Cum ne ajută frigul, căldura și TERAPIA DE CONTRAST | BOABE DE CUNOAȘTERE | cu Dr. Susanna Søberg

There is so much showing that some different levels. The cold water is something that benefits every one of us. I mean, if you had just the benefits from a pill, some kind of pill, people would take it.

Yeah.

But here you have a multiple pill. It will help you on your physical health, on your mental health, and you can just take it. It's free.

What happens in the body when we expose the body to the cold?

We can see that people have a higher energy expenditure, so they burn more calories when they get cold. I always say use it or lose it actually, because if you don't use the brown fat for anything, there's a risk that you're gonna lose it in time. This is longevity. So, yeah, I think that is important.

What about cold plunge? How, how long should you stay there to have this dopamine release?

How much stress you can tolerate is how much pain you can tolerate. So if you can tolerate more pain, you would actually train how much stress, mental stress you can take in. You can actually go from to no stress in within a few minutes.

How many times should we do this contrast therapy? I mean, how many sessions a week would you recommend for the maximum benefits? Kumar feeds. Him. Laboratories. Doctor susanna soberg metabolism winter swimming. Reports magazine. Also some link on the screen. Is the new normal. Susanna Soberg, this is such a great honor to have you here and to talk about cold exposure and heat exposure. We at this channel are like very interested in this. We have a lot of materials about that. I'm so glad that we can have top leading researcher telling us what, what are the true scientific, scientifically true discoveries about cold and heat exposure.

Well, thank you. First of all, thank you for inviting me to this podcast. I am, I'm truly honored to actually also talk to the Romanian people speaking to you. So I am very happy to do that. So, and, and also get the cold exposure out here. I mean, it is, I've heard this is actually something that you don't do. I think it's important. I think it's a good, good topic for, for your podcast. It's so big here.

Let's talk about cold first and then about the heat. Let's talk about the mechanism, what happens in the body when we expose the body to the cold.

Yeah. So first of all, when you expose your body to the cold, it could be just the cold wind. If you're just going outside, just wearing a T shirt and you get cold on your skin. So whether it's cold wind or it is cold water, you will have an activation of your cold Receptors in the skin. And we have so many of them because we need them to tell the brain that now it's getting really cold. And we need to save our body, we need to save ourselves from getting hypothermic. So the body reacts instantly by signaling from the code receptors in the skin to the brain, where we have a temperature regulating center. And that center makes sure all the time that we are in the perfect balance of temperature. And those receptors up there have connections to other receptors. So it's kind of like telling all the time, are you getting a little bit colder? Are you getting a little bit warmer? And that little center in the brain then signals to what we call the brown fat. So the brown fat is my research area. I've been researching this for many years at the university. Seven years to be specific, and continue to do that today. And that's 10 years. The brown fat is an organ that is centered very, very close to our central nervous system. Which is important because when that temperature regulating center gets activated by telling that, these receptors telling, well, it's getting super cold. So it releases noradrenaline. And the noradrenaline adrenaline is a brain chemical and also a hormone from the adrenal glands that is released as soon as we get cold. And those noradrenaline small molecules would then go to the brown fat and activate that. And the brown fat then starts to heat you up from the inside. The brown fat is our healthy fat. So I just want to distinguish that from the white fat. We know the white fat, that is what we want to get rid of. But we of course need a bit of that. But we don't need as much as we have today in our society. So obesity is a huge problem. That's why I studied this. So white fat is storing our fat and the brown fat is actually spending our fat. So it increases the energy expenditure, the metabolism and burns the fat.

Yeah, it's like it's, it's also fat, it's called fat, but it's, it has a different anatomy. Yeah, it's like a factory that is burning the triglyglycerides. Right? The fat, the liquid fat inside it is.

Yeah, exactly, the triglycerides and also the glucose. So it burns the glucose that is in our bloodstream, meaning that it clears it. So as soon as you get cold on your skin, sends a signal to the brain that you're getting cold. Noradrenaline is released within a split second and then puts sets on the brown fat cells. And that will immediately increase the heat in your body and it will then take up triglycerides of fuel, fuel, which is sugar and fat from the bloodstream. And that is the way to clear our sugar and fat in our bloodstream. And in that way burn calories. So when you get cold, you actually burn calories. And the brown fat is the key to this. So that is also why you don't shiver at first when you, let's say you go into the cold water, you want to get cold because you want that. All the benefits from it. We're going to go back to that.

Yeah.

But what happens there is the body goes in a fight and flight system mode. You can say it tries to survive because the brain doesn't know that you are doing this deliberately. But of course we are talking about deliberate cold exposure. So you go deliberately into the cold water and you know you're going to stay there for a short period of time. But the, the brain tells you, oh, we need to make sure that we don't die.

That's what makes cold exposure kind of unpleasant.

Yeah, exactly. But it's actually a way to get uncomfortable on, on, on purpose. But it's also what you do when you exercise. But it's a good thing because then you are awaking all your cells in your body. You are increasing mitochondria, you are exposing your brown fat to this, this activation which makes the brown fat cells actually grow. And it's like muscle cells. You want the brown fat cells to grow because they will help you keep you warm and it will burn your calories in your body. So you want more brown fat.

Yeah.

So that's on the brown fat side. There's so many mechanisms that we can talk about, but that was just one pathway.

Yes. One pathway is that the brown fat gets, starts to burn triglycerides and glucose from the blood. So they burn calories. About that. Is there any research showing how much calories can you burn? For example, if you walk? We know like how much calories we burn in 10 minutes of walk or 10 minutes of jumping rope or 10 minutes of weightlifting. What about cold exposure? I mean, how many calories can you burn exposing yourself to the cold?

I think we need more research on exactly what happens when you immerse into the cold water and what happens there. I think that that is something that is coming. Yeah. And how many calories exactly you are burning depends also on body type. So body composition, age.

Yeah.

And I think there are variables here that we need to discover also. But what we can see also from my studies is that when you do this on in, you can say you get adapted to the cold. So you continue doing this deliberately over a period of time. We can see that when you are adapted, you have done this maybe for one year or something like that. We can see that people have a higher energy expenditure, so they burn more calories when they get cold. That is what we could see from my studies. And these are done, of course, in a laboratory where everything is very controlled. So we could measure pretty precise how we could do that or how many calories we could burn. Yeah, but what we could see is that when you are an adapted winter swimmer, as we call it in Denmark, then you burn more calories faster. And we measure that with a very specific way. But it's, but it's more like in a controlled setting in the laboratory. So what we can see from that is that the brown fat is more activated, it's more efficient because the mitochondria are more rich in these cells and in the muscle cells.

Okay. So you sort of get to train your brown fat to, to you train them, basically.

You train them. Yeah.

To burn more.

To burn more. It's just like a muscle cell. It actually looks a little bit like a muscle cell. It is, has this very brown, dark color and muscle fibers have this color too. And, and have also the ability to grow. So it's actually like training a muscle. You have to train your brown fat.

So they can grow in time, can.

Actually grow, but it can also make more or one could be more efficient.

That was one of my questions because when I was like reading literature and studying brown fat, what like physiology book says is that when we are young we have a lot of brown fat. Yeah, because like kids can really shiver to, to create energy. So we have a lot of brown fat and that brown fat gets to, to diminish during the time. So I've read somewhere that when older you got, you have around from 60 to 170 grams of brown fat left. And the question is, can you, is it all that you get and you get to train that brown fat or you can actually create more brown fat? I mean, our body, is it able to create new brown fat cells?

Yeah, yeah. And it's really great question because that's, that's the point of it. Yeah. So just like you can grow your muscles, the brown fat cells are depo. The organ can actually grow also. So you can get more cells, but you can also, you can also get the more efficient. Just like your muscle cells will be more efficient because you get more Mitochondria rich cells. Yeah, yeah, but, And I mean, 60 to 170 grams is maybe on the lower end. I think newer studies have shown that we have up to 250 grams.

Okay, so it's nice.

Yeah, that's nice. That's really good. And what we can also see that, that people who work outside or just spend a lot of time outside in nature, they are more exposed to the cold, of course, but they also have more brown fat. They have a higher efficiency in the brown fat cells. So what we saw in our studies and in, in winter swimmers were that they had a higher efficiency or activation of the brown fat when they get cold. And we can see that because they have a higher increase in temperature in the body from the brown fat. And that measures exactly on the main outcome from the brown fat. And I think that is interesting because it is not only about how big is the organ, but also how efficient are these cells. The more efficient they are, the more mitochondria they're in the cells. Yeah. So if the brown fat can increase the temperature in the body, then you also have efficient organ to burn those calories. And you want, you really want that. So you can grow it and you can also make the cells more efficient, it seems.

That's amazing because that shifts my perspective from like, let's take a cold shower, let's say in the morning for immediate benefits. But I was never thinking that those benefits can be trained in time. So you can get better and better on that and you can like, it's like exercising. You exercise because you like, like the feeling after the exercise, but you get more performance in time and healthier inside. That's the same thing with cold exposure. I mean, we can practice it on a daily basis to get better and better in general.

Right, exactly. And now we are talking very specifically how to help your body on the metabolic side. And why should you do cold exposure just for the metabolic benefits. But this has many benefits. This. There was also the mental benefits of this. But keeping that pace and keep doing this will help you keep your brown fat. I always say use it or lose it actually, because if you don't use the brown fat for anything, there is a risk that you're going to lose it in time.

Yeah.

