5 Minute Facts - Extreme Heat

This is episode 184 of 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 into 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. All right, welcome to Performance Power. Five minute Facts right now. And we're going into extreme heat, extreme heat. So what extreme heat looks like is your sauna. And to identify with fact number one, we've got sauna with dry heat, got steam heat, and we've got infrared. So in order to get the extreme heat to have some of the health benefits that we really want, it has to be in the zone of 60 to 90 degrees Celsius, or that sounds like 150 to 195 degrees Fahrenheit. So think of an oven, you're getting close to that oven temperature. What that is is the steam rooms actually have lower temperature, not as high as a 150 to 175. Whereas the dry saunas or the infrared saunas, those would have higher temperatures. So Those are the 150 to the 175 degrees Fahrenheit. So why would we want extreme heat anyway? So this goes into our fact number two for extreme heat, it causes what we would call eustress. So there's no stress, there's distress and there's eustress. Eustress is this fantastic stress on our bodies that creates positive benefits for our health, for our wellbeing, all sorts of things. So for example, you might have distress with overwhelm, you might have distress with an injury, whereas you might have eustress with excitement around socializing or exercise or great news. But those types of things will create some eustress and other things will create distress. Eustress has positive benefit also. In fact, number two for extreme heat, passive extreme heat, is we get a relaxation benefit. We get increased circulation and decrease in blood pressure. The reason it's a decrease in blood pressure is because when the circulation is increased and we need to get all this heat cooled from our body, the blood pressure actually decreases. It also decreases muscle tension. Fact number three, for our extreme heat or passive extreme heat, we get an increase in heart function, we get lower cardiovascular and all cause mortality. Get this by 27% for men who have been in a sauna two, three times per week. So two, three times per week, they get 50% of a decrease in all cause mortality if they go four to seven times per week in a sauna of a minimum of 19 minutes. And again, that temperature is same as what we talked about before. It's 175 degrees Fahrenheit. This is research that's been done by a number of different studies. But one person who's been researching it a fair bit is Dr. Rhonda Patrick. The purpose of looking into it is not only to prevent disease and death, but but also to look for ways to have added health benefits for people who might not be able to exercise, whether they have Alzheimer's, whether they have Parkinson's, whether they have some injury. So looking for health benefits when they may not be able to get them from exercise, but they can get them from passive heat. It's really powerful research findings. That's fact number three, excuse my voice, which I've lost here. Number four, the way that occurs is in what's called heat shock proteins. Heat shock proteins promote longevity. They protect against cardiovascular disease, protect against neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington disease. It slows muscle atrophy. Muscle atrophy is when our muscles naturally get smaller if we've stopped doing any training or they also atrophy or waste a little bit when we age. It slows muscle atrophy. It increase health span, not lifespan, but health span, meaning your health is longer over the duration of your life. Instead of having a long lifespan with short health span, it increases health span. And it is step one for what we would call heat acclimation training. So if someone's looking for higher performance benefits, whether it's biking or running or whatever the the performance benefits are, step one, for heat acclimation training would be using a sauna, so passive extreme heat. And five, for our facts on extreme heat, we have some risks, so we want to make sure we're addressing those. And risks are dehydration, dehydration when it comes to losing all that sweat. So every single time somebody uses a sauna, whether it's a hot steam sauna or a dry sauna or an infrared sauna, rehydration has to happen right after. Another risk would be that extreme heat if you're not acclimated to it, you've got heat exhaustion or heat stroke as a risk. So shorter spans of time initially to acclimate to it. And anyone who has really low or really high blood pressure, that can be a risk factor as well. If someone already has heart disease or are using drug or alcohol, that would be a contraindication. Another contraindication would be pregnancy as well. What happens with pregnancy is that we can cool our bodies really well via sweat, but the fetus can't cool its body as easily. That's why you wouldn't introduce something like a sauna to a pregnancy. Unless you've been using a sauna all the way along throughout your body's already adapted to it, then that would be fine. Typically ask your doctor, though, because I'm not the doctor. All right, so let's open it up to questions on passive extreme heat. Or if you don't have questions on passive extreme heat, bring it in on whatever you've got questions on. So I'm going to open it up, open up the chat, and I'll open up questions that have come in previously as well. So for who's on right now, what do you have for any questions? Just going to check here. Okay. I don't see any coming in right now. So as you think of them along the way, let's pop some more Coming in. So, as you can hear, I've got a little voice loss here. So I'm going to dive into some of the things that I do because this is something that others would ask on. We're in an environment right now that invites fear around anyone who has a cold. I know I don't have Covid because I've tested twice for it and it's negative. Yay. However, I have been around other people, which for humans who are biological creatures, and we're not typically around other people for this weird extended period of time, then we're