The Health & Wellness Show: The benefits of cold adaptation Sott.net Fri, 18 Mar 2016 15:00 UTC
Sott.net Fri, 18 Mar 2016 15:00 UTC
Audio clip: Dave : You probably heard about people taking ice baths, maybe you seen videos of professional athletes sitting in tubs of ice water thinking it doesn't even affect them. It doesn't, at least not that much other than improving their performance but that's because they're adapted. If you want to get adapted, it's not that easy, if you want to jump in ice water it actually hurts and it can cause a cold shock, it's really uncomfortable, you get inflamed afterwards and it's just not a pleasant feeling. The way to get yourself into ice water, or if you're like me and you're just kind of lazy and you don't really have the time or resources to go out and buy 20lbs of ice every time you want to sit in a tub of ice water, it's expensive and it takes a ton of time. You can do it, at least some of it, in about 2 or 3 minutes, you can take a pan or dish about the size of your face and you fill it with about that much water and then you put it in your freezer. Then, you add water to it; stir it up, so you have really cold ice water in the thing. Sit it in the counter, take a deep breath, bend forward and stick your face in the cold water. The first time you do this it's going to hurt, you're going to be able to leave you face in there for about 5-10 seconds before you take it out. It's a horrible shock but if you do this every night, after a week, you find you can leave your face in there for at least 20 seconds and you're ok. Then after about a month, you're like I guess I should get a snorkel because I can stay in there for 4 or 5 minutes. And what's going on there is that the nerves in your face are tied to the rest of your nervous system, particularly to your vagus nerve. Just by getting cold adapted on your face you can do this, it changes you metabolic rate and your sleep quality dramatically. I sleep on a chilly pad which lowers the temperate of my sleeping surface, which dramatically improves sleep on the metrics that I use for my sleep. So does soaking your face in ice water before bed, even if it's just for 30 seconds, this is almost free because you're using the ice that was already in the ice, you're not buying ice, you're not filling the tub. It's not as big as sitting in a tub full of ice water, which is a profoundly amazing practice. If you like the bulletproof sleep induction matt, you lay on the thing and god it's so sharp and all of a sudden you just melt, the same thing happens when you get in a tub full of ice water, after you have adapted using this face technique. All you need to do is get this part of you inside water and you're on the path.