Transcript: This Is Why You Can't Relax: How Recharge Rooms Bring Recovery Science to Frontline Workers

Timestamps link directly to the original YouTube video at that moment.

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long hours, high stress, and a body that doesn't recover the way it used to. If that sounds familiar, this episode is for you. Through his work with recharge rooms, Rich Ganley took research back to recovery tools and made them accessible to the people who need them most. Because when tools like cold exposure, heat, and red light therapy are stacked together, the impact isn't just additive, it's exponential. This is the Work Ready Podcast. Rich, you know, I'm just thinking about the people listening to this episode. They may be in the middle of the workday, maybe driving home from work. What are they going to get out of this episode? A few things I hope we get across today. one is that there's some simple rapid recovery and rapid preparedness tactics that we all can use to really bounce back and and to really keep our backpacks a little lighter uh as we go through life. Um the other thing is life happens, right? So, um, how we take adversity or change or challenge and turn that into victory, uh, through proactive tactics, keeping sort of a god-like spirit about it, and really just having a positive attitude towards any challenge we we approach with positivity turns it into a victory. I love it. Well, I want to start uh here because I think this reframes the entire conversation and that's when someone spends years in a high stress, high demand job such as construction, law

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enforcement, fire, utilities, what is actually happening inside their body and nervous system over time? Well, you know, for decades we're we're we built systems to maintain equipment to, you know, predictive service intervals, you know, maintenance, things like that. And you know, in public safety specifically, where where we started the recharge uh rooms and and these types of tactics is um constant reoccurring stress. So, what happens to our bodies as stress accumulates and our cortisol levels go out of control and we we just have these these areas we can't sleep as good and we're we're angrier and and we're shorter and you know, it piles up. Unless we have a good tactic to unpack the backpack a little bit, it it ends up basically we've always heard I I never really thought I believed it, but I think stress does kill. Absolutely. And a lot of people listening recognize that feeling, but they've never had the language for it. And so I think you you nailed it. It's it's like a backpack. It's that burden that just kind of hangs on our shoulders. And so when stress goes unreieved for months or years, what are the early signs uh the body starts sending that most people just push through? The the real answer is people act all types of different ways. Some people get into, you know, drowning their problems in and maybe alcohol and drugs and things like that. Other people uh you know find that they get more aches and pains. They're not sleeping as good. They get headaches. So there's so

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many different indicators. uh some of the core ways to maybe keep track is, you know, like your your v your heart rate variable and and some of the other things that you can keep track of on your own to really just see how you're feeling. So, um th those are some of the signs when your gut tells you something's wrong, you probably should listen to your gut. Rich, I have a sports medicine background. And I mean everything that the recharge rooms stand for and provide from a modality perspective. I mean this is stuff that we've been doing in sports medicine for 25 years. I do sauna, cold plunge, red light therapy on a consistent basis. And so this is stuff that, you know, has been out there, but it just has never been brought to frontline workers in a way that's accessible to to everyone. And so, can you maybe back up a little bit, tell a little bit more about your story, how you even got to this place of of designing the recharge rooms, and then I want to walk through what that experience looks like for frontline workers. You bet, Kevin. So, backing up, um, I grew up on the wrong side of the street. Basically, I've lived on my own since I'm very, very young. um you know didn't have a lot of um direction in life when I was young and just had all kinds of hacker odd jobs and everything you can fast order cook pots and pans washer you know uh brick layer you name it I because I I only went to college for a week so I could never get a good job I wasn't smart like you were Kevin become a doctor so um so what

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happened is I was insecure and I didn't think I was that smart so that led me to become a lifelong learner that adversity like you said we'd hit on adver adversity that adversity motivated me to become smarter and I became a lifelong like reader and learner and absorber and so I started self-educating and I turned that into a victory as I kept evolving in life. So, I' I've I've been a very successful uh I retired the first time when I was 39 years old. And my kids were all in prek first and third. So, I became like a volunteer dad dude. And I went to school every day, did whatever the principles and teachers told me to do. And then when my kids got old, they're like, "Dad, if you show up to school again, we're going to kill you. It's not cool." So, I had like I'm like, "What am I going to do?" So, I went and um got back into the proactive tactical sort of space in health and wellness and and I was actually at home praying like three years ago, Kevin, and I was like, "Okay, God, somehow I'm like still alive cuz I'm in my 60s now and I'm alive. That's a miracle." I said, you know, and thank you for for the success in business. I've been able to really turn a lot of adversity to victory and help people. I feel so blessed. And but really what I feel most blessed about is my three kids all grew up to be great people. Um they married wonderful spouses. And I I had four grandkids back then. Now I have six. And I'm like I'm a granddad and everything. I go, you know, God, what can I do? What's next for me to help? What can I serve? What can I

