September 2, 2021

From podcast: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/the-giant-cold-thermogenesis-episode-everything-you-need-to-know-about-ice-baths-cold-therapy-how-cold-how-long-much-more-with-morozko-forge-cold-bath-experts/  

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:01:27] Podcast Sponsors

[00:04:10] Eating and Fasting Habits of Cold Thermogenesis Aficionados

[00:08:26] How Jason and Adrienne Became Fanatically Involved with Cold Therapy

[00:16:05] First Ice Baths In 2017 Show Promising Results

[00:24:41] Making Ice Baths Commercially Available

[00:30:07] Podcast Sponsors

[00:32:36] How Ozone Keeps the Water Clean, And How the Morozko Gets the Water So Cold

[00:41:22] Ice Bathing for Workout Recovery

[00:45:59] How Depression and Anxiety Respond to Cold Therapy

[00:51:19] How an Ice Bath Affects Blood Glucose Levels

[00:54:58] Precautions to Take Before Considering Regular Ice Baths

[01:00:36] Meditation and Breathwork Before an Ice Bath

[01:11:32] The Recipe for Ben's Secret Steak Sauce

[01:15:53] How to Combine Heat Therapy with Ice Baths

[01:21:53] Epsom Salts and Magnesium Salts in The Morozko

[01:23:06] Closing the Podcast

[01:23:42] End of Podcast

Ben:  On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast:

Jason:  Endocrinologists will tell patients, “You must take this synthetic hormone once a day for the rest of your life. If you stop, you might die.” And, something about that just didn't sit right with me.

Adrienne:  The more my mindset changed instead of feeling like a victim of my illness and a victim of my circumstances, I was now feeling empowered.

Jason:  Bring that water temp down, ice blocks around the evaporators, and there it is. I had my ugly prototype, my backyard engineering project. We had an all-the-time ice bath.

Ben:  Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show.

Alright, this is the moment of truth. Everything that you have been wanting to know about cold baths and cold thermogenesis and cold therapy, I unpack in today's episode with a couple of real cold ninjas. This couple who I interview–And, we conducted this interview will walking by my house, along the beautiful Spokane River. And, we actually jumped into the river afterwards and record that for you, too. Anyways, these folks design cold tubs. They research cold thermogenesis. They just live the cold. And, we had a great, great chat. So, you're going to dig this one.

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So, a million-dollar question after last night's steak fast. Are you, guys, fasters? Are you fasting this morning?

Jason:  Yeah, we typically do one meal a day. That's our general regimen. It might average out to a meal and a half.

Ben:  If you are cool, you will call that OMAD.

Jason:  Right, OMAD, for those who are down with the acronyms. But, when you're on the road and we're traveling, sometimes, we'll indulge a little bit, have second meal of the day, especially, when we're in some place like Spokane where there's so much good food around, and we're only here for a couple of days.

Ben:  So, when you do OMAD–And, I'll introduce. I'm being super rude, not even introducing my guests. But, that was Jason, by the way. I'll give Jason a better intro later. Jason Stauffer?

Jason:  Yes, Stauffer.

Ben:  Stauffer. When you say that you guys do OMAD, are you doing dinner as your main meal of the day?

Jason:  Yeah, dinner is the main meal of the day, usually, on the earlier side. So, by the time we're actually ready to eat, it might be 4:00 or 5:00 p.m. And then, we're usually pretty high fat, low carb. But, we're not Puritans about it. We definitely have our cheat meals and our carb load volatility, which I think just goes into that stress response in the system. You get something in there that, maybe, isn't the best for you. But then, you go back to that regimen.

Ben:  Well, a lot of times, if you're following a high fat, low carb version of an OMAD diet, just pretty much any high fat, low carb diet, depending on your level of physical activity, doing some type of carbohydrate refeed every weekend, or, in the case of a pro athlete, sometimes it's every night or every other day, seems to stave off a lot of–some of the metabolic downregulation that you tend to see occur with long-term carbohydrate restriction, like the thyroid downregulation, testosterone. For example, we had carrot cake last night.

Jason:  Yeah, we did. 

Ben:  What do you think about the carrot cake, Adrienne?

