5 Minute Facts - Cold Water Immersion

This is episode 178, the empowered team Podcast. Hey there. Are you looking to grow as a leader or grow leaders on your team? If so, then our leadership series is for you. It's running all year long. It's free webinars to teach you about various topics in leadership that can really expand your growth, elevate your leadership, and be able to really serve those around you. If that's something for you, then opt in to our Leadership series, our free webinars that will be going on all this year. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider. Beautiful. Okay, today we're doing five minute facts, but this month it's all about cold water immersion. Now, some of us want nothing to do with cold water immersion. However, it is my duty to bring to you the research and the information so that you can have the best of the best when it comes to your training, your fitness, your health, all of the good things and also our mental state. This is a surprising thing about cold water immersion. So here is five minute fact number one. Cold water immersion. There is some evidence to support it boosting our immune system. So no matter how long we've heard to not catch cold by going in the cold, it doesn't seem to support that adage that our family might have told us when we were children. There is some research and evidence to support immune boosting with cold immersion. Now I want to qualify this because the research on cold immersion has to do with open water swimming, cold plunges, showers in the cold. It also has to do with are you up to your waist or your neck or completely underwater. There are different studies that look at all of these different factors. Number two, and this one's so powerful that I think is such a cool technique to use. There's possible antidepressant effects. In one study that I looked at, I quoted what they said because they didn't understand how this was happening. They could see it in case studies, they could see it in different research methodology. But one of them said it could be that the over overwhelming the amount of electrical impulses from peripheral nerve endings to the brain which could result in an antidepressant effect. It's not understood how or exactly why, but cold water exposure or immersion can have antidepressant effects. Number three, when we look at the research we're looking at, there's objective measures and there's subjective measures. Some of the subjective measures are Simply people reporting back what they're feeling after this immersion. Number three, we're looking at two things here. Less muscle soreness and a lowered rpe. And that's rate of perceived exertion. When we're looking in the exercise world, rate of perceived exertion means that if I went for a really, really hard workout I might have rated that at the original scale is out of 20 but the modified scales out of 10. Let's say I rated that as an 8.5 out of 10. Well, cold water immersion has people lowering their rate of perceived immersion score. So they would have perceived it at maybe an 8 or a 7.5 out of 10 instead of an 8.5 out of 10 after they had done the cold water plunging or immersion. Then also less muscle soreness. Some of those are the subjective measures, but when we looked at some objective measures, here are some objective measures across a meta analysis. So in a meta analysis we're looking at an increase of metabolic rate by up to 350%. So we're increasing our metabolic rate with this cold exposure heart rate, blood pressure also increasing by 5 to 8%. Noradrenaline and dopamine. So some of these hormones that really affect how we feel up by as much as 530% and 250% respectively. And this is. These are some of the numbers across a meta analysis. And looking at these subjective measures so that we're not, or sorry, objective measures, so it's not self perceived. These are actually what's been recorded via blood work, via sphygmomanometer. That's what measures blood pressure by those types of things. So that's number three. I think that's very powerful because of the numbers and the measures that show up in the research. Number four and this one is interesting, this can support your slow wave sleep. So your slow wave sleep is unique in that I focus a lot on REM sleep because it has to do with a lot of brain recovery and restoration of the brain and its connections and also memory processes. But the slow wave wave sleep is a space where in our recovery it has to do a lot with our muscle recovery. So when you're doing your own workouts and you want to recover and that slow wave sleep is a place to do so. So here's what it found is that this slow wave sleep, it is supported by cold water immersion and this is where muscle repair growth occurs. This is also where we have some twitches and things like that as well. But in cold water immersion, fewer twitches, less Limb movement was occurring after cold water immersion. That's where it can affect this flow or support this slow wave sleep. Now this might seem counterintuitive because we've done a lot looking at sleep. What we know about having a really great sleep is having something like a warm shower or a warm bath before we go to bed. One of the reasons to do that is to actually cool the core body temperature. It seems counterintuitive, but by bringing the blood to the surface, we're allowing and having our hands and feet warm, warm socks going into bed that allows our core temperature to cool. Some of this seems a little counterintuitive because we've been told to have a warm bath or have a warm shower to have a good sleep. Well, this cold water immersion seems to be more specific to training events. So say you've done a really long hike, say you've been doing extra volume in your training, say you know you're really sore because you did something with lifting boxes or something different than you'd ordinarily do and you've got a lot of soreness. That's where the cold water immersion would come in to