201. Sam Maxwell & Kyle Ponton: Does Cold Plunging Really Work? Here’s the Science!

My favorite part about cold plunging is that it changed my life completely.

I was diagnosed with severe ADHD when I was young.

I was just googling what can help me with an Adderall addiction.

So, when I found the cold therapy, being able to substitute that, I was buying ice every single day.

I'm a walking testimonial of what we sell and what we created.

I literally call it my drug of choice because nothing makes me feel better for longer.

That aspect of getting out and just being so clear.

People are realizing, man, there's so many ways to feel really good without drugs and alcohol.

And that's when we then connected on how much he believed in cold plunging.

And he was like, dude, let's stop everything we're both doing right now, put our brains together, and let's create our own product.

Most people see comfort very aggressively.

They avoid any level of discomfort, not realizing that some level of discomfort can make you stronger.

There's really something to be said about pursuing the discomfort to where then when stuff comes out to you, you just feel like you got it.

I always say, if your morning is hard, your day will be easy.

Doing that very hard thing in the morning just sets me up for my day.

I feel like cold exposure is one of those things that is going to still be mainstream 5,000 years from now.

When you look at the intelligence, really break this down, you get into a cold punch.

What is the body going to do in that situation?

One of the things that I found very interesting was, and I didn't really learn about this really until this past year or two:

Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.

I'm your host, human biologist Gary Brecca, where we go down the road of everything: anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between.

Today is going to be a really special podcast because it's on a broad topic that so many people are interested in, and even more people are confused about.

So, I'm really, really excited to run this podcast on cold plunging.

And I've asked two of my very good friends and partners to come to the podcast today.

So, welcome, Sam and Kyle from Cold Life Cold Plunges.

Welcome to the podcast, guys.

Thanks for having us on, Gary.

We're pumped to be here, man.

This has been an awesome journey.

I mean, in full disclosure, I'm a shareholder

in Cold Life, a proud shareholder.

I met you guys a few years ago

through my son.

I fell in love with the purpose and the passion.

It reminded me a lot of, you know, when I was getting going off the ground, young entrepreneur, passionate about an idea, unrelenting.

But what I really appreciated about you guys was

the level of intentionality that you had in bringing your product to market.

You wanted it to be American-made.

You wanted to have the best motors.

You wanted to have the most durable plunge.

And I don't want to turn this into a commercial for Cold Life because I want to go into the science of cold plunging, but I want to get that out of the way first.

This is not a podcast to sell you a cold plunge, of course.

It's a podcast

talking about all of the benefits.

So let's just rewind uh the clock a little bit i mean how and and why did you decide to take the leap into cold plunging and make that your

i'll i'll start so for for me my journey was was honestly a little simple you know i got invited one saturday morning i don't know this is probably four or five years ago now probably right before covet era uh i'm from atlanta so in atlanta the winter time it gets pretty cold so thankfully we have some pretty cold water near us and all the showers and such and so i had a couple crazy buddies of mine and uh we said hey let's just go to a local pool and do this in the morning.

It's like 8 a.m.

Saturday morning.

You know, what else better do I got to do than go jump into a pool of cold water?

So I started to do this.

And it just, it was, it was incredible for me.

I literally came out of there.

I had no idea what any of these benefits were.

I didn't know any of this, the mental clarity, the inflammation.

I didn't know any of these buzzwords.

I just knew I felt like incredible.

And it was just so addictive.

So we kept on coming back.

And then five of us turned into 20 of us, turned into 60 of us, turned into almost hundreds of us getting together weekly back in Atlanta.

Really?

And jump in the lake.

To just jump into a lake.

There used to be something in

Chicago.

I went to grad school in Chicago, and it was called the Polar Club.

Yeah.

Do you remember that?

Like once a year, they'd all go, but I actually didn't do that for the record, but they would all go bum rush Lake Michigan.

I was like,

that was a crazy dog.

Yeah, yeah.

But it was like women.

Yeah, everybody.

Killed the whole thing.

Yeah, it was a big community of everything.

So that, and that's what this turned into.

It was just a big community, which is why I loved it.

And then Sam and I had, you know, had met and we were doing some different, you know, business things on the side.

And so one day I walk in.

This is while I'm doing these events and such.

I walk into Sam and I'm, I'm going over there to say, hey, you need to come check out this cold punch thing we're doing.

We're doing pools.

You know, next weekend, you got to come by.

And I walk in and I'll let Sam share his side of the story on that.

But that's really where I discovered, wait, you're doing cold punging too?

Yeah, I had just discovered cold punging.

And my favorite part about cold punging is that.

It changed my life completely.

You know, a lot of people do say that.

And for people that are are watching this, they're like, okay, go play with the change.

Sure.

I get it.

Where's the affiliate link?

So, you know, yeah, no, seriously.

But for me, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm a walking testimonial of what we sell and what we created.

And going into that, I was diagnosed with severe ADHD when I was young.

And when I met Kyle, I was just trying to get over my addiction of taking Adderall.

As I got older, I hated that I was absolutely dependent on a medication.

Wow.

And the older I got, the more I was aware of how horrible of a person it made me.

My family.

It was a tough one too, man.

My family, everyone that was close to me was scared to confront Sam about his addiction at all.

I wouldn't sleep for days.

I would take multiple a day.

I got down to like 145 pounds and I was oblivious.

So the older I got, I was looking for an outlet, a natural way to battle my ADHD, but not take the medication anymore.

Right.

So after doing some research, I saw that cold therapy was a possible solution to fix that.

And I tried Cryro.

And just for me personally, it didn't, didn't make me get over that edge.

I was still craving the medication.

Then I discovered ice bass.

So I bought a plastic barrel at my office.

I didn't want to spend thousands of dollars on the few that were on the market at the time.

And I bought a barrel and I was buying ice every single day.

And I didn't miss a day for like 14 days.

Really?

And within 14 days, I reflected and I was like, I'm not craving the app.

But who was the one that was like, hey, dude, I think you need to try cold?