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do? Because I like to be a servant, right? And all of a sudden, like three days later, Kevin, I get a call from the town of Gilbert, Arizona. and they go to town manager, the city manager wants to meet me. Like I didn't even know what a city manager was. So I'm like googling city manager. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, that's like the CEO over the whole thing, you know." So we had lunch and turned out to be a great visionary city manager, Patrick Banger. And Patrick says, "Look, I've got about 2, 000 employees and I really want to improve things, but can you think about my first responders? We need help." And I didn't know anything about first responders. So I started learning and googling and I was shocked. My heart opened up. I go, "Oh my god, we need to help." What I found out was that the average first responder signs up for this job knowing that statistically they could die 15 years younger than a normal civilian. They could have 8 to nine times more cancer, four to five times more cardiovascular events and PTSD. and my my heart opened and I was studying I I call it the synergy of togetherness teamwork right makes the dream work togetherness science calls it bio stacking so I was studying a stack I was putting together for a rapid recovery tactic for the sports industry like you mentioned earlier and then my brain all of a sudden went wait a minute why do wealthy people and elite athletes get these types of tactics and tools why not

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our heroes And that's how the recharge room got born. And alls I meant to do, Kevin, was just give a gift. So we donated a full recharge room to a fire station uh to a police station and to the training center and we made him an app that sort of runs it and tracks it and you know keeps track of the surveys we take and and all a sudden they started using it. So that's kind of how this all got started was through a prayer and through the lens of what can I do to help others. Theosity is more than training. It's a safety and readiness platform trusted by companies to keep their field professionals strong, healthy, and ready for the job. Now, we're launching something new, the work ready community. It's the first online community built exclusively for field employees. A place to connect, learn, and lead the future of our industry. Join us and be part of the movement. And one thing that I've been so intrigued about, this isn't just an idea that you threw out there, like you've partnered with academic organizations that are actually studying this. They're getting ready to to publish some of the data. what what is some of the uh the results from those uh early studies that have come out? One of the things we did is we got IRB approval and that just stands for inter I didn't know what it meant international review board. So every

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couple of times somebody does the recharge room it pops up an IRB sort of survey. We collect that data and then we use that data to constantly evolve and prove and teach. Right? So um some of the results have been pretty amazing. Um like in Gilbert for their first pilot study we did where we had a control group and a user group um the results were like 78% sleeping better. 86% reporting less chronic aches and pains. Um 90% saying less emotional stress and anxiety. And these are men and women that don't want to look weak. So, what they figured out though, and I'd like this audience to to help figure out in in your mind, is this is a sign of strength. When you take advantage of these non-drug ways to enhance your human capital, yourself, right, to make yourself happier, healthier, and safer in in a hard job. Um, that's where the magic comes from. And and if we can give you those tools, right, easy to access, it makes it e even better. And it's it's and we have crosscorroborated because now it's not just from Gilbert, Arizona, it's from 21 different places in six different states. And the results I'm really happy I looked before our podcast today are a little less sleep is 74% now with the bigger pool which are pretty dang good. Chronic aches and pains are 87% less and emotional stress and anxiety are in the' 9s. And then we added another question

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at the beginning that is critical on longevity on the job. And so couple of side notes that um about 72% of people uh are reporting that's going to help them work a longer career. And you know cuz what happens in these high stress high physical jobs gosh I mean after six or seven years you just have all those chronic aches and pains and you know you remember that scene or you oh my and your mind and you know it just all starts piling up. So now you have a way to sort of rapidly reduce that and build your resiliency and sort of like really help prepare, be more prepared, but with the goal of a health span, right? Cuz we don't want you to put in all this hard work and and keeping all of us safe with with the power lines and the public safety, whoever you are. And thank you so much for what you do for us. But now, what about if you're happier, healthier, you're safer, your family life's better because you're not as beat up all the time. And when you retire, wow, you can retire and have not longevity isn't as important, right, as health span. I mean, I don't want to be 90 and there snot coming out the side of my mouth. I want to be 90 and feeling like I want to feel like you do, Kevin, and me. Like we're vibrant, we're active, and we're like, "Wow, life is beautiful." Right. Absolutely. And that's such a important distinction. It's it's not just the number of years that you have, but it's the quality of those years. And that's really what health span is. Um, we've

