Modern recovery culture often reaches for intensity first. This conversation offers a more useful frame: Dr. Susanna Soberg explains why cold discomfort, brown fat activation, and deliberate thermal stress may matter for metabolic health.
This transcript is grouped in two-minute sections. Each timestamp opens the source video at that moment.
you do something that is super hard and you overcome it and then you know that you can overcome many other things so this short you can say into or of stress that you have will be broken and you will open up your mind for okay if I can do this then I can do many things [Music] one of the key rules as an interior is never to talk about yourself but when I first discovered your protocol I gave it a go because I was fascinated by it but Dr sober I can't do it I cannot stand that that moment it fills me with Dread I would rather do anything else apart from fully submerge myself in cold water why do some people hate it more than others is there a reason why that other than just a psychological reason and secondly is it a case that there are people that are more reluctant to do it could potentially benefit more I'm trying to see if there's a relationship between getting a greater physiological or mental health benefit the less you want to go in and do it in the first place if you've got any insight on that hmm I think that is a really good question well I can use myself as an example so the more you reject the cold the more you probably need it also yeah I was worried you were going to say that it is like the the more you reject it is probably because you uh reject the stress so you don't like stress nobody really likes stress even the short-term stress but you can get used to it and you can widen that window for how much stress that you can take in both physically but also mentally so if you get used to that you can say pain of doing this deliberately it's kind of a pain painful thing to do but you get used to that and you learn yourself that you can manage the pain you can breathe yourself through this pain so you can calm your nervous system and teach yourself that you can overcome a stressful situation so this helps you
stressful situation so this helps you both physically to overcome the the very low threshold for pain that you have and increase that but also mentally so it's really funny how this works both as a window for your capacity to cope with stress in general and mentally but also how much you can cope with it physically so today just to take myself again is is really much easier for me to go out in the cold and do cold water immersion so just go out when it's cold I don't always have to like have it all be completely packed in the in in sweaters and and warm jackets I mean it's I can have my jacket open even it's very cold in Denmark so often of course close it but I can leave it open up more today than I could before so I do feel that the this there's been a shift in how much cold I've I can take before I feel that it's stressful to me and I do think that someone may be like you I don't know how much you have done cold water emotions but people would benefit from this because it also increases them um you can say self-believe you do something that is super hard and you overcome it and then you know that you can overcome many other things so this short you can say into or of stress that you have will be broken and you will open up your mind for okay if I can do this then I can do many things a lot of people won't have tried it and then there'll be that trepidation which is putting them off what are the the easy ways to introduce yourself to this I'm thinking maybe a cold shower or alternating a cold shower with a hot shower what are the other easy introductory steps that someone very new to this could take yeah so yeah a cold shower is definitely a good way to get started if you are um if you are rejecting the code very much and you think that it's too big a thing to just step into an ice bath that
thing to just step into an ice bath that is for me it would have been too much definitely but a cold shower could be a way to get started it will not be the same as doing a cold water immersion but it's a good way to get started so you can end your hot showers on the cold five seconds and try to build it up to 30 seconds but you can also get used to the goal by putting cold water to the face it will also not substitute for the coke water immersions but it will be a way for your for yourself to get used to how does this code feel um maybe hand cold baths and and foot baths could also do it that will definitely activate your round fat so in that way you can also prepare a bit I've always whenever I've done any kind of cold treatment I've always ended with a really hot blast because otherwise I feel like I'm going to be cold for hours afterwards and it just takes away that edge but obviously that goes against the so-called sober principle where you need to end on cold why is it so important to end on cold and what are the detrimental effects if you don't if you do what I do and go back to hot afterwards how much of the benefits do I eliminate yeah well people don't need to end on the code I think that is maybe it's a bit Advanced I don't know but why I have studied this metabolism and during I called it a bit of a nerdy face where I was studying what happens to the body when you expose yourself to the cold and what I figured was that if you are called after your winter swim your cold water immersions then you will force your body to heat up by itself and that is the sober principle because when you do that you will increase your metabolism for hours afterwards if you are new to this and you just start out and say well I'm gonna follow the super principle then you will increase your metabolism for a long term afterwards not only the few minutes that you're in the cold water and this is super helpful for you right for your metabolism that is like a an after