Adrienne:  That was so delicious. I was thinking about it when I woke up this morning.

Ben:  And, that was Adrienne. But, what's your last name, Adrienne?

Adrienne:  Jezick.

Ben:  Jezick, okay. So, the carrot cake, that's my wife's recipe. She knows how much I love carrot cake. And, like I was telling you guys at dinner last night, three years ago, I told her that I would love to figure out how to just make a carrot cake at home because I can't find the perfect carrot cake at restaurants. And, she came up with this gluten-free, dairy-free coconut cream carrot cake recipe. And, I tell her not to make it very much because it's one of the few foods that I will not stop eating. After you guys left last night, I had another slice of cake. I'm not kidding. But, the thing was, back to the carbohydrate, I did a workout this morning. I had a deadlift workout this morning, just crushed it in the gym, because you feel like you're on steroids once you get it. The carrot cake is healthy, let's face it. It's also a total carb bomb. So, you wake up and your muscles are all swole and you're ready to go work out, you're like, “Oh, yeah, this is why I occasionally need to put the carbs into the system.”

Let's do a little bit more of a formal introduction. And, I'm fasting, by the way, too.

Adrienne:  Good job.

Ben:  So, we're all fasting this morning. So, when I ate a slice of carrot cake at 10:00 p.m., I won't eat again until 1:00 or 2:00 or so. And, I will, by the way, publish that steak recipe that I made for you guys last night. With the beet and the honey and the butter and the smoke with the reverse seared. I'm going to publish all that as an Instagram post. And, I'll link to that in the show notes for everybody listening in. Of course, I know all of you are only here for the steak recipe. But, just in case you want to hear about all the other cold craps that Jason, Adrienne, and I talked about, the show notes are going to be at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/ColdPodcast. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com/ColdPodcast.

So, first of all, so that people know who the heck you guys are, I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you all got into this concept of cold so intensively that you actually now have a company that makes these cold tubs that I soak in daily. But, what got you started on that path. And, as is the case with three-way interviews, you guys get to fight over who goes first. So, Adrienne just pointed out Jason. Alright, Jason. So, how did you get into all this, man?

Jason:  So, I like telling the story from the point of Adrienne got sick in her early 30s, she hit about 32 years old. And, it's very sudden. It was very strange.

Ben:  How long ago was this?

Jason:  That's going to be about eight, nine years ago.

Ben:  We all know your age now.

Jason:  And so, it was very strange. All of a sudden, foods that she'd eaten for her entire life are now giving her allergic reactions. There was some very rapid weight gain of about 50 pounds. There was inflammation. Even though she'd lived in the Phoenix area for 15 years, all of a sudden, all of the indigenous botanicals were giving her breathing and throat problems. And, she ended up getting a couple of diagnoses. One was Hashimoto's hypothyroidism. Another was eosinophilic esophagitis —

Ben:  Holy cow.

Jason:  –which is the allergic reactions of the esophagus to foods and botanicals in the air. Artificial fragrances were another big one. They would actually give her hives in her throat that would burst, and [00:10:00]_____.

Ben:  Oh, my gosh. She definitely couldn't walk through Macy's.

Jason:  No, not at all. And, the other one was a urticaria, which is a flushing of the skin. This is, again, allergic–And, all these are autoimmune conditions. And so, there was diagnoses, there's pharmaceuticals, synthetic hormone, pill every day, live antibody shots twice a month. And then, there were side effects to those. And so, there were supplements to manage the side effects that had their own side effects and supplements to manage those side effects.

One of the things that really just didn't sit right with me was the story that the physicians were telling her, that there's nothing you can do about this. You are chronically sick person. You have autoimmune conditions. You will always have these. We can manage the symptoms, but this is never going away.

Ben:  Wow.

Jason:  And, in the case of the endocrinologist, endocrinologists will tell patients, “You must take this synthetic hormone once a day for the rest of your life. If you stop, you might die.” And, something about that just didn't sit right with me. I couldn't really accept that there was nothing that could be done.