Was that you?

It was you.

Yeah.

Well, it actually wasn't me.

I won't take the credit for that.

I came in, it was completely independently, which is probably why.

There was like an article.

I was like up at the office like late at night, didn't have my prescription.

I was just struggling, right?

Drinking so much caffeine every single day.

And I was just googling.

I was out of curiosity, like, what can help me with an Adderall addiction?

And I looked at cold therapy.

There was a few articles at the time that said that it could help.

Yeah.

Which we'll dive into in a little bit.

But I started doing ice bass in a plastic barrel.

And he walked into my office at the time when we were doing a different venture together.

He's like, bro, he's like, what's going on?

What do we got?

He was like, what's this?

He's Jeffrey Dahmer bucket in the corner of your office.

It is true.

It's a crusty thing.

He's hiding over there.

And he walks over to it and he's like, dude, this water is disgusting.

And I'm like, I'm like, dude,

I don't care.

I'm like, I get ice every day.

I'm like, I'm tired of buying ice.

But I was like, I don't miss a day, dude.

And that's when we then connected on how much he believed in cold plunging.

Yeah.

I started telling telling him about I want to start a cold plunge company and he was like, dude, let's stop everything we're both doing right now, put our brains together and let's create our own products.

And what were you guys doing at the time?

I was, I had my own prior like e-commerce business selling 360 spinning photo booths.

Okay.

I used to always follow trends.

And what I like to say about the cold plunge is that I'm not in this because it's a trend.

I'm in this because it changed my life.

And now we want this to impact as many lives as possible.

Good for you.

So I'm very proud of myself for getting off that drug.

And now every day communicating with customers and possible prospects to join the cold life and be a customer.

People are battling ADHD and it's not talked about enough.

Yeah, you know, I talk about this a lot, you know, because I've studied genetic methylation pathways and how the body converts nutrients and what have you.

And one of the nutrients that we make in the human body, we make dopamine, we make serotonin, we make norepinephrine, we make the neurotransmitters that create our mood.

that create our emotions.

And so if we're making them inside the body, when we take things from outside the body and put them in in an effort to try to fix that deficiency, it never works, right?

I mean, it works for a period of time, but it creates dependency or creates something called tachyphylaxis, which is desensitization.

So, I mean, unknowingly,

you basically stepped on a physiologic secret and that is that your body can produce these kinds of

things.

Within myself, I was 25 at the time and I was like, this is me going to the next chapter of my life trying to become a better person.

Yeah, I literally call it my drug of choice.

And the reason why I say drug of choice is because nothing makes me feel better for longer.

And there's no, there's no downside to it.

Yes.

There's no downside.

Other than the apprehension right before you get it.

Exactly.

It's always cold.

But then that gives you that kind of thing.

Which you'll kind of learn as an upside down the road.

Yeah.

You're doing that hard thing.

Yeah.

What are the top three reasons why I prefer a vertical cold plunge versus a lay down tub?

Well, I've used both.

When you're in a vertical position, your body naturally regulates your breathing better.

So if you're holding on to the sides and you're in a vertical position, you can just focus on your breath work and you can stay calm.

A lot of people feel more calm when they're in a vertical position than when they're laying down in the water and think they might slip under the water.

So when you're vertical plunging, you're fully immersed faster.

You can focus on recovery, inflammation reduction, and you're not struggling to just stay in a lie down position.

Your body floats in an awkward way sometimes.

So it's just a more efficient, comfortable experience, in my opinion.

It takes up way less space too.

It has a smaller footprint so you can put these on your patio your garage your bathroom your locker room you can really put it anywhere i've got one on my balcony i've got two in my bathroom so this is why cold life is my favorite cold plunge on the market so click the link below and you can order yours today make sure you get the ultimate human version now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast yeah that's great so how about you what what was your first kind of For me, you're into the cold plunging now.

Yep.

You got a little bit of background.

You walk in.

He's in the dirty algae water.

He's in the dirty algae water.

That's a guy I want to be business

dude

give him the honest great choice dude well you know what it's you know this because you know now we've gotten to know each other for some years now and so we know this but in life everything is about relationships no question um and so um when i met sam uh we actually had a whole completely different uh business uh together i had given him some money for uh really just kind of an investment into some e-commerce stuff he was doing and it completely flopped and failed and um through that process uh sam really showed the kind of person he was um by not only only making me whole and making efforts to do that, but the communication and showing and being transparent and showing all the effort.

And so I like to judge a character when things are not good, not when things are great.

It's very easy to hide things when things are really good.

I think you have done proven that to me, too.

Well, thank you.

We appreciate that because it's easy to hide when things are good.

You know, numbers help, right?

You know, everyone's doing well and everyone wants to really poke the bear.

But when things are tough, everyone looks to go point fingers.

And that's not what Sam did, which I really respected.

And I said, hey, I don't really, you know, I want to do something with you.

Let's find a project together um and so for me i was i was i was starting this cold plunges out and it was just five of us and then so fast it turned into 20 and then 30 and then 100 and i was like there's so much more people who want to do this yeah there's so much more people who want to be a part of this and so when i talked to sam about it i said man we should start something well and it happened for a reason clearly because he was actually coming to my office to pick up a partial check to me to meet get exposure to being

that's i didn't want him to come by that day just being honest with you i was that's why the cold punch was dirty He's like, get in here, bro.

Yeah.

No, literally, literally.

I was dreading that day, to be honest with you.

It was a rough season of life I was in.

The business flopped.

And he came by and we didn't talk about the check for three hours.

He was just like, we just talked about it in the corner of the office forever.

He's like, dude, what do you like about it?

You know, what do you want to do about this?

Like, we just looked up on Google trends.

Like the search volume on Google of cold punging was slowly increasing.

And then thanks to Kyle, truthfully, he just was dedicated.

And every single day day after that day, he showed me that.

I got a real sense for that too when I met you guys because, you know, the cold plunge space was by no means saturated, but I was actually just coming out of a very difficult cold plunge experience.

