Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Hormetic Stressors - Health Benefits of Sauna and Cold Exposure

[Music] good morning everyone um i'm very excited to be here in a country that has more saunas than people because i love saunas and apparently you guys must also like saunas today my talk is going to focus much on some of the health benefits that saunas have on the brain and also on overall longevity i'm also going to dive a little bit into cold water and how cold water can also affect the brain as well as metabolism and other health benefits as well but today my talk is going to begin with a personal story about stress so there's good stress and there's bad stress for me when i was a graduate student getting my phd i was experiencing a combination of both good and bad stress the good stress was i was learning how to be a scientist i was learning tools and techniques um to answer interesting scientific scientific questions that i had and that was good i was adapting to that stress but there's also bad stress that i experienced in graduate school and that came along with many different exams multiple exams failed experiments experiments that would take me three months to set up and would fail and 16 hour experiments i had to perform again and again and again i was not adapting to that stress i was experiencing a sense of at times crippling anxiety which i think everyone in this room has probably experienced some form of anxiety in their in their lives before so we can all relate to that um so i was not adapting to that stress and it was having negative effects on my health i was getting poor sleep so i decided to try to counter that stress bad stress with good stress and good stress is a type of stress that is a short-term stressor on the body something that is slightly stressful that activates all these genetic pathways that are hard encoded in our genes that are able to deal with stress and so what ends up happening is that tiny bit of short-term stressor ends up not only compensating for that stress but you end up having a net resilience effect and this is often referred to as hormesis so you have a little tiny bit of stress and it activates all these stress response pathways the reason we have these stress response genetic pathways is because life itself is stressful just normal living normal breathing and oxygen and eating food you know causes stress on our body we we are making you know metabolic byproducts reactive oxygen species like every second it's happening right now as i talk so our we're able to heal uh handle this these types of stresses with you know various genetic pathways but when you when you can flip that switch on to those genetic pathways with something that's just slightly stressful on the body something like exercise then you have this net resilience effect and you adapt to that stress and you're able to handle it um better and not only are you able to handle that stress better but you become better additionally another type of hormetic stressor is actually heat stress so something like the sauna which is a you know heat stress that's something that i started to do in graduate school so i lived across the street from a gym it had a sauna i started using it every day and uh i was using it quite frequently probably about five days a week and i started to notice that i felt really good like my mood was noticeably enhanced and i also was able to handle stress better and my anxiety was down and i was trying to figure out what was going on in my brain like how was the sauna affecting my brain because it was i it was very very obvious to me so i decided to dive into the literature and try to figure that out so most people are familiar with the feel good endorphin what you may not be familiar with is the counter to that dinorphin and dinorphin is activated upon heat stress and the reason for that is because dinorphin cools the body down well dinorphin is the counter to endorphin because it makes you feel uncomfortable and dysphoric so heat stress will release dinorphin from a presynaptic neuron and that dinorphin will then bind to another receptor called the kappa opioid receptor and when that happens that's when you begin to feel uncomfortable and dysphoric and that's the feeling you usually feel when you're hot and you're in the sitting in the sauna or you're you just you feel bad like oh i just want to get out it's too hot or you're exercising really you know vigorously and you're you're feeling hot and you want to stop that's dinorphin that's what's making you feel uncomfortable you may be thinking to yourself well i thought you said you felt really good what are you talking about here well this is where it gets really interesting because this pathway this mechanistic pathway that is that this is a thermal regulatory control pathway you make dynorphin to cool your body down but you also feel uncomfortable what happens is this actually changes the way your brain responds to the feel good endorphins so endorphins bind to another type of receptor called the mu opioid receptor and when dynorphin is released and you feel uncomfortable this causes mu opioid receptors to make more of them and it sensitizes them to endorphin so that means the next time that you make endorphin whether that's from exercise or the sauna because it also makes uh causes you to release endorphin or if it's you know from laughter or giving someone a hug whatever it is that's causing you to release endorphin you are going to feel so much better because that endorphin is going to bind to those receptors that are really sensitive to that endorphin and so the effects are lasting and they last longer and you feel better so it you know your depression is you know it lowers depression and it helps with anxiety it helps with all these things when you're when you're sensitized to endorphin and so it's quite possible that this is actually why the sauna was able to help me deal with my anxiety and help me to deal with stress and made me feel really good but in addition to affecting the brain the sauna