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talked a lot about the physical and the mental. Before we walk through what a recharge session looks like, let's talk about the toxic load as well, because I think that that was a big part of why you chose the different modalities you did, can you maybe share for our audience uh some of the the toxic components that impact people's quality of life and health? You bet. So society in general were more sort of polluted now. Or as a a simple example, if you were a firefighter back in the early 1900s, you were mostly putting out fires consisting of wood. Now, when you're fighting a fire, you're putting out fires consisting of like 800 different flicking co toxic chemicals and PAS and, you know, like uh forever chemicals and, you know, just it's just and and so we've seen studies showing how the human body is continuing to accumulate higher and higher levels of toxins and microlastics and microchemicals in our system. Right? So, the other thing that's interesting, when they fight a fire, they smell like smoke, Kevin, for two or three days. No matter how many showers they take, charcoal, soap, you name it, they smell like smoke. So, in the recharge room a couple years ago, there were two captains and fire service who said after doing fires all day, they're like, "Man, let's go do a recharge room. It just feels good." And so they do the recharge room and they get done and the one guy's like, "Hey, you don't smell like smoke, man." And the other guy's like, "You you don't either, I don't

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think, so don't say anything." And they both went home and both of their spouses were like, "Did you not do the fire today?" And so they don't smell like smoke. So like, why don't they smell like smoke in the recharge circuit? And here's why. It's the synergy of togetherness. It's bio stacking. It's 1 + 1 equals 10. And here's what I mean. When you do the recharge, and we'll get into this, it's we you basically you're going to be grounding, doing full body red light, vag nerve and sound healing, then a sauna, and then a cold plunge, and they don't smell like smoke. And we'll go into why more scientifically as as we dive a little bit deeper. So fascinating. And with the PAS and PAS, too, I think the the key thing there is that they're starting to find that those microplastics are hormone disruptors. And so it just uh you know every single process in our body is determined by the whole cascade of events of of how our hormones work together. And so yeah the synergy of togetherness when you start to impact that right it can have a huge impact on your overall health. And so I I'm sure everyone listening is like what does an actual recharge session look like? So we got them all one. Yeah. Can you walk us through like from start to finish what that actually looks like and then we'll dive into each one of the modalities separately? You bet. So it it could be used separately, each modality separately or what we call the recharge circuit is a 33 minute circuit and there's three basic stations in the circuit. Station

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number one is for 10 minute session. You're going to be standing on a grounding mat when surrounded by two six - foot tall red light panels. And you're going to be wearing this headset that has Bluetooth, so calm app, sound healing, whatever, you know, sound healing. And it also, we'll get into what it is, but it's going to stimulate your vag nerve. So in station number one, you're doing a physical and neurological downregulation and reset and recharge in a 10m minute session, right? Um then after 10 minutes in the red light we'll call booth um in the recharge booth. That's the four modalities. Then you go into a 20 minute infrared sauna. We'll talk about infrared versus traditional. And then after that you rinse off real quick. And then you go in for everyone's favorite 3 minutes in the cold therapy, cold water therapy, cold plunging. And and that's the basic circuit. 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 3 minutes. And that's what these men and women go through as a tactic they use on a daily basis. Uh you know, few times a week and and it's made this huge improvement. Um and and the nice thing is that you know, we'll take each modality now, right? So, red light therapy. So, when I started studying red light therapy maybe five years ago, there were like 2500 peer-reviewed published papers on it.

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Today, there's over 10, 000. Red light, they said if it was a pill, it'd be like a $ 5 billion pharmaceutical pill. But the good news is it's all natural. So, red, they call red light therapy, this the scientific name, not to bore anybody, is photobiomodulation. But it's just red light therapy. And the red light you can see with your eyes. That's why they call it red light therapy. And the in near infrared or the infrared light you can't see with your eyes. And those are the two healthy wavelengths without UVB or any of the harmful parts of our our light in our sun coming into your body. Okay? And what they do is pretty amazing. So the first thing they do is they hit your mitochondria. So what's the mitochondria? I always say to people the mitochondria is like the engine in your truck. And the fuel or the gas of your truck is called ATP. And as we age, your ATP production kind of poops out a little bit. Or if you're under a lot of stress, it kind of poops out. So red light is scientifically like validated as heck when it hits your skin, goes in and hits your mitochondria, it generates and activates ATP production. So it's cellular regeneration or cellular health is one thing. The reason NFL, NBA, all the sports people use it is it reduces inflammation. It helps with circulation. The other the light you can't see goes to the bone level good for bone, ligamental, muscular health. Right? Harvard's done all kinds of surveys that show taken red light therapy, cranial photobio

