Modern recovery is no longer reserved for elite athletes. In this conversation from Performance Ranch, the focus is metabolic health: how deliberate stress, precise rest, and simple protocols can help the body return to equilibrium.
Timestamps link directly to the original YouTube video at that moment.
All right, thank you and for joining us on the Live Life Beyond the Walls podcast. And we have our guest Jose Marisma here with Thermal Lab. And we're going to be talking about our Thermal Lab grand opening day. And we're super excited about bringing it. It's finally coming March 21st, which is 10: 00 a. m. to 2: 00 p. m. next Saturday. Uh we really look forward to having you guys come and check us out and see what we have to offer the community. It's it's something that we're trying to just expand out and give people that that uh just that gift to to learn how to to relax and chill. I mean, that's one thing I've learned and I'm going to let Jose kind of get into the science and some of the stuff and we're going to [clears throat] we're going to talk about but Well, yeah. Thanks, Lawrence. Um I think we're just super excited that we're actually getting this off the ground. Um we've soft opened uh we've been running people through the um thermal lab. So, people are using the cold plunge and the sauna. I've been working with a lot of clients there. A lot of people that are training here are using it for recovery. Um, and we've just had incredible success. So, I think we're just super excited to get this out to the public and open it up. Um, you know, we were talking before about how this is a phenomena, this this thermal therapy thing, uh, but really humans have used it for all of human history. And the studies that I started looking at are actually more than 40 years old. And I've been doing it for a long time, for for over a decade. And now it's become very popular. You have people like uh Joe Rogan talking about it. You know, Brian Johnson, you know, the health benefits associated to it. And that's
why humans have done it for a long time. Um because they just feel good. It just feels good. They didn't have any science behind it, but they just felt good. You know, it's invigorating when you get out in the cold. It feels soothing when you get into the sauna because it's analesic, you know. So it's pain relieving. It actually your mood increases. You have social experiences there. That's what we're doing here at the thermal lab. So on Saturday at the grand opening on the 21st 10 to 2, we're going to be offering you the opportunity to have the experience to come out and actually do it. And um you know with modesty I think we have one of the nicest facilities that are available in the city of Albuquerque. There are several that are around here. We're excited that there people are offering these types of therapies. Um, I think we are very unique. Our sauna is beautiful. That's actually one of the big features. It's one of the nicest saunas, eight to nine person finished sauna. And if you're looking for some of the health benefits like reducing your risk for death by 43% for all causes or reducing your cardiovascular risk for death by 50% by doing sauna regularly. And these are real numbers. This is not exaggeration. Um, come on down and check out our sauna. It's actually lovely. And and um so and the cold plunges are cold, too. I mean, we we have the we have three tubs. And so on purpose, we we did three because we wanted three different temperatures. And we knew through science that Jose's done research and the books that we've read and all the stuff that we just take in. We we know there is a there's a
there's a reason to have three. There's there's actually benefits to having three different temperatures because we have one that's, you know, more like 55 degrees that they recommend for most females, right? That's what Dr. Sober is saying. Yeah. Susanna Soberg, who did her PhD in thermal regulation that she calls herself the thermalist. She's actually opening something very similar to what we have in Los Angeles this year. Um, and it's [clears throat] wildly popular. people have already signed up because people are very aware in that area of you know the health benefits. Um but she she observed again women's physiology is different than men's physiology and that's you know we celebrate the differences women can make human beings so big deal. Um, but if if spending too much time in too cold of water can actually put women into a chronic stress state and that isn't something that you want to do, but the right dose, right? So, the right amount and that's what we look for with exercise or whatever we're doing intervention wise. You know, our culture loves more and harder and you know, if you get on the internet, people are going to be like just, you know, toughing it out with ice cubes all around them. It's unnecessary to get the health benefits, right? Totally unnecessary. No, for sure. So, for women, get that that cold shock um you know, about 55 degrees. They stay in for about a minute to three minutes and they're actually going to start reaping those benefits of the cold shock proteins, the increase in dopamine, um the help with mood stabilization, all those things. And the challenge because
it's still uncomfortable. And same with somebody that might be new to this, you know, may want to experience it. We might open with a 55 degree tub. Then we have tubs that are as cold as 44 degrees. And that's for somebody that may be wanting to challenge themselves a little bit more. Um the intensity of the cold actually brings on the changes a little bit faster. Um so that's one reason we might want to use a colder tub. Um also it's a you know one of the biggest benefits is the psychological aspect of doing something that's uncomfortable, right? Doing something I don't want to do. Not everybody, you know, is excited to, you know, in the morning or in the afternoon, whenever jump into ice cold water. Um, but it's very invigorating. It increases your attention, um, your focus because you increase your dopamine for minimum two 200 times, 2x your dopamine. There are some studies that are saying that it's three to 400 times your normal dopamine and it's sustained for several hours. So, it's very helpful for attention, focus, and mood. Um and there are other health benefits you know the anti-inflammatory components to it the neuroprotective and actually um protection against things like degenerative cognitive decline which is something that that's kind of scary you know and dementia is a real thing and we we are seeing it rampant now we're seeing it's probably going to be the biggest thing take taking over healthcare it is it's going to be the so the prediction was that that as we approach 20 240 that it would be the um highest healthare cost would be associated with
