podcast

Hi, welcome today to calm your caveman. We're going to talk about a strategy that I had to be basically forced into before I would even try it. And that's the strategy of cold water therapy or cold therapy. Let me just say, first of all, that I have never liked cold water, but I live with someone who loves to get in cold water. My husband is somebody who will get in an icy waterfall, who will jump in the Arctic ocean or in the ocean at the tip of Patagonia and come back, jumping up and down and rejoicing and so happy and wanting me so much to get into this cold water so that I can feel what he's feeling. But no way was I going to do that, right? I didn't care how good it was going to make me feel. If you stick your hand in the fire, it also feels really good when you take it out, right? I'd much rather just be even keel. I'm good as I am. Thank you very much. I don't need to put myself through these crazy extremes. I don't need to torture myself in order to feel good. So I never would get in.
But life cornered me eventually. And I found myself in the situation that I've explained many times where I was, had long COVID. There's no cure. Searching everywhere for things that might help me with my symptoms. And online I was starting to see things about cold therapy, which has been used for thousands of years, and how it can help reduce inflammation. And for some people it's helped with autoimmune disorders. And there seemed to be some kind of auto-immune component to long COVID and I certainly had trouble with inflammation. So I decided well it might be worth giving this a try, right? And I got my instructions for how to start cold therapy as a beginner from Wim Hof, who's kind of the guru of cold therapy online. Especially cold water therapy, right? And he instructed me I didn't have to start with a cold shower. I could just start with a normal shower and I could just end it cold. And I could just very gradually turn it cold and acclimate a little bit, and I could stick one arm in and then one leg in and just get to different parts of my body a little bit accustomed to it. He talked about how it didn't have to be frighteningly cold. That with time that I could, I could get it colder and colder, but at first I could just start small, and I could, and I could just stay in for a few seconds. And just gradually stay in for a little bit longer each time. The goal was to get up to two minutes at the end of the shower. And he pointed out most importantly, that it was you should be feeling cold, but trying to relax into the cold. Because it's kind of our default reaction. When we get into cold water to just, you know, start hyperventilating and, and get tense, and tense up against it. But he talked about how it's really beneficial to relax into the cold and especially do, instead of that hyperventilating chest breathing, to do abdominal breathing, which is where your belly moves out when you breathe in and goes down when you breathe out. So doing the same type of breathing that we do when we're asleep, we're doing it in the cold water, trying to relax into the cold water. So these were the instructions that I was following, trying to ease into this alarming sensation of the cold water.
And I found that doing this over time had a really interesting group of effects. Some of them were physical. Some of them were emotional. But one of the most interesting psychological effects that I found was that I started to not be so afraid of painful sensations. So as I learned to breathe through my discomfort, shift my mental attitude, see the cold has beneficial, it started to have an effect on my relationship with my anxiety as a whole. As I explained before my default up until this point in my life had been to feel anxiety. I reacted with anxiety to most things. That was kind of my default emotion. I felt anxious most of the time. But with this training to feel something uncomfortable that my body just wants to run away from, but choose to trust it and relax into it instead and breathe into, it that this changed one of my brain's default settings. Our brains kind of have a default factory installed setting, which is that pain is bad and pleasure is good. Right? We're wired to avoid pain and seek pleasure. So we have this very yes- no dichotomy. Yes to pleasure, no to pain. But as I started to try and day after day, subject myself to this painful sensation and tell myself. That it was good. I started to feel the development of a new category in my brain, a new story, a new meaning for pain, which is that sometimes painful and unpleasant things can be good for me, they can be beneficial for me, and that most of all, that I can handle them. I started to see that even though the water was really unpleasant and I wanted with every cell of my body to run away from it, that I could stay in it and it was bearable. I could breathe calmly in it. And I realized with time that the first part is the worst and then it also seems to feel worse if I am just immobile, if I don't move while I'm in the cold water. But I found that unpleasant as it was, I could time myself and I could make myself stay in for two minutes eventually. And I could just breathe deeply with my diaphragm, not with my chest, while I was in the water and let the clock tell me when it was time to get out, rather than my instincts. And I could complete my goal of staying in for the chosen amount of time. That I could do that, even though I hated it.
So this repeated action day after day of saying to my brain, we're going to do this painful thing, this yucky thing that you don't want to do, but we're going to learn to tolerate it little by little and breathe into it. And I would sit there and I would imagine the cold water as it was so unpleasant coming down on me, I would imagine it helping my immune system to balance itself. And I would imagine it improving my circulation. And I would feel it reducing my inflammation. I would imagine all of these things. And I was able to reteach my brain to not be afraid of the cold, even though it always was unpleasant. And with this teaching, I noticed a general reduction of fear of stress in my life, fear of pain in general, fear of discomfort. I became overall less reactive to stressors. Because I had trained my brain to learn that, um, first of all, pain wasn't always bad. And that I could handle feeling it, even if I didn't like it. So that was maybe my top anti-anxiety benefit from the cold water was learning to face my fear of discomfort and having my brain not be so reactive to it, not so afraid of discomfort anymore in a way that carried over into my life overall, and I just became less reactive to stressors in general.
