Done correctly, deliberate cold exposure can positively affect brain and body health. Below, I detail some of those benefits and how best to access them. Safety Never get into a dangerous body of water. Also, never do deliberate hyperventilation before or during cold water (or any water!) immersion. Start slow (warmer than colder)—as cold shock is possible; just as with lifting weights or other forms of exercise, you’ll need to find the right temperature for you, yet prioritize safety. How cold? This is the most common question I hear, and it makes sense to ask that. However, it is truly impossible to answer, as some people tolerate cold better than others. The key is to aim for a temperature that evokes the thought, “This is really cold (!), and I want to get out, BUT I can safely stay in.” For some people, that temperature might be 60°F, whereas for others, 45°F. Here is the key: the colder the stimulus (water immersion, shower, etc.), the shorter amount of time you need to expose yourself to the cold. One study showed significant and prolonged increases in dopamine when people were in cool (60°F) water for about an hour up to their neck, with their head above water. Other studies describe significant increases in epinephrine from just 20 seconds in very cold water (~40°F). The good news is that as you do deliberate cold exposure more often, you will be more comfortable in the cold at all times and can start to use colder temperatures with more confidence, just like exercise. Ice bath, cold shower, or cryo?Most of the studies use ice baths or cold water immersion to the neck. Those are best, but cold showers can work too (and are more accessible to most). Cryo is very expensive and harder to access and not subject to much variation in protocols, so it is not considered here. To Increase Energy and Focus Deliberate cold exposure causes a significant release of epinephrine (aka adrenaline) and norepinephrine (aka noradrenaline) in the brain and body. These neurochemicals make us feel alert and can make us feel agitated and as if we need to move or vocalize during the cold exposure. Cold causes their levels to stay elevated for some time and their ongoing effect after the exposure is to increase your level of energy and focus, which can be applied to other mental and/or physical activities. Building Resilience & Grit By forcing yourself to embrace the stress of cold exposure as a meaningful self-directed challenge (i.e., stressor), you exert what is called ‘top-down control’ over deeper brain centers that regulate reflexive states. This top-down control process involves your prefrontal cortex – an area of your brain involved in planning and suppressing impulsivity. That ‘top-down’ control is the basis of what people refer to when they talk about “resilience and grit.” Importantly, it is a skill that carries over to situations outside of the deliberate cold environment, allowing you to cope better and maintain a calm, clear mind when confronted with real-world stressors. In other words, deliberate cold exposure is great training for the mind. Enhancing Your Mood While not true of every stress, cold exposure causes the prolonged release of dopamine. Dopamine is a powerful molecule capable of elevating mood, enhancing focus, attention, goal-directed behavior, etc. Even short bouts of cold exposure can cause a lasting increase in dopamine and sustained elevation of mood, energy, and focus. Metabolism In the short-term, cold exposure increases metabolism as the body has to burn calories to increase core body temperature. The total calories burned from the cold exposure are not that significant. However, the conversion of white fat (energy storage) to beige or brown fat (which are highly metabolically active) can be beneficial for:
Of course, calories on (consumed) versus calories out (metabolized) or “CICO” governs whether you gain, lose, or maintain weight. There is no escaping the laws of thermodynamics. A Solid Basic, Science-Supported Protocol Consider doing deliberate cold exposure for 11 minutes per week TOTAL. NOT per session, but rather, 2-4 sessions lasting 1-5 mins each distributed across the week. Again, the water temperature should be uncomfortably cold yet safe to stay in for a few minutes. You can do more, but this should be the minimum to achieve the benefits of cold exposure. You can do very cold, very brief exposures for adrenaline release too, but the 11 minutes is based on a recent study that explored a range of effects and is a good solid, basic protocol for ongoing use. The “Counting Walls” Approach Undoubtedly, during (or before) cold exposure, you will find your mind pushing back against the challenge. Your mind will say, “I really don’t want to do this,” even before getting in, or “Get me out of here.” You can imagine those mental barriers as ‘walls.’ Those walls are, in fact, the effects of adrenaline pulses in your brain and body, which in this case is what triggers the eventual adaptive response. After all, if it were easy, then there is no stimulus for your body to change (adapt). By maintaining top-down control of your reflexive urge to exit the cold environment, you will have successfully traversed that wall. Challenge yourself by counting walls and setting a goal of “walls” to traverse (e.g., 3-5 walls) during the round of cold exposure. You can also go for time. Up to you. The advantage of the walls approach is that it carries over to other scenarios more seamlessly, as most of life’s stressors don’t lend themselves so well to merely timing the duration until it passes. It also enhances your sense of mind-body connection to do it this way. Shivering and The Søeberg PrincipleThe Søeberg Principle based on deliberate cold researcher Dr. Susanna Søeberg is: To enhance the metabolic effects of cold, force your body to reheat on its own. Or “End With Cold.” Also, allowing your body to shiver may enhance metabolic increases from cold. Shivering causes the release of succinate from muscles and further activates brown fat thermogenesis. Try this protocol to increase shivering, either during or immediately after cold exposure: Don’t huddle or cross your arms while in the cold or after getting out. Also, don’t towel off. Let your body reheat and dry off naturally. Admittedly, this is tough. Unless doing deliberate cold exposure on a hot sunny day, admittedly, I prefer to take a hot shower and towel dry after cold exposure, but I am no doubt limiting the metabolic effect by doing that. Physical Recovery A meta-analysis of cold-water immersion effects on recovery found that cold exposure can be a highly effective recovery tool after high-intensity exercise or endurance training. Short interval (< 5 mins), cold water immersion demonstrated positive outcomes for muscle power, perceived recovery, and decreased muscle soreness (in part due to a reduction in circulating creatine kinases). The problem is that cold water immersion (but not cold showers) can limit some of the gains in hypertrophy, strength or endurance if done in the 4 hours or so after training. It’s better to wait 6 to 8 or more hours until after training, or do it before training UNLESS your goal is simply to recover without adaptation (for instance, when in a competition mode and not trying to get better, stronger, etc.) Day or night? After cold exposure, your body heats up. Yes, HEATS up. Body temperature increases tend to wake us up, whereas body temperature decreases tend to shift us toward sleepy states. Thus, I suggest using deliberate cold early in the day and not too close to bedtime. Sometimes it’s better to do it late than never, but not if it perturbs your sleep. If deliberate cold affects your sleep, try doing it earlier in the day, or not at all. Increasing the Resilience-Enhancing Effects of Deliberate Cold Exposure Staying completely still while in cold water allows a thermal layer to surround your body, ‘insulating’ you from the cold. To be most effective as a resilience training tool, move your limbs while keeping your hands and feet in the water. That will break up the thermal layer and you will experience the water as (much) colder than if you stayed still. This is also a good way to increase the potency of a cold stimulus without having to make the water colder. This is akin to slowing down the movement of a weight lift to reduce momentum and provide more tension on the working muscles. Thank you for your interest! Coach Kayli I will answer all questions! Please feel free to drop them in the comments or email me directly @ kaylimontoyafitness@gmail.com Disclaimer: KM Fitness is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice, and no doctor/patient relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast is at the user’s own risk. The content of this podcast, blog and website is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions.