You know, with my clinics, we invested heavily in this cold plunge company that was actually sourcing everything from China.

And I don't have anything.

uh against china except everything that comes out of china but um

Chinese people are great.

Yeah, exactly.

I love Lomain.

Is that Chinese?

Yeah, I think so.

So good.

We'll go with that.

A lot of good things

come out of China.

And

we bought like 250 of these things, sold them to our biggest clients, and they were thousands of dollars.

And then we had a 65% failure rate in the motors.

Cost my partner and I seven figures because we did the right thing.

We refunded everybody's money, let them keep the cold plunge.

And I was, you know, just coming off of this shell shock.

And I met you guys.

And I was like, oh, gosh, here we go.

But when I started talking to you,

American-made

right here in America, American labor, the factory is right down the street from my house.

I'm like, I'm going to come put a finger on that guy.

Yep.

You know, powder-coated aluminum, durable.

And I think I ran mine for about a year.

before I put my toe in the water with you guys.

Yeah, we didn't hear from you.

I remember we came and dropped it off.

I was beating that thing up.

We had it out in the sun

on and off and on and off.

And then I brought it into the house.

And then I started letting everybody get in there every day.

And I was like, man, these guys are pretty legit.

And then I remember I was like, you know, this motor is like, you know, it's a little bit noisy.

You're like, don't worry, next generation, we've got.

And you brought the motors over.

They're whisper quiet.

It's like, okay, I like these guys dedicated to customer quality, dedicated to customer service.

What I like, too, is that you shaped your company.

at least from my perspective on the backs of the feedback you were getting from your customers

who thought they needed we still communicate with our customers frequently and no matter how big we get I mean since July 1st of this month nearly every day I've been helping with sales being on the phone with sales opportunities or even we call customers to get feedback yeah ask them how it's going yeah and it's been a great way to get good clarity that we're at a great position and we have been that the product's at a good it's it's it's hard to it's hard to i think do anything right if you don't have customer feedback because you're just sitting in your own kind of siloed world thinking i think i have the best sauce of whatever it is even whatever you for selling products, services, media companies, whatever, you know, if you don't hear the feedback from the people, then you're never really going to know how to make the best thing.

So for us, we kind of knew, we knew some of the things right early on by going out there and testing the market a little bit.

We knew American Made was going to be a massive one.

That's a huge thing.

I mean, this is even.

you know, pre the current administration, which is

really incentivizing.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

Pre- all the competitors get smoked by the tariffs and whatever.

And it was tough because we know some of our competitors, people, they're not bad people.

It was just a really challenging thing that, like you mentioned about China, there's, you know, there's, there's, people have their opinions on China and there's certain things that we use every single day that come from China and chillers should just not be one of those things.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Our supposedly had ozone filtration and all this stuff.

I mean, it sounded great.

Yeah, exactly.

It's, it's super gimmicky, right?

It kind of looks like a shiny toy object syndrome is what I call it.

You know, looks good, sounds good, has a cool screen and all that.

But our philosophy is very simple when we go about building products.

And I don't want this to turn into a whole cold life episode about our products, but we're passionate about it.

We have a lot of passion behind what we build.

And we really take a simple approach behind the engineering and the development of these things, which is just build simple products that look beautiful.

And the more you complicate things, the more get, you know, gadgets and widgets and things and this put inside of these machines, the more likely you're going to have something break.

And that was our biggest problem.

If you go call any cold punch company or I can guarantee you, you know, they're struggling because the failure rates are high

because most of the machines do come from overseas.

So we really wanted to stand on that and say we wanted to make an American-made product, which, by the way, takes a significant more time, significant more resources, significant more energy,

money, everything.

It's very challenging to do things here in America.

It's also way more expensive.

So,

we went that journey, though.

And it took us, you know, coming up on, it took us over a year of just development, you know, before selling anything

to really go out there and

build these things.

So,

let's delve, let's delve a little bit into, you know, the science and the benefits.

I mean, clearly, I'm a, I'm, I'm, I'm a believer.

Cold plunging was definitely a tipping point for me.

But now that I'm out there and looking at the research, and of course, you can't, you know, you're on Instagram, the stuff comes into my feed.

You see that people are all over the place

on cold plunging.

I think the hardcore cold plungers like myself

try not to go a day without it.

I mean, in Colorado, I got a $165

cattle trough that I jump in because I can't, I don't have electricity, right?

Literally.

So there's no,

I can't run a chiller.

So I just bought a $165 aluminum cattle truck.

There we go.

The water comes out of the glacier at like 42 degrees, and I jump in, and I don't let it get moldy like yours.

I

change it every day.

But I guess it's not, I wasn't in my office.

I was extremely healthy then.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You hadn't taken my mold detox glass yet.

Not yet.

You can sign up for that challenge.

So, you know, but one of the articles I read lately is studies

was that cold plunging actually reduces the benefits of exercise.

And I think that this threw a little, no pun intended, but cold water on the cold plunging space.

And maybe clarify that or

talk about that a little bit, you know, timing or whatnot.

I can share some stuff on that.

So there was a recent study that came out and I think it kind of scared people a little bit thinking like, oh, no, cold plunging is bad.

And it's really kind of like anything, it's a very nuanced discussion.

It's not general.

It's very nuanced.

And so when they talk about inflammation being bad after a workout, they're talking about the concept of when you're working out after a heavy lift, right?

In a heavy, in a gym exercise, where you're actually inflaming the muscles.

And that's the intention of the exercise.

Then immediately following the exercise, you probably don't want to now deflame the muscle.

I would agree that.

Now, you might know more about this.

I'm sure there is a time period and that's, I think, where the nuance comes in.

Is it an hour?

Is Is it four hours?

Is it three hours?

I think that's where the kind of the conversation comes in.

I think safely, just for everyone's purposes, if you wait a couple hours and just use logic and then you go hop in the cold punch for recovery, you're going to be okay.

Or if you do it prior to exercise, or just do it prior to exercise.

And I think that's where people misunderstood.