really support the sleep. If you can differentiate between the two, number five, temperature and body amount in water does matter across the studies, it looks like the temperature of being between 10 and 15 degrees Celsius is this great temperature for doing the cold water plunges, that would be about 50 to 59 degrees Fahrenheit. The beneficial effects aren't typically right. Then when we're looking at all the measures, a lot of the beneficial effects are happening in that 24 hour, 48 hour period after the cold water plunging. Unless we're looking at the effects of, what do you call it, of antidepressant effects, like we mentioned before, the amount of the body in. There's even been studies, the research lab that I was doing my master's degree in, they were doing a lot of research of cold water immersion in just the hand and the forearm. And that would have a beneficial effect in cooling the body. So clearly cold water immersion will cool the body overall, as in if you were overheated or you were risking heat stroke or anything like that. However, there's another part to all this research when it looks at immune boosting and stress and that has to do with breath work. A lot of this studies that looked at cold water immersion also looked at intensive breathwork, Wim HOF type breath work. And so some of them it was difficult to distinguish between whether or not the breath work was causing Some of the results or the cold water immersion was causing some of the results. And that's why I took a look at some of the meta analyses. But what is known is that the breathwork does help boost immune system. The breathwork does help manage depressive states and stress and so does the cold water immersion as well. Now the other thing about it, this is the last thing I'm going over my five minutes of my five minute facts is that you can acclimatize to heat. You can acclimatize to cold as well. The neat thing about being immersed in cold is that when our body starts to acclimatize to that, we develop more brown fat. Brown fat is good fat for our bodies. And you'll find people who are at optimal body composition or fairly fit and well trained, they often have a little more brown fat. It's a more metabolic fat versus more of the white fatty tissue. That's just another little aside in terms of overall acclimatizing to it. We know that in research if you expose yourself to some extremes like a higher intensity workout or a colder environment in small doses, that that is really, really good for our brain and our body. Small doses of some of those extreme things can be amazing. Longevity, brain and body. Ok, so that is wrapping up the five minute facts on cold immersion. Tell me what questions these produce. These facts produce and then we will dive. Q and A. So let's take a look. Unmute yourself. Lynn has one here. Go for it Lynn. Unmute. So I'm curious if the order matters. So can you have a cold shower and then have a nice hot bath or is the idea that you're finishing with the cold? Great question. And what I would say is that order is going to matter more depending on the time of day. So what is the outcome that you want? So for instance, if that cold happened and then the hot happened and then you're going to do your workout because it's first thing in the morning, then there's going to be some effects that come from that. So you would likely what happens? One of the things that happens with cold is that you become more alert, your brain is woken up. But that can also go the other direction. When you warm up, you can become more calm. If it's pre workout or pre day, the effect is still going to happen, but it depends on what you want from that scenario. If it's after workout, then what we used to do in therapy a lot was hot cold bath. We would go between one or the other. We use this as a therapeutic modality to constrict and dilate the blood vessels to promote new fresh cells. Going into an injured and we would typically if somebody was in an inflammatory state, meaning the injury was still inflamed, often either it was either within 48 hours or it was chronic. We would always be finishing on the cold. Always be finishing on the cold. If it wasn't in an inflamed state, it was maybe something that was a long term thing that was being dealt with, but it wasn't actively inflamed, then we might finish on the hot, especially if they were about to head into a practice or head into a scenario where they were going to be physical. So I hope that I'm providing context because that context is really going to be critical to understanding what to do. I can give a personal example for Paul. Almost, not every morning, but many, many mornings he finishes his shower on the cold. He will do his normal shower and then finish that shower on about a minute or 30 seconds of just cold water to make his brain alert to wake up his body and then head into his day. Because it affects his mood and positively he wants that best effect on his mood. So I hope that. Do you want to. Is there any more specifics you want to give or an example you want to give there, Lynn? No, it's more that I hate being cold. Yes. So if I had my choice, I would do the really quick cold shower and then either flip it to hot or have a hot bath. But my son also does what Paul does and he swears by it. And I'm like, oh, I just have to get my hand around it. Yes. And the challenge and I'm in a similar boat, the challenge you're going to have is rewarming. And the bigger challenge is that if you are highly metabolic, but you tend to run cool throughout the day as it is. For instance, if I put my hands on somebody's lower back or their face, my hands are cold. Now for me to dive into a cold scenario when I'm already somewhat chilled, then it's harder and takes longer to warm back up. When you do, you're going to feel a bit groggy. I've been in a lot of races where I've been very cold after and you know, almost or in that hypothermic area. And it's a real challenge. It takes