metabolism that is like a an after workout where you don't have to do anything it's just your body working itself up to the right temperature again I find that is so applicable and I find it so feasible for people to do if they can just figure out a way to keep moving afterwards that I think that is important so moving afterwards you can go home you can clean just don't sit down on the couch because if you do that you have what is called the after drop and then you will start shivering in the sofa not that it's dangerous in that sense but it's just uh uncomfortable and that might give you the idea that this was not a great idea to to do this so I am I always advise people to keep moving afterwards because that is also healthy so it's kind of like um exercise post your um cold water emotions yeah and and very quickly where would your advice be for somebody to begin if they do want to go in could you talk a little bit about the optimal protocol that the people should should adopt as a starting place when they want to explore this field yeah first of all I think that people should should go and take my beginner's course because I have made a course where I teach people the the house and wise on code and heat and also the breath work so the breathing part is of course a very important steering wheel to lower your nervous system but you can also do it on your own if you are ready to do that and what I advise is 11 minutes per week which I saw in my studies 11 minutes per week divided on two to three days and also alternating with Sona and I think that is really really important part of it as well if you want this health journey and you want to start that so that is 57 minutes of sauna per week also divided on two to three days so if you are not able to alternate you can also divide it on different days that is also of course okay but I can't say exactly how does that differ in outcomes compared to what I've done because that
compared to what I've done because that study is not done so that's that's people I think it was really nice as well the the whole holistic approach I think thanks to social media and Instagram there's a lot of really buff guys jumping into ice buckets and it's all a bit rare but actually as you've said it's the breath work and when I have done it and I've managed to do it for a little bit it's almost that meditative effect it's it's the opposite of Macho it's taking it it's taking your breath it's thinking about things it's getting some perspective and then jumping out and going do you know what nothing I do today is going to be as hard as this and it's resilient you touched upon that self-awareness and for me it was it gave me a sense of purpose and a belief that you know what I can do anything that pops up today and I think that's where the benefit came from I didn't enjoy it but I can absolutely see the mental health benefits yeah I think that is a really important benefit that you just touched upon there because when people are worried it is not easy to get out of your mind right you cannot just park that and say well I'm not going to worry anymore but what you can do is something physical you can do you can go and exercise that is also a great thing but you can go and shock your body and that's gonna take you out of that it worries because the body cannot concentrate on Surviving and think about your worries about what's going to happen in five years or tomorrow or whatever or what you're gonna shop in in a few hours you cannot think about anything else to just being in that moment during that moment you have that increase in neurotransmitters in the brain which will make you more positive to whatever worries you have when you then go up so that in in a physiological sense you you will actually be at a better state of thinking about whatever you had on your mind so if you want to have a more positive mindset definitely if that is all you want want to get out out of your cold war emotions that is definitely something you will have um on a short term so short-term effects there are definitely something for your mental health but also probably also for for the long term
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Transcript auto-generated by YouTube. Verbatim — duplicates intentionally preserved.
The most valuable protocols are not built around spectacle. They are built around signals the body can read, recover from, and eventually use as a path back to steadiness.
cold exposure for health works because the body notices it. Shivering, skin cooling, and the desire to leave are not incidental. They are part of the stimulus that asks the body to generate heat and adapt.
Brown adipose tissue helps produce heat when the body is exposed to cold. In plain language, it is one way the body converts a thermal challenge into internal work.
Moving between heat and cold teaches flexibility. The benefit is not in chasing extremes, but in giving the body clear temperature signals and enough recovery (covered in detail here) to integrate them.
Some discomfort is part of the thermal signal, but it still needs a sensible dose.
Some discomfort is part of the thermal signal, but it still needs a sensible dose.
Cold exposure may support metabolic flexibility through heat-producing tissue.
Contrast protocols work best when heat, cold, and recovery are all respected.