long-term care of people with dementia and you know the majority of dementia is Alzheimer's and vascular dementia right and these are metabolic conditions so right and what happens when we do cold therapy and hot therapy we're actually supporting the metabolic system vascular elasticity those kinds of things so what's the down downstream kind of benefit is that it actually you see um people that practice these things like getting cold intentionally and and then doing sauna that they actually have lower rates of dementia and it can be from lots of different angles, right? So the vascular kind of flexibility that we see some of the heat shock proteins, cold shock proteins that are produced that actually have a lot of health benefits and protect your DNA. Um and then also the increases in metabolism. For example, when you do cold plunge, you actually see an increase in uh mitochondria, brown fat. Um so metabolic factors and for most people you know they call um Alzheimer's disease diabetes type three because they see insulin resistance in neurons in the brain cells and so and it aligns perfectly with our obesity crisis, right? So we see increase in dementia that's just a byproduct just like obesity is a byproduct of poor metabolic health. That's diet, exercise, things like thermal regulation. Um you know so it's holistic. You can't separate these out in the little buckets. It's, you know, all these threads touch. So, come on down because we can talk about it. Some cool things. I mean, this whole science, there's so
much science to it all. And this is the thing like it's we're the thermal [clears throat] lab is unique in a way because one, we have Jose to kind of explain and and deliver the science to us and and explain it in a way we have these protocols actually built out for for you. You come in, we have a chart there. You check it out. We have, you know, one for sleep. We have one for mood enhancement. We have one for um testosterone. Yeah, there's Yeah, for hormone recovery. So, there's several different types of therapies you can use. And currently, I've been doing more of the recovery one because of my back. And I do this at home. I do hot, cold, hot. Yeah. The last probably the last week now. Yeah. I get in the hot tub for about 15 minutes. I get in the cold plunge for three. I get back in the hot tub for another 15 minutes. Beautiful. And it's been great. like my leg um every day it's getting better and I I know this this injury or this reinjury is a it's all about time and you know looking and when I get into the cold I can film myself start to try to relax that thing and it it's it's uh it's it's challenging because it's a lot of mental part of it. What I'm noticing now is actually I'm putting my arms back in. It's a whole different experience. Yeah, it is. That's that's one of those things that you learn about when you [clears throat] jump in the cold cold plunge. Sometimes we put our hands here. I always encourage people just fully surrender to the cold. Um it's not going to kill [clears throat] you. Your body thinks it's going to kill you and that's why we actually get that rebound effect of the adaptations. Um but we're going to be doing this on the 21st. Come on down. So we're going to open up the space. We're going to have the three tubs running. We're also
going to have two community tubs out. These are ones that we use for group work and teams and that type of thing where we'll actually have ice inside those. Uh, and it's a lot of fun because you can jump in with others and you know whether you go in for 30 seconds or try three minutes, it's really just about you challenging you. We'll be there to support you. I will be teaching breath work techniques that actually help us regulate in the cold and in the heat. And so you can come down and these are nervous system regulation tools and I am a certified uh mindfulness instruure, mindfulness-based stress reduction and breath work instructor. And so I'm going to give you the lowdown on those things. Here's the best part. These are not complicated things. Yes, I have these, you know, did two-year internship to learn all these things and have a degree in exercise physiology and all this stuff that we do. You don't need all that. We come on down. We show you what to do. We help you. That's that's our job is actually to give you direction and guidance. It's not super complicated. It's only complicated when you don't know what you're doing. And it might, you know, you could get injured. there there are things that that we want to be cautious about, but once you're aware of that, you are fully equipped and ready to use the the thermal lab. And so you'll be down here doing these activities. We'll be doing mocktails using element, which it's a product we love. Um, and it's a great thing to have in the sauna, by the way. [laughter] It is. You're going to lose a lot of water. You do sweat. I mean, it is one of those I'm already a pretty heavy sweater and I sweat a lot, but man, in there just drip