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modulation for people with traumatic brain injuries, Parkinson's disease, other neurological diseases, Alzheimer's. It's helping because what does it do? It helps circulation and it reduces inflammation, right? So, um there's more to red light than you see basically. But it's nice cuz all you got to do is stand there and the more skin the better because in our body, you know way better. You're a doctor. I think we have like 10 trillion mitochondrial cells in our body or whatever. We have like tons of cells, right? And by exposing your skin, it absorbs into even more and gives you uh the right potent uh kind of outcome, right? Um and the other nice thing about red light, there's not a lot of what we call contra conditions or reasons you can't do it, right? So, one reason you can't do it is if you're taking photosensitivity medicine that would have an adverse effect on you. Um if you have like active cancer, some can, some can't. So, you need to check with your oncologist to see what they in your case would say. always check with the doctor cuz uh that's that's why they're they're there to give you expert advice especially if you've got some condition going on. Um so so you know that's another one and and really thyroid they mention as a contra condition only because it actually helps the thyroid and if I don't check with my doctor more often with my blood work, my dose would still be where they think I need it. Even though my thyroid is working better, I don't need that

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much of a dose. Right? So red light we could talk about all day. Nassau put red light on the map really like 40ish years ago. There was an astronaut in space and they got cut somehow and it wouldn't his heal his wound wouldn't heal. So the scientist guy sends up the red light thing to space and they're like, "Oh my gosh, it helped him heal because it also stimulates collagen and helps with circulation, reduces inflammation." And so a lot of orthopedic surgeons now are recommending red light posts surgery. Like I had a full hip replacement 6 months ago and I used after my surgical bandage was off full red light on the area. I hardly can't even see a scar anymore. And my doctor's like, "You healed like a 35year-old and you're 60 something. I'm really old. When I cough, dust comes out." Kevin. All right. That was a great explanation on the red light. Thank you for for sharing that. So, you're receiving the red light therapy and you're standing on grounding mats. So, let's talk about what a grounding mat is. Yeah. So, grab mat's really simple. So, we work with a um Clint OAR is his name. He's in his late7s now. He spent $ 15 million over the last 20 years doing all kinds of clinical scientific research. He was an electrical engineer and he he was always into grounding things. And then he noticed how grounding is so good for the human body. But unfortunately, we used to ground a lot more, but now we're walking around on plastic rubber sholes, shoes, you know, we're never

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barefoot touching the earth. So the earth has all the negative ions. So when you connect to the earth, it just balances out your entire system. And it's really good for, you know, these studies show, I mean, it's not as validated as red light therapy, but it certainly can't hurt you, but I believe in grounding wholeheartedly. That's why we we put them in there. So, you basically it helps you uh reduce inflammation. It helps with sleep. It helps you know your your whole system, your chakra, your cellular organizations all all align better. And the more aligned we are, you know, the the more powerful just other things we do become, right? So grounding has lots of science behind it. And it's simple. Again, what I like is simple. I basically stand on a grounding mat and I stand with as little clothes on as possible between two red light panels. So now I'm doing two things. Okay? I'm grounding and red light. Now since I'm standing there, I used to get bored. So now we had Dr. Nick Hool um who's a PhD from ASU in neuro like biomechanics or something like that. and and he's the inventor of the first ever non-invasive Vegas nerve stimulator and and his device um has become renowned in in helping us rapidly reduce stress and reset and so let me explain uh the headset. So now I'm grounding mat full body red light and the last two sound. So, I'm wearing a headset, so I have great sound and I could play the comm

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app, beta, theta, whatever I want to play. The magic is it also has these two gel tips that go below your ear with their little gel tips and this is like an electric like a 10 unit basically where electric stem your vagus nerve. So, what's the Vegas nerve? So, the Vegas nerve is your tenth cranial nerve. Here's how simple this is. And it's a birectional nerve which is that means it's important. And the ve nerve in Latin I think ve means wanderer. And they call the veus nerve the wandering nerve because it touches all nine of your major organs. And there's only two tones you're typically in. You're in sympathetic. Let's say you're hanging off a power line in the middle of a storm or you're fighting a fire. You're arresting a person. You're in sympathetic. That's called fight or flight, right? And when you're in that high-risisk environment all the time, you get stuck in sympathetic and it's hard to get out. And the signs are I don't sleep as good. I'm grumpy. You know, I'm short-tempered. I'm like, you know, life just doesn't feel as good. I I don't feel like as pumped about myself. There's lots of symptoms of it, right? But you're in sympathetic. What you want to be in is parasympathetic, which is rest and digest. So with the stim technique Dr. who will develop within 3 to 5 minutes. Your pulse rate goes down, your heart rate goes down, your variable heart rate goes up, and you go into a powerful parasympathetic. So now I'm doing four modalities in one

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time in a quick 10-minute session. That's called the recharge booth. Grounding, full body red light, headset with sound healing, and Vegas nerve stimulation. I get done with that, I'm like, and some places just have a 10-minute reset during the day. They can use that on job and and that's it. And they get done, they're like, I love my life. I love my employer again. All right, that was good. You know, so so that's station number one. And and any other like on the modalities or any other thoughts or comments about those? Well, just more of a personal anecdote here. So I remember it was probably 2004 2005 when I was first going through um first in chiropractic practice and so the chiropractor for uh a tour to France uh championship team uh was someone that I knew pretty well and so that was my first exposure to grounding and the whole idea there is that you're getting free electrons you're binding them to free radicals helps with inflammation. So for probably the last 20 years, we've actually had a set of grounding sheets on our bed, plugs into the wall, is grounded there. And so that's been something that I've done consistently. And again, and Kevin, this is why you're you're the doctor because you explain that way better about ground. No. Yeah. You did a great job. I have grants, too, by the way. Yeah. And I mean, it's one of those things. At first, the literature was pretty uh pretty weak when it when I was first exposed to that, but I'm like, what do I have to lose?