So what we see from research studies is that after the age of 40, we will actually have smaller or less and less brown fat. But we also see that when we have measured in people who are 60 years old or maybe even older, actually, they have brown fat as well. So it's not like, it's just. You just know that from the age of 40 or 50, you would just lose it. It's not like that. It depends on whether you are actually activating it. So just like the muscle cells keep activating these. This is the main thing. You need to activate it to keep that metabolism up. And you need to do that so you keep yourself healthier for cardiovascular function and also be healthier. This is longevity. So yeah, I think that is important.

That brings cold exposure so close to like to the exercise. Yeah, on all levels. Like we, if we don't exercise after 40 years, we lose our muscles.

Yeah.

We go to sarcopenia. So this is, this is the same things happens with, with the brown fat. And we say, look, yeah, we don't talk only about the benefits of exercise. We talk about the downsides of not exercising. Like not exercising is bad, right?

Yes.

So we can say the same in the same way that not exposing yourself to cold is bad. Right. For the health. It is bad because you lose that brown fat.

Exactly. But I think this is like, this is so new. Even though this is so new, people are like, oh, can cold exposure or cold water immersion be anything that we can use for longevity? Is this actually something that we need to train, train our body to get uncomfortable in order for us to stay healthy? Healthy. And I think this can be comparison to back in, I think it's the 60s or something when, when jogging came in. I don't know if you know that, but. But I was not born yet, but yeah, me neither. No, exactly. But I've seen these clips where people are joggin, these black and white. I don't know, maybe it's the 50s. But jogging around in California and the speaker saying, oh, people have started jogging around and they are jogging. Look at this picture. And they have these hot pants on and you know, the, the trees and everything. And people are like jogging around in California. And then the speaker says, this is such a fun trend, but let's see if it's gonna just die in, in five years because it seems so stupid. Why are people running around for nothing? And then it's just. I think this is actually the same thing. We need to get over that. Where people are saying, oh, it's just a trendy thing. No, it's not. Because this is physiology. We can see that when you train your brown fat, just like you train your muscles, you will actually have health benefits on exactly what is causing some of the most, you can say killing diseases in the world, which is diabetes, cardiovascular Diseases. And these are actually something that we need to work on not only with drugs. We need to do something that everybody can do, which is for many people would be free cold exposure, cold showers. And it's actually something that will help them so you don't have to take drugs all the time to keep yourself healthy or get healthier.

Yeah, exactly. I love the way it always gets back on. On how our body is built and what is built for. Yeah, like our body is built to move. Right. So because we work in offices now, we have to do like artificial movement. Yeah. You go to the gym and you walk on the treadmill or you are you jogging and it seems stupid.

Yeah.

But it replaces the things we were doing. Like it's not that like in prehistoric humans were walking about 15, 15,000 steps a day. So we have to replace that somehow. And it does a treadmill. So now also a prehistoric man was exposed to cold and heat all of the time because we didn't have like climatized rooms. Yeah. Now we have them. So this is like a replacement of what we are used to do. But we have to do it artificially, like to cold expose ourselves. And a lot of people even in Romania are like, why should I take cold shower in the morning? I mean stupid. Why should I do that? Yeah, like what for? That's what for. Your body is made for that and you're losing it and you can become sicker if you not do that. So.

Yeah, exactly.

That's always getting back to basics.

Yeah, yeah, well said. Yeah.

And you said about the brown fat. So that's one of the pathways you, you get cold exposure on your skin. You get the signals to the brain. The brain activates with some chemicals. Activate this brown fat. Yeah. And it's generating heat. What, what, what else happens when you expose yourself to, to, to cold?

Well, if we are still talking about maybe the. Let's stay in the brain because that's where the noradrenaline also comes from. You will have an increase in dopamine and a dopamine spike that you get from going into the water might be up to 2.5 fold. It could be up to fivefold actually.

Okay.

But if you do that, then you would definitely get that drive and you would get that energy from the noradrenaline and you would also get with. You can stay in the water for, for a minute or one and a half a minute or something like that. Then you would get over what is called the cold shock. And the cold shock response is there to activate the Body and tell the body, oh, you are actually doing something that, that is activating your, your fight and flight system. And, and you should be prepared. So it's a fight and flight. So you have to fight the water or flight from it. But you stay there deliberately. So you are in control, let's say. Of course you're in control. You breathe yourself into control. When you use your breath to get into control, meaning you will dampen that stress response. And you want to do that because then you get over that feeling of not being able to breathe, that is one thing. But telling your body you are okay, you don't have to panic. I am in control.

Yeah.

Telling your body to do that trains both your stress window so you can tolerate more stress. And we need to train that in our society because we are not, we are not getting out there in nature. We are not stressing ourselves deliberately so we can tolerate more stress. Meaning we have kind of like a society where we are closing in on what we can adapt to. And we are not used to stress. But using that cold to train our stress window means that we can tolerate more. Meaning that when you get over the cold shock, then you get calm. So you activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is our relax and digest system. So you can actually go from stress to no stress in within a few minutes if you can train yourself to breathe yourself and calm yourself down. And that is both a mental training, but it's also a physiological training. So within those two minutes, you have trained a lot. Yeah, on many things actually. Yeah.

So this, this mental training you beside. I mean, you can go to the cold, cold exposure, expose yourself to the cold. Now we know what the benefits of like physiological benefits of brown fat activation. Right. But still you have that shock. And that's, that's what, what I want to ask you. Because when I get into the like cold water, cold plunge, and it's about 7 degrees Celsius. Yeah, about 7 degrees Celsius.

You do cold plunge?

Yeah, sometimes in the gym, I have in the gym a local plunge so I can jump there and we, yeah, we're gonna get to, to the protocols and what's the best way to do that? Yeah, but even if, if I go, even if it's after sauna or simply after, I simply go like I. Without doing the gym, without doing the exercises, I go and I. First thing I do is a cold plunge is getting like really, really uncomfortable. And what you say is that we have to train our ability to stay there and to say to the body. Okay. It's okay. It's going to be okay. I'm in control here. I can get out whenever I want, but I don't want that. And that's going to train our stress response. Yeah. Ability to take more stress, right?

Yes, exactly. And I think the reason why that is important is that we, we actually build our, our stress tolerance based on that. Not only physical, but it actually trains your mental capacity for stress. So. Meaning that all the stress that we get today also just by incoming emails will actually it would help you on the stress level. So the pathway for that is actually the same and it's on the pain threshold. It's a pain pathway. So what you train is your pain threshold.

Okay.

And it's funny how that is related. How much stress you can tolerate is how much pain you can tolerate. So if you can tolerate more pain, you would actually train how much stress, mental stress you can take in.

That's so cool. I see again I see the, the similarity with, with the sports because in sports when you like the most beneficial push is the last like push up you can make. And that's so much pain.

Yeah.

And you have to go over that pain and control it. So it's kind of the same mental training. But how can you like do you tips for me at least? How can I stay more there? Because there are times I can go do a cold plunge and stay for one minute there. But there's so many times that I just go into the water, into up to the, up to the neck.

Yeah.

And it's so painful. And I just stay there for four, five seconds and say okay, it go out. Yeah. I go swim, I go to the sauna. It's much better. How can, how can I improve my tolerance? What, what, what is the mantra I have to say to myself to stay there.

Okay. So I think that is, that is good. But it's also a little bit funny is the thing is that many people would, the first times they do this.

Yeah.

Would feel exactly that. It's so uncomfortable, it's so painful. I cannot stay more than a few seconds and then up. But actually maybe that is okay.

Yeah.

That maybe you should just keep in control and tell yourself, I'm gonna do again, I'm gonna try again. Five seconds is fine. Then next time maybe count to 10 and tell yourself, well I can get over this. Yeah. I'm just have to breathe myself through and get over this wall, get over the next wall and tell myself I can do this. So it's also a way to tell yourself I have to stay here, be uncomfortable because afterwards I'll get all the benefits. So just like exercise, you're going to, you know, you have to do the. These. Nobody's doing 20 squats and thinking while you do number 20. This is so joyful. This is just the best thing. People are thinking, when can I just get to the, to the 80s, 80 squats and then I'm done.

Yeah.

And everybody thinks that it's the same mentality you are bringing to the cold water. You just have to push through Eventually. Eventually when you have adapt it more, then you will have that feeling that you get down, you breathe for a few seconds. Actually you can train yourself to do this and you use your breath for that. So the breath is actually the key here. And I'm going to go back to that. Just a second.

Okay.

Yeah. So I think that getting adapted is the key. Get adapted slowly is the key. Just accept that you cannot do two minutes the first time. It's okay. And if you do that, you might have, you might become so cold afterwards that you will be scared to do it again. Maybe. So don't push yourself too hard. Just take it step by step. It would take a few months if you do this a couple of times per week. And within a few months you will be so adapted that within a few seconds you can breathe yourself through and then you will already be at the point where you will have activated your parasympathetic nervous system. So you'd be relaxed and you would sit there and you would be surprised when you think, I am actually enjoying this.

Okay.

This is actually. Okay, I'm sitting here. This is cold water shock after the shock.

Yeah, but you will, as far as I know, it's no, no way you can get rid of that uncomfortable state. So you have to accept is going to be painful and uncomfortable all of the time.

Every time you go, it's going to be uncomfortable.

Yeah.

But the uncomfortable timing will decrease. Okay. So it's going to be more painful in the beginning. Just like exercise, you are training your cells, your mitochondria and they need to adapt. So you're actually training that. Exactly the same is happening when you go and train in your, in your training center. So those muscle cells need to get adapted, but it hurts afterwards. Right. If you, you, you don't run a marathon from going sitting on your couch. You don't just do that because that's going to be painful. So that's why I'm saying take it slowly with the cold, you're training your adaptation. So it's okay to do five seconds, but the way to get over that five seconds pain and actually get over to the other side of the cold shock, which I would recommend that people do. So they will activate the, the relaxed system in your body and there are many good health benefits from that as well. That is to use your breath. So your breath is the key here. Just focus on that and on nothing else.