drip. I mean, I'm I I don't ever weigh myself, so I would be interested to see how much weight I actually lose, but I try to replace them as much as I can. You could lose 3 to 5 lbs in there easily just in one session. Oh, I've seen it. I've seen Well, if going back into the sauna, it always brings me back to all the fight camps that I've been involved in. I've been involved in probably a hundred camps now over the years and, you know, 50 of those in the UFC and, you know, doing the championship fights. spent hours and hours in the sauna because of weight cuts. And I was always amazed by how long those guys could last in there. And that's not the healthy weight, by the way. So not this is for fighting. This is for getting to a weight for a moment in time and then they are up the normal weight within the next 24 36 hours. But I have solutions for that too. But [clears throat] um but anyways um it just brings me back cuz that sauna is it's hot 200 degrees. It's it's one of the I don't know any other sauna around cuz I do hear this from a lot the people coming in now. They're saying, "Man, this is hot. My sauna at my gym doesn't get to get this hot." Yeah. So, I mean, and there are reasons to use various temperatures. So, the threshold temperatures about 165 degrees to get a therapeutic effect. Um that some of the things that I was starting to mention about heat shock proteins, etc., They really only happen in um Swedish or I'm sorry, Finnish sauna because the the whole mechanism is raising your core temperature needs to come up. So, uh infrared sauna does not
do that. Um infrared sauna can be useful and you know again not dissing it in any way. I've sat in infrared sauna but it's it's better for mitochondria skin and that type of thing. But but these core health benefits that you read about that most people are kind of asking about um from you know the protection from from mortality, heart disease, um serotonin production, so mood elevation, dealing with things like depression really are from Swedish sauna and or I'm sorry, Finnish sauna. The Swedes use the same sauna. It's just called Finnish sauna. And that's what we have here. And again, nothing negative about the the infrared saunas, but they don't get hot enough. They're not eliciting that kind of core temperature increase that's necessary. Uh, one of the other things is that sweat component, super important, very valuable, and we're getting um great data on how it detoxifies. So, sweating, our endocrine system, and sweat, that's how our body naturally detoxes. I've always in 35 years of practice and as a physiologist, health coach, and educator, I've always been frustrated with people selling products to detoxify this and that that, you know, again, people are using these kitsy words and ideas to sell you things. Our body detoxifies all the time. It's doing that naturally. It's it's removing toxins, right? You know, whether it's metabolic waste that we make inside our bodies or things that get in our bodies like we're dealing with microplastics uh these days. That's a big topic you you'll hear in podcasts, etc. So, awareness is up and what we call forever chemicals
that are in our foods. They're in our, you know, furniture. They're everywhere. They're in the cans. I mean, I don't even know, but potentially. Yes. Potentially in cans. But here's what what's cool. Sauna has been shown to help us remove those toxins from our body. Um I'm not going to get into names or anything, but in a recent kind of anecdotal um informal study, but conducted by scientists um they had somebody that had been in the Los Angeles area um during the fires, right? So you had the fires, you had those smoke and all those chemicals were traveling around and you couldn't help but inhale them. So they were getting into these bodies and this particular individual had the means got tested and they used uh various body fluids including blood right and he had high toxicity really high levels of things that you would find in for mica for like kitchen countertops and in tires you know these things that burned in these fires and they were actually at very high levels and he ended up um then doing sauna didn't do anything else uh nothing special. Didn't take any uh bentidite clays, these things that people sell you for detoxifying, those actually could be helpful in that process that can help our body remove things or attach to chemicals. But he didn't do anything like that. And just through sweat, he was retested um three weeks later. So he had six sessions in the sauna, actually a little bit more than that. and uh he had reduced all of those
chemicals almost to non-detectable levels just from letting the body do its cleansing job. And so I you know that's exciting to me because I do worry about those things. You know at my house we clean. We eat organic food because we're lucky we invest in that. Um we use glass containers where we can or you know our metal you know we don't drink out of plastic. In fact I usually take that off because that plastic and it's not that I'm trying to go nuts. I'm just trying to protect myself, [laughter] you know, against things that later on disrupt our endocrine system, potentially could lead to cancers. This is, you know, just facts. Um, but knowing that I can kind of cleanse my body. It's really important. Yes. The other thing that we promote too is like for men, we have you chill your testicles when you're in there, that's something that also has been learned because it can really affect your sperm count. And whether you're wanting to have children or not, men's sperm counts are highly associated with cardiovascular health, mental health, and physical health. And so we don't want to deplete that. So we actually have you sit on the lip pack which is important. Um that's something that's newer and that we actually understand to be very important. That's what you get when you come down here is we have we do spend time paying attention to the latest research and science and we want to guide you and help you and support you. Yes 100%. And again the science is one part of it and I think really it's when you experience it and you get the anecdotal part of it. Like for me going to a little bit of my story, we'll kind of end it with that and going in. But looking at when I first got introduced to thermal therapy, it was more it was