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Blog Post by Coach Julie**Please Note: This is my journey. The protocol that I am following is individualized to my situation. I am not a doctor nor am I offering medical advice. Should you wish to seek coaching for your individual situation please fill out the coaching call application and Coach Kayli or I would love to help you. This is going to be the beginning of a blog series that will also have podcast episodes and social media posts to supplement it. This series will be a case study and a documentary of my journey to better gut health. I have been on a mission since 2008 to figure out what was wrong with my gut and fix it so that I could have a better quality of life. I had not been successful finding answers regarding what was wrong with my gut so that I could start the process of healing and getting better. Now, in 2022, 14 years later, I have the answers I need, the coach to guide me and support me and the protocol that will hopefully put me in the place of healing and a normal functioning quality of life. Through this series I will outline my journey. What we are doing, why we are doing it and how I am doing with the process. At this point, not even I know if the method I have in place will work, but I’m going to document each step and any changes we make along the way. Let me start by giving you the backstory. In 2008, I started having severe diarrhea. It was so bad, I couldn’t control my bowels. I would have diarrhea as soon as I woke up and it would continue until almost dinner time. It didn’t matter what I ate. I was always sick. My doctor at the time ran a bunch of lab tests to try and diagnose an issue. All labs were normal. I was negative for Crohns’, Ulcerative Colitis, Celiac, etc. They couldn’t find anything abnormal. There was nothing they could do. I couldn’t function at a normal capacity. I couldn’t work and I had to do my college coursework via email. This persisted until around 2011. In 2011, after a procedure by my chiropractor to close my ileocecal valve, the diarrhea stopped. The ileocecal valve is a valve in your intestinal tract that can get stuck open and cause what’s called “dumping syndrome.” After the diarrhea stopped, I began feeling a little bit better, but I had started having nausea. I returned to the doctor. The doctor had previously run abdominal sonograms and ultrasounds but found nothing of note. At the time she had mentioned a test called a HIDA scan to check the function of the gallbladder. This test requires you to lay still on a bed for an extended period of time, which I knew I would not be able to do without getting sick. Now that the diarrhea had resolved, I asked if we could discuss the HIDA scan again. We decided that would be a good course of action. The test showed that my gallbladder was only working at 7%. The gallbladder is usually removed at 50%, it should have been removed a long time ago, but since I didn’t have gallstones and I wasn’t full of sludge and uninsured, I wasn’t an emergent case. I knew part of the key to feeling better would be removing the gallbladder. I borrowed money from my grandmother to pay for my surgery. In December 2011, I had my gallbladder removed and I asked for an upper endoscopy and colonoscopy at the same time to check for other issues. While they were removing my gallbladder, it actually ruptured. It was actually full of sludge. Coming out of surgery, I felt much better. I had to avoid certain foods but I felt much better than I had in a long time. I was able to proceed with a better quality of life than I had the 3 years prior to. I also used this as an opportunity to stop smoking. In 2015, I had a flare up of diarrhea again that wouldn’t stop. I was even hospitalized and given strong medications to help the condition, but instead of healing, I ended up with C. Diff, which is a horrible bacterial infection in your bowels. I sought help from a GI specialist. Without running any tests, the doctor handed me a prescription for a very high powered anti-diarrheal medication and told me to be careful. He said some people end up with obstructive bowels after using that medication. I decided I would start with half a tablet per day and slowly increase until I found the dose that worked for me. That seemed to work ok. But I wasn’t satisfied with using a pill to mask a symptom. Something had to be causing the diarrhea. I sought the help of another GI specialist in 2016. He completed a colonoscopy and found nothing of significance. He found a had a tortuous colon, which means that I have a sharper bend in my colon than most people so things sometimes don’t move through as smoothly as they should, which can cause pain. Again, an answer but not quite the answer. I finally was able to get into a specialist program at KU. I was pretty sure that would be my ticket to wellness. KU is supposed to be the gold standard of treatment. On the day of my appointment my doctor came in and said that I had IBS and I needed to continue to use the medication for the diarrhea but because it was causing a little bit of constipation, I needed to add a laxative to