So was. Was the right way to breed when you cold plunger cold expose yourself?

Yes. I, I would recommend that people who are not adapted and I would, I would suspect that many people in Romania are not that adapted to the cold because you don't use it that much. But you should, you should start. This is just suggested for me. But do, do use your nose to breathe in.

Nose to breathe in.

Yeah. And because you're not adapted, you, you will start to hyperventilate because of the cold shock, right?

Yeah.

So you would need to push out through the mouth. So do the circle of like and then try to see if you can do it slower and slower, but just focus on that. Even though it's a painful thing sitting in the cold, but just stay there for a few seconds and try to breathe yourself through. When you can get. Breathe yourself through over the cold shock, then you made it. Okay.

So you have to breathe like that when you're inside the water. Right. But.

But you can do it before as well.

Okay, so do. How much time should I do it before getting inside the cold water?

Depends on how much anxiety you have before going into the cold water.

A lot.

Yeah. Okay. A lot. So let's say that you are maybe outside, you found a lake you want to dip in. Let's just say that. Yeah. So you would take off your clothing, you have your swimwear on, and there's a cold wind. Try to see if you can use that breathing technique in the wind. Just depending on how much wind there is, you can do it for one minute or you can do it for a few seconds. But try to get into the rhythm before you go in because then you just have to continue that and it's easier for the brain to just do the same thing. Yeah. And you can focus on that. So breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. And when you then start to go into the water, you will activate that cold shock and that's gonna activate also your hyperventilation. So you will have that state of like, not feeling you can really breathe. But that's okay. You are in control. You don't have to rush in, but you can. But go steady and don't, don't go up to your knees and think, oh, I'm going to, going to go back.

Okay.

Just be determined on what you do. Go in, breathe through like that. And if you can stay in the water for just a few seconds, try to breathe like this circle. Then the end goal, you can say is to see if you can use only the nose. Yeah. So this is when you have tried this a few times, I would say only the nose. Yeah. See if you can get over the cold shock. When you do, you are, you will be able to breathe only through the nose, in and out. And that is a good thing because that, that exercise in itself activates the parasympathetic nervous system. It increases what is also called nitric oxide. And we really want that perfect, perfect molecule in the body because that is also helping your oxygen level to the brain.

Yeah.

And it helps also getting that oxygen further out in your lungs and diffuse to the red blood cells and that will transport out to all your cells in the body. And you do want to get a better perfusion of oxygen in to your, all your limbs, all your organs and, and out to your legs, your toes. That's, that is, that's the circulation part of this is a benefit because you.

At first you think maybe you, you get lack of oxygen because the vessel are constricting their self. Yeah. Because you, you want to protect yourself. Like the body protects itself from the cold by vasoconstriction. Right. And you think you, you will get not enough oxygen. But this nitric oxide you said about, it's like doing the opposite thing. So when you got get out, you get plenty of oxygen everywhere.

Some people you can see in adapted winter swimmers, I don't know if you've seen this, but they get really red afterwards. Yeah, that's because the vasoconstriction you just mentioned, as soon as you get cold or get into the water, there's a fast vascular constriction. When you're not adapted, that constriction ability is not as efficient. So that is why you are building the adaptation. Right. So in time, the more and more you do this, and it's not about how long you do it, I just want to point that, that out. It's not about timing on how long you're in the water, it's about how often you do it. Okay. So the frequency. So vasoconstriction is a way to protect the body against the cold. Yeah, yeah. And when you have done that multiple times, you get more and more adapted. That ability increases, but also your vasodilation increases. And with vasodilation and an increase in nitric oxide and more oxygen in the body. Because now let's say you can actually breathe yourself through the cold shock and you have that increase in nitric oxide in the body, you would have that increase of oxygen going all the way out to your skin. So what you will see in adapted winter swimmers is that they get red on the skin as soon as they almost get up from the water. And when you're not that adapted, it doesn't really happen in the beginning, but some actually get really red afterwards. So that's not from the sauna. You also get red skin from the sauna because of the heat. Yeah. But you could also just train your blood vessels and your small blood vessels to actually contract and dilate.

So that's like a cardiovascular exercise. Right?

Exactly.

And that's the reason why we see in studies blood hypertension decreasing in time when practicing cold exposure. Right. Because you train your vessels to do that.

Exactly. But you. What, what you, we see in from studies is that people who are adapted to, to cold water, they have, they get a lower blood pressure.

Yeah.

Which is, is an underrated health outcome. I would say we don't talk enough, enough about it. But what we do when we go to the doctor is to get our blood pressure measured as almost the first thing is like do a health check, measure the blood pressure. It tells so much about your heart health.

Yeah.

And your cardiovascular health.

Yeah.

So if you have a high blood pressure, we know, okay, there's something not right with your cardiovascular system, your heart, something is not right. So what we can see that this is actually a teller. So if you get a lower blood pressure, it means that you have definitely better blood circulation. And also you have exercised your heart, so your heart health is better. And that's probably also because you increase this nitric oxide. And the nitric oxide is very good for heart health. If you just look at the, at the vascularization of the heart, we can see from. This is from mice studies that if they have more nitric oxide, the heart health or the, the, the vascularization of the heart and also the, the pumping function, the electricity. Electricity, the. You know what I mean? Yeah. Of the heart is actually getting better. So you do want that increase in nitric oxide for heart health. And maybe exactly that is the outcome when people have been doing winter swimming for a long time, that you have this increase in nitric oxide. And you will have more mitochondria, you have more efficient mitochondria, more brown fat activation. All that together makes the blood pressure go down because you also decrease inflammation. We haven't talked about that, but inflammation.

We're going to talk about inflammation. But before that, I want to ask you there, I have some more questions that derives from your. Your answer. First of all, when I go to the cold shower or cold water, my reflex is to hyperventilate. Like that.

Yeah.

Is it a good thing? Or should I counteract that by should I try?

You should definitely try.

Okay.

Because you don't want to hyperventilate. The thing is, when you go into the cold water, it's important to remember that it actually doesn't increase the blood flow to the brain, which is a misconception. I hear people talk about this online, and that's not happening. So because you activate the sympathetic nervous system, you get less oxygen to the brain. So you can get a little bit dizzy. I don't know if you tried that, but some might have. And that's because of the hyperventilation. You don't. And. And the. And the constriction of the blood vessels. The activation of sympathetic nervous system. No. Almost. No. Nobody's. 30 to 40% less blood flow to the brain.

Really? So much.

Yes, it's a lot. It's a lot. And we have researched this actually from a laboratory in Denmark.

Yeah.

And so it's important to control your breathing. Try to see if you can breathe yourself with the technique I just mentioned to see if you can get a relaxed nervous system. So dampen your stress response.

Yeah.

Because if you can get over that cold shock, you would have the activation of the parasympathetic nervous system. And when you get to that stage, you will have the blood flow to the brain again.

Yeah. Okay, so that makes sense. So we have. You have to counteract that reflex to hyperventilate and to relax and breathe in the nose, breathe out through the mouth. But I see a lot of techniques that promote hyperventilation. Like 10 minutes before going to the cold shower, cold plunge, like laying down and doing session of, like, hyperventilation, and then again hyperventilate and stuff like that. What do you think about this kind of technique?

Yeah. So I'm gonna explain on the physiological side what's happening in the body. So when you do hyperventilation, as I said, you decrease the oxygen to the brain. So imagine that you do this 10 minutes, 20 minutes before you go into the cold water and you have planned this so you know that you have less oxygen in the brain then you step into the water. And with the knowledge you now have from, I explained before you go into the water, you will have that activation further from activating your sympathetic nervous system from the cold water. So you have a further decrease of blood flow to the brain.

Yeah.

And you already had a lower blood flow to the brain before because you hyperventilated. So you're actually stepping into a potentially dangerous situation here because you might faint because no blood flow, less oxygen to the brain, then there is a risk of you actually fainting. And you don't want to do that when you go into the cold waters. Dangerous. And that's also why I'm, I'm saying just in general, for safety, don't go alone, just always bring someone. And if you have heart problems in general, and if you have a high blood pressure or low, just unregulated blood pressure, we don't recommend that you do cold water exposure or start it up at least. And you should ask your doctor if you, if you are not certain about that, of course. So that was just a disclaimer for that. But to say that hyperventilation before going into cold water is not something we recommend because you would have the risk of having too little oxygen to the brain and definitely not hold your breath in the water and then also donk your head, which I've seen, it's like, why are people doing this? But I think it's because people might not know what is happening in the body. Yeah, but if you don't have any oxygen to the brain and you didn't also dunk the head into the cold water, you shock your system and it's dangerous. It's not funny. I'm just laughing because it's, I, I see people do this and I, I try to sell, tell people don't do.

This dangerous hyperventilate before going to the cold plunge, you know?

Yeah.

Where it comes from, you think at first if you hyperventilate, if you do.

Yeah.

Before going into the cold water, you think that you are going to get more oxygen inside your blood. But the, the, the way body works, it's kind of different because in blood we have oxygen stick to some proteins and in the same proteins we have CO2. Right. So we have oxygen we use, after we use it, we get CO2, we have to take it out. So what happens when you hyperventilate? And what I have to say before that is that oxygen CO2 should be in equilibrium because if it's more CO2, less oxygen or otherwise, you are going to change the acidity of your blood. So they have to be in equilibrium. So when you do the hyperventilation, you get rid of CO2?

Yes.

I mean, you get rid of that CO2, so the body gets rid of oxygen. So if you do the hyperventilation, you get to get less oxygen in the blood. Is that correct?