It makes, it seems like common sense.

Right after the workout, we're going to get in the cold punch for recovery, which, like you just said, though, now I cold punch before I work out.

Yeah, I do too.

Yeah.

I don't have to take pre-workout or caffeine or nothing.

That's it right there for me.

And then additionally, if I want to do it again, I just wait until later in the day.

Yeah.

And you know, I've actually used it as a

contrast therapy sometimes, even before I go to bed.

Now, I won't get in for a long time, but I'll do a short sauna session.

Then I'll just go in the cold plunge for about 30 seconds,

dunk, come up to my neck, hang out for about 30 seconds, and then get out.

So it doesn't actually give me that massive spike of narpinephrine, dopamine.

And I find that I sleep really, really well

on those nights.

But let's go into the science a little bit of cold plunging.

I mean, we know that there are stresses you can apply to the body called hormesis or hermetic stresses.

These are stresses that we apply to the body and the body strengthens in response.

I often say, we were talking about it before the podcast, that, you know, aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort.

And most people

seek.

comfort very aggressively and they avoid any level of discomfort, not realizing that some level of discomfort can make you stronger.

Yeah.

Um, so talk a little bit about direct evidence-backed benefits that come from cold plunging.

Yeah, absolutely.

I actually, interesting enough, so my wife, who you've met, Kayla, um, when I was doing this whole cold plunge thing, she never uh really got into cold plunging.

Um, I kind of did mine.

Mine took a solid two years.

Yeah, that's it, right?

That stage was slow.

Right on the right on that timeline.

Yeah, that's about right.

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They actually come from real citrus fruits, and the color is from vegetable juice, not artificial dyes.

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Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast.

You know, for me, you know, it was more like a hoorah, you know, get in there, hard thing to do, you know, that kind of thing.

And so that's why, you know, she'd see me do that.

And she's like, I'm not doing that.

I don't need any of that stuff.

So until, you know, about a year ago, she ended up getting like a health coach.

And one of the things that she particularly

was challenged with was she had high cortisol um and she tended to um

maybe just say mismanage stress in that sense right and so because of the high cortisol because of the high stress when more stress would come on situations that'd be very high stressful and she'd have a hard time managing that and so one of the recommendations that her coach you know uh gave to her was hey have you considered cold plunging she's like well funny enough you know

i've got access to one um so uh she started to cold plunge regularly and and there was a absolute massive change in her behavior.

And I think the reason why, which I've actually come to learn a lot more about this, even just being in this space is, yes, it's one of those hard things to do, which is probably one of my favorite benefits from it.

People talk about the science and the benefits and the mental and the inflammation and all those things, which are great things.

But for me, it's very difficult to do.

And I do it every single morning.

And so doing that very hard thing in the morning is just.

there's nothing else.

It sets me up for my day.

And that doesn't get talked about enough because

there's really something to be said about doing difficult things.

Like you said, kind of pursuing the discomfort to where then when stuff comes at you, you just feel like you got it.

Yeah, and doing them early, doing the difficult things early.

Doing the difficult things early.

Your morning is hard.

Your day will be easy.

Exactly.

And so to go deeper into that though, but one of the things that I found very interesting was, and I didn't really learn about this really until this past year or two is.

You know, when you go into a cold plunge, everyone talks about it.

I think even one of your listeners might have asked a question about this.

You know, hey, it's, it's so hard to get past that first 30, 60 seconds, that shock.

I want to get out.

I want to get out.

And we experience this.

You know, we see a lot of first-time cold plungers come in and they want to just jump in and jump out.

And when you jump into a cold plunge, as you know,

you go into a fight or flight response state.

You go into that sympathetic state.

You get to breathe.

You forget to breathe and you're pretty much, you know, your body is thinking, okay, I need to kick in because I'm going to die, right?

Your brain knows you're just in a cold plunge, but your body is telling you something is off.

And so doing that, and then we we know that if you get past that 30 seconds, 60 seconds, 90 seconds marker, it's different for everybody, and you get on to that kind of parasympathetic state where your heart rate comes down, you start to find calm, you start to find peace, you start to find that balance again.

And then all of a sudden, everything's okay.

You can actually stay in that cold punch at that point for probably as long as you want, really.

You know, we don't recommend anything past a couple minutes, but it's a lot easier at that point.

And what I learned was that there's actually a lot of data behind that

transition of going from sympathetic to parasympathetic and actually training the nervous system

to to to combat and activate in the normal world.

And so

for my wife, I've seen that transformation where, you know, those same situations will come up or those challenging things can come up and it can be very stressful, but it's not that same level of stress or that same reactivity that's there because you've trained the mind, you've trained the nervous system that, hey, stress is coming.

It's coming.

I'm going to go through it.

I know I'm going through it.

Now on the back end of this, I know there's kind of a smooth sailing coming and uh i think that's that's a very powerful thing because there's a lot of people who deal with high stress high cortisol that's that's a very challenging thing i totally agree with you there's actually something fascinating well documented in the literature it's called the mammalian dive reflex um and the mammalian dive reflex is germane to all mammals um and when mammals dive whales dolphins when they actually dive in the ocean as the water temperature cools and it's passing over their face it shifts them from a sympathetic to a parasympathetic state it actually reduces their heart rate, calms them down.

So, you can actually capture this benefit by putting your face in the water when you first get in, either dunking or splashing cold water on your face will activate the mammalian dive reflex and actually make the cold plunge easier.

Yeah, and that's well documented in the literature.

You can look up the mammalian dive reflex,

it's a well-known reflex that's germane to all mammals.

So, that's essentially what's happening there.

And if I can't, if I can, we

like our more or less scientific saying, sorry, Of everything you just explained is we have a saying it's called, I don't count if you don't dunk.

Oh, okay.

That's our less scientific saying.

Now you don't count if you don't do the mammalian dive reflexes.

Yeah, exactly.

Actually, shout out to Andrew Huberman because he was the first one that said, I was like, that sounds a little small.

I started looking it up.