also appears to affect overall longevity so this was actually a study that came out of the university of eastern finland and the study followed around 2000 middle aged finnish men that we're using the sauna frequently and the study followed them for 20 years and measured who died of you know any sort of non-accidental death so people that died from cardiovascular related diseases people that died from cancer or nerve degenerative diseases respiratory diseases so all these diseases were measured and followed these men were followed for 20 years and what this study found was that men that use the sauna two to three times a week so that's indicated here in red they were 27 percent less likely to die from any cardiovascular related disease compared to men that use this on a one time a week men that use this on a four to seven times a week which is indicated in black they were 50 percent less likely to die from cardiovascular related diseases throughout the 20-year period compared to men that only use the sauna one time a week so there was a dose-dependent effect that was uh improving cardiovascular health and causing these men that were using the sauna more frequently to you know be healthier and to die less of or be less likely to die of cardiovascular disease in that 20-year time span well it turns out not just sauna frequency was important but also the duration of time spent in the sauna so those same men that were that stayed in the sauna for greater than 19 minutes so that's indicated here in black they had the most robust effect on lowering cardiovascular related mortality compared to men that only used this on a less than 11 minutes so both the frequency and duration of sauna was very important for lowering cardiovascular risk there are a variety of different mechanisms that have also been put out there for why using the sauna can lower cardiovascular related mortality chiefly among them is the sauna in some ways mimics cardiovascular exercise so when you sit in the sauna in a hot sauna your heart rate elevates to 100 to 150 beats per minute which really is equivalent to moderate intensity physical exercise also plasma volume expands and increases and blood flow increases to the heart and this lowers cardiovascular strain so your heart has to do less work for each beat that it's pumping blood you know throughout your body to to deliver oxygen to your tissues so it's lowering cardiovascular strain it's been shown to lower blood pressure improve endothelial cell function endothelial cells line your blood vessels it's been shown to increase and improve uh left ventricular function so lots of different things that the sauna has been shown to improve in terms of cardiovascular risk factors well turns out cardiovascular disease was not the only thing that the sauna lowered the mortality rate for turned out that all these other non-accidental deaths were also lowered so men that used the sauna two to three times a week had a 24 lower all-cause mortality than men that use the sauna only one time a week men that use the sauna four to seven times a week were 40 percent less likely to die of cancer cardiovascular disease neurodegenerative disease respiratory diseases and all these other non-accidental diseases that you know people come down with with age so this is very interesting but before i get into the potential mechanisms i want to point out that this study also measured a variety of different parameters that may affect the data so confounding factors they're called so they measured you know the physical activity of people their their percent body fat um their smoke if they smoked or drank a lot of alcohol their socioeconomic status so all those things were considered when they when they were analyzing this data so this data really is reflective of sauna use but the interesting thing is these men were 40 less likely to die of all these diseases why is that like why what is this ana doing how is it affecting overall longevity so to understand that we're going to have to turn to some animal studies and look at other molecular mechanisms where we know that heat has shown to affect longevity chiefly among them are heat shock proteins so heat shock proteins as their name implies are activated by heat they're often referred to as hsps and they play a very important role inside of cells they pl their their role is to make sure that proteins maintain their three-dimensional structure and that's really important because every protein inside your cell has a certain three-dimensional structure in space and that three-dimensional structure is essential for that protein's normal function and if you disrupt that three-dimensional structure the protein can't function optimally so for example all your metabolic enzymes are specialized proteins their three-dimensional structures are disrupted they're not going to be working optimally but that's not the only thing that's important or the only reason why the three-dimensional structure is important um the three-dimensional structure of protein is getting damaged all the time so just normal existence uh is damaging proteins in our body all the time every time we breathe in oxygen and we're eating food and our mitochondria are trying to couple those together to generate energy well that generation of energy is really damaging because it also makes reactive byproducts that damage the proteins inside of our cell and when they damage the proteins the proteins become misfolded they're not their three-dimensional structure is screwed up and when they become misfolded this disrupts the protein half-life and what this ends up doing is that protein just kind of sits around inside of the cell longer than it's supposed to it's usually supposed to get you know be gotten rid of sooner and when it sits around inside of the cell it starts to aggregate with other proteins that have been misfolded so as we age we start to get these protein aggregates that are accumulate inside of our cells outside of our cells that happens in our brain amyloid beta is probably one of the you know key