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And uh now more and more uh evidence and and research has come out to support that. So, that's definitely been a core uh component. We have a red light uh therapy tool. Use it on a consistent basis. Uh last year I had a ski accident, broke five ribs, partially collapsed my lung, red light therapy, like multiple times every single day, uh sauna, all these different things that we're talking about right now. And I mean, literally within 45 days, I was back to running. I was, you know, on track. And so huge, huge believer in that. And like you said, it's probably one of the most wellressearched modalities out there. Uh, and it's so much more accessible than it ever was even, you know, 10-15 years ago when it first came out. And then the Vegas nerve stimulator, you know, I I remember studying the Vegas nerve and just the impact that it has on overall organ health, the parasympathetic tone like you talked about, the sympathetic tone, but never tried it until uh you and I met the first time Rich, you gave me uh a Vegas nerve stimulator. It is 100% become one of my daily routines and it is amazing. I I see uh changes in my sleep uh stress levels all that. So pretty cool. And again I think it goes back to one you know just doing one component is great but when you can start to stack that's where you see the the compounding effect of these modalities. So thank you for for giving us uh that that rundown on station one. Now let's

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talk about station two which I believe you said is the sauna correct? Yeah. So station two, now we're going to get into contrast therapy. So station number two is 20 minutes in the infrared sauna. Okay. Now, sauna, I mean, lots of studies on sauna, you know, decades and decades of evidence on sauna. You know, people have been using it for hundreds of years on sauna. Recently, uh there was a huge 20-year study that was put out from um was it the Netherlands? It's a big like a huge study. Do you remember who it was from? uh for sauna probably some Nordic country I I don't know the one that you're talking about but yeah like a 20-year study though and they basically showed that people at sauna five days a week or more which is a lot um they had like a 40 to 50% reduction in all cause mortality like a 40% improvement in cardiovascular function so sauna in general when you put your your body in stress so to say and the heat chakras and you vasil conrict, right? Or or dilate, I mean, when when you open up. Um, all of those things have a very positive effect on your body and on your and there's huge evidence on how good a sauna is for why do we use it? For reduction of inflammation, helps with circulation. It's like a like cardiovascular workout, right? It makes you sweat. It makes you purge. It makes you detox a little bit, right? gets the crap out of your, you know, the beginning layers of of your

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your biology, right? So th those are all wonderful reasons to sauna. Sauna also has been studied a lot recently on the effect to mental health. So they showed people with a severe anxiety and stress who sauna and heat their body up. As the human now comes down from heating up their body, it has a positive effect on resiliency and uh reduces anxiety and stress and and sort of those sorts of things. So why do we use infrared sauna? Well, for our purpose, these men and women have to be fit for duty and ready for duty. So you could be in the shower, in the bathroom, sitting in at the table or in the sauna or and and the bell rings and you have to be on scene typically in four to five minutes. So you have to jump out, put on your stuff, jump in the fire engine, drive to the thing, and be there in four to five minutes, right? So readiness and preparedness. So they make sure with their shower and they lay all their stuff out and same thing in the recharge rooms, they make sure everything's organized. Well, the reason infrared sauna, one of our doctors, Dr. Gary B. Smith, who's been in fire service for um 40 plus years now, he's a wellrespected, does annual physicals on first responders and and all types of enhancements. and he did a study cuz we wanted to know can we use a sauna on duty or does it raise your core body temperature so high that the last thing you want to do is respond to a fire cuz

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you then you'd be killing yourself right so here's what happened on duty firefighters allowed to work out and that raises and I could be off by a few degrees but that raises your core body temperature 006 to like 1. 0 0 degrees, right? A traditional sauna with the main difference, a traditional sauna is hotter. It heats the air. So when you get in a traditional sauna, the air is hotter than heck. You're like, "Woo!" You know, and then that's a regular sauna and that's that's good, really good for you. That's a regular sauna. It heats the air. Your body temperature raises like 1. 7 to maybe 2 something, right? An infrared sauna only raise core body temperature by 0. 05 to 0. 09. So they determined that if you work out on duty, you could infrared on duty because it keeps you in the safe zone from a heat exposure standpoint, right? So um just a little sidebar on that. So when we do sauna, it's really good for you in a lot of different ways. In these saunas too, we have two other elements. We have speakers in the sauna, so more sound, meditation, whatever you want to do. And they listen to piano music, whatever. It's your time. How often do we take time to pause in that relaxing warm environment? It's magical. And then we have chromotherapy lighting, which is basically um uh an eastern sort of philosophy that's very well documented that we have what's called our chakras in our body, right? So your crown chakra, you know, your throat