I was like, all right, Andrew.

He's rarely wrong.

So he'd be right again.

But so talk a little bit about time.

Yeah.

Temperature, because that's the big one.

It's like, should it be 35 degrees?

And I do 15 minutes.

It'd be, you know, 60 degrees and I do five minutes.

You know, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Yeah, I mean, we've heard it from yourself and from the research we've done, there's no studies that say the colder the better.

Right.

So we always recommend people when they're starting, you know, the machine goes down at 37 degrees Fahrenheit.

Right.

I myself rarely cold punch at 37 degrees.

That's brutal, man.

Unless I'm having a rough day and I want to do something extremely extreme.

We do it.

We generally recommend around 48 to 55 degrees.

Perfect.

And we tell everybody, start at one to two minutes and get your body used to it.

Don't go in there at 37 degrees and try to do it for five minutes.

You know, we have people reach out to us that say, oh, I did it for 10 minutes yesterday at 40 degrees.

What should I do next?

And we're like, actually, you can get the full benefits just doing 10 to 14 minutes a week.

That's a dark.

breaking it, you know, breaking it down at two to three minutes a day, even just four to five days a week.

So, you know, if people don't want to do a cold cold plunge at first, start off with a cold shower, start doing it for 30 seconds, 60 seconds, get it obviously as cold as it possibly can.

I think cold showers, in my opinion, are actually harder than a cold plunge.

Because part of your body's wondering what's going on, the other half is wondering what's going on.

It's like, yeah, it's like being in line of the torture.

You know, you're next.

You see it coming.

I hate not having a cold plunge because then I feel obligated to do my cold shower.

And I'm like, this is miserable.

I would rather just be sitting all the way up to my neck in a cold plunge.

But that's kind of the quick breakdown that we explain to everybody.

I mean, a lot of our customers always ask for our advice and we always say, like, if you want to go down to 37 in a few months and you feel like you can handle it, wear the footies for your feet, you know, to keep your feet warm at least.

But yeah, we always suggest people.

Man, I see the same thing, 48 to 52, 55 degrees, three minutes minimum, six minutes maximum.

You get all the benefits.

I mean, all the literature and I've exhaustively gone through the literature.

And, you know, if you think about it, when you get a peripheral vasoconstriction and you constrict, if you actually keep reducing the temperature, it doesn't constrict any harder right it doesn't like that it's not because once you make a fist as tight as you can make it if you keep putting it in colder water you're not going to make a tighter fist right so you're not going to increase their peripheral vasoconstriction what i found found fascinating which not to completely jump topics but the more i study the human body the more i believe in god because when you look at the intelligence the the the architecture of what happens if you really break this down you get into a cold punch you get this peripheral vasoconstriction but it vasoconstricts in a very specific specific physiologic pattern.

It shuttles blood.

It shuttles the blood first to the brain.

That's the first organ to receive the

blood right up through the carotid arteries.

Then it shuttles the blood to the heart and then out to the lungs and then everything else.

And if you think about the intelligence of that, you know, let's say you're walking on the ice and you're by yourself.

You break through the ice.

Now you're in.

38 degree water.

You're alone.

You have no resources.

What is the body going to do in that situation?

I mean, it has no external resources.

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So, first thing, preserve the brain.

Second, heart.

Third, lungs.

And if you think about that sequence, I mean, if this goes out, nothing else matters.

This stops me, nothing else matters.

And then these are not working.

But you can tolerate those in that sequence, right?

And then,

you know, after it does that, it starts this entire physiologic cascade to prepare you to best get out of that situation.

Release of cold shock proteins.

I think one of the most fascinating areas of clinical research now is in cold shock proteins.

We're just scratching the surface of these fascinating proteins that are locked up in the liver.

There's a few of them, LIN28A and LIN28B, that are being investigated for improving insulin sensitivity

and decreasing insulin resistance,

scouring the blood of free radical oxidation.

So if you think about that and then, you know, releasing norepinephrine,

say it.

That's noreperephrine.

Don't ask how many times I've tried to learn that word.

He was practicing it before the podcast.

Out of the screen right here, like

I was on Google, having it say it to me while I was pacing in the hallway.

I was like, Come on, Sam.

I told him I said the porcupine one is harder than that.

And you know that one.

There you go.

But if you think about it, what does that do?

It widens your field of vision, makes your hearing more, makes you more alert, focused, concentrated, increases your short-term processing speed.

Why?

Because you got to survey the environment around you.

You got to critically be able to think.

And

to me, it's even understanding the physiologic mechanisms it's a it's a it's an eerie form of meditation

because i'm one of those folks and you with an adhd background probably fall in the same category that has a very difficult time quieting my mind yes like to just sit be still like my wife and i play the silent game i last 30 seconds

like sage could go three days right

but i'm like i need to say something you know um and i've tried guided meditation but dude when you're in a cold plunge,

your mind is not, you're not.

Where else?

Did I get everything on my grocery list?

I wonder if I returned that email.

You know, you're not thinking about your Instagram post.

You're like highly present.

Yes.

And so good.

And I think that, you know, that aspect of getting out and just being so clear, you know,

it's like, what an amazing way to start your day.

Yes.

And the fact that we can tap into this every day, God gives us an endless amount of this resource.

And I always tell people, look,

we're trying to cold shock the body, not cold adapt the body.

Very important.

And that's why I say not hanging out in cold water forever is not a great idea.

In fact, when I

was a mortality researcher for years, and when I started in the mortality space, when I was born in 1970,

Eskimos had the shortest life expectancy of any race.

Really?

They lived at the poles, very little sunlight, very little vitamin D3.

Wow.

Very high fat with high carbohydrate diet.

And they were called adaptive.

So, you know, they were learning, their body was adapting to the cold.

So it was adding adipose layers.

It was increasing the amount of visceral and body fat.

So this is one of those tools that you throw in the arsenal.

You know,

you use it for its advantages and don't overuse it and don't abuse it.

Exactly.

And it can just really be an

integral part of your day.