exposed to more pathogens, bacterias, viruses, all sorts of things. This would be a normal response for being isolated from a lot of people for a long, long time and now being around people, because I was in an airport and in other spaces as well. Whatever my body is dealing with, I want lots and lots of water. So I'm going to do some other things to support this. Right now. I'm going to use essential oils, which I gargled with this morning. I'm going to take extra vitamin D, extra vitamin C. There are some products out there specifically for these things, but I tend to just go with vitamin D and vitamin C. I already have. We've done a talk on vitamin D and all the benefits for it. So that's very, very powerful. I'll also be taking in a lot more clear fluids. I can feel my body working harder with managing whatever's going on here. So I want lots of clear fluids to support whatever inflammation I have going on here. Because my voice was really stretched for a really long period of time. And then at the same time, warm liquids, anything like honey with lemon in it, lemon essential oil in it. What else have I been doing? Clear fluids and oh, I'll notice I use an OURA ring in order to monitor sleep and recovery. So I'll notice a little bit of a difference with what's happening with my sleep. I might have a slightly elevated heart rate. I might have a little decrease in heart rate variability. Some things like that will be going on. I won't feel as hungry if there's a little bit of inflammation in here. I don't have anything in my nose. I don't have any fever. The question that often comes up with clients is, will you still work out? If somebody's workout is something like walking or maybe some weights, then typically that's going to be fine. So I'm going to make a judgment on if I have a fever, then I'm not going to work out. If I have a cold or something that's just cold, maybe it's just around here or around here, then I probably will still work out. I'm going to listen to my body and listen to where the energy is, whether it's high energy or low energy, whether I have a fever or not. Those are going to dictate whether I work out or not. So this morning I did lift. I did lower volume than I normally would because I was away from my weights for a while. So I wanted to reintroduce with just two or three sets instead of going to the three or four sets that I would have ordinarily had today. Those would be some things that often get asked by clients if they've gotten a cold or if they're getting sick at all. If there's questions for you that come up on that topic, let me know. And Joe says, I love infrared saunas. I haven't had a chance to be in one for a couple of years, but really loved using them, was living with friends who had one. The infrared saunas are fantastic for our health and they're very unique in that they're not heating the room as much as the Light rays are heating your body, so it's really, really powerful. Those infrared saunas are now becoming really available to stick into your home as, like this little wee room, this product that's available for sale. So a lot of people are opting for that to pop it in their basement or in their rec room. And then they've got this little infrared sauna. So really powerful health benefits. And like I said before, it's step one for acclimating to getting training benefits from using heat so you can see. So for the skiers out there, the swimmers out there, the runners, the people who are looking for greater performance, you can get greater benefit. Your heart is going to be more efficient when you're exposed to regular extreme heat. So it can be very powerful that way. Another comment here. Hot flashes and the steam tends to be worse, almost like drowning. You're getting this massive wave of heat. Feels like a sauna and there's no sauna around. Fantastic feeling. That is. Ok. So on those ones, because you're not intentionally trying to heat yourself up in that moment, you're going to want to have something that is just a really quick cooling mechanism. And what we've used often is like, I have a spray bottle by my bed because a lot of my really hot flashes are at night. So I have a spray bottle by my bed that has things in it like some alcohol or vodka with peppermint essential oil. And it's a fast cooling so that I don't go into that sweat that looks like soaking the T shirt, soaking the bed, and feeling like you're drowning in all of your own sweat and feeling like you're dehydrated and all of those things. What I find that works for some of my clients and for myself, the lower my stress is, the less I'm eating, the less sugar I'm eating. Those two things, I would say, are the biggest factors for any symptoms that I have. So it ends up being, for me, stress that is coming from either what's going on in my life or what I'm actually thinking about it or what I'm consuming. If I'm consuming a fair bit of sugar, then that makes a difference for me. So if those things are on point, then the hot flashes are lower, the night sweats are lower. Not experiencing as much of that. When it comes to trying to introduce a sauna, I would start with. I would start with if you're feeling comfortable with it, if it's tolerable, I would start with five minutes and then I would build up from five minutes to 10 minutes, to 15 minutes to 20 minutes, as long as it's tolerable. If a big five minute jump isn't tolerable, build it up by two minutes, build it up by one minute and make sure. A little tip for health. You see how much metal I have in my ears. Take the metal off because the metal will really burn your skin. The metal gets a lot hotter. Your body's cooling itself, it's trying to cool actively. That's where all the sweat's coming in. But the metal is getting hotter and hotter and it'll burn your ears, burn your neck if you keep any metal on. The reason that the steam sauna is lower temperature than a dry sauna is because the steam sauna, you are actually getting just as hot in the lower temperature. But because there's humidity in the air almost, it can be up to 100% humidity in the air in a steam sauna. In that environment you can't cool