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chakra, your heart chakra, your chakras in your body. And chromotherapy lighting is different colored lighting correlates to specific chakras. So when you turn on a certain color light, it helps that chakra sort of get in balance even more. So you're you're doing chromotherapy lighting, sound healing, and infrared sauna for 20 minutes. So that's the 20 minute secondst step infrared sauna. Any any other What do you think about infrared saunas and stuff? So, you've done those, right? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And my u my dad's also a chiropractor. We've had infrared sauna. I think they've had one when I was like Wait, your your grandfather was a chiropractor, too, young man, wasn't it? No, just just my dad. two brothers, uncle, cousin. So, yeah, it was a bunch of you guys. Yeah, deep in the family. But, uh yeah, so we we've always had the infrared saas. It's been the approach that we've taken. And you know, some people will hear things like the chromotherapy and chakras and like that sounds kind of weird, but I think at the end of the day that the thing that we have to keep in mind is that the human body is an incredible electrical organism. Like every single muscular contraction, impulse, like digestion, every every process that happens in our body is facilitated by electricity that our body produces on its own. like we are an electrical unit. And so um there are all

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these different things that we can do to stimulate the biology to you know open up pores, increase circulation, get the you know get the the veins, the arteries to to change how much blood flow is going to certain regions. And so the more we learn about the body, I think the more we're just like, wow, that stuff that people have been talking about for 3, 000 years, there's actually something to it. So yeah, I appreciate you sharing that piece. Yeah. And and then the the final is the cold water therapy. And you know, talk about thousands of years, samurai warriors used to go over freezing cold waterfalls before they went into battle, right? Cold therapy we see in our society um sports teams after a sporting event, right? Football player, let's say, you typically see them in the cold water. Well, why? Well, cold water does a bunch of good things from a recovery standpoint, right? It helps reduce inflammation. It vasil constricts. So you're flushing things out. It kicks in your endorphine system. So I think the studies show if you cold water therapy um any temperature below like 54 degrees or below, it kicks up your like dopamine, serotonin, feel-good chemicals by about 200% for several hours, right? Uh really good for recovery, mental and em you can't get out of the cold water without going, "Woo! I feel good. Right. So traditionally that's how people have used the cold water therapy. Again, lots of science behind it. I mean, when I started looking at cold water therapy,

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there were I think three companies. Now, there's like 5, 033. So, all of these modalities over the last three years since we started have just boomed and sort of what they do and and the notice they're getting out there in society. Uh but still we have to be, you know, you have to make sure you're getting the legitimate types of devices. But with the cold, it's kind of simple. The water's a certain temperature and then when you get in it, that's what it does. But there's another tactic now that we use is using cold water as a boosting tactic. So typically cold water you use to recover shoulder, hip, and I'm recovering. I'm going to use cold after PT or after, you know, I don't want to build and bulk up, you know, I'll use it post or or to recover. If I want to use it to boost, I do it before workout, it boosts three things. It boosts one, your power about 17% they say. The second thing it does, it boosts brown fat production. So, when we're born, we have a ton of brown fat in our clavicle areas, right? And as we age or under stress, brown fat kind of poops out again, kind of like ATP. And isn't that funny how the body works alike and it it kind of goes down and that ingredient in your cells is critical to fight like disease and cancer and bad things. So that's why we start aging and we more susceptible to disease, right? So now they found out Harvard did this big study. They took active cancer patients, had them cold therapy before

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working out, active cancer patients over like a 2 or three year period, and it came back where there was like a 35 to 40% slowdown rate in the cancer growth by boosting brown fat. And then the the final boost is testosterone from a hormonal standpoint. Um, it typically boosts testosterone very substantially with no drugs. Um, I'll tell you a super quick story. I know we're we're kind of getting tight on time. There was a firefighter I spoke at a conference with from Tular, California. And Shawn, his name is Shawn. And Shawn was putting put he's a captain. They're putting him down a well for like a training exercise rescue. And something broke on the harness. And he fell and they caught it and it crushed his testicles and his left testicle they had to take out and they put him on painkillers. He had to take like testosterone pellets and gel. And after a couple months, his wife's like, "He's going to kill everybody. He's the meanest guy I met in my life." And so, one of our doctors, Dr. Tom Seager from ASU, is considered like the Andrew Huberman of cold water therapy. Tom's like, "Look, get off of that for 6 months. Not going to kill you. Try cold therapy before you work out." So, Sean's telling his story as he's giving his talk. He's showing his gross pictures from a surgery. Like, ah. But then at the end, he goes, "After seven months now, here's my testosterone. no drugs 800. So it boosts test. So so cold water you can use different ways but it's recovery, resiliency, readiness. Uh