So time,

you know, temperature are big ones.

Yep.

And so what about people that have, you know, renowneds or

people with heart conditions?

There was one question in here.

There was a very specific question she was asking about.

We'll get to that in the VIP community.

But do you find...

Are you finding a wider adoption of cold plunge outside of like the hardcore CrossFitter, like, you know, go ruck or the, you know, high rocks racer.

I get, I get that community.

Of course, yeah.

They were the first adopters.

We call them early adopters.

I feel like a lot of people in their midlife crisis that are trying to turn their life around.

Yeah.

Honestly, just trying to live healthier, want to live longer.

People that are working a normal nine-to-five corporate job or people that, you know, are

looking at the budget.

We actually did a cold plunge challenge

on the Ultimate Human Rights.

That's where thousands of people you guys gave away a cold plan.

Cold plunge.

We did.

And the family that won,

we gave it to them because they they brought the whole family over and they created this.

I think they used, remember those little plastic uh um pools that you got in as a kid that were like

kiddie pools.

It was like kiddie pools, baby pool, yeah, yeah.

So they filled it full heights, and the entire family got it.

That's incredible, like the kids, the uncles, the wow, yeah, her parents, they looked like they were easily in their late 70s.

Wow, and I was like, you guys,

they deserve it.

Wow, um, that's incredible.

My nieces do it, it's awesome, they're seven and ten.

So good.

So I think it's becoming a really cool way to even build community.

You know, yes.

Like here in Miami, I love this

coffee and chill.

Yes.

You know, where you

walk into these parties and

you would think if you didn't know any different that it was like any other South Beach Rager.

Yep.

You know, that's got DJ, LDC, party people.

Crazy people.

Like, you know, but it's like safe.

Everyone's sober.

Everyone's networking.

Yeah.

And I love seeing that trend.

I mean, because people are realizing, man, there's so many ways to feel really good without drugs and alcohol.

Yes.

And the community side is one of our favorite things about this business.

Yes.

The community side is incredible.

Coffee and Chill specifically, you know, we've partnered with them, and that's really been a part of that, a way that we've been able to really get involved with the community, you know, outside of obviously selling the products.

But, you know, we're now in Miami, Austin, LA, New York.

Yeah, they're kind of franchised.

They're all over the place.

And, you know, so if you're talking about access and accessibility for any of those markets, um, definitely go check out a coffee and chill, especially if you don't, you know, have a place to put one of our products or the money or whatever it is.

You can go there for 20, 30 bucks and have a great time, meet great people

and go get started in cold plunging.

Also, fantastic way to just do a first cold plunge because there's nothing like getting into the water.

Oh, you got the peer pressure, right?

It's like, yeah, you got like six dude and there's a bunch of hot chicks standing around.

You're like, I'm getting in here.

Oh, this is great.

I love this.

Trying to be all stoic looking and everything.

No, but it's incredible for that part of it.

We love being a part of those communities.

And

honestly, a lot of those types of communities are growing all over the place.

I mean, we sell

a product to those communities, the party plunge, and those products go all over the country.

I mean, I would probably say any given weekend, there's got to be at least 10 or 20 of these events happening across the country.

Wow, all over the place.

It's so crazy.

It's so crazy to hear that.

None of them are involved with alcohol.

It's all just coffee, cold plunges, health and wellness stuff.

And they're selling out almost all of them.

Yeah.

Another thing to touch on, though, because I just want to say earlier, you mentioned, you know, know, access and, you know, we're a big component of just get started, right?

If there's a cold shower or you want to have a DIY set up, or if you don't want to have anything at your house, go to a gym.

You know, we're, we, we as our company, we're in over 200, I think, locations.

We just hit 200.

And so whether it's a cold life plunge you're going to or another, you know, whatever, go find any gym that's carrying this stuff.

But gyms and wellness centers and clinics and yoga studios and contrast therapy places, I mean, these places are popping off like they never have before.

I guarantee you for all the listeners, if you go to Google right now and type in cold plunge near me, there's probably one pretty close to you, pretty close to you.

And you can do a free trial.

Yeah, free trial or it's low cost to go out there and try.

I tell people, look, if you got a bathtub, just take Tupperware containers, put them in your freezer, freeze them, take the big block size, throw them in your tub.

Sometimes those will last two, three days even.

Yeah.

It's a good way to just get yourself into it before

you bite the bullet and decide to commit to it.

And I think once people commit and it becomes a regular part of their life, then they're

these people like Dana White and all.

When they travel, they ship the cold plunge.

Wahlberg is the same way.

Crazy.

I can't disclose it.

He's now a shareholder.

We can now disclose that.

Welcome, Mr.

Mark Wahlberg to the cold punch.

Yeah, I remember when he sent me,

I sent him out.

Well, we sent him out one, and then he sent me back to the video.

He's like, dude, I love this team.

I'll tell you what, man.

There is people.

Probably had to search far and wide to try to find somebody who would beat the consistency of Mr.

Walbreak.

4 a.m.

club, man.

Every day at 4 o'clock in the morning, before the sun is up, that man is inside of a cold plunge, which is extremely difficult.

Before he arrives to a new city,

he makes sure he has one waiting for him the next day.

He doesn't miss a day.

Yeah.

I send him videos sometimes and like mess with him in the mornings because

if I'm in a different time zone and I know that maybe I beat him up, like, you know, like, there's no way, I'm not in the gym at 4 a.m.

Sorry, Mark.

And yeah, so the other day I'm in my, I'm in my cold, I mean, I'm in my hyperbaric chamber.

I'm actually, bro, and I sent him a video.

I'm like, get out of bed.

You know, what did you do this morning, you lazy bum?

And he texts me back and he's like, just got off my knees from thanking God for everything.

I'm grateful for him.

Oh,

all right.

You win, dude.

You win.

You got it.

I'm just in here in my hyperbaric chamber.

I thought I was, I thought I was cold.

Exactly.

So, so these,

you see now,

you know, before I think like you you were talking about, this was a trend, a fad, sort of gimmick-y, if you, if you will.