yourself as well. Your body temperature is getting just as hot as you would be in a dry sauna, even though the dry sauna has a higher temperature than the steam sauna. Some people have the infrared saunas right now. Some people have, they'll put water on a rock sauna and create a steam sauna. Others will have, you know, there's Turkish. Turkey is notorious for its hot steam baths. So different countries have different cultures and different traditions. Whereas some of the Norwegian countries, they're very much hot, dry sauna and Turkey is very much a steam bath. But the point is, is that you're getting this internal, your body internal temperature is going up and it's causing the physiological responses and, and specifically those heat shock proteins. And that's what's creating this resiliency for our health. This is greater heart. We actually get a greater ability to pump with our left ventricle when these changes are going on. So it's really, really powerful. But yeah, I would say start with a couple of minutes at a time and then you've got this minimum dose effect is two to three times a week. And I hate to say that it's mostly studied on men, so we're making assumptions to put it into women. However, physiologically, for a number of reasons, there should be a similar effect for women, but the minimum dose effect for men was two to three times per week to get a 27% increase or decrease in all cause mortality. So two to three times a week at 19 minutes, then that was the rate for them. I would play around with it especially post Workout, if you've done a walk, if you've done some lifting, you've done something like that, it's a great time to relax the muscles. It's a great time to just breathe and settle into that heat. What else do we have for questions? Anything on training, injury, illness, nutrition, wellness, what do you got? Recovery, I had. Before you type that in, I had someone asking just over the last few days, the person was asking for accountability for their body composition and they wanted to reduce their body fat percentage over the course of the next few months and get a better body fat composition. And that was their terms. They wanted to get. It was male, they want to get down to 15% body fat. And the first question I asked was, well, what do you want accountability for? And they said, I want accountability for my body fat. And I said, well, what do you want accountability for? Because we're going in this circular question because to him, he's going to get lower body fat if somebody's checking in on him. And I said, well, what do you think you need to do the most? He says, well, I'm going to work out every day. Well, what do you think is the thing that's going to make the big difference? This is the question that I would ask and this came up a few times over the last week when somebody is asking me for results in some area. Here is the challenge. Think of the area. Is the area around your exercise, Is the area around your eating, Is the area around drinking water or recovery or any of those things. The question I ask is what do you think? Because you know your life and your body the best, what do you think will move the needle the most? So for those of you who are on, think of that area that you want some sort of physical or health or, or wellness benefit from. What's the one thing that you think will move the needle the most? And somebody's. What happened when I asked this question is that it's so much easier when I ask this to guys because they come up with a specific answer. So, for example, I was talking to a husband and wife and I said, okay, I'm going to start with the husband here because we're going to go pretty quick with the husband. It's going to be fairly easy. And so he said, well, I need to not be watching Netflix and not be eating later in the evening. So he knew exactly what it was. And then I said, okay, what do you want to do? Do you want to have no Netflix and no evening eating after whatever time? He said five times A week or seven times a week? What do you want? He says, I think I want to plan it for five times a week. I said, OK, now what is your score out of 10? Some of you have done this with me before in creating a vitality habit. What is your score out of 10 in your confidence? Are you a 10 out of 10 where you are so confident, you know it is done, it is as good as done, you know it is happening, you can do it, you have done it before. It is a 10 out of 10. Or is it a 5 out of 10 where, you know, the evenings are the toughest time. I always say I'm going to do it and then I don't, or I really have challenges. I really want to eat at that time. So we want to get it to it. So it's a 7 or above out of 10. Ideally an 8 or above out of 10. He was a 9 out of 10. So he was pretty solid on it. Then go over to his wife and his wife says, well, I want to lean out a bit. She said, I said, okay, well, what do you think is the one thing that's going to move the needle? Just one thing a little bit? And she says, diet. I said, ok, that's like saying the whole thing. So when someone says diet, there's so much that's like saying religion. There's so much to it. There's so many things and so many meals and so many types of food. And it's easy to give somebody a diet, and it's not so easy, but a lot of people will actually follow through. But it doesn't mean it's going to be the right thing for them. So when she said diet, I said, well, what kind of change would you like to see made in your diet? She said, well, because of the kids, I'm eating, I'm grazing a whole lot, and I don't want to be grazing a whole lot. And she couldn't think of a way to quantify that or call that a thing. So I said, how about this? How about the only time that you eat if you're constantly grazing around when the kids are eating or not eating and things like that, or you have a snack. And they described hummus and chips while they're making dinner, not realizing until the husband said, well, it's like we're eating two meals, isn't it? Like, yeah, you eat the hummus and chips and then you have your dinner. It is like you're eating two meals. So I said, how about you