uh protein aggregates that people are familiar with that play a role that plays a role in brain aging as well as alzheimer's disease so these protein aggregates you know they disrupt all sorts of things and they're really really bad and they lead to neurodegenerative diseases also they play a role in cardiovascular disease so the role that hsps or heat shock proteins which are activated by heat is really important because when you have that protein that's damaged the heat shock proteins can repair that damage and they can make the protein fold back to its normal three-dimensional structure and this allows for you know the protein not to form aggregates um and that's why heat shock proteins have been shown in many many many different studies and animals um you know in lower organisms to prevent alzheimer's like diseases parkinson's disease um and also cardiovascular disease so heat shock proteins are very important just sort of as a proof of principle here um there's been a couple of studies that have looked at fl fruit flies and worms um these are lower organisms that kind of like temu was talking about the tardigrade we these organisms actually share a lot of uh human dna so drosophila have 40 40 of these fruit fly genes are found in humans which is quite a bit so if you take a fly and you get expose it to one single exposure of heat for 70 minutes it extends their lifespan by 15 percent also that was shown to be dependent on heat shock proteins because they have a version of heat check proteins um heat shock proteins have also been associated with human longevity so humans that have a variation in a gene that makes heat shock proteins live have exceptional longevity but there's actually another pathway that's activated by a heat a longevity pathway and that's fox03 so foxo3 is a gene that is a master regulator of many other genes because it activates those genes and it deactivates those genes many of the genes that it's regulating have to do with stress resistance have to do with being able to handle stress and what do i mean by stress i mean that same damage i was talking about so just you know the normal damage that we're being exposed to every day not even to mention the damage we're exposed to for from external factors like you know benzene from air pollution and other carcinogens that we're exposed to that's also damaging things in our body but that same damage that damages proteins damages our dna and when it damages our dna that can potentially lead to mutations that could lead to cancer well foxo3 activates genes that are involved in dna repair that repair that damage before it ever can form a mutation additionally foxo3 activates genes that are involved in cell death so if a cell does get a mutation that could potentially lead to cancer the cell will sacrifice itself and it will die so you know it's a it's a protective mechanism against cancer that same damage that damages proteins that damages dna also damages cells and when the cell accumulates enough damage as we age it accumulates more and more damage that cell eventually becomes what's called senescent and senescent cells aren't cells that are they're not alive but they're not dead they're kind of just sitting around inside of a tissue and or an organ and they're secreting these pro-inflammatory molecules and cytokines that are damaging other nearby cells accelerating the aging process and causing them to become senescent so it's really bad well foxo3 activates genes antioxidants genes that prevent that damage from ever hitting the cell they also foxo3 activates genes that if the cell does become senescent and is damaged genes that are involved in autophagy and clearing away that damage but just to kind of highlight how important the autophagy process is in clearing away senescent cells there was a recent study in mice mice also accumulate senescent cells as they age and they were given a chemical compound that any time a senescent cell cropped up in one of their organs it got rid of that senescent cell and that extended the lifespan of the mice by 20 so they actually live 20 longer than their normal average lifespan so senescent cells are definitely accelerating the aging process and anything you can do to get rid of senescent cells or prevent them is going to positively affect aging so foxo3 also activates genes that are involved in stem cell function stem cells are very important because they replace all the other cell types in our tissues for example they make more white blood cells we lose white blood cells as we age and we become more susceptible to infections and respiratory diseases as we get older stem cells also make more stem cells which is good because we lose stem cells as we age as well and we want to keep replenishing our organs we want to keep replenishing the cells in each of our organs so that they keep maintaining the function of whatever they're supposed to do so foxo3 activates those genes as well it's pretty it's pretty badass but if you're not convinced yet i'm going to show you one of uh some a study that's actually my early work when i was a young scientist at the salk institute it's actually one of the first biology experiments i did and really got me hooked on biology so this worm here is um it's a c elegan worm and it lives on average about 15 days of lifespan it has around shares about you know 60 of its genes are found in humans um it has a version of the foxo3 gene so this worm has been genetically engineered to express human amyloid beta-42 that toxic peptide that aggregates and forms plaques and brains of people as they age and plays a role in alzheimer's disease it's been it's been engineered to express it in its muscle tissue lower muscle tissue so as it ages the amyloid plaques aggregate in its muscle tissue and it can't move it becomes paralyzed so i guess if you watch this video let's go back because it okay so you watch the video whoops one second here i press something okay so let's see if i can play this see it's not moving its lower body it's just moving its nose around that that worm right