I would think so, yeah. Yeah, it is true. Yeah.

For example, if you, if you see somebody fainting here in Romania a lot of the times and probably in other countries, you're going to get a bag and you got to. Yeah, you're going to breathe inside the bag. When you breathe inside the bag, you're getting out the CO2 and you take it back. So you increase the level of CO2, and by increasing the levels of CO2, you're gonna increase the level of the oxygen in the brain. So that's how it works. And it's, it's so strange that. Yeah, before going to the cold plunge, there is this crazy technique of hyperventilation which brings down the CO2 in your blood, it brings down the oxygen in your blood. And it's. Maybe it can be an exercise for somebody that's really experienced and he want to go further and go with less oxygen.

I would say it's for no. Nobody. Yeah, yeah, it's for no. It's, it's just a no. Yeah, it's just a no go. Just don't do that. But I think that hyperventilating breath work can be a good exercise, just not, not in combination with water.

Okay. For other benefits.

Other benefits. Do it in a, in a studio or something and do it for other reasons. Just not in combination with cold water.

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, you said about, like the scenario you, you proposed is kind of a topic for Romania, because I, I can't imagine a Romanian going to the forest, seeing a, a lake and going inside. It's much more realistic to take a cold shower. I mean, not a lot of people have like, cold plunge here, but everybody has a shower. So that's what, that's what, that's, that's what's what the Romanian can start with, with shower. Is there any way you, you have to do it? Should you go like directly in the cold water? Can you just go with your fits, with your feet, with the legs, with, with your middle body? But what's the best approach to go. To take a cold shower?

Okay, so I think there are benefits also to just do a cold shower. It's a. It's a wonderful place to start with the cold showers because you also activate your. Everything we just talked about. So the sympathetic nervous system. And you want to do that. So you also increase that mental threshold. You have the activation of the brown fat, active activation of your immune system. And you will have all these benefits. You might not have all the benefits from activating your parasympathetic nervous system, which is activated due to the immersion into cold water. So just to distinguish these kind of two modalities. So cold water is cold water. So you will get the benefits. That's alike here. But the modalities also has something to say. So if you are new to this, you can start with the cold shower. For me, personally, I would say cold showers, I find it a bit stressful because it's just stress, I think for a minute. I like the immersion because after the cold shock I also get that stress relief because of the parasympathetic activation.

Why don't you get it in the cold shower?

Well, it's because you. You are not immersing that. You're not activating that diving response. So. Yeah, and you want to do that. And that's what's happening when you immerse your body into water, whether it's cold or hot, it actually is activated reflex. So you want to have that. But you don't really get that from the cold showers. But you do get a lot of the health benefits anyways. So you can maybe say, start with the cold showers. Once you find yourself getting more and more adapted. It's a great way to get cold adapted. And then you can maybe switch to finding. Finding that lake. It's not that insane. I mean, it's. It's the nature you are born in.

Nature sounds a bit insane.

No, no. We do it all the time. In Denmark. We do it all the time.

Yeah, I guess.

Yeah. You should go. You should. You should watch our. Our beaches. It's full of winter swimmers.

Okay.

We do it all the time. If you go there, you see people walking down the Lido and going into the water. And Maybe they go 2 and 2 or in small groups. And you can see them laugh in the morning. Right. It's in the sunrise. It's just beautiful. And they have such a good time. But if you don't know this, and I guess not many Romanian do.

Yeah.

If you see this, you would think they are crazy. What are they doing? Why are they laughing? We're having so much fun. It's cold, it's painful. But it's because of the brain chemicals that's coming into your body. You feel this activation of the dopamine. So you get a little bit high from this. It's. I call it the swimmer's high. Just like the runner's high, you know, from running 10km or something. You get the same high from that, and you do that within a few minutes. And when you go into the water and you have that feeling of, oh, my God, I am so painful cold, and then you get over that shock that you're telling your body you survived, and when you have that feeling of survival and you do that with your friends, you have that experience together and you, you get that bonding. And that's why people who winter swim together, they have a special bond. They have this special little club, you can say, where they have this feeling of just being alive. We are just human beings. It's very, it's very humble. It's a humble feeling that you get there. You just connect with those you are. Are with nature and with the people you are together with. You only know this when you do it. You. You cannot really explain this for me as a scientist reading all the papers, and I studied for a long time before I did my first plunge. So I didn't. I was not a winter swimmer before I started studying brown fat and cold exposure and, and heat exposure. So I was like watching them on, on the lidos and doing a little bit of field study. And then they said, you have to come, you have to try this. And I was just. I'm starting to understand it. I. I read so much and I'm starting to connecting the dots here. But I was not adapted to cold and I did not understand that scenario where you come up from the water and they have this special thing. It's due to serotonin, I think.

Okay.

Yeah. Our love hormone. So that is increased when you get over the cold shock and you activate the parasympathetic nervous systems. You have an increase in serotonin. And that feeling of gratefulness and gratitude that comes from. That is what bonds people, I think.

So if you have a fight with a friend, you can propose him to go to a cold lake. Yeah, maybe you can.

Maybe you can.

Yeah.

Let's be friends again. Let's do a co plunge. That's a great idea. I didn't even think about that. What a great idea.

It could be used as a therapy or a couple. Therapy.

Yeah. Actually, me and my husband, we co. Plunged together and because we, we don't have much time we have family, we have job and we have a lot to do. So every weekend we go and co plunge together and it's just wonderful. It's just something that bonds us and it's just a small moment. It doesn't take a lot of time, but it's wonderful to do together. I also do it with my friends, but this special thing with my husband, I really appreciate that.

Okay. That's so nice. So still sweet. Yeah. And I think it's a such a great a place to study called Exposure. Yeah. In Denmark.

Yeah.

And you have such a lot of subjects you can study.

Yeah.

But did you start cold plunge before studying it or you started to study and then you started the cold plunge?

I started the studies before I co plunged. Yeah. Because I'm a co. I would call myself do we every. Everybody's the CO in this world today because we are avoiding everything that is uncomfortable. So I don't think I'm alone in that. I just think that I'm a really good example of everyone else.

Yeah.

So I was avoiding it. I was just like, I don't want to go into the cold water. I'm going to study this and I'm going to look into the brownfare because it's so. It's such an underrated organ. Nobody really knows anything about it and especially not society. So I was very quickly asked from media, what is the brownfield? What is it that you're studying? And also I started to reach out to winter swimmers because I was like Talking to my PhD supervisors like what. How can we study something that is something we can go out and tell society how to do, how to get healthier? And that is, that was my main purpose when I started my research. I want to study something I could go out and do some recommendations on or at least take the first step in that concept. And not to, not to study something with drugs or something. But I wanted specifically finding out how can we use the cold and how is that healthy for us and can it actually activate the brown fat? But I was not a winter swimmer before I did that. No.

Okay.

Yeah.

But knowing the benefits you. You started to do that. I want to ask you what was the biggest challenges you, you face when promoting cold exposure to the public? And how can you convince somebody that it has to it's benefit beneficial for him to call expose?

Well, it is challenging because there are, there are. You can say that this kind of health is not paid by big pharma or anything. And that's why it's, it's Difficult. It's difficult to promote something that is natural. And natural health is just, just. It needs passionate people to go out and tell the world, well, this is actually healthy people find it hard to go out and do something because it's new. Yeah. So it takes a lot of studying from my side and knowing the literature to go out and say, well, this is this and this and this is happening. But there will always be people who are afraid and say, oh, I don't believe in that. That's okay. It's not my job to convince everybody or anything. I'm just telling what my research has shown. What. Yeah, everyone else research has shown. Because I don't only talk about my research. This is studies going back all the way to the 70s, the first really good studies on human physiology. And cold water immersion goes really long way back. And we can use these studies and look at what happens to noradrenaline, what happens to dopamine, what happens to adrenaline and cortisone. Cortisol levels is that stress level. Right. We want those levels down. And what we can see is that cortisol levels go down when you adapted to cold water. So you actually have a physical proof that cortisol levels actually decrease. So I mean, there is so much showing that on different benefits, on different levels that the cold water is something that benefits every one of us. I mean, there is. If you had just half the benefits from a pill, some kind of pill, people would take it.

Yeah.

But here you have a multiple pill. It will help you on your physical health, on your mental health, and you can just take it. It's free.

It's free. Yeah.

So I don't, I don't know if I have to promote that. It's just like, well, people, you can take it if you want to. If you don't, then don't.

Yeah. Actually we have, we have seaside in Romania. So the big problem of the seaside in Romania is that the season is for about three and a half months. So it's open for three and a half months, then everything is closed and it's no man's land, Nobody's there. Then it's open again this summer. Yeah. When the autumn comes, everything is closed. So maybe this is a good idea to have an extra season and for people to travel to seaside just to make cold baths over there.

Yeah.

For the health. I want to ask you about alternating cold and. And hot showers, let's say, or cold sauna and we're going to hot sauna and, and plunges. We're Going to get to sauna soon. Also, how can we get out of the cold? I mean, what's the benefits of getting out of the cold shower or cold plunge or cold black sea? Yeah. And staying cold or getting into a hot shower or alternating cold water, hot water. What was the differences between the benefits of both?

Yeah. Okay. So I always recommend people to, if they have the possibility to actually use cold water immersion or cold shower. But also a sauna.

Yeah.

Some people have access to a sauna, some people don't, but they can use the hot shower.

Yeah.