during co we were talking about about cold plunging and these things and I you know I tried actually I didn't try cold plunging really until about 3 years ago. And then I did start feeling a difference. I felt what I started feeling a difference was how I could control my breath. That was the main thing. like I could learn to breathe and calm and slow things down. I noticed I read the book Breathe. And I tried to breathe through my nose just laying on my back out there. I I was doing the 4 second in out. I thought I was going to suffocate. I couldn't I was panicking. Yeah. And so through the process of doing the breathing and the nose and then the start med doing meditation and then going into the cold plunge getting a hot tub 3 years ago you know started really using that and now the sauna again I I've only been using it for a couple months and man it's a game changer. I sleep so much better and I think when my back is feeling better and I can actually sleep through the entire night. I'm really interested to see what my sleep score is cuz I know I'm getting into a good sleep. I feel tired. Um, my body feels good. I feel good coming out of there. Sauna is phenomenal. You know, if we do it later in the day, it really can help with sleep. Um, you know, so we heat the core and a lot of things happen. It's analesic. It opens up the circulatory system, but you also have a rebound effect where the body once it gets hot and that core temperature goes up, it actually turns on the mechanisms to cool itself. And that's something that's required of sleep is to drop down. So, it can help
that. and and just it's relaxing in general. Super relaxing. Um so I think you know touching on all that's so important. Um yeah, you know, but to experience it, that's you're going to experience and that's why we're doing this. So our grand opening is the 21st of March. So it's next Saturday 10: 00 a. m. to 2: 00 p. m. We're going to have a link on our bio. You're going to have you'll be able to check it out. You'll be able to check it. It's free. We want you to come down here. We're planning to hopefully have a food truck here and you know get some of that. But again, it's really more about just coming in, learning the community, learning how what it's all about, learning how we're going to use thermal therapy here. And I mean, we would love for you, yes, to have to be able to come here and use this as a as as a membership. Cuz we talked about this the other day, the biggest roadblock to this, even though it is probably the easiest thing to do because you just got to walk in the room and sit there. You got to get in the tub and sit there. The problem is you don't have that availability. Like not we don't live in Finland where every house has a sauna. Yeah. There are more saunas than households in Finland. That's how big it is in their culture. And they're also the happiest country. Yeah. They're one of the happiest countries in the world. Um they do it socially. So Sundays typically families are doing sauna. The kids are in there. U you know the grandparents are in there. They have food set up outside. You know they they take their little vodka shot or whatever. you know, they they it's a social component and and a lot of the research
always nods to that. It nods to that there's a social element to these these practices, these cultural practices that are very old um all throughout Scandinavia and Russia. You know, you can go to big cities and they have Russian bathous or Japanese bathous. You know, the cultures have done this. even the Native American cultures here in the Southwest. Sweat lodge, get out, maybe go get in the river. You know, these are practices for altered states. And little did they know it felt good, but little did they know it also was really good for their well-being. And they were just practicing being human. Um so come be human with us. Yeah. You know, [snorts] move more, eat good food, sleep better, connect with people, get hot, get cold. These are human things. Yeah. So, come with us. So, come check us out March 21st, 10 a. m. to 2: 00 p. m. Sign up. It's for free. We uh look forward to having you here. Take care.
Transcript auto-generated by YouTube. Verbatim — duplicates intentionally preserved.
21 minutes of conversation 85 Reacher quality score
The body adapts to the signals it receives. Heat, cold, compression, strength work, breath, and nutrition all ask a slightly different question of the nervous system. Used well, they create a rhythm: brief stress, clear recovery, better readiness.
sauna raises heart rate, expands blood vessels, and increases thermal load without the joint impact of training. In plain terms, the body practices moving blood and regulating temperature. Many people experience that as easier relaxation, deeper sleep, and a steadier sense of calm after the session.
Cold exposure creates a short, controlled sympathetic response. Breathing slows the reaction. The result is not toughness for its own sake, but a trained transition from alarm back to control. That is why a well-dosed cold plunge can leave the mind clear and the body awake.
Food timing, protein, fiber, cold, and movement all influence how the body handles energy. The useful frame is not punishment. It is metabolic flexibility: helping the body move between fuel sources while still protecting sleep, strength, and hormonal stability.
The strongest message is restraint. More heat is not automatically better. Colder water is not automatically wiser. A useful protocol has a purpose, a dose, and a recovery window. It should leave you more capable, not depleted.
Recovery works best when the signal is clear, the dose is honest, and the body has room to adapt.
Choose one recovery input at a time, then notice how sleep, mood, soreness, and focus respond.
Keep the dose precise. End sessions while you still feel composed and able to recover.
Pair stress with support: hydration, protein, minerals, breath, and unhurried rest.
The deeper lesson is simple: recovery is not passive. It is a practice of creating the conditions where the body can do its best work.