there is 12 days old so it's at the end of its lifespan so the next worm i'm going to show you is the same age as that worm it's also been genetically engineered to have amyloid beta plaques in its muscle tissue to get paralyzed the only difference is is that it has also been genetically manipulated to have foxo3 gene active all the time so you can see it moving around just fine same age as the other worm day 12. so the only difference was that foxo3 gene prevented those aggregates from you know accumulating in its muscle tissue and causing it to become paralyzed so it aged much much better than the other one and if you're not convinced with worm longevity then perhaps you'll be convinced with uh human longevity so the foxo3ga the foxo 3a gene has been associated with human longevity so we're we all have uh different variations of the same gene so we have the same genes but different variations of these genes uh it's what give people you know blue eyes versus brown eyes well some people have a version of foxo3 a that makes it active all the time so it's you know it's always activating these antioxidant genes it's activating autophagy genes it's activating stem cell function genes it's activating dna repair genes so these genes are constantly being activated and so people that have that are able to deal with all sorts of damage so much better because they can just repair it constantly well those people are 2.7 times more likely to become a centenarian to live to be a hundred which is pretty uh impressive so in summary when we're talking about the sauna and and longevity the sauna sensitizes the brain to endorphin and it does that by increasing dynorphin which makes you feel uncomfortable and as a consequence you feel better because you become sensitive to the feel-good endorphin it improves cardiovascular function um it's been associated with lower all it's been associated with lower cardiovascular rate of mortality uh it improves cardiovascular function by lowering cardiovascular strain it also improves overall longevity possibly by many different mechanisms activating heat shock proteins which are important for maintaining the proper three-dimensional structure of proteins inside of our cells and also by activating the fox03 gene which is doing so much cool that's like really really good and really important for the way we age one other thing that i want to mention that i didn't get into it also increases growth hormone by like two to three fold sometimes in cases if you if you do multiple sauna treatments it can increase growth hormone by up to 16-fold i mean growth hormone plays a very important role in many things but improving repair of muscle damage is one thing that it's important for but i want to switch gears just for a minute here and talk a little bit about another type of stressor another type of hormetic stress and that is cold stress which um i i think you guys in finland are also very accustomed to jumping in cold water as well there's many different modalities for cold stress jumping into a cold lake taking a cold shower jumping into an ice bath walking around in the cool air in the winter going into a cryotherapy chamber these are all methods that can cold stress our body and cold stress much like heat stress is a type of hormetic stress that activates all these genetic pathways that help us deal with stress probably one of the most robust responses to cold stress that i have seen in the literature is the robust increase in norepinephrine in the locus corulleus region of the brain norepinephrine in the brain plays a very important role in focus and attention and vigilance also in mood so it makes you feel better norepinephrine is something that's actually pharmacologically targeted quite often so it's used to treat depression and also adhd but it can be released by cold shock in the body um sorry that slide what kind of temperature temperatures are we talking about here well we're talking about uh people people that were walking around in 16 degrees celsius air you know temperature for six hours increase their norepinephrine by 260 percent you don't have to spend that much time in the cold to get a norepinephrine increase uh people that submerge their self in 4.4 degrees celsius water for 20 seconds were able to increase their norepinephrine by 200 to 300 percent so the colder the water the more robust the norepinephrine release uh but also duration as well so if you're if you're not if you're in less cooler water then you don't have to stay in as long for example but these things have all been shown to be very robust in releasing norepinephrine something else very cool about norepinephrine you know in addition to being a neurotransmitter it actually acts as a hormone as well and we also release it in our body because it causes vasoconstriction and that's one of the mechanisms that we use to conserve heat when we're cold so another mechanism that were that we use to generate heat is also related to norepinephrine and that has to do with increasing mitochondrial biogenesis in your adipose tissue and in your muscle tissue so mitochondrial biogenesis means new mitochondria so this is an electron micrograph that i took several years ago of a fibroblast cell which is not an adipose cell but i just wanted to show you mitochondria this oval here in the center is the cell nucleus and all these like beam-like structures around it are mitochondria and those mitochondria are the energy-producing units inside of our cells they're what makes energy in our cells well these these mitochondria are the mitochondrial biogenesis occurs with cold exposure you can think about it it makes perfect sense because as you generate energy as a byproduct you generate heat and so this is a adaptive mechanism that occurs to help you warm up when you're cold so this mitochondrial biogenesis that happens in the adipose tissue is often referred to as browning of fat and the reason for that is because if you look here at the mitochondria this is a black and white micrograph but the mitochondria are like darker in