a while to get back and then you almost feel this, this groggy, warm kind of, kind of scenario. So I don't like being cold either. And where I enjoy it the most doesn't mean it's the most effective. When I enjoy it the most is when I'm really hot and then I just like I can tolerate the shock of the cold, but it's easy to get rewarmed and get back into that kind of status quo. So that's more of a personal preference. Yes. You're going to get more out of it if you immerse yourself and stay in the cold plunge, especially if it's body soreness and injury related. You're going to have more of a benefit if you stay in there and stay in there for 10 minutes and go in that little bit of an ice bath up to 10 minutes. Now that might feel like misery to you. So it depends on where the value is of what you want to accomplish from it. But the easiest for the brain alertness is that quick 30 seconds of cold in the shower or even less even that 10 seconds for more alertness. But for the physical, the muscular benefit and the actual getting some of the hormone responses, you need a bit of a plunge and to hold the, hold the cold bath. This has been so vital for athletes for so many years. When I used to go with a regional national triathlon group, we go to training camps and competitions. We would be traveling with a kiddie pool. We would be traveling with a blow up kiddie pool because it was so important for the athletes to have their cold plunge. And they hated it. And it was like, you know, there's a lot of brain games going on as they are trying to tolerate this water that's got buckets of ice dumped in it. They hated it. And it was still so worth it that nobody ever missed it. It was that powerful for recovery. And I've experienced that too. You know, it's so powerful for recovery, especially when you've got a lot of muscle tissue breakdown and things going on that it's that worth it. So other questions, what else do you have? Bring it on. Could be on this topic or other. Open it up. No, Nothing. Okay, I've got a couple questions that have come in. I just want to give you those on live the opportunity. First, any other personal questions for health, nutrition, exercise, training, injuries, anything going on? No. Okay, so here's a question that came in. It was a question around compression band, around a bit of tendinitis. Now historically I've started to notice the trend that this time of year, any of my clients or athletes, especially when it comes to forearm, any sort of wrist or forearm areas, the chronic tendinitis tends to come in so I'm talking a lateral epicondylitis is a tennis elbow. A medial epicondylitis is a golfer's elbow. But just starting to notice this kind of aggravating tendinitis type scenario. And I personally think. I don't. I just. Accumulation of experience that as soon as it gets a little cooler, and especially if you're over 35, then you're more likely to start to feel it in the fall, that little bit of tendinitis. Now what happens for those of us who are on the computer a lot, and then we might be training at the same time, Most of us are not stretching out our wrist flexors, our finger flexors, our wrist extensors, our finger extensors. We're typically not stretching this area out. And yet these areas are getting under such high load, such high volume of work at computers, and then high intensity when it comes to actually lifting some weight or doing chin ups or doing things like that that put a high amount of intensity. And then you add that on top of the high volume of same movements on a mouse or same movements on a keyboard or same kind of grippy things on the steering wheel. So I find this time of year, often personally, myself, clients, other people that I know, tendinitis will start to come up. One person had asked me about that. Have you ever seen that band around the elbow? Yeah, we've seen those. Whether that's just a weird, fluky thing or whether they actually work, those tension bands around the elbows do work, and I'm going to tell you why. On your wrist flexors or your wrist extensors, they run along the back of the forearm or the front of the forearm, and they have a common attachment. That common attachment is that medial epicondyle on the wrist flexors or the lateral epicondyle on the wrist extensors. When all those little tendon or the tendinous areas come together to one common attachment, that means all that force is going through that one area. What happens when a band gets put around? Usually it's about anywhere between a centimeter to 2 centimeters away from where that common attachment is. You get that band around. What it does is it dissipates the force coming through that would ordinarily be hitting that common attachment, but instead, it puts a bit of pressure before the common attachment point and it dissipates the force and alleviates some of that tension on that one spot that's happening all of the time. Okay, so you're going to see this in people who, you know, golf, obviously, tennis, lifting Typing, swimming, you know, racket sports, all of those things. Eventually people will, you know, carrying things. People are usually going to come up with a complaint there at some point. And that little, you know, that little band or little chopat, that will be a thing there. No problems. And any questions on that one? That was one question that somebody had brought in. You might have an experience with that as well. Okay, the next question I had. Go ahead. Is that the same for knees? Yes. What happens with the knees specifically is that again, the patellar tendon goes over the patella, the kneecap. The patellar tendon attaches on that tuberosity, that tibial tuberosity, the bump on your shin, and it is taking all that force from your quad and even as far up as your hip flexor, this rectus femoris, and it's going all the way over there. What happens, especially if you're cold and you. If you were running downhill cold, and you had old knee injuries or you had really