that as well. That was not an answer. Those medications counteract each other. I left very displeased. I have been able to manage my condition so far with diet and exercise, but I still have cramping, pain, bloating, constipation, fatigue and just overall feeling of malaise. I have been living this way since 2016. I struggle with anxiety and depression which could very much be caused by this constant ill feeling. Toward the end of 2020, I started pushing again to find the answers to my gut issues. My doctor and I ran so many tests. Finally a stool test showed that I had pancreatic insufficiency. I was elated. Finally an answer that wasn’t “it’s all in your head” or “it’s your anxiety.” They prescribed me a pancreatic enzyme to correct this issue. It seemed to work really well, I was feeling pretty good, but I started feeling more constipated than before. I decided to try and stop my anti-diarrhea medication. I was able to stop that and feel ok. No diarrhea returned and I was feeling ok, not quite great yet. I saw another gut health specialist at KU in December 2021. This doctor hadn’t looked over my medical records that he required before he would see me. He had to ask me what lab testing had been done and after telling him what my test showed and my diagnosis he told me “that is a trash can diagnosis.” He wanted to put me under anesthesia to prove the other doctor wrong and that my pancreas was fine. He said you have IBS and I am going to give you medication for constipation but it may cause diarrhea. This time I actually spoke up for myself. I told him I wasn’t interested in taking another medication and ending up back where I was. I have been chasing my tail for over a decade now. His solution was to take peppermint oil, which I wasn’t super happy with but at least it was natural. After this disappointing appointment, my wife and I decided to seek the help of a functional medicine doctor. I was getting nowhere so it was time to change the path. I saw the new doctor in January. She gave me a great plan of action but the testing was going to cost me around $700 out of pocket to figure out what was going on, but she thought I had a parasite. The issue is, the tests she wanted me to complete weren't for the gut. I wanted my gut addressed, I wasn’t in a place where I wanted to mess with everything else first. I mentioned all of this stress to my nutrition and fitness coach, who, like Coach Kayli and I, is a gut health speciailst. He stated that he thought that he and I could do this together for less money and less invasive. I agreed. This is where we are now. I ordered a GI MAP test online. The mail you the testing materials, you complete the stool test and mail it back to the lab. My results were back within 2 weeks. The results showed high inflammation, H.Pylori and SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.) These are things that can be healed and treated. Brandon and I have come up with a protocol that we think will work. The protocol is coming from his experience and his wide network of other coaches and specialists that have completed this protocol before. The protocol I am following has also been reviewed by a functional medicine doctor and my primary medical provider. They approve of the protocol and are supervising me throughout this journey. This is very much a collaboration as everyone involved has been given the lab results and the protocol and knows where we are every step of the way. The first phase of this journey that is required is the diet. Before we can do anything, we have to prepare the gut for treatment. Temporarily changing my diet will help reduce inflammation which will not only help me feel better but also make my gut more susceptible to the treatment. The diet changes I am implementing are moving toward gluten free and low FODMAP diets. We are also cutting out caffeine and alcohol, although I don’t drink. I will need to eat 3 to 4 hours apart to allow the gut time to recover and digest each meal. I will also be reducing the amount of intensity and frequency of training. The body needs to dedicate the energy to healing the gut so I will be lifting 3 days per week and not exceeding 7 RPE/3 RIR. No high intensity cardio, only walks, yoga and mobility. I will also be taking 10 minute walks after meals to aid in digestion. I have also started peppermint oil to help soothe the GI tract and Saccharomyces Boulardii. S. Boulardii is a good bacteria that acts as a probiotic in the gut. This is used to help boost intestinal immunity and also helps with diarrhea. I will also be starting a colostrum supplement. This will be used to help repair the gut lining and make it stronger so that it can treat the H.Pylori infection. I have not received the colostrum supplement but I have received the S. Bouldarii. I started it on Saturday March 19th. I have tolerated it well. I am having some cramping but it isn’t terrible. No diarrhea or vomiting. My diet changes have started but I am not fully at gluten free or low FODMAP quite yet. It’s a gradual process and I had some groceries that I needed to finish so they didn’t go to waste. I seem to be doing well so