color so you can imagine when you have more of these in adipose tissue which is white it appears to look beige or brown so it's a little browning color also as you have more mitochondria in your fat because fat is you know it's where you're storing the most energy you start to burn that fat because the mitochondria are trying really hard to make heat because they want you to not die they want you just you know to warm up you the the side effect is that you actually burn fat and so a lot of people like that as a you know potential mechanism to treat obesity this is all regulated by norepinephrine so that's very interesting because i just talked about norepinephrine and how it regulates mood focus tension it makes you feel good helps with anxiety but it also appears to regulate this process because if you block the the brain's ability to respond to norepinephrine then mitochondrial biogenesis does not occur upon cold exposure in adipose tissue so that norepinephrine is very important for that what kind of temperatures are we talking about for mitochondrial biogenesis well those same humans that were walking around in 16 degrees celsius weather for six hours that had a 260 increase in norepinephrine experienced a 37 increase in browning of their adipose tissue so they're able to brown their fat after walking around in 16 degrees celsius weather cool-ish weather for six hours adipose tissue is not the only tissue that mitochondrial biogenesis occurs it also happens in muscle tissue and this is another electron micrograph i took it's a little closer up it's not muscle but you can see the mitochondria are they come in different shapes and sizes and uh the ones that are longer that's actually two mitochondria fusing together exchanging all their mitochondrial dna and all their mitochondrial content and the ones that are like oval shaped are ones that have actually broken apart after they've exchanged all their content it's really elegant how mitochondria can repair damage by doing this process but it's sort of a side tangent the mitochondrial biogenesis also occurs in muscle tissue that is not regulated by norepinephrine that's regulated by another pathway but it has been shown to be very robust it activates something called pgc1 alpha and what's interesting is that if you think about mitochondria they're what allow us to use oxygen for energy so if you're if you have more mitochondria in your muscle tissue then you're going to be able to more effectively use oxygen and this is why mitochondrial biogenesis and muscle tissue has been shown to improve aerobic capacity which you know is uses oxygen uh so peop so men that actually submerge their legs in i think it was but 10 degrees celsius water for 10 minutes they have experienced massive mitochondrial biogenesis or muscle tissue and it's also the cold exposure has also been shown to improve in very you know preliminary studies to improve endurance in some athletes including runners and cyclists and tennis players so there's this you know the ongoing study looking at how cold exposure may actually enhance endurance uh performance because of this mitochondrial biogenesis among other things it also reduces inflammation and helps with recovery time so lots of interesting stuff we've talked about today we talked about how the sauna affects cardiovascular you know function how it affects overall longevity how it affects the brain how it sensitizes the brain to endorphins talked about how it activates foxo3 and how foxo3 is a really really important stress response genetic pathway that activates all these other amazing genes that help us deal with all the damage that we're constantly being exposed to and how it's involved in longevity we talked about you know cold exposure and how it's important for norepinephrine how norepinephrine helps you focus it helps you feel good and also helps with anxiety as well and it causes the production of new mitochondria both in your adipose tissue and colds causes the production of new mitochondria in your muscle tissue and how that may play a role in endurance so lots of interesting science going on in this field but what i think many of you actually may be asking yourself is what about going from the hot sauna into the cold water does you know going into the cold water after the hot sauna negate any of those effects and the shorter answer is i don't know there's not really any empirical evidence that i have seen that suggest anything because no one's really looking at that but i do know that going from a hot sauna into the cold water causes nora epinephrine to be increased even more than either alone so that's good and it implies there may be some synergistic effect and i also know that cold shocking the body with cold water whatever modality you're using also activates heat shock proteins not as robustly as heat does but the fact that it activates the same genetic pathway that heat does i think is good because i it gives us hope that maybe these two things in combination are synergistically acting together and are improving overall long longevity through similar uh mechanisms but i know personally from doing it it also just makes you feel really really good and i think that accounts for something so with that i will leave you with a slide of me on my sunny california beach and to taunt you and say thank you [Applause] so i guess i can take some questions yes i always repeat the question but we'll wait for the microphone it's not on the mic is not on okay so the question i think is when combining sauna with exercise is there a certain protocol that before or after okay so the question is if you are doing exercise you know i guess aerobic or strength training i'm not sure what type of exercise and you're doing the sauna like is it better to do the sauna before you do the exercise or better to do this on after exercise and if you're asking me if there's empirical evidence showing either no i haven't seen any of this showing but from personal experience i prefer to do this on after exercise because one the sauna is also exhausting