It's kind of like a cool thing.

It was almost like a TikTok challenge.

What was the big challenge that went around where everybody was like, The ice bucket thing?

That was for ALS.

And I think that really caught on, which was really cool.

I did the ice bucket challenge.

But it's not a gimmick.

No.

Right.

And I think that, you know, when you look at things that have been around for sustained periods of time, like I say this all the time about medicine, you know, when you look at acupuncture, for example, it's been around for 5,000 years.

Why do you think it's lasted 5,000 years?

Because it works.

Right.

So, okay, maybe we don't have the peer-reviewed randomized clinical trial that we have for X or Y or Z, but these people have been doing the same thing and the same points with the same results for 5,000 years.

I feel like cold punching, cold exposure is one of those things.

that is going to still be mainstream 5,000 years from now.

Yes.

Because I find that it works.

Yes.

And in your experience, when people get into this game,

what kind of feedback?

Are you getting feedback like, this is too much for me?

I'm sending this thing back.

Or this is changing.

Tell them.

This is probably the easiest way to explain it in a nutshell.

You know, we have sold thousands of units.

And I will say this very truthfully and candidly, on both of Sam and I's hands.

Yeah.

We cannot, we can count the amount of returns that we've had inside of our business.

And a few of those is simply because it didn't fit.

And honestly, probably 80% of those

fit on their balcony or something crazy.

So

very, very, very dedicated customers and community.

I mean, once you go into this thing, you're not going back.

You're not going to get started in cold plunging and make this a daily part of your routine or a weekly part of your routine or whatever it may be because it's just, it's like you said, it works, you know, and so once you're going to be able to do it.

You feel good about yourself.

You have to feel proud.

You did something hard.

And we hear it all the time.

People end up buying one for their second home because they hate not not having it at their vacation.

Or for their friend or for their cousin or for their wife or for somebody like, hey, I need to get this person cold punging.

You know, they're going through this depressive state or they're going through this health thing or whatever it is.

Like, get it, you know, they'll call us.

Can you get to them as fast as possible?

And, you know, ship it to him tomorrow kind of thing.

Isn't that wild that, you know, so we define depression in this country as an inadequate supply of serotonin.

You know, we've always said in the

addiction space, when I was in the mortality space, that the absence of dopamine was the presence of addiction.

You know, addicts weren't really seeking a high, they were seeking normalcy, right?

They didn't wake up one day and go, I want to get really banged up.

They woke up one day and said, I want to feel normal.

It's like you with Adderall, right?

Your first time taking Adderall, you weren't like, Man, I just want to get high.

I just want that puzzle.

I want that, you know, fetamine hammer.

You're trying to feel normal.

Yeah, your mind's bouncing around all over the place, and you just wanted to feel normal.

And I think that's where most people begin their journey to addiction: the search for normalcy.

And I think what this gives people is a way to do that with a lot of beneficial consequences instead of having that cliff like kind of right behind you that you know you're running from a low, not running towards exactly.

Which I commend you a lot because getting off Adderall and amphetamines is one of the most difficult.

Because again, not because it makes you feel banged up.

It's because without it, you don't feel normal.

I was a slob.

Yeah.

I couldn't get anything done.

And I blip.

Yeah.

I mean, so how was that struggle for you?

And do you, do you ever think about it?

Oh, no.

I think it's been just about four years now that I haven't taken one.

Yeah.

Never going back.

The side effects are not worth it either.

The best part about the cold plunge is there's no crash.

You know, four to six hours at minimum.

I feel phenomenal.

I'm focused.

I have attention

compared to taking a medication like Adderall or Vivance.

I was on both of them.

Yeah.

And your girlfriend's going, when's the asshole coming?

Yeah, probably about two hours away right now.

No, literally.

And I'd be doing too much at once, or, you know, I'd be dusting my fan instead of doing something productive.

I would just see

it had me all over the place.

You know, I'd be cleaning my shoes.

I didn't need me to be cleaned, but I wasn't doing something actually productive I needed to get done.

Yeah.

And it's crazy over the last few years now that I've been off Adderall and I love sharing my story.

Um, a lot of people are currently um starting to identify that there's more cons than pros to taking that type of medication.

Yeah.

Um, and in particular, too, I was a hothead.

So it was affecting me in business relationships, my family.

And it was, it was a struggle.

But that was the biggest problem was I would try to get off of it when I didn't have another solution to fall on.

So I would immediately, after two days, if I couldn't get any from the pharmacy, I'd be contacting people, hey, can I, can I get an Adderall?

Just to get by for a day or two until I got my subscription, my refill.

And a lot of people are like that.

And it's hard to admit it

because it's an addiction that you don't want to admit that weakness.

so when I found the

cold therapy, being able to substitute that, I was like, this is phenomenal.

Because even if I don't have a cold plunge, I can do a cold shower.

Um, and sometimes I was doing like two cold showers a day until I had a cold plunge on my place just to get by.

Yeah.

And then when you live somewhere where it's cold, you know, a lot of our customers, they are on the fence.

They don't want to spend the money yet.

It's like, earn it for yourself.

Earn that reward of a cold life cold plunge.

Where do you live?

You're in Minnesota.

You got a hot tub?

Don't turn the hot tub on.

Use that as your cold punch.

Yeah, you already got it.

You already got the body of water.

Yeah, sometimes up there, the water comes out nice and cold in the winter, too.

Exactly, exactly.

So, we always suggest that to people, too, like we're from Atlanta, the Chattahoochee River is like 40 degrees all year round.

Oh, is it really?

Yeah, all year round.

So, when we were when I was in high school, you know, we'd go there and you know, do stuff, stupid stuff, and maybe get in the water for like 30 seconds to swim across the river.

And little did I know what benefits I had in there.

And back then, you might see like one guy that I thought was crazy, like laying in the cold water, and I'm wondering what he's doing.

But now any natural body of water you go to, especially in the wintertime, it's so normal now.

Yeah.