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there's a whole slew of benefits especially in high stress, high physically demanding sort of jobs. And the nice thing it takes three minutes in and out, right? So Rich, what is the theory on why those two firefighters didn't smell like smoke when they stacked everything versus when they just did this on alone? So the synergy of togetherness or by stacking them. So as an example, one when we're grounding, as you mentioned, it it really organizes your body to be more in tune or grounded. The red light in essence gets cellular energy going, reduces inflammation and helps with circulation. The vagus nerve stimulator, remember the wandering nerve. So now all of my organs are set into rest and digest. So what they think is now when you get into the sauna, your body is more organized and more regulated to have a deeper, more meaningful purge during the sauna session and then followed by the shower and the cold therapy to kind of knock it all down and and they don't smell like smoke. So they think it's my crazy synergy of togetherness idea. I love it. Well, thanks for walking us through that session and yeah, it's it's so cool to to understand each layer and also hear the impact that it's had on so

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many people. So, let's move to the next section of this interview, which is a little bit of myth myth busting and rapid fire questions. So, uh I'm going to ask a series of questions here and and you uh you can give me some short answers. So, uh, mythbust number one, uh, this is just a luxury or a perk, this type of treatment. What would you say to the leaders who see it that way? What happens if you come back from physical therapy 25% quicker? What happens if we reduce cancer by a certain amount? What if you're safer now and there's less injuries on the job? Right? All of those types of things. by helping have the tools to make our men and women ready, prepared, and alert during their shifts. Um, bang down. So, this is not a luxury. This is a way to save taxpayers and shareholders money. And it's a way to improve morale, retention, and recruitment. So, that's what I usually tell a chief and I say, "Data doesn't lie." And so, here you go. So, do the math yourself. And if it's not a leader that gets it, I honestly just don't really work with them then. But I luckily I don't run into too many of them anymore. Kevin, back, you know, when I first started, they look at me like I had three eyes like red what the we this is not a a spa over here at the the fire or police station, right? But they're understanding these are not these are tactics. They're critical tactics just like they're critical equipment to have in a fire station just like you'd have as a cop a gun, a taser, your badge, you know, just like a firefighter has the engine and and then

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the tactics to fight fire and rescue people. These are critical to keep us fit for duty. Love it. Myth number two, and this is more from the frontline worker themselves. I don't have time for something like this. What does 30 minutes actually buy someone? Yeah. Well, I mean, it buys you a lot of the stuff you've heard today. And I would just challenge you if you have the opportunity to do it, try it for like a month. So, you got to put in twice a week 30 minutes times four, right? two, four, six, whatever that comes out to four hours out of your life and try it and see how you feel when you're done. Most people keep going because they're like, "Wow, this is no drug. Easy to do. I can it helps me in all aspects mentally, emotionally, and physically in in my recovery and my readiness and my resiliency training. So, I would just say try it. And if you don't have a lot of time, just do the headset for 10 minutes. Or just do the full red light booth for 10 minutes. Or if you don't have time, just do the cold plunge. Start some place. Or you might be resonating with sauna and you whatever. Start with the one that you're comfortable with. It's like Kevin said, you said earlier, these are all individually wellvetted, scientifically validated modalities, not like some pie in the sky thing. So bottom line is if you just do one, it's going to be good for you. If you do the synergy or the bio stacking, it seems like it's going to be way better for you even, but either way, you're good.

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Love it. Myth number three, recovery is personal. It's not the company's responsibility. So, where does the responsibility actually sit? So, a company's responsibility is to make sure that we have the healthiest, safest employees uh out there. And leaders nowadays are understanding the importance of delivering what people want. So Gallup is a big agency that does a lot of surveys of corporations and and the staffing industry and they recently came out with a survey that showed for the first time ever this generation of worker is like 60% say what's most important to them on the job is balance well-being and do they care about me? So as an organization, if we provide these types of tools that help for what the ailment is. As an example, in police patrol cars, we use this little fob size Vegas nerve stimulator because between every call, their accumulative stress, their backpack, like we talked about earlier, just gets heavier and heavier. This way when they do this in between calls, they can shed a little of that and sort of leave it in the past because they have this tactic to use. And that's another way. So, those would be some of the ways I would address that. Love it. Uh, few rapid fire questions. What is the biggest sign that someone's nervous system is overloaded? Yeah. So, difficulty sleeping, um, irritability. I mean, some of the things that we've talked about, uh, you're not yourself, you know, why aren't yourself?

