In this early‑morning episode of the Daniel Bourke Show, the host opens with a personal cold‑shower challenge, explaining that he now takes cold showers for the majority of his daily routine because they make him feel energized despite limited sleep. He outlines three primary benefits of cold‑water exposure that he has found compelling from his own experience and online research. First, cold showers stimulate brown adipose tissue, which can help burn white fat and potentially lead to modest weight loss over time. Second, the shock of cold water triggers deep breathing and increased blood flow, boosting circulation and white‑blood‑cell activity, thereby supporting immunity. Third, cold water preserves the skin’s natural oils and temporarily tightens pores, preventing clogging and keeping hair and skin healthier compared to hot showers that strip oils. Throughout, he interweaves anecdotes about attending a wedding in Noosa, references to Wim Hof’s methods, and encourages listeners to try a 30‑second cold‑shower challenge. The episode blends personal storytelling with informal health advice and a call to action.
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What's going on everyone? Welcome back to day 88 of the Daniel Bourke Show. Two 8s, that's awesome. What an awesome number. Thank you so much for tuning in on YouTube and the podcast. Hope whatever you're up to, you're up to, you're having an amazing day. I feel incredible. You know why? Because I just had a cold shower. Now, if you've never had a cold shower, I highly recommend trying it. That's actually today's challenge. I'm going to do the challenge right up the front. So the challenge is have a cold shower. Now, even if you go, I don't know, your normal temperature, hot water for the whole shower, and then the last 30 seconds, turn it on cold. Now, over the past couple of days, I haven't had the greatest sleep quality. I was at a friend's place the other night, and I was a bit late here last night because of a party and whatnot. But, oh, by the way, I'm still at Noosa. I'm here for a wedding today. It's my first wedding. I've never been to a wedding before. I've DJ'd at weddings and stuff like that, but today, in a few hours' time, some of my good family friends are going to get married. So, congratulations, SJ and Paul. Nonetheless, today's episode is going to be on the— I found some benefits of cold showers, and I've been taking them for, I don't know, majority of this year and some of last year. And I would say 80% of my showers are cold now, like fully cold. I don't turn on any hot water. I get in there and it's cold. And the reason being is because I, regardless of the facts, I genuinely feel better after after them, just the way I feel, regardless of the health benefits and the science behind it and whatnot. But after the first few times, you do not like it. But I'd say after you do it half a dozen times, the feeling starts to get addictive. Like, when you, even if it's only for like 30 seconds or a minute, it starts to get really addictive. Like, when you get in the cold shower and you come out, you've got all this energy. It's like you've just had a cup of coffee. Like, last night I probably had maybe 6, under 6 hours of sleep, but now I'm feeling great. I'm sure it's gonna catch up with me later, but, and I'm not advocating to replace sleep with cold showers, but let's just dive straight into science. What's the science say? So, I picked out 3 points that stand out to me out of the hundreds of things that you'll find online about cold showers. But number 1 is that it stimulates brown fat. And now, why is that good? Like, what's the difference? Brown, so you've got, body's got 2 types of fat, brown fat, white fat. You think of it like this: brown fat is good, white fat is bad. White fat's that fat you get around your gut and your stomach and your— the fat that people generally see as bad. Whereas brown fat is more— it's actually up in the back of your neck, it's in different locations of the body, but it's good. Stimulating brown fat, like, helps to burn white fat. It incre— like, and I don't know the full science behind it, but from what I've read is that taking cold showers, there's been studies done, just taking Taking a cold shower can stimulate brown fat that much that you can lose up to 9 pounds over the course of a year, just by how many calories brown fat burns because of the stimulation you're giving it from taking cold, from cold exposure. That's what we're looking for. Not necessarily cold showers, like you could take a cold bath, you could swim in a lake or whatever, but cold exposure is the key here. So that's number 1, it stimulates brown fat. Number 2, it improves immunity and circulation. The deep breathing to keep you warm improves your blood circulation. So when you, when you breathe in heavily from the shower, that is essentially your body trying to take in more oxygen to keep it warm. And how does it improve your circulation? So you have increased blood flow around your major organs to keep them warm. And with increased circulation, you release more white blood cells, which is good for immunity and just general circulation. Much better. And so again, it's from the cold exposure. It's your body trying to adapt to the cold. And we'll go off on a little bit of a tangent here. Hot showers are totally not necessary. They're a complete luxury, right? And I'm guilty. I've had hot showers my whole life. Like, you sort of take it for granted sometimes. And whenever the cold water, the hot water doesn't work in your house or your apartment or whatever, it's a burden. But in the past, cold showers were all people had, and that's— and they had to bathe wherever they would find water. And most of the time, if you ever swam in a lake or a pond or whatever, it's not warm often, it's cold. And so the fact that we have hot showers is something to be incredibly grateful for. What's number 3? So number 2 was it improves immunity and circulation through more blood flow around the organs and increased white cell counts. So number 3 is keeps the skin and the hair in good condition. Now, how does it do this? So, hot water usually is, dries out the skin really quickly. It washes away all of your skin's natural oils because it's so hot. It expose, your pores expand and the hot water, 'cause it's the molecules in the hot water are moving, moving faster, they, they wash off all your natural oils in your skin. And cold water temporarily tightens pores. So, all the dirt that's on your skin and whatnot on your face, etc. It temporarily tightens those pores so dirt can't seep into it and grow into something that you don't want. And so tighter pores prevents the skin from getting clogged, and cold water, yeah, as I said, helps to maintain the natural oils of the skin. And so there are my 3 main points. There's hundreds more on the internet, but they, they sort of appealed to me because I've had skin problems in the past, fat problems in the past, and immune system system and circulation problems in the past. So if it— if cold showers can help to stimulate brown fat and burn some calories, and it can improve my blood flow, and it can keep my skin and hair in good condition, well, I can do 30 seconds a day of cold showers. But what about the rest of the day? There's a wedding in a few hours. I've got to go down. There's a breakfast. I'm gonna upload this podcast, and then— well, I'm gonna upload the podcast. I'll upload the YouTube video in a few days, but then go down down to breakfast, go to a wedding. Don't know what to expect from a wedding. I've got to get dressed up in a suit, but I think it should be a good day. It's going to be good fun. I'm going to be dancing. Um, and yeah, thought I'd do the podcast nice and early. It is 8:44 AM, so this is probably one of the earliest podcasts I've ever done. So whatever you're up to, I hope you're having an awesome day. I love you all. Remember today's challenge: have a cold shower. You can have a warm shower, 30 seconds. Try it for 1 day. If you want to find out a bit more about cold showers, I'd say look up Wim Hof. Wim Hof. Awesome dude. You'll love all his stuff. But nonetheless, we'll catch you tomorrow. Davey and I.