But in addition to this, I noticed already from the very first time that I took a cold shower, that I would have a big boost in mood and in mental alertness right after I had the cold shower. And that that effect would last for a few hours. And I also found that the colder the water was, the stronger the effect was. I didn't have to necessarily stay in as long if the water was super cold, in order to have that same effect. But it was especially helpful for me during this time that I had long COVID because of, I've, as I've told you before, I had a lot of trouble sleeping. I really didn't sleep very much during this time. And not very restoratively, not very deeply. I would get through a night in which I had just kind of dozed a couple of times. And get up in the morning feeling like I had a hangover and somebody just been hitting me on the head all night long, and then I would go take a cold shower, and all of a sudden I would feel like I had actually slept a little bit. My brain would feel that refreshed and I would feel like I could handle things a little bit. I'd feel kind of on top of things. Which was miraculous for how sleep deprived I was and how sick I was. Right?
Another cool thing that I saw happen from cold water is that once it helped me to stop an allergic reaction. My immune system was kind of out of whack during this time. And I started one time having an allergic reaction and breaking out in hives all over my body for no apparent reason, and itching, and the hives were swelling. And it was nighttime and I was trying to sleep. I couldn't sleep through this. But I got up and had a cold shower and immediately the reaction stopped. The itching stopped. The hives started to disappear and go away. And my body just went into peace again. So that was pretty dramatic. Another thing that it helped me with is that I had a problem for a period during my long COVID journey, I had what's called POTS. It's a very common post viral condition. POTS stands for postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. And what happens is your autonomic nervous system is dysfunctional in a very specific way. It doesn't make your blood vessels constrict like they should. Usually when you stand up the blood vessels in the lower part of your body will constrict so that you can still have blood in the upper parts of your body, especially your brain right? But when you have POTS, they don't constrict the way they should. And so you stand up and the blood kind of pools in the bottom of your body, down in your legs and feet, and you get really dizzy because your brain doesn't have enough blood. And your heart starts to beat like crazy, 'cause your heart also doesn't have enough blood to nourish it. And so it starts to work harder to overcompensate. So it's, it's a pretty debilitating condition 'cause you can't be upright without feeling dizzy and having your heart go crazy. But with these hot cold showers that I would do every day, the hot would make my blood vessels expand and then the cold would make them practice constricting. And I did this religiously a couple of times every day for several months. And I don't know for sure if this was the full reason why I recovered from POTS, but I just know that I did this and after I had done it for long enough, I didn't have POTS anymore. So somehow I feel like it helps my autonomic nervous system to recover from this problem. There may have been other factors, but it did seem to help.
But this mental sharpness that I talked about, this alertness and this feeling of positive mood and feeling on top of things, um, is really dramatic and it was something that I carried over after I got well again. And I started to use this cold shower strategy as a way to help with situations where I might experience performance anxiety. Whether I was going to have to do some kind of public speaking or actually performing music on stage, I like to use the cold shower. And I don't like to go out on stage with dripping wet hair of course. So I don't usually take the cold shower immediately before I go on stage. But as close as I can to my performance and still be able to look the way that I want to look in the moment. Because it's really interesting that this positive effect of alertness and feeling on top of things and feeling good, and feeling less anxious, right, as a result of all of this, that that lasts for hours. And studies have shown this, that it has an effect, that unlike a lot of other dopamine triggers, like pleasurable things like chocolate and different things that can trigger dopamine, that dopamine release that comes with those things is pretty short-lived. But on the other hand with cold exposure, the dopamine release is really quite strong and extended, and long lasting. It's durable. And so I really like to do this. I have a son who did the MCAT last year, which is the test to get into medical school. It's a grueling test. It's eight hours. People study for months, even years to prepare for the, the test because it tests on a huge, a huge amount of medical knowledge. My son, 'cause I told him about some of these effects of cold therapy, he decided that he wanted to go to a cold plunge on the morning before his MCAT. On the same morning, right before he took the test. So he got up, especially early, went to the cold plunge, stayed there for a while and then went to his test. And he did say that he felt like it helped him.
I have a couple of other sons that have gotten really gung ho on cold therapy. Not because they're trying to help with performance, not because they're sick, but just because they like how it makes them feel in daily life. And I'm going to let them tell their own story now for you to listen.