And everyone has a shower at home. So the alternation of cold and heat is really good for your cardiovascular health. So let's just take a hot and cold shower, for example. That is something that is feasible. It is doable. Everyone can do it. You can start there and you will have the benefits of the vasoconstriction, vasodilation and the increase in nitric oxide. We mentioned that. And all the mental benefits or the physiological benefits of activating the brown fat. All these things you have. But I always say you should end with the cold shower and with a cold shower. End with it? Yes, you should end with the cold shower because then you are pushing your body to. Forcing your body to reheat on its own. And that is a good thing because it's just like the aftermath. You can say the after workout for the body, it increases the metabolism, activates the brown fat, and it pushes the brown fat to reheat your body. And that means that your cold shower or cold water immersion, if you have access to that, will push your brown fat to stay healthy, stay activated and also grow. And you really want it to be activated, just like we talked about. So reheating on your own makes your body increase in metabolism. It, it takes up the glucose, it takes up the fat in your bloodstream, and in that way you can burn more calories and makes your body more efficient at burning calories in the future. So you're priming your body when you end on the cold.

Okay, so we have to end on the cold.

Yes.

Even though we. If you can alternate cold, hot shower, cold, hot shower, you end in cold and get out cold.

Yes. You can put your clothes on, of course, but I mean, you can also just do a little bit of exercise. You can. Yeah. To help your body reheat again. So the two organs in our body that could heat us up, these are the only two almost. So there were small tissues that could help with that, supported. But eventually it is the brown fat which will always be activated. Firstly when you get cold and also when you get hot because it's our temperature regulating organ, but it's also a metabolism organ. Then you have the muscles and the muscles and the brown fat, they work together. They are like a couple. So when you have activated the brown fat and it's your, if you get that cold and you are starting to shiver, which is fine, then you're activating your muscles as well and that's going to increase your metabolism. So they work together in increasing your metabolism, burning fat and glucose, which is a wonderful thing because you can actually do this at home. You, you, you can, you can use this as a, as a modality to further increase your health besides going to the gym. So this is a way to push it even further, get that metabolism up and running, push your brown fat and ending on the cold. You have couple of hours where you push your body without. You don't have to do anything.

Yeah.

I mean it sounds a bit lazy, but it's also, it's. No, it is really also maybe counterintuitive that you actually get warmer from this, but you do. So over time you will reheat so fast sometimes when I go into swimming now and I, I do that a couple of times a week, but I am almost reheated myself when I get home and I live like five to ten minutes away from the water. So I can reheat really fast actually now by working, by walking just back home. I have of course my robe on and I have shoes on and I'm not really wet, but I am almost reheated when I get home.

Okay.

But the first few times I did this, I went home, sat on my couch, took the blanket on and I didn't have a sauna.

Yeah.

So I had to reheat on my own.

Shivering by shivering.

And I was shivering on my couch. That's where I started to ask the questions. This is like, this is. Yeah, it's seven years ago or something like that. I was sitting there and thinking as a scientist, what is happening to my body? I was not shivering when I got up from the water.

Why?

Because you should always think about your body being actually not the coldest when you're in the water. It's getting colder when you get up. So you could actually start shivering after you've been in the water.

Yeah. That's interesting because you, you, you don't shiver inside the water, but you get out of the water and you start to shiver. Right?

Exactly. Yeah.

What happens there?

Yeah. What's Happening is that when you're in the water, you have the vessel constriction. And then when you get up from the water, you. You dilate your vessels again. Right. The cold water you are inside when you're in the water, that makes your blood go into the core.

Yeah, it gets into the core where it's hot.

Hot. Yeah, exactly. Protecting your inner organs, your vital organs. That's the main thing. Right. And then when you vasodilate again, you go up from the water. Right. Then the warm water from your core starts to move outside to your limbs, so out to your peripheral tissue. But this tissue is so cold now.

The warm blood from your. From your core get. Gets outside to the cold. To the cold tissue.

Yeah, to the cold tissue.

Okay.

And cools down the blood, but then it runs back again to your core. And now it's starting to cool down your core.

Yeah.

And when you cool down your core, there are receptors in the core telling the brain what temperature you are. And it gets a little bit surprised by the fast decrease in temperature of that blood now.

And you start to shiver.

And because. Yeah, exactly. The temperature sensor then says, oh, my God, you're getting too cold. The brown fat cannot keep up the temperature. Let's get in the muscles to help. So these two organs are helping each other to increase the temperature in the body. And the shivering is definitely a good thing doing that because that's going to keep you away from being hypothermic. So always think about, for safety reasons also, that when you're in the water, this is not the point where you would be the coldest. You get up, you get home, maybe sit on your couch, don't sit down, as I did in the beginning, keep moving your body because that's going to increase the temperature. But if you start to shiver, that's just because your blood is starting to flow around again and you're starting to reheat yourself. The shivering will diminish over time as you get more and more adapted. But this is called the sober principle. And Andrew Huberman was the one naming this ending on the code. But it's super good for pushing your metabolism and making yourself reheat. So what we could see actually in our winter swimmers who also ended on the cold, they were actually physically warmer. So we could measure that. If you put a temperature measure on the skin, they will. They were warmer than the control group. And this is just a physiological reaction of being adapted to the cold. So if you are adapted, then you would actually also just get rid of More heat from the body because your vessel dilation, your vessel, the blood flow to the skin is increased. Yeah. And that means that you are also just dumping more heat.

Yeah, exactly.

And when you dump heat, you need to reheat the body. So the body is actually working on reheating all the time more than in a person who has more closed veins, has more, close to more constriction all the time they are colder on the.

Skin and that's why you expend more energy by doing that. Yeah, that's cool. It's called suburb principle. So you, you have a principle having your name. That's so cool.

Yeah, I did not even expect that. I was like wow.

But you discovered this, this, this effect of like shivering and getting even more cold inside of your body when you get out of, of cold water.

Yeah. I would say that, that researchers way before me and many years ago have discovered the physiology of cold exposure to the body. But, but yes, I connected maybe the dots and now I'm telling this. It's, it's just a physiological reaction and ending on the cold is something I recommend for health benefits. So yeah, that's, that's something that I would definitely say that if you can then end on the cold. Cold.

So you, you said about dopamine release and I, I, I've read the study when people were exposed to cold plunge, but it was not so cold. That was not so cold plunge where they stay for about 50 minutes and then they get out and.

15.

Sorry, 50.

50.

Yeah, 30 up to 50 minutes. And when they get, get out, they were measuring the dopamine release and it was like five fold increase.

Yeah.

In the bl.

That's an old study. Yeah, that's, that's scram it all. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's a study by them and it's a really old one. Old physiology, but it works. I mean we are not, we are not changing that much.

Yeah, but it's, it's a long time. I mean 50 minutes is a long time to stay in a cold.

We don't recommend that.

Yeah. So what was, was the minimum exposure you can have in the shower or by a plunge to have that increase? And how long does it last?

Yeah, it's a good question because the timing is the key here and the timing recommendations is not the same for shower as it is for cold water immersion.

Yeah.

So I would recommend that if you do a cold shower which is feasible for most people. Studies have shown a study from the Netherlands where they have looked at compared cold Showers with, with ending on the cold showers or the ending the cold or ending the hot shower with a cold shower. That was it. Yeah. And they measured doing cold showers for 30 seconds, 60 seconds and 90 seconds.

Yeah.

What? And compare that to the group that did not switch to the cold shower. And what they can see from this is that they had, they measured on sick days, whether they felt more energy and they had fewer sick days. So, so, so sick leave from work. But what you can see is that there were no extra benefits from staying in the cold shower more than 30, 60 seconds.

Okay.

So you don't have to stay in the cold shower for more than a minute. Okay, that's enough. You don't get extra from that.

And that's a very good trick. So you can have the benefits even if you go in the morning into the hot shower and just switch to the cold and stay one minute in the. Yeah, I mean, that's more acceptable, I think, for, for everybody.

Yeah. Also timing wise.

Yeah, exactly. So 30 to 60 seconds, ending the hot shower with cold shower in the morning. And you have these benefits. What about cold plunge? How, how long should you stay there to have this dopamine release?

Yeah. So what we can see is that now you mentioned this very long cold exposure with this old physiology study, but you don't have to stay that long to get that dopamine spike. Like it's only a few minutes even. So what we can see is that the cold shock is what's actually increased the dopamine and the shock, the shock of it, of that. So if you can, if you can work on your cold adaptation, breathe yourself fruit like we talked about, you will get that dopamine spike and it will last for hours afterwards. Well, my studies shows, is that if you do 11 minutes, that's the results of, of my PC studies that you don't have to do so much. Actually, it's very little and it's feasible for many people that you can do 11 minutes in total per week, but you have to divide that on two to three days.

Eleven minutes per week.

Per week. Yeah. So it's not in one row. You do, you don't sit 11 minutes in the cold water. Not a good idea. But you can work yourself up to 11 minutes per week, divided on two to three days maybe.

Okay.

And on that day you would do one to two minutes in the cold water per dip. And okay, you might do a switch to a sauna or a hot top or something. Yeah. But what we, you would do is the contrast therapy. Of that. So if you can do that, then you would have the health benefits that we see from my studies, which is an increase in insulin sensitivity, and that is a really good marker for having a better metabolism.

Increase in insulin sensitivity by cold exposure?

Yes.

Not by contrast therapy, but just by.

No, by contrasting. But it. You will also see that just by cold exposure.

Okay.

But contrasting that with the heat is pushing your cells even further because you are doing the, the, the extreme of switching from the temperatures that will work on your cardiovascular health. So it's kind of like an exercise.

Can you explain what's. What, what is that? Contrast therapy.

Contrast therapy is when you contrast between or you switch between cold water immersion.

Yeah.

And to something hot.

Yeah.