just the only Thing you eat is on a plate. And when I said that, she thought about. She's like, I can do that. Said, okay. So that means that there's no opening the bag and eating out of the bag. There's no grabbing on the fly on the go while you're creating another meal. The only thing you're going to consume is what you can see and you've actually placed on the plate. She said, yeah, I think I can do that. And so then we got to the confidence scale. How confident are you that you can do that? Hers was a little lower. She was probably around a 7 out of 10. And so we said, okay, because she was looking at all the time, every single day, every single meal, all of the time. So then we just went, does it have to be all the time? Do you want it all the time? And she wanted it all the time. And she wanted that challenge. But then because there was the two of them together, they started discovering how they could support each other in this. And they realized a few key things. If he wanted to get up at 5am to go work out, he worked backwards from his nighttime time. He wasn't going to snack. He's like, I'm confident I can get up at 5am Five days a week. And then he realized that if she stays in bed and sleeps a little bit, he won't get up. So it's dependent on her as well. And he also realized that if going to bed earlier in the evening to get up at 5am and not watching Netflix and not snacking during Netflix, if she wanted to have some quality time with him, maybe some more romantic time together, then that would also throw out the window. Him going to bed early. He was very influenced by her. Meanwhile, she also discovered that when she put a bit of the weight on, it was when they had moved in together and blended their families. There's so many things that can come out just from learning about what some of the nuances are. It's not sometimes as easy as saying changing the diet or even putting the food on a plate, or even getting up at 5am There are other things that are impacting that. And what it typically is, is if somebody has a value that says, I really want to be healthy, but say a mother has a value that says, I really want to be healthy, but I really want to be with my kids and snuggle with them in the morning, then that mother is probably not going to stick with getting up at 5am and going to the gym. So sometimes there's a conflict in Values, just like you heard with that husband, he wants to go to bed earlier. But his value of connecting with his wife when they have time together, just the two of them, which is often fairly late because their kids are older and they're waiting for these kids to go to bed at 10pm and they're tired. Then he's defaulting with connecting to his wife instead of going to bed earlier so he can get up earlier for his workouts. So by a show of hands, who has found that something like that has occurred where the great intentions are around this thing, but there's some other thing that's very meaningful to you that kind of pulls you in a different direction? Yeah, for sure. Okay, what are the questions? We've got time for about two more questions. Food preferences, workout preferences, injuries, Any of the things. Okay, so this question is on a specific doterra onguard softgel. For me, I'm a bit hardcore. If I'm traveling, I will take a softgel. It is a little gel cap that has oils like oregano, clove, melaleuca, a combination of different oils. It has thyme in it, has a number of amazing oils in order to combat anything that's bacterial or viral. And so I go hardcore in that. I put the direct oil into a shot glass and I shoot that back with oregano and on guard in it. Or if I only have on guard in there, I'll gargle it. If there's oregano in there, I'm shooting it back and I'm chasing it really fast with warm water because the oregano will burn the back of your throat. But if it's an arm guard softgel, I would take two or three a day. If I felt something coming on, I want to hit it hard, hit it fast, before it settles in. And this particular voice thing, it came on very suddenly. There was no fever, no nose thing, no sore throat. None of the things I normally get when there's something like a frog like this. I normally would get a sore throat before I notice any other symptoms. And I can hit it hard with oils, but the on guard I would take if I felt something coming on. I would either do the on guard soft gel if I was traveling or if I was at home, I would do the shot glass with the on guard and. Or oregano and. Or melaleuca. Okay. And. And in terms of on a regular basis. I don't take it on a regular basis. I take it when I'm in susceptible scenarios. So traveling on a plane around a whole bunch of people or around a few people, but I know one or two of them have had a cold or are sick or I feel something coming on. That's when I take it that way. But I don't take it kind of as a preventative every single day for that. I would do more vitamin D, vitamin C, and I still will use lemon essential oil in my tea or things like that. But I usually take it more consciously versus not as I don't take it every day all the time. Yeah, but I would put it on topically if I'm going out, especially if I've gone to the grocery store. Especially like I'll put it on topically and inhale it, but I'll only do it internally when I've when I'm in those susceptible scenarios. Okay, so that's going to wrap up Performance Power for today. Have a beautiful, beautiful rest of your day and I will see everybody shortly just in a couple days. Have a wonderful Monday. Stay healthy, stay well, keep rocking it. If you enjoy listening to the Empowered Team Podcast, you'll love being on the Empowered Team. The Empowered Team runs year round. It is our group coaching and accountability program where we we take mindset and physical performance concepts and break them down to usable action steps that optimize results. To learn more about our Empowered Leadership coaching for business, our custom online physical training plans, and of course the Empowered Team Group coaching. Head to www.theempowered.ca Empower Empowered Learn More. That's www.thempowered.ca Empowered Learn More.