so if i try to do the sauna before i work out my workout won't be as good and also i think that you know after the workout i like doing it because it's increasing the growth hormone and igf-1 and so these things are you know right after you're working out it's helping repair that some of that damage that's been done from the workout too so but i don't there's no empirical evidence to say what's the best protocol yes i think i'm the next here hello she's looking at me sorry i'm here so the question i think is uh what are what are my thoughts on doing cold after so the question is what are my thoughts on doing the uh cold shocking the body so going into a cold bath or ice bath after doing aerobic exercise versus strength training exercise where you're lifting weights and it's a really good question because there's been a lot of diff differences and conflicting evidence in the scientific literature showing that doing cold water immersion for example immediately after endurance exercise appears to improve the endurance exercise and and that's partly because one mitochondrial biogenesis is immediately occurring in muscle tissue so you're improving aerobic capacity so if you're if you're doing that and then you immediately engage endurance exercise again you know studies have shown there are some endurance enhancements also it reduces inflammation and so when you're doing endurance type of training that also can help if you reduce your inflammation that can improve your performance as well however when you're doing strength training if you're lifting weights something that you're wanting to cause muscle hypertrophy then it's been shown doing cold water immersion immediately after that is not good because immediately after strength training there's inflammation that's that occurs and that inflammation is very important to as a hormetic response to activate all these anti-inflammatory pathways and also it's important to activate some immune cells that play a role in producing igf-1 and muscle tissue which helps you you know make your muscle grow basically it helps you with hypertrophy so doing cold water immersion within an hour after strength training is has been shown to be deleterious on muscle hypertrophy so do we not have a functional mic okay here sorry so i'll try it so the question is is there any difference in how a person breathes their breathing you know the way they're breathing in the sauna and if that affects some of the hormone production if that affects some of these other you know neurotransmitter and and things that are being activated by breathing so uh the answer is i haven't seen any studies doing that sort of breathing in the sauna to you know actually you know effect affect that but you know you know changing doing hyperventilation and things that can cause a slight hypoxia have been shown to affect epinephrine release also norepinephrine so independent of the sauna they are also affecting neurotransmitters and also hormones doing it in the sauna i'm not sure um right the air is different okay we can have a question in the back now the microphone is working i'm told yes hello yes hello thank you for your presentation i would like to ask them what is the case if a person is has got lycote and heat intolerance like in the case of fibromyalgia so are there any genetic snips that one should check in in the case of heat and cold intolerance like in the cases of fibromyalgia i heard some of the question i think that you're asking in the case of fibromyalgia if there's any evidence because there is intolerance most often there is cold and heat intolerance so i would like to ask do you know anything about the genetic snips um snps that would be altered in the case of heat and cold intolerance so i don't know about any genetic polymorphisms or snips that play a role in fibromyalgia specifically i'm sure there probably are some genetic polymorphisms that do uh but i do know that both the sauna and cold exposure have been shown to improve and and these studies are not very well done i mean there's no control group but that people subjectively have felt better their fibromyalgia has improved after using what about the lack of copper because it is um it's linked to this cold intolerance do you know anything about the metabolism of copper and the link to this situation i'm sorry i don't know anything about the copper thank you thank you you can't yes hello hi um is there anything you need to watch out for when you have a certain heart disease or a weak heart if you go from very hot to very cold is it all healthy or do you have to watch out for some stuff thank you yeah so that's a great question is you know is there any health risk involved in going from the hot to the cold and this is something that i've been very interested in as well you know if you think about it you're you're causing vasodilation and you're increasing blood flow when you're in the sauna and then when you go into the cold you're doing the exact opposite you're actually causing vasoconstriction um and uh so it's that i've looked in the literature and i i found a few studies that were published showing that people that had pre-existing heart conditions um particularly ones that are involved with plaque production and the arteries like arterial sclerosis atherosclerosis these these conditions may there may be a risk according to a few studies with going from the hot to the cold but it's it's it's really there's not a lot of research on that and it's something i'm very interested in and i'm actually going to be talking to the researcher that did the sauna study here in finland in a couple of days and so he's someone i'm hoping to get some answers from and also ask him if he can look at you know future studies he can look at that because i think it's a very important question that needs to be answered and we need to understand the health risk potential health risks of going from hot to cold cool how about a weekend for dr rhonda patrick thank you thank you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Biohacker Summit