tight quads and tight hip flexors, chances are that patellar tendon is pretty annoyed. And so, same type of thing. The band goes around just below the kneecap. It's basically, there's the kneecap. Say again in that. The little divot you can see. Yes. Just below. And what it's doing is exactly the same thing. It's taking, it's dissipating some of the pressure from that common attachment. Now, here's the overall problem with that band around the knee and the band around the elbow is that it's our human want to do the quick fix. Okay, I put this on and I don't feel it so much. But eventually, over time, if the overall cause of the problem isn't dealt with, then eventually they're going to put the band on and they're still going to feel the pain and they're going to wonder why it doesn't work anymore. It used to work, and it used to work here, and it used to work on the knee. It used to work. Why isn't it working now? The reason why it isn't working now is that that area just has too much tension, too much force going on it. And there hasn't been the other areas addressed. So the actual muscle and the actual trigger points, the. The little areas that are getting knots and that kind of thing have not been released. They have not created either the pliability in the fascial tissue, the connective tissue, or they haven't released the trigger points and the muscles are too tense. That's where the Massage comes in, the rolling comes in, stretching comes in. Because all of those things will create more pliability and more length. When the pliability and the length is created, the. Then there's not the same kind of tension pull right on the tendon itself. And sometimes the tendon itself just needs some time to calm down. If there's one or two specific things that are causing the issue, sometimes you need a little time away from that, some massage or treatment or rolling on the actual tissues, and then you're going to find the person can go beyond and feel great without needing the band, without needing the strap, and then they'll have a big difference. And you'll see that for yourself. You'll see it for other people in your life that you work with. But it especially becomes Problematic Anytime over 35, anytime there's not any of that maintenance work going on. And there's one or two specific overuse type of things that contribute to it. All right. Does that answer that one pretty well? Yep. Awesome. Any other questions on those? Those ones. Okay. I've got one other one that someone. Someone put in. This is a client that basically said that they feel better. And this wasn't just the tendonitis stuff. They feel better in the warmer weather. Meaning they move. They were referring to moving better, being able to train more. They just feel better. Now. I. I pointed to some of the things that are going on. There's in the warmth. When we are warmer, there's more. Not only blood flow through the muscles, which create warmth, but that also. And once movement starts, the synovial fluid, which is the joint lube, that comes in really fast, too. And so most people, I for myself as well, because I run cold a lot of the time. As soon as I go to, say, Florida or Mexico or somewhere like that, that day, my workout will feel so much better. I don't feel as stiff. My joints seem like they're moving better, all these things. And that warmth makes a big difference for me personally and for many other people. If someone's not acclimatized to the heat, though, then they might feel. Have a hard time cooling themselves down. They might feel a little nauseous. They might feel a little out of breath. So that can be there. If they're not very. If they're not used to walking a lot or running a lot or things like that. That was another question that came up, but it wasn't super specific. It was more about my workouts feel so amazing in the warm, and they feel so crummy in the cold. And what I would point to is give your honor your body to be able to warm up just a little bit more for being a coach. For Joni, if the temperature in the pool is cooler, she knows that in order to get the best times out of the swimmers, if that temperature in that pool was lower, that they're going to need probably another two or three sets of warm up just to be able to get the optimal performance if they were in a colder pool competing versus a warmer pool competing. So honor your body in giving it the little bit of a longer warm up or more specific warm up to certain areas. Like if you're warming up on a bike and your hands are still cold, but then you go to do a workout, then guess what? This whole region isn't warm yet and you're putting yourself at risk for injury. If you warm up on your bike and you're still feeling like you never broke a sweat, same thing. The shoulders are at risk for injury because that blood flow never got a chance to actually warm everywhere. It wasn't long enough. When the temperature in the room is lower or the pool is cooler, does that, does that land for you? That's going to be a really important one in warming up. Same thing goes for if it's wintertime. We go to go for a run or a walk outside and your feet are already kind of cool. And then we wonder why we have fascia problems, either plantar fasciitis or ankles or tendons or having trouble yet our feet were like, maybe not ice cubes, but they were like cool blocks going out. And then it's still colder outside and we're not overall warm enough. So sometimes something passive like a hot pack or warming up a little bit before you actually leave and go outside makes a big difference. Ok, so that is today's performance power. I hope that answers a few of the fantastic questions about cold immersion and all the other things that come up. Have a beautiful rest of your day. Honor, nourish and protect your bodies and I will see you on the next one. Bring your questions in at any time and I will keep track of them. Have a great day. 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