And now there's all these movements from the communities to the polar plunges people are doing.

In Austin, Texas, they have that area that's like a really cold body of water that people go to all the time.

And it's very fascinating seeing how normalized it's becoming.

What are some of the customer feedback stories, testimonials that come in to you guys that you find to be really, I mean, getting off hat or all.

Yeah.

You got to share one of the most recent ones.

There's so many good ones.

I wish we had more time to share them all, but there's one that sticks out to me.

We have a customer

who is battling stage four cancer.

And

he, I

had the opportunity to actually talk to him himself.

There was something up with his delivery or something.

So somehow it got brought up to me.

And so I just was talking to the customer.

How'd you find us?

What's going on?

You know, what's your story?

And come to find out he's battling stage four cancer.

And,

you know, I'm not going to sit here and say cold plunges cures cancer because he's certainly still going through that.

But to me,

especially for the reason why I do the cold plunge, which is like it's a hard thing to do.

It's the mental benefits.

It's that clarity I get coming out of it.

But for me, I get that win for the day.

That's when I do that cold plunge.

I'm checked off.

I got my win.

I feel very great about myself.

For me, you know, in the days where I'm like slacking or I don't want to do it or I get up into that cold water, this was probably a few months ago now.

I talked to that customer, and it is still, it is the first thing that comes to mind thinking there is a man that's battling stage four cancer who struggles to get out of bed every single morning, who has aches and pains and is throwing up and is doing fear, going through the worst of worst, and the fear that it's all about to come over.

And that man

is getting in to a cold punch every single day.

And yeah, it's just, it's insanely inspiring to see customers that have that level of commitment.

And a lot of our customers.

And veterans with PTSD,

all kinds of stuff.

It's crazy.

We hear from veterans that are in their 60s that are like, this has completely calmed me down,

helped my anxiousness, and just in general, helps me get by on days that used to be challenging.

And it's been like one after one after one.

And for me, I've connected with multiple people in their 50s or 60s that are my dad's age.

And they're all like, you know, your story about Adderall is remarkable.

I hate to admit it, but I'm, I drink like eight coffees a day.

Um, I don't want to take a medication, but I drink a ton of caffeine.

I do this, I do this, and I'm a slug.

And now that I've invested into a cold life cold plunger, like I'm performing better than ever.

I feel younger.

Yeah.

Um, and the confidence that I even have as a man, you know, a lot of people lack, you know, self-confidence.

They're like, it's, it's elevated my own confidence within myself because I used to be weak and I, you know, I needed to find something to overcome that weak weak feeling.

And as a man, you want to feel like an alpha man.

And a lot of guys can't.

You feel alpha when you get out.

Not so much when you get in.

Yeah, but you definitely feel like

you're in there.

You don't feel like an alpha man when you get in there.

Yeah, yeah.

Especially when we got an audience.

Like, you know, we're the cold punch founders.

Like, we got to have a game based on the game calm.

You're like,

sit here, see, it's not that good.

You got to breathe.

You got to breathe in.

So, where do you guys fall in the contrast therapy?

You know,

there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of folks out there, and there's a lot of gyms and wellness and recovery centers that are now using the contrast therapy.

What have you found works?

What have you found doesn't work?

What do you find in the

contrast has always been an interesting one because I think it's it's quite uh it's it's it's quite personal and different in the sense that cold plunge, to me at least has a relatively specific outcome you're trying to achieve, right?

For me, it's the mental stuff.

It's the hard thing.

For some others, it's recovery coming from the gym.

For some others, it's inflammation, right?

Everyone, I feel feel like, kind of has their, their main reason why they're getting into the cold points.

But for contrast,

to me, contrast is almost more therapeutic,

you know, than a recovery aspect of it.

You know, you're going from, you know, you could probably explain the science behind the constricted blood vessels and then them opening up very quickly.

And so you're doing that back and forth, back and forth.

For me personally, on my own, on my own journey, I actually fell in love with contrast therapy.

My wife and I, once a year, our big thing is we would go to Asheville.

There's a place there called the

Omni Grove Park Inn, and it's like a big old, you know, kind of castle thing that has this in Asheville, North Carolina.

That's a beautiful area.

It's a gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous hotel.

And it's in the mountains, and it's beautiful.

And they have a spa that's actually in like the basement.

And then it looks out onto the mountains.

And it's just beautiful.

But they have these areas.

And in this area, it's a cold plunge.

It's a hot tub.

It's a steam room.

And it's a sauna.

And actually, right during COVID, when COVID was all happening, we got a chance to go up there.

And I didn't know if I had COVID, I was sick, whatever.

And we were there and I just started feeling like awful.

I mean, horrible.

And I was taking, you know, anything I could, was going online, taking all the Z packs and whatever I could get my hands on.

I was taking, couldn't feel better.

It was just the worst couple of days.

Go and do contrast therapy for like two and a half hours.

And I came out of there and I literally felt like an absolute new person.

Like I felt like better than I did before.

And I was like, oh my gosh, this is the best thing ever.

Why is nobody talking about this more often?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that really lit me up.

So for me, I love contrast therapy.

I don't think it for me is something that I'd recommend doing daily because it's one of those therapeutic things.

To me, I kind of put it in like the massage category in that, in that sense, and in my own personal view.

However, if you are doing it daily or you're doing it more often, the one thing I will say is that I do highly recommend you end on cold.

You don't want to end on cold.

End on cold.

Yes.

I agree with that.

Guys, this has been amazing.

I've got a whole list of questions for you from my vip community so i have a special community that this is my community i've been building for the last few years called the vip community so i always spend private time with them so we're going to go into a little private room now they've got a bunch of questions for you guys for the rest of you guys if you're interested in joining the the ultimate human vip community you can go over to theultimathuman.com forward slash vip sign up you get private podcasts you get uh one-on-one uh private coaching with me when we do it in a group setting we have a course in there called becoming the ultimate human version of Yourself.

You meet great guys like Kyle and Sam.

And until next time, Master Science.