Ben:  And, also, in a case like that, you feel like you're a prisoner to some type of external thing in order to be normal. I don't know how you feel about that, Adrienne. But, it's like everybody who I've worked with, or even myself, in some cases, when I've been on something that seems to be fixing an issue, you're like, “This seems to be helping. But, man, this is going to suck to have to be a prisoner to this for the rest of my life.”

Adrienne:  You're absolutely a prisoner of it because there was even a point in time where I was between insurances. So, I couldn't get my medication without paying out of pocket. And, out of pocket, it was absolutely–it was astronomical price. And so, the doctor gave me a certain amount of samples to get me through till my new insurance kicked in. And, in the meantime, she's saying, “Well, this is all I can give you. And, you'll die if you don't take it. But, there's no way for you to take it if you're not paying out of pocket and if you go through these samples too quickly.”

So, talk about being a prisoner of medication, I really believed that if I wasn't taking these pills, I was going to die. So, you become a victim of the illness. You become a victim of the system. And, you become reliant on these things that you think are keeping you alive, but never actually make you feel any better.

Ben:  Wow. So, you guys were dealing with all this. Then, what happened, Jason?

Jason:  Another part that I noticed is that, just as Adrienne was just discussing, there's that identification that a person adopts as a chronically sick person. So, there was depression. There was anxiety. There was stress. And, she just wasn't getting better. No matter what pills or medications or supplements she was taking, she just wasn't getting better. So, I just started reading. I started reading everything I could on psychology, physiology, biology. I was even digging into old fiction, like novels.

Ben:  Because, your background is in medicine, right?

Jason:  Engineering, but I was working in pharmaceuticals as a pharmaceutical business analyst. So, I also had that cultural understanding, that macro-level data understanding of disease states, of how medications are developed, marketed, how really everybody is seeking the chronic symptom management over any cure or attacking the root issue. So, I had that background as well. It led me to a couple of things. First of all was the extended intermittent fasting.

Ben:  Wait. Wait, wait, wait, I want to throw one thing. Right when I interrupt you, you said you looked at fiction?

Jason:  Yeah, I was even digging into old novels, seeing what kind of old folk wisdom I could get out of Steinbeck novels.

Ben:  Wow.

Jason:  I was reading old stoic philosophy.

Ben:  That's so interesting.

Jason:  Yeah, I was reading about the stoics and how they would, even the ancient stoics, and how they would expose themselves. They would go through hardships intentionally.

Ben:  Alright, fasting was medicine and in the good old Greek days.

Jason:  Absolutely.

Ben:  Was it Hippocrates who said that it was one of the best medicines?

Jason:  Absolutely. And, it was standard, really, until the Industrial Revolution and our current food abundance sprung up, and there was a marketing effort to get us to eat more. And, that's when the fasting went away.

Ben:  Slash, the rise of physical culture in gyms, which is part of this a lot of people talk about. Once we figured out how to burn calories really, really well, we actually were able to get by fasting a little bit less to manage the chronic diseases related to caloric overconsumption. But then, you get the whole physical therapy exercise overtraining industry that pops up around that. So, you squeeze the putty in your fist, and it stops coming out one knuckle and starts coming out the other. So, anyways, you're reading these novels to get clues.

Jason:  Novels and non-fiction. New non-fiction, old fiction was my reading regimen. And, one book I read was “Antifragile” by Nassim Taleb. Nassim Taleb is a Lebanese American mathematician, stock trader, and linguist. And, he outlines in this book his concept of antifragility. And, this is the hormetic stress response. He applies it a lot to economic and social systems, but there's a biological aspect to it as well. This really changed the way I thought about how I was relating to the world around me, where I was no longer trying to hide from stressors, I was looking for the stressors that could make me better, could make me healthier. And, that's what led me to take my first ice bath in October of 2017.

Ben:  Well, you didn't make Adrienne do a [00:15:36]_____. What's up, Adrienne? Geez.

Adrienne:  He is so wonderful.

Ben:  Oh, my gosh.

Adrienne:  He tries the hard things first.

Ben:  What a nice man.

Adrienne:  [00:15:44]_____, babe. Now, you try the hard things.

Ben:  First, I'll do the sauna. Then, I'll get radiated under sunlight. Then, I'll fast. Then, I'll go deadlift, take a cold bath.

