should be adapted you're doing where are you getting too much in your head versus being in the now of like let me be in the sensation let me notice what's coming up and breathe through it and so if we go to like Macho like all right let's go and this is part part of the reason why across the board I've taken thousands of

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that conscious entrepreneur and I love those words it's that conscious entrepreneur it's that Peaceful Warrior it's that combination of the masculine and feminine that represents the yin and the Yang that is the whole and if we can learn to play in both of those energies in both of those Lanes it's this beautiful practice and that's what the cold is because you got to get yourself into the cold and getting to that point

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neurochemical level on um on a nervous system level on a regulation level like all this stuff just makes so much sense and it's so powerful and then you pair with the actual practice of Stillness and of calm and to see how it's accessible for for everybody we all have access I mean every shower gets cold to some degree it's like we all have access to cold water we have access to air air is free we can breathe it and that's

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we've got the tub ready for you but you don't need to start you don't need a tub to start cold immersion in fact I'd recommend starting where you're at which is turn your shower cold at the end of your next shower turn it cold and start breathing long slow exhales and see what that does see how you feel maybe resistance around that you can do a 30 second cold shower you can do a 10 second cold shower and start to build

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because it's a great place to start one question I want to ask you actually just really quick is you've grown so much I I see professional athletes Gary to Becca I see everybody using your tub just before we even go I want to ask you something I'm gonna I always end with the show with some final round questions cool but I wanted to before we do before that other question I just asked you anything

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we'll bring you back I actually kind of want to geek out with you on Brown fact yeah that's that's just really it's The Cutting Edge part of the scientific literature and research around the space right now wasted a whole podcast never bringing that up but yeah that's right and we'll talk about because I think the bat activation the brown fat activation just ties so much

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can I breathe so I would say that the way that I choose to respond to adversity is would be the answer to that question yeah so good and it's so funny using attitude of gratitude because that is that's how I've known you it's just that is who you are that energy that positivity I love it um and it's so cool that your mom embodied that because I think you naturally subconsciously yeah grew that

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all these benefits we're talking about here they're amazing but it takes getting your ass to freeze in cold water to make it happen it doesn't get easier you get better at it but it never gets easier before you get into that water and so people that do that day in and day out inspire me that is so good and I don't know what your slogan is for Edge Theory but you mentioned in the beginning this is more

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books I'm a big reader are there like a top one to three books that just jump out at you is like man this changed my life everybody that's listening this podcast should go and read this one or just I don't know yeah my favorite book is way of the Peaceful Warrior I mentioned Peaceful Warrior even on this podcast earlier Daniel yeah fantastic if you haven't read it I love the types of books that are like award-winning

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someone but usually there's someone that's like oh I'm grateful for this person maybe I talked to them recently and and that's why I'm grateful for them maybe they haven't and they just popped up in my mind but I'm gonna just write on my paper I've got like these you know these these note cards I'm just gonna write like hey so-and - so thinking of you sending you some love and then I and just writing a gratitude note a Little

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so uh that's I would say Instagram's the best way website Edge theorylabs. com everything else through there amazing brother thank you so much man I just want to say in closing I'm so appreciative for what you're doing I consider it truly I was reflecting on it before you came here like truly a privilege and an honor to know you and to call you a friend and a brother in this lifetime and I I'm just such a fan