Hello, my name is Sam. I am twenty years old. Um, my younger brother is called Laz, and we have always been very, very close friends. We've always loved spending time together. When I was 19 years old, I decided that I wanted to serve as a volunteer, as a missionary. Um, my faith has always been very important for me, and it has been the source of a lot of hope and a lot of peace in my own life. And I wanted to be able to share that with other people. But this, this mission I wanted to serve meant that I would have to live somewhere else, somewhere far away for, for a few years. So I wasn't going to be able to be close to my younger brother, which was a big sacrifice. I'm not quite sure now how we started this. We started doing cold water exposure right before I left on my mission. And we decided that until I'd come back to my mission, we would only take cold showers. We would not take any warm or hot showers. And it has been pretty hard. Sometimes you wake up and it's dark outside and it's really cold. But after a few months doing this, it's been, cold showers are so, so nice, so great. And I don't think we are going to stop after I get back home. Just because the benefits of cold water exposure are really, really, really powerful, really, really wonderful. Um, sometimes I'd wake up and I was feeling overwhelmed and tired and felt like I, I couldn't do this anymore. And just two minutes of really cold water would change that completely and I felt in control. I felt like I was in charge and I could do this and I felt honestly very happy. And, uh, yeah, it's been it's been really amazing to see the blessings of cold water exposure, and it's something I'm very grateful for, and I am definitely not going to stop after I get back home from my mission. I will continue doing this for as long as I can because it brings me a lot of joy.
Hello, my name is Lazarus. I'm 16 years old, and one year ago, I made a deal with my brother that we would only take cold showers, except for Sundays and sick days. And when we started to do it, at least for me, it was Truly not too fun because I'd wake up at 6am to take a shower before I went to school and There's never going to be a moment where I'm going to enjoy Going from my warm bed at 6 a. m Into the cold shower. But I kept to it and as time passed I Realized that I actually really liked that routine. The routine of taking a cold shower in the morning made my whole morning feel better, made me feel better, made me feel more productive, more excited about my day and, and feel more alive and awake during the day. And I also began to go take a dip in the sea. And I began a routine of waking up early, before school, earlier than normal. And besides taking a cold shower, I would walk down to the sea, and take a dip in the sea, and then walk back. And That also especially made me feel good, um, because I got both the experience of walking around, getting a little bit of early sunlight, and getting in the cold water. And yes, as time has passed, um, getting in the cold shower, there's always going to be that thermic shock, but getting in that cold shower has become more automatic and less troublesome. And it continues to be great for me, to help me to feel better and more energized. So, yeah, that's it.
So there you have it. There's Sam and Laz's personal testimonial about why a 16 year old and a 20 year old, or actually when they started at 15 and 19, would have decided to take cold showers for two years, except for on Sundays. Why it feels good enough for them to want to keep doing it even after two years is up. So this is worth knowing about it's worth trying. The most expensive part of it is that it's unpleasant, but the facing of that unpleasantness is beneficial for you in and of itself, because it will help you to increase your resilience and your grit and reduce your reactivity to stress. And this is not something that's just true for my family. This is something which has been shown in research generally. That people who go through cold exposure, have all of these benefits that I've described. A significant release in adrenaline, which is what gives you that alertness and that feeling of focus and a prolonged release of dopamine, which elevates your mood and enhances your focus, your focus, and your ability to engage in goal directed behavior. And so studies also show that it, it seems to overtime reduce your cortisol levels, which is a stress hormone. It reduces your stress hormone levels overall. They don't go up with exposure to cold, which is really interesting. So try it. Try a hot- cold shower. Start small. You can just inch it a little bit colder at the end and then a little bit colder each time gradually. And then build up your time. Start with just a couple of seconds at first. Increase it eventually to 30 seconds. And then maybe even to two minutes, which was my goal. If you want to feel a big boost in your resources and feel like you are a person who can handle stuff, try this therapy. It'll help you both in the short term, immediately after your very first cold shower, and also over time, that effect will also influence your brain's relationship with stress in general and how reactive you get to stress and how much you feel like you can handle uncomfortable stuff without getting upset and anxious about it. So give it a try. Thanks for listening and see you next week.
And don't forget to stay tuned for our kindness narrative, your nearly effortless gratitude practice for this week.

My husband and I just moved to Oregon after 14 years overseas. Uh, my spouse has a job at the local university, but I don't have one yet. And this is a recurring theme in my life, the third time we've moved where I don't have a job waiting for me. Everything is new, and we don't really know anybody, and it is daunting to have to start all over again.
Uh, more daunting, I think, as I age. But my husband has, uh, A very thoughtful boss. She invited us both to have lunch with her shortly after we arrived. She kindly listened to an explanation of my situation, seemed to genuinely want to help, offered suggestions of people and places to connect with, and paid for the lunch. With our two previous big moves, no one reached out to me like that during the early struggle to get established. Um, we've been here a month and I still don't have a job, but her kindness helped me to stay more positive than I would have been without it, and I'm very grateful for that.