Adrienne:    And then, he says, “Do you want to join this party?” And, I'm like, “Yeah, I do.”

Ben:  So, you set the cold bath.

Jason:  Yeah. So, I took an ice bath.

Ben:  Like an old school, like get the ice from the gas station, dump in the bathtub?

Jason:  Yeah, 100%. A yoga instructor in Phoenix named Gordon Ogden was doing Wim Hof–amateur Wim Hof classes–out of his house. And so, you would just get a text message on Thursday nights that says, “Hey, we're doing Wim Hof tomorrow. Bring two bags of ice if you're in.” And so, I did a couple of those. And, the first one, I didn't know the science of it.

Ben:  BYOI.

Jason:  Yeah, BYOI. I didn't know really the science behind it yet, but the visceral experience of that first ice bath was like, here it is. Here's one of these things I'm looking for. Here's one of these things that's uncomfortable. It's stressful. It's a shock to my system. But, there was just something about it that just all of my systems got rebooted and came back online in this really interesting way.

And so, we just started digging in on that, doing ice baths in our own house on the weekends, digging into the literature, scientific literature that's out there, and really coming to understand that this isn't some cool party trick, where Johnny can sit in an ice bath and everyone's like, “Johnny's crazy.” There was a lot of data points to connect that were really saying this is something very helpful for the body, in so many different ways, in physiological ways, psychological ways, circulatory system, hormone regulation, psychology, the nervous system, metabolic system.

Ben:  And we're definitely going to unpack some of those as well. But, up until, I guess, probably the past, I'd say, decade, and the advent of guys like Wim Hof making the concept of using cold for a variety of physiological benefits more popular, my perception is that, for the most part, cold and cold thermogenesis was relegated to the athletic training room where the football players will go get in the ice after the game, or the track and field athletes after practice each day will go sit in the ice tub for recovery. But, nobody was talking about the immune system benefits or guys like Wim Hof injecting himself with E. coli and using breathwork in the cold to fight off infections, and what we know about the vagus nerve and icing your balls for better testosterone. All that stuff was pretty fringe, but has become quite popular of late, which is interesting, very Epicurean-esque culture, adopting some of these stoic practices that you were talking about, Jason.

Jason:  Absolutely.

Ben:  Alright. So, you did the ice bath. And, when did you pull Adrienne in?

Jason:  So, I guess I'll have Adrienne talk about her first ice bath. It's probably a few weeks after my first one, maybe, a month or so.

Ben:  Alright. So, what happens, Adrienne?

Adrienne:  So, it's November of 2017, and Jason has this idea that we're going to try this in our backyard. And, I was reading the same books he was, I was understanding that there were benefits to this, that people were getting some success off of deliberate cold exposure as a healing modality. My very first ice bath lasted nine seconds.

Ben:  Congratulations.

Adrienne:  Thank you. I hovered over the tub. I put one foot on each side. I put one hand on each side. I dropped myself into the water. I held my breath, jumped out, freaked out, and then felt amazing. So, in nine seconds, getting out of that ice bath, I felt a sense of empowerment that I don't think I had experienced in my entire life. And, I am a warm weather girl. I grew up in Florida. I lived in Hawaii. Phoenix summers are my favorite time of year. I still prefer the heat to the cold.

Ben:  And, by the way, I have a lot of clients in Florida and some of these hotspots. And, that's the trickiest part, is finding water that's cold enough in the showers and stuff. But then, once they actually do get it cold, 55 degrees or so is the freak-out temperature, it seems, for a lot of the people in the warmer states —

Adrienne:  Yeah, that's [00:19:52]_____ .

Ben:  –like a client in Minnesota, I told him to start taking ice baths. They were like, “I do it every day. It's for me walking out to get the mail from the mailbox.”

Adrienne:  Exactly. And so, anything below 70 degrees would just make me emotionally dysregulated. I was like, “I can't function. It's cold.” And, after this ice bath, the first thing I noticed was there was this pain that I would have in my legs prior to deliberate cold exposure that sometimes hurts so bad, I couldn't push a gas pedal in my car. And, after these nine seconds in the ice, that pain was gone. For the first time in years, that pain disappeared. And, I was alarmed. I was shocked. I said, anything that can help me with even one layer of pain or one layer of illness that I'm going through is going to be a benefit.