Views: 176,853

Rating: 4.9459829 out of 5

Keywords: biohacking, biohacker summit, biohacker, summit, event, conference, health, healthy food, healthy lifestyle, self development, fitness, quantified self, individual health, measuring, nutrition, nutrition facts, nature, self optimization, optimized life, optimization, mind, mindfulness, mental health, physical, physical body, science, physical health, technology, health technology, future of health, self realisation, self realization, health events, COLD, COLDEXPOSURE, SAUNA, HORMETIC STRESSOR

Id: -ty6VTNPjqw

Length: 43min 19sec (2599 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 28 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Majalisk]

Further comments about her appearance will be multi-month long/permanent bans, not short ones like I’ve had to, unfortunately, give several of.

[u/greg_barton]

Based on Dr Patrick talking up the benefits of sauna a few months ago I bought a sauna bag from amazon. It's really fantastic and I use it almost every day. In the past few years, even while maintaining a keto/carnivore diet, I've gained a few pounds every winter and have had a hard time losing them in the subsequent year. This winter, with the daily use of the sauna bag, I haven't gained any weight, and my mood is noticeably better.

The duration of sauna use she mentions in interesting. I don't really feel uncomfortable until about the 20 minute mark. (max setting for the bag, 80C) I'm currently using it for about 40 minutes at a time.

The one I got is no longer on amazon, but this one looks almost identical. (Except it's about half the price of the one I got.)

[u/prroxy]

The interesting thing she mentioned in this presentation is that heat exposure increases sensitivity to endorphins.

[u/raRCer123]

Cold showers in the morning really help me start my day, they make me more alert, focused and energetic. Really recommend them to everyone.

[u/bobpage2]

Tldw?

[u/FeralFizgig]

I went down the sauna rabbit hole a few months ago. Haven't purchased one yet, but it's still something I'd like.

There's a youtube channel run by Matt Justice, and he's not only got evaluations of home IR saunas, he has an affordable online course for building a DIY tent model. No idea if he's got a turn-key kit available, but I might invest in the course and build one.

My only gripe with that guy is his hang-ups against EMF emissions (or whatever the current woo term is). Honestly, I don't know if electric fields are a real health problem, but I haven't seen any convincing science (excepting maybe when it concerns cell phones) to convince me they are yet.

[u/[deleted]]

Can't wait for the bloody pandemic to end so I can go back to my favorite jjimjilbang (Korean bathhouse).

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/financeben]

Wreaks havoc on sperm. I need a top half sauna lol