It could be like a sauna or like a wet sauna or dry sauna. It. It's really not that important what kind of sauna or what kind of heat you have. Just whatever is accessible to you.

Cold and heat.

Yeah.

And that's very beneficial for, for instance, sensitivity. So to prevent diabetes, Right?

Yes, yes.

And can you. That's so interesting that. Can you like, tell me what's the protocol? How, how should you switch between. Between those two?

Yeah. So you can see, I always recommend to just start on the cold. Start in the cold, start in the cold. You can start, you get the shock. You also decrease your temperature on the skin. And then you can sit a little bit longer also in the sauna.

Okay.

And you get that. I think it's because in Denmark we go out in the sea and we have that increase in all the neurotransmitters that we just talked about. And you also get the increase in serotonin. If you can get over the cold. Shock, Shock. And then when you go into the sauna, you can sit there and you have that after effect of being in the cold water and you feel so good because you have that gratitude and you have that super good feeling of being saved by the heat.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Which is good. And you sit there, you totally relieve. You're like, oh my God, I did it.

Yeah.

And I'm sitting here, I survived. And I'm so cool. I'm so good it. And I'm feeling so grateful. And the sun is coming up. I'm so grateful. I love you. Even to the next person beside you. This. This is, this is what's happening. It's just physiology. It's a really good way to increase your. Your mental health, your mood. So starting in the cold is just giving you that moment, I think.

Okay.

You don't have to do it that way. It's just what I think works.

So we start in the cold. Yeah, cold plunge or cold shower. Up to one minute list, let's say, then you go, go out, you get that shower. You get out, you go into the sauna. How much should you stay there?

So not long actually. Okay, you, there are many studies, not only mine, showing that being in heat and let's say it's a sauna, just for the example. So a sauna at 70 to 80 degrees Celsius is what is most researched.

Yeah.

And when we see that people are there for just 10 minutes, 15 minutes, which my studies show is enough. Okay, then you have the increases in what's called a heat shock proteins. Yeah, heat shock proteins is not something people know much about, but it's so good and it's so important to have an increase in heat shock proteins. These heat shock proteins repair our cells from the inside. So we have enzymes and we have proteins in the cells that are, are, that are destroyed and we need to repair those. And the heat shock proteins do that. They repair the cells from the inside, make the cell live longer. And when we have that healthy stress, as I call it, when it's short exposure, a short exposure of 10 to 15 minutes, you have that increase in nitric oxide back to the nitric oxide. It also happens in the heat. Okay, so you have that double thing when you do the contrasting between the cold and the heat. You have both things here, but they work differently. Okay, so we go back, go back to the difference also. But, but the healthy stress that you do when you shock your body with the cold and with the heat, when you go into a hot sauna is the relief release of heat shock proteins.

You have this heat shock proteins releasing after 10 to 15 minutes sitting in a hot sauna. I think it's really reasonable to, to say this, this period of time, I, I, we have like a long material about sauna on this, on this channel. And in the studies, I, I, I've, I've checked the recommendations. When you start making hot sauna to start with about like eight to 10 minutes and then increase for, for like three to four sessions a week and then you increase by maybe three to five minutes to, to adapt your, your, your body to, to the, to the, to the heat. So yeah, 10 to 15 minutes is really reasonable. So, so you start with cold exposure, then you go to the sauna, 10, 15 minutes, then you go back to the cold.

You go back to the cold. Okay, it's a good idea. To just. When you come directly from the heat. Yeah, just. Just cool off a little bit in the wind. Yeah, just for a minute or so. So you're not that hot when you go into the cold water. So if you can just cool off a bit, then you won't get too shocked when you go into the cold water.

But actually here in Romania, we don't. I don't think people do that in the, in the cold wind. We do it. We have a lot of gyms.

Yeah.

So in the gym, you either have the sauna and a cold plunge or you either have a sauna and the cold shower. So if I go out from the sauna where I stood for 10 to 15 minutes, can I go directly to the cold shower?

Yeah, you could, but I. You can also just go outside from, from the sauna, wait a few seconds or a minute or so. Just cool off a little bit. Yeah. So it's not that extreme when you're going to the cold shower because that's to just decrease the pain a little bit and not getting too shocked. So it's, it's just for both the experience, getting a good experience, but also not to shock yourself too much. Yeah.

And how much. How many times should we do this contrast therapy? I mean, cold heat. Cold heat, for how many times and how many sessions a week would you recommend for the maximum benefits?

Yeah. So my studies shows that you can do this for two to three times per week. So two to three days, you spread it out. The 11 minutes of cold water immersion spread out on two to three days. And for the sauna or the heat, which is air. It's our studies was on sauna. So it's hot air.

Yeah.

Is 57 minutes per week. 57, yes, 57 minutes per week. And you, you do that on either the same day as the cold plunging. You don't have to do it on the same day. It's just important that you do it. So it's, of course, another vascular exercise if you can contrast on in the same row. So you start cold, go to the sauna, then go back to the cold, then to the sauna, and then you end on the cold. So it's like three dips in the.

Three dips. Okay.

Three dips in the cold water and then two saunas. And. Yeah, it's, it's. It should be feasible for many people.

Yeah. So you have to do this. Yeah. If you. So you said 12. 12 minutes of cold exposure per week.

Yeah, yeah, 11.

Yeah, yeah, sorry, 11.

Yeah, 11.

He said 11. Sorry. Okay, make it 12.

Just round it up. If, if we start to do that, that's the thing. Then you have the Internet. Right. Because if you start to say, oh, it's just an hour, then, nope, no one can find it in the literature.

Yeah.

And then people are starting to say, well, where, where's the, the proof? So that's why I'm, I'm being a little bit.

Yeah, yeah.

That's neurotic around this. It's just otherwise people. Yeah, but if you do 12 minutes, it's okay.

O. The literature says it's 11 minutes a week. So you can split it in three, three sessions and 57 minutes a week of sauna hot exposure. You can split in three. And that's let's say maybe four, four minutes. Three to four minutes per session of cold exposure.

I would say more like. Yeah, per day. Per day. And per dip, it would be just 12 minutes.

One, two minutes.

Yeah, yeah. If you can get over the cold shock, then you are over one minute.

So if you make one minute cold exposure and 10 to 15 minutes of heat exposure for two, three times, and you repeat it for three, for three times a week, that's the perfect protocol to take all the benefits from cold exposure and heat exposure.

That's at least what we know. Yeah. Today.

Yeah.

I think that we need more studies. I would love to do more studies on this. On also my studies were done on men. And that's just because at that time where we started these studies, this was what we did. And you cannot always decide everything you do as a PhD student. This is what's recommended.

Yeah.

But I think today that I would love to have done more studies specifically in women. And I think this will come as well. But if we look at the benefits, then we, or the physiology that we know from studies on, on men versus women going into cold water. We see that there is a difference in how men and women defend their temperature in the body, but the outcome of how much they increase their metabolism is the same. So they spent, they burn just as many calories from, let's say one minute in the cold water. So if you are a woman thinking, oh, am I also getting the benefits of these cold exposure as shown in my study? Yes, you do, but you, it's just the, the explanation of how you burn the calories and the physiology of that is a bit different in women. But this is already studied. So we know already if you're a.

Woman and you want to practice cold exposure, hot exposure, is there anything you have to pay Attention on regarding the menstrual cycle or the fertility, let's say, is there any harm you can do there or any, anything you, you need to know regarding that?

Well, I think that due to this, our cycle, I think there is definitely times where you, you should maybe even you could avoid doing cold exposure. If you find yourself having a lot of symptoms during your period, then maybe not stress yourself too much during that period because that's just, just stressing you too much and you also feel colder. So I myself sometimes just skip it at that time because it's just too stressful for me.

Yeah.

And women's temperature during their cycle also varies a lot. It could be a whole degree actually. Yeah. So it means that sometimes you as a woman can go and cold plunge and maybe you could do a, a one minute plunge or two minute plunge or you can sit in the sauna for a very long time and you're like, wow, I'm doing great. And then it goes a week and then you do the same thing and then you wonder my, oh, why am I feeling more stressed in the cold water today? Maybe it's the same temperature. So you're wondering. But it's often because our cycles determine our, our core temperature. And if we are already colder from the beginning because of our cycle, our hormones, then we would feel that cold exposure more stressful. That's why women have to listen to their body and accept that don't put the timer on here, you don't have to. Men should, should neither. It's just not something that you need to do. But women being a little bit more careful when they have their period, I think that's a good thing to, to recommend that stress is not good thing to put on stress. So if you are stressed out during your period or you feel stressed, you feel cold or you feel maybe you have mood swings, even as a symptom of that, you, you might not want to go and cold plunge then. I've heard also women say, well, it actually helps for me mentally when I have my period. And that's where I'm like, well, it works for you, I think. I think you should do that then. So this is just a research area that I think needs to be studied even more on. So you can use my protocol. Even when you are a woman or a man, you can do that. But you have to ask yourself when you go, is this a day where I'm in the water one minute or two minutes? That depends on your core temperature and your stress level.

Yeah. Okay, that's A very good point. I would like to get back to the, to the cold exposures for a few of other benefits we you've mentioned a little bit. So maybe we can talk about the immune response and inflammation. How, how this affects how the cold exposure can increase our immunity against cold and viruses and stuff like that. And how, how does it affect the inflammation in the body?

Yeah, inflammation, that's a good key word here I think because inflammation is something we want to have less of and we are so inflamed in our society. We, we eat processed food, we have high stress levels and we see the effect of that when we look at blood pressure. It's a really good measure for that. So if you have high blood pressure, you might also have high inflammation. You might have a lot of inflammation in your vessels and an increased risk of blood clots and you want to get rid of that as well. When you expose yourself to the cold water you have an increase in what is called, it's getting nerdy now, but something called the TNF alpha.