So, even though I wanted to do it again, I did not do it again that day. I waited till the next week when we hosted another session with some friends. It changed my life. It changed my life from that first nine seconds. And then, the more I did it, the more symptom relief I had, the more empowered I felt, the more my mindset changed. Instead of feeling like a victim of my illness and a victim of my circumstances, I was now feeling empowered. I felt like there was something I could do. Because I'm a doer. I'm a fixer. I'm a, tell me what to do, I'll follow the instructions, I'll get it done, everything will be better.

Ben:  Wow.

Adrienne:  But, when it comes to chronic illness, if you're only seeking out specialists that are in the standard medical field, they're going to say, “Take this pill. Take this pill. Take this pill.” That's not doing anything. That's just a Band-Aid.

So, as I was going through this practice, I was learning, these band-aids are not fixing anything. They're stopping the flow of the water. And, the water is behind it, ready to just push forward. The illness was still there. They weren't curing you of anything. And, most of the time, they weren't even getting rid of symptoms. The deliberate cold exposure, the ice baths, and that's [00:21:54]_____.

Ben:  That's actually a good name for it. That's an actual term, deliberate cold exposure.

Adrienne:  Deliberate.

Ben:  It sounds fancy. It sounds way fancier than, go get your asses cold.

Adrienne:  We call it DCE.

Jason:  DCE.

Ben:  OMAD, BYOI. We got a lot of [00:22:06]_____. So, you start incorporating deliberate cold exposure pretty much on the daily?

Adrienne:  No.

Ben:  No?

Adrienne:  Because we were still in Arizona. And, even though it was technically wintertime, the fossil water is not cold. And so, we had to buy ice. So, Jason, bless him, we had this outdoor freezer. And, he would spend about an hour and a half each night filling up these empty Costco salsa containers and pretzel containers to make our own ice. But, he would have to do that four or five days a week just to get enough for one ice bath on a Sunday. So, in the first couple of months, we were only doing about once a week of that.

Ben:  And then, obviously, you guys figured out how to how to hack and engineer a cold tub that's now become a commercial tub, the Morozko. But, I want to get into that in a little bit. But, we're walking, just so all of you listening in know, a long path along the Spokane River. You guys see that river off to our left. That's all the runoff from Lake Coeur d'Alene, which has some glacial feed into it. And, it actually gets remarkably cold. But, a lot of my own experience with cold thermogenesis, if you want to call it that, originated from all my days in triathlon where, come hell or high water, I'd usually be in that river, because my house used to be 10 minutes from here. And, I'd come down to the river every day and swim. And, I would basically swim until I felt like I couldn't lift my arms anymore because they were so sluggish and heavy from being cold. And then, I know it at the time. I thought I was just making myself tough for races. But, for me, all of my experience with cold baths was basically just swimming in open water and cold water a lot, just because when you're doing triathlon, if you do all your training in the pool, despite it being in a nice, anywhere from 70 to 76 degrees, you're not getting all the open water sighting and learning how to deal with waves and learning how to practice your visibility and your gear in the open water. So, for me, I'd pretty much just be in the cold from about, gosh, late March until, sometimes, as late as early November, just swimming in open water. So, that was how I got into, I guess, embracing cold or being comfortable around it. So, anyways, though, a little anecdote for folks listening in. We're walking along the Spokane River right now. And, we may even go jump in afterwards. We'll see.

So, basically, you guys have started to understand the power of cold. And, at that point, how long did it take you to start designing your own cold bath?

Jason:  Tom, our business partner, he's a professor of engineering at ASU. He's a research scientist. Research is his jam. He was getting into the literature behind this. And, this is when we were discovering that there really is a lot of mechanisms, a lot of systems, that the therapy is working on. And, we decided we wanted to be able to do this every day.

What would it take? There's got to be some mechanical way to do this. The first thing we do is we look online. We didn't invent cold exposure. Wim Hof didn't invent it. Sports teams have been doing it for forever. Physical rehabilitation centers have been doing it forever. Maybe, there's a product out there that we can buy, that is a mechanical cold bath. And, there were. There were a couple of products on the market. But, they were very expensive. And, they were marketed for that old market, the sports teams, the rehab center.

