Ben GreenfieldFounder, Ben Greenfield Life

Cold Plunges & Testosterone: What Nobody Tells You!

10 Jul 2025 · 1 min

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A short transcript excerpt from a Ben Greenfield video discussing ice baths (cold plunges). The speaker recounts receiving an elevated PSA lab result (PSA = 7 at age ~52, with >4 considered elevated), which motivated seriousness about ice baths. The speaker also emphasizes magnesium supplementation for cold bathing, noting magnesium’s central role in hundreds of metabolic reactions and mitochondrial function and that most body magnesium is not in blood.

Questions this video answers

About 52 years old

Anything above 4 is considered elevated risk

Chapters

I did not get serious about ice baths until I got a lab report back with my prostate specific antigen. So this is a PSA. And I was, I don't know, 52 at the time. It's very typical for men that age to get a PSA checked. Mine was seven. Anything above four is considered an elevated risk for prostate cancer. So I got this lab test and, you know, I go straight to WebMD or whatever it was online. You spend 20 minutes online and you're going to convince yourself that you will die. You said magnesium is critical coal as a supplement if you're going to be doing cold bathing. I'd never heard that before. Why do you say that? Magnesium catalyzes hundreds of metabolic reactions. Magnesium is essential to mitochondrial function, so it does attach to the mitochondria. The funny thing about magnesium is almost none of it is stored in your blood. Only 1% of the total body burden of magnesium is in the blood. Most of it is in the bones. It can also be in the muscles. But when you get cold blood serum, studies show.