Yeah.

And you want to actually, you want to have an increase in that because that's going to also get rid of your inflammation.

Okay.

So it, it, it's actually helping your body getting less inflamed. So you're in your, your immune system will react to that. That when you're completely new, let's say you're completely new to this. Yeah. You go out and you, you do a cold plunge or cold shower, you will actually have an increase in white blood cells as well. And that is because the body's reacting to a stressful situation. So the immune system and is very close. That is your stress response. So it increases. But over time you will have a less, a less respond increase in your, in your monocytes, in your white blood cells. And this is because, and okay, so this is my analysis of that at least that we could see in winter swimmers. In my study but also other studies we have seen the same. You say results of being adapted that you have a less smaller increase in. In. In OR levels, just base levels in, in. In. In white blood cells and monocytes. And it could be like an a feedback, a response to being less inflamed. So if you have less inflammation in the body you would not need to have a high levels of in inflammatory markers. So because you're less inflamed you will get, get a lower blood pressure, lower heart rate which we see in winter swimmers. And you also see a lower immune response or just basal levels and you want to get that lower inflammation in the body because that helps on your cardiovascular system and your cardiovascular health is what we need to work on. Because all the sedentary lifestyle that we have today is increasing the risk of type 2 diabetes and blood clots and, and heart problems.

Yeah. This is all the benefits we've talked so far. Like the brown fat, calorie burning fat burning. The mood. Yeah. And keeping this in mind, the mood. You named all of those hormones and neurotransmitters that makes you feel better. Yeah, right after the shock you have after the exposure. But there are some studies that shows the benefits in treating depression even. Can you talk about that? What was the effects you saw in your studies? What can you say about the depression and this alternative treatment?

Yeah, I don't like calling it an alternative treatment actually. So the thing is that this is actually natural. This is, this is the natural treatment. This is, this is something that we, that we should actually do as.

First thing, first line treatment, please.

Yes. Okay, thank you. And drugs should be alternative.

So I'd like to explain.

I want to switch this around a bit. Just my point of view. I think that natural health and staying healthy should be something that we could also do by ourselves. We just need to know how. Yeah, yeah. And drugs, dogs are there to help us.

Yeah.

So people do need the help. So. Yeah.

So there is a direct, direct effect of cold exposure to, to depression treatment.

I think that we need specifically a really good scientific studies on that. But I think there's just a study coming out from Denmark which I think was published last year, 2023. And this, I think it's a pilot study. So I think they are continuing, also doing more studies. But they measured on depression and a depression score.

Yeah.

To see if these people who were clinically depressed could actually increase their mood and getting a lower rate on depression. And what they could see from this study, as far as I remember it was a pilot study, but they would do more, I think. So they saw that they actually had a lower rate of depression after doing cold water swimming in the sea in Denmark for a few months. And I think that that says a lot. If you can change your mood, your mental health based on this, it will have a huge effect also on your physical health. So it's kind of like the body and mind totally working together. If you have, have, if you have a, if you have a depression, if you have anxiety, that's going to affect what you are doing. So it's going to have a huge effect on your behavior. If you are not in the mood for the right healthy behavior, then your physical health is going to go down as well. Right. And that's going to affect your brain as well. So what we are realizing today is that depression is actually a metabolic disease. Oh, oh, yes. Because inflammation increases. And the inflammation is also making you depressed in your brain.

That's right, yeah.

Yeah.

The brain is an organ. It gets effects by everything you do or not do or everything you eat or drink. So when it's inflamed, you're much higher risk of developing depression.

Exactly. So what we see is that when people start to exercise or they start to do well, cold water emotions or going to the sauna. Sauna is important here as well. The heat is impressively doing well on depression. That there's actually studies on that as well.

Yeah.

So the heat can also do something here for our mood and depression. So whether it's very cold or whether it's very hot, it is increasing our endorphins. Endorphins is our, you can say natural painkiller in the body. And that increase when you go into the heat, it's not the same pathway when you go into the cold water. It seems that this is noradrenaline. Noradrenaline is our pathway. Pain pathway.

Yeah. When you expose the cold. Yeah. Noradrenaline.

No adrenaline. Exactly.

Yeah.

And that works on your mental health because it increases your pain threshold. And. And when you increase also so no adrenaline, you have that energy, that drive and you have that dopamine rush. You also work on your mental health. So I think depression from doing the contrast of cold and heat is that. That is. That is a good cure for having any bad mood or even maybe clinical depression.

Yeah. And heat and cold exposure. I want to say that it's obviously an anecdotal data, but one of the, one of the most popular videos we have on social media is about cold exposure and cold showers. We promote that and people really love that. And a lot of people try that. And I meet a lot of people in real life. Again, this is anecdotal data that just approach me and they tell me, look, man, I saw your video about cold shower in the morning and I had really bad times having panic attacks and anxiety. And after I started doing cold showers, like few days after, I have much less panic attacks, I have much less anxiety. And I didn't stop until now. I just take one cold shower. I still don't like it. I hate it. I hate you for doing that to me. But I simply have much less panic Attacks and anxiety since then. So thank you so much. Yeah. That's anecdotal data, but it's not just one person. There's many that's saying that that's amazing, that it's amazing effect on. On mood and mental health.

Yeah. And you are a doctor, so you also hear these stories. So I'm not the only one hearing these studies around the world. It's just amazing how people anecdotally can tell you how well they feel. And even though it's just their story, is hearing it again and again and again. And this creates a hypothesis which we need to research.

Exactly. Yeah.

So we need to. To push this even to people who have any kind of disease. I think that cold and heat repairs the cells exactly where we need to have a repair. Yeah. That is the thing. If you meet. That is on anxiety. Right. And depression. But if you meet a person who has a lower back pain, they would tell me, oh, I have a lower back pain. And the code is helping me getting that rid of that pain. Or the sauna is helping getting rid of that pain. So it seems that whatever people have cold or heat is gonna twerk that in the work body. And getting back to like, I don't know, we could call it like the baseline. Yeah. Back to basic or repairing. I think that that's. That's one of the things that I have observed. So there are so many things that we can study from this and see. Well, actually, in a study would we see the same effects, but there are a lot of studies on lower back pain and cold exposure, but also heat exposures showing that that actually decreases the pain and also menstrual pain, actually. So that's not. With cold water immersion, I haven't seen that. But with. With heat, I've seen it. Infrared heat, even. So there's a lot of, like, small studies out there leading up to this and all the hypothesis and all the anecdotal studies or stories showing that this is helping people. And for that person telling that story, that is the most important thing. So what we know for now is what we know, and that is even much more studies, much more evidence than I would say some drugs even have up. And they are. Yeah, they are getting out there.

Yeah.

Even though afterwards they found out, well, this drug is not working in that pathway. This drug doesn't work. And it's like people are still like, selling it and buying it. It's. It's just that this has more evidence than many other alternative drugs.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Alternative drugs.

Yeah.

Primary treatment.

Yeah.

So, Susanna, we have like 10 more minutes and I would like to shift our focus to, to sauna and heat exposure.

Yeah.

And what would you recommend? Because we have like three, three kinds of sauna. You have dry sauna. Yeah. With those rocks you control water on. You have wet sauna and you have infrared sauna. If you have these three options, which one would you choose? What room would you go inside to?

Like personally? Yeah, yeah, I would prefer the. I would prefer the, the something in between. So the wet, the wet sauna. Do we talk hamam?

Yes. I don't know.

Probably Steam.

Steam coming out. Yes.

So this, the steam. I am not adapted to that. I think it's. I love it, but I can't stay that long because it's, it's. Think about sauna and, and wet sauna versus the dry sauna as a continuum. Right. So you have this increase in a heat response or heat shock in your body. You can you shock your, your cells as well? Yeah. And the more wet it is, the faster you, you would actually activate that. Okay. So it's. The more wet it is, the long, the shorter time you stay in. In. In the sauna.

Because if it's dry, the, the temperature change is slow. Yeah, yeah. If it's wet, the temperature change is fast.

Exactly. And it's because you, when you get warm, you want to dump the heat and the body tries to dump the heat, but it cannot really dump the heat as fast because there is also, there is too many water molecules in the air. And because that is on your skin, it's difficult for, for the body to get rid of that because the difference is too small. And when you're in a dry sauna, you can dump the heat better because you have the ability to actually sweat better.

Yeah.

So the building up of your temperature happens really, really fast when there are many molecules of water in the air, say wet sauna. Hamam. But a dry, completely dry sauna, only with the rocks and 80 degrees Celsius, let's say that then you can stay a little bit longer, but it's not pushing your cardiovascular system as hard as the wet.

So wet one is better for the cardiovascular.

It's definitely like a hit training, like it's, it's more efficient so you don't have to stay that long.

Okay.

But it's efficient.

Okay.

And the dry sauna, you can sit a little bit longer and relaxing and, and feeling that heat building up over the next 10, 15 minutes. Minutes. But in a hamam, I would say I would stay five minutes.

Because I can't stay more than five minutes.

No, no, because it's just so hot. Right? It's just very, very hot. So. But I like something in between. I like when we sit in a dry sauna and that put water on the rocks. So you have that momental, like water in the air to give that increase in heat, just a shock of the heat. And. And I love that. I think that is just fantastic. And then of course, it goes away. And you can then put water on the rocks again. So that is what I love the most. And we practice that also in Denmark. It's very. That's the Finnish style, even.