far. I will start the colostrum as soon as I receive it. I will continue to move the diet toward gluten free and low FODMAP and will take the two supplements for 2 weeks. After two weeks, if I’ve handled the protocol well so far, we will progress to phase 2, but that phase will be dictated by my progress over these 2 weeks. So you’ve been listening to Kayli and I about how to lose body fat and you’ve adjusted your diet and you’ve started resistance training. That’s fantastic news. Wait . . . you say the scale is up this morning. Oh man that must have been scary huh? Well guess what! I have more good news for you, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing and it’s totally normal. Fat loss and weight loss are not linear. It is very common and incredibly normal to see the scale go up and down from day to day. This is why I suggest that you weigh daily. Now, if you struggle with body dysmorphic disorder or the scale causes you severe emotional distress, that suggestion changes. When you weigh daily and record that weight somewhere, you can plot the weight on a chart and you will see the overall trend going down. We don’t care about what is happening in the micro perspective here, it’s the macro that matters. When you are in a fat loss phase, you should be watching several different metrics. I suggest keeping track of your body measurements, biofeedback, how your clothes fit, and the scale. Oftentimes the scale won’t move but you notice your clothes are looser and your measurements are dropping. This is usually a good indicator that you are gaining muscle mass and losing body fat. None of these metrics by themselves are good indicators of your progress. You must look at all of them together. As a matter of fact, the very definition of a plateau in fat loss requires a consecutive 4 week of no scale movements and no measurement movements. Unless both are stalled for 4 consecutive weeks, you are still making progress. There are several things that can cause the scale to fluctuate. Your body weight can fluctuate up to 4% from day to day depending on the situation and your body. Water can often be a driver of scale weight. You could have been dehydrated one day which made your body hold on to more water, this can make the scale go up. Your body could be inflamed from a hard workout, this can make the scale go up. You could have undigested food left in the gut which would make the scale go up. You could be full of poop. I don’t mean that facetiously. If you’re struggling with constipation or you didn’t get enough fiber to help you clear out your bowels, the scale will go up. Stress, lack of sleep, eating later at night, eating fried or sugary foods can all make the scale go up. It is important to be aware that in order to gain 1 pound of body fat in a day, you had to eat 3500 calories OVER your maintenance calories. So if you eat 2000 calories per day just to stay at the same weight, you would need to eat 5500 calories that day for the increase in the scale to be due to body fat. So the next time the scale is up 2 pounds from the day before. Ask yourself, “did I really eat 7000 EXTRA calories yesterday?” I would almost guarantee the answer is no. Since I mentioned measurements, I feel like I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a swing in the other direction. I mentioned all the different types of metrics that you should watch for a reason. We don’t just watch these to test the validity of the scale. They are important in their own right. For example, say the scale is going down and you’re super stoked about that but the measurements are not dropping. That’s discouraging isn’t it? If you are a person with quite a bit of extra weight to lose and the scale starts dropping but the measurements are not budging and you aren’t noticing a difference in your progress pics, there’s a good chance you are losing fat, but it isn’t going to be the superficial body fat that gives your body shape. You are most likely losing the visceral fat first. This is the fat that surrounds your organs. This is a good thing. Do not let this discourage you. This is why the first 10 pounds lost causes the most impact on your health markers on lab work with your doctor. When you drop the visceral fat, your body can work more efficiently. I would strongly suggest watching several different measurements of progress. Scale, measurements and photos are all great ways to judge your progress. I would argue that even if those things aren’t moving or changing, but you feel better, you are winning. Oftentimes if you chase health and wellness, the body you want will come later and then you can really enjoy your newer body and actually feel better in it. If you would like more 1 on 1 help reaching your fat loss goals fill out our coaching application to hop on a free coaching call so we can discuss your goals and see if you would make a great fit for the Phoenix Rising Program. |
AuthorKayli is a certified personal trainer and online coach that specializes in fitness, wellness, nutrition, mindset, mobility and everything in between. Categories
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