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And, you know, get your blood work checked, get the basics checked, but, you know, gosh, stress is really a leading cause of dysfunctionality. And let's face it, you know, our society today, I mean, heck, what do we got going on now? Like potential world wars and all kinds of diseases and, you know, the weather events we've never heard about in our life and, you know, financial strains and, you know, it's just remember adversity leads to victory, but you have to help yourself. You know, there's an old saying, there's three kinds of people in the world. There's people that make it happen. There's people that watch it happen. And there's people wonder what the heck happened. So, be the type of person you're you're smart enough to listen to Kevin's, you know, podcast. Be the type of person that makes it happen. And remember, the reason they say when the mask comes down in the airplane to put yours on first cuz if you don't have any oxygen left for yourself, you can't rescue anyone else. So, we know everybody in this audience is out there keeping our communities lit up, safe, and and protected. You got to take care of yourself, too. And that that's what we're here to really encourage you. At least our missions. I know Kevin has a similar mission, is to inspire and educate so you can make the best choices on your tactics to have a health healthy span, healthy lifespan. Rich, for people who are listening to this, again, frontline workers, uh what are three things that you hope that they come away from this uh conversation

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with? One, there's there's ways you can take proactive steps to reduce these things you may be dealing with physically and emotionally. uh that you know depending on the type of job you're in that that career like first responders we know what the major killers and symptoms and things you're working on. So we're we're focused on that. So that'd be one thing I would just say. The the second thing is it's kind of getting easier and easier to do these types of things. Um more employee wellness programs are being established. you know, um, encourage, you know, your fellow workers and other team members to work with leadership, you know, in in a team-spirited way and and we show them the advantages of these types of tactics and and why it's important for for the frontline workers, right? You guys and gals deserve um these types of tactics. You're industrial athletes is the way I look at it, right? I mean what you do and in the different fields we work with it requires an industrial athlete. You just can't be some normal, you know, like me right now. I'm overweight. I couldn't do it, you know? So, you got to be in top tip shape and everything. So, and and I I say the third one is just remember life happens, right? And adversity leads to victory and try something, right? uh even if as simple as Vegas nerve stimulation a good parallel is like Vegas nerve stimulation with this tactic there's breath work

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which is very effective but it takes you know 15 20 minutes worth of breath work uh yogic you know activities right meditation uh you could take a xanax don't do that but take a xanax and and but this tactic according to Dr. research and other research, it's the fastest way to downregulate. So my last bit of advice would be if you're feeling these types of things, you know what those types of things might be. Don't just sit on it, right? Take be act be make it happen. It's for your own benefit and and it's self-love, which is okay to say, and you're taking care of your friends and your family. So just just make it happen, basically. So those would be like three things just rattling off. Well, Rich, thank you so much for uh being a part of this conversation and just for sharing your insight and just some closing thoughts that I'd like to leave the audience with. And that's recovery is not a reward for working hard. It's what allows you to keep doing the work. And we've spent decades building systems to protect equipment, improve efficiency, and reduce risk. It's time we apply these same principles to the people who are doing the work. Rich, what you're building is a shift in how we think about performance, safety, and longevity in the workforce. And I think it's long overdue. And so, thank you so much for bringing this to our audience and just for going out on a limb and starting, you know, an organization that's 100% uh geared towards improving people's lifespan and

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their health span. If you want to learn more about the recharge room, uh definitely uh contact Rich to request a demo or explore the science behind it all. Uh and a lot of that research can be found on rechargroom. io. Rich, how can people find out more about you and about Positive Impact Alliance and uh Recharge Rooms? Yeah, so one one great place is the rechargeroom. io IO uh website covers a lot of uh our scientific advisory board, some of our partners, some of the things we're involved with. Uh anybody in the audience um um please contact me directly if you have any questions or you you have any ideas. We're always like we're a sponge for feedback and helping. And so my email is richchargroom. io instead of com. io. Richchargroom. io IO. Well, Rich, thank you so much. And just a few closing uh thoughts to our guests. Number one, if uh this conversation changed how you think about recovery, make sure to share it with someone on your crew or someone in leadership. Uh we definitely want to spread this message. Also, follow uh the Work Ready podcast on any of the different platforms, YouTube, uh Spotify, Apple Podcast. We're we're in all those places. It just ensures that you're going to get the latest episodes and uh a lot of the guests that we have coming up are going to further expand on some of the science that you talked about, Rich, just so we can continue to learn

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how to optimize uh recovery and in the workforce. So, until next time, take care of yourself, take care of your people, and stay work ready. Thanks so much.