How much water do you put in? Because I have moments when I just go after a gym session and I go to the dry sauna. I love it dry. I want to stay there for 15 minutes. Then a guy comes and he said, hey, do you mind if I put some water in? I say, yeah, okay. And here's is. Is point putting like a lot of water. And I. And I'm like, man, there's a like steam sun over there. You can use that one if you wanted to. That the. Can I leave? Yeah. So how much water should you put there actually? Or it's. It's. It depends on what's. How wet you like it.

Yeah. So what I have done that is look to. To the finish style here. Here. And what I have found out is that it's. It's just. You just take what is corresponding to a, I don't know, spoon. They have this kind of like.

Yeah, we have a spoon. Like. Like a wooden spoon.

Yeah, wooden spoon. And I think it corresponds to maybe 2 deciliters or something. Or 3. Yeah. Okay. And sometimes you could do twice, depending on how much steam do you want?

So you. So you take one, maybe two of these, right? Two of these?

Yeah, I would say. Yeah, one and a half. One and a half of these cups.

Okay.

That should be enough to like. But it also depends on how big the room is. Of course.

Yeah.

So if you have a really big sauna and.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. So the size of the room is. Is important here as well right now.

So you just have to like to put the water in and like, find the humidity. You feel comfortable.

Yes. Yeah. And often the sauna has also the. You can choose whether you want to sit up or down. So if the higher up you go, the more steam you have because the heat is going upwards. And if you feel too hot, then sit down on the lowest bench.

Yeah. And what Is like the main benefits, if you can just like say them shortly. What are the main benefits you see in studies with sonar? And what is, what is, what is what? What are the new researches that are ongoing now are saying about that? Like things are not published yet, but what you, you research maybe or are researched right now.

Okay, so the main benefits of using a sauna is that it mimics exercise for the body. And we know all the benefits from exercise. And you would actually get that extra, extra exercise for your heart, and that is heart health. So going into a sauna multiple times per week, Finnish studies have shown, these long cohort studies have shown that there is a dose response relationship between going into the sauna. So if you can do two times per week, that is great. And it even shows that you will have a better cardiovascular health. Lower risk of cardiovascular diseases, less risk of stroke, even mental health is improving. And also you will have a lower risk of dying early if you can go more than two times. But if you can go three to four times or even every day, so seven times per week, it also shows that you, even you, you decrease the risk of cardiovascular diseases. And you would, you can say you have a lower mortality rate because of the risk, the lower risk of cardiovascular diseases, of course.

Yeah, of course.

So these studies have been following, following more than 2,000 sauna bathers for more than 25 years. So they have measured this and followed the sauna bathers every year, measuring them, how well are they, did they go to the hospital, how many got sick and how many died? Of course, also. And they see that the more they do sauna, the better their health is. Just to say that just very briefly. So, but on the physiological part, we see also why this is actually happening. And that is because of the increase in heat shock proteins. It mimics exercise, it increases nitric oxide. Right. And it increases, what else does it increase? Well, very shortly it increases the blood pressure and the heart rate. But after you go out, as in the storm, because it's like, like it's an exercise, right? But it also increases mitochondria in the cells because it pushes the cells. So it needs to be more efficient. And the mitochondria is our, you can say a little fabric in, in the cells that needs to work very well for, for the body to adapt. And that is what we want to do. We want to push those cells to, on the healthy stress part. So it's very short, what we are talking about, the timing is short. And that pushes the cells just enough to repair itself. To make it prepared next time. That is actually what we were talking about. We are preparing ourselves, our, ourselves in our cells for doing this again. So the body is just waking up and making prepare for the next time and next time and next time. Because what if you don't go out? So the body is actually thinking, oh, I don't know when we are going out from this heat, so I better prepare myself. So it's your, your cells are making an army almost for, for, for protecting you. Yeah. And that is health, you can say.

Yeah, that's so nice. I love, like the wintertime is coming and I love to go out in a shirt like that T shirt.

Really? Yeah.

I mean I have like, not for a long time, but even if I have to walk for five to 10 minutes, I go like that, you know. Is it a healthy habit?

It's a really healthy habit. So if you can, if you can get in a habit of doing that, then it's perfect because that cold exposure for very short time, just getting briefly out in the cold wind is going to activate your brown fat immediately.

So you would recommend people to get like to get the jacket down and to start to expose themselves. Even like we have the winter, we have maybe minus 10 degrees Celsius. Celsius sometimes. So we can even use these weather changes. Yeah. To get this exposure benefits without having a cold plunge.

Right, you can. Exactly. And you should definitely use that. But many people think that if you go out in a T shirt you would immediately get sick and you would get a cold. So it's a misconception. So the reason being. And the misconception is that you try, you, you, you think that the cold is get, is getting you sick, but it's not, it's a virus. So if you, you do get out in the cold and you get in a T shirt say that.

Yeah.

And you get sick afterwards. That's because you already had a virus in the body.

Yeah, exactly.

But when the body is shocked by the cold wind, it starts to focus on that and all the physiological reactions that we just talked about earlier is happening but then they cannot really focus on that virus.

Yeah.

And then it gets a little bit of a head start that virus and it, and it evolves faster. So it's like if you have a virus and you get a cold, that's just because you were not adapted to the cold. And also the virus was there already. So it's not because of the cold, is because you had a virus.

Yeah.

So the, yeah.

And in the end what you Would you recommend to, to all the listeners that are watching this podcast until now and they want to start somewhere? What, what, what, what would be your recommendation? When to start, how to start? Cold exposure, heat exposure.

I would recommend if you're new to this and you're getting started, that you could just use your cold shower and your hot shower. It's the way to start and you can see how do, how well do I adapt? You can train a little bit with your breathing, see if you can get that cycle of nose breathing and then out through the mouth. If you have a bathtub, you can also practice there. Some people have, have you can even buy a whole plunge. You don't have to buy anything expensive or anything, but it's, it's possible to buy these. It's also possible to find a lake, rivers, anything you can sit down in or whatever. It doesn't have to be deep, you just have to. Even a running river that is really good because then you are also breaking that thermal. Yeah, exactly. Area.

Yeah.

Because if it's completely still water, you can actually heat the water just over your skin. So I would say do it slow. Make sure you don't have any, any cold. Adaptation needs to go slow. So either showers or cold water immersion, saunas, hot tubs or whatever, just do it very slowly. Adapt and accept that it takes some time for your body to, to adapt to it. But also make sure that you have, have also checked your health before. Just, just a blood pressure would be, would be a good indicator. And don't, don't make it too complicated for yourself. It's just cold and heat and just feel how you, how is your reaction to the cold, to the heat. And if you start to hyperventilate, take it easy. Slow breathing is important. And in the sauna, if you cannot stay as long as your friend, that is just because you, you are not the same people.

Yeah. So don't push yourself.

Don't push yourself and don't compare yourself. It's not a competition.

Yeah.

And anyone telling you, oh, you need to cold plunge for 10 minutes for it to be efficient.

Yeah.

That is a misconception. No. Studies have shown that you need to cool down your deeper tissue.

Yeah.

All the benefits come from cooling down your superficial tissue.

Okay.

Happens within a few minutes. So.

Yeah, that's great. What's your like next projects you work on in research?

Yeah, so I've already done up to now. Now it's 10 years on this contrast therapy research and I want to continue.

That on contrast therapy.

Yes. So Building on my protocol that I already have, I want to look more into what kind of benefits do we see from this minimum threshold. I think there's no reason to. There's no studies out there that really tells me there is a reason to look at what happens with the body. If you do at 15 minutes cold plunge, because then you have cooled down your deeper tissue. I don't think that it's logical that that on a long term is going to give you health benefits because it's just pushing your inner organs. And I think that we need to go back and think of the body as what is actually healthy. And healthy stress was not invented by us. That is like Hans Seeley actually published in Nature magazine back in 1936. The distress response, where he shows that there are two, three stress responses here. So there's the acute response to the cell where you shock the cell and it has to be activated in order for it to survive. Okay. So that's corresponds to going into the cold water. Right. And then you have phase two. Phase two is where it adapts.

Yeah.

And that's healthy stress. You want it to adapt because then it survives. It gets this. It arms itself by repairing the cells. Repairing it from the inside, making it stronger. Right. Yeah. You want to be there if you. Then in phase three. He says in phase three you have exhausted the cell.

Yeah. That's bad.

Too much. Too much. It's exhausted it and then it dies. Yeah, you don't die, but in the long term it might harm the cells because the deeper tissue cooling is not necessary. Yeah. So I want to keep researching on what happens when you do short exposure. Stay in phase two. Yeah, that's my recommendation for people stay in that healthy stress response.

Yeah. Just a little bit of stress.

Yeah.

And the adaptation. Not too much.

Not too much.

That's great. That's such, such a great info from you today. And where can people find you? Do you have social media accounts? Website?

Yeah. So they can find me on. I have a website, I have a school because I'm teaching this also for people who practice this and teach other people. I think there's. There is a need for this and people have been asking me a lot, can you help us and learn this so we can teach other people and we have workshops and stuff.

Yeah.

Institute, that's Sober institute dot com. And you can go and check that out. But also you can find my social media. So Instagram, it's my name. Susanna. Underscore Soberg.

Yeah.

And on YouTube. The same. And Twitter, everywhere you can find me. Great. Yes. Yeah.

Well, thank you so much for being here, for taking your time, for sharing all these infos. And don't forget, you have this book. We hope we can have it translated in Romania soon. But you can order it on Amazon, I guess. Do you have an audiobook also on it? On Audible?

Yes, it's also on Audible. Yeah.

It's also notable.

Okay. Yeah.

So nice. Okay. Susanna, thank you so much. I'm gonna switch to Romania now.

Yes.

So, Professor david.