Ben:  The huge stainless-steel tubs, the fancy–I would imagine, the ones I've seen in the most athletic training facilities would probably be in the, what, 30 to 40k price range?

Jason:  About that. We found one that was about 20. And then, some chiller units that didn't even have a tub. They were just a chiller box about 5 or 6,000.

Ben:  My friend actually give two diagrams–that was before I met you, guys–I think, in my book, “Boundless,” the fancy rich guys' version of a cold tub setup which was inspired by another guy who's been on the podcast before–He's super into cold, by the way, and used it to slim down from 400-plus pounds to a lot less.

Jason:  Wow.

Ben:  Rick Rubin, the music producer. And, he has this fancy chiller system set up. He had it set up at his home in Malibu. He has it at his home in Hawaii. And, he sent me all the diagrams. And, I included them all in “Boundless.” But, it was very fancy setup that I think, all in, was around 20k. And then, I also have the opposite end of the spectrum, another guy who you guys know, Luke Storey. He sent me all the diagrams, again, for my book, buy a freezer from Lowe's or whatever. And then, he's basically just filling it out with ice and cleaning it with all hydrogen peroxide and just using the poor man's freezer. I'm not calling Luke poor. What I'm saying is, I guess, he used the biohacker approach. And so, those were really the predominant two forms of ice-bathing that I'd seen out there, aside from the ones in the professional sports training rooms.

Jason:  Yeah, absolutely. And, Luke's got a Forge, by the way, now.

Ben:  Oh, an upgrade.

Jason:  Yeah, he's got an upgrade. So, when we realized that there was really nothing out there that was going to suit us, our price points, our needs, Tom and I looked at each other. And, we're engineers. What would it take for us to build our own? Tom's Ph.D. is in thermodynamics. I've got my degree in civil environmental and sustainable engineering. So, we have a lot of that background physics knowledge. We just needed to figure out if we can apply it in a way that made our own all-the-time ice bath.

And so, I just started tearing apart refrigerators in my backyard. Tom would drop off a dorm fridge and be like, “Jason, figure out how it makes cold.”

Ben:  [00:28:12]_____ beers out of it?

Adrienne:  I thought he was going to blow the house up. And, Jason goes, “Adrienne, that's not how thermodynamics work.”

Jason:  So, the first proof of concept was I tore apart a small dorm fridge. I figured out which part of it makes the cold. I understood intuitively that the cold doesn't actually exist. Cold is the absence of heat. And so, what a refrigerator does is it draws thermal energy out of an enclosed space and pushes it out to the environment.

Ben:  So that's why it gets hot behind your fridge, sometimes.

Jason:  Yeah, absolutely. It's that thermal transfer. And so, I pulled out what I would later learn is called an evaporator. And, I stuck it in a small styrofoam ice chest of water, put the lid on it, plug it in, and came back the next day to see what happened.

And, it turns out, yeah, I've turned the whole thing. It's a small body of water, but I turned it into an ice block. I'm like, “This works this way. How can I scale this up?” And so, tearing apart some more refrigerators, we even bought one from Home Depot just to tear it apart. It didn't survive three hours. And, I took a galvanized steel tub. I put it on a bed of sand. I built a pine box around it. I closed in the gaps with$400 worth of spray foam insulation. I took the mechanics. I draped it over the side in the water. I took a big door from one of the freezers, the large freezer that I destroyed, same freezer that I was using to make ice blocks. Put it on top. But, this time, it's probably getting to be early summer of 2018, late spring, early summer 2018. So, getting pretty warm. And, I just want to say, “Can I make myself a backyard engineering all-the-time ice bath?”

I think it took two or three days to bring that water temp down and to actually build a couple of big ice blocks around the evaporators. And, there it is. I have my ugly prototype, my backyard engineering project. We had an all-the-time ice bath.

Ben:  Hey, I want to interrupt today's show to tell you about one of my favorite websites to go to when I want to shop for all things water, like adding hydrogen to my water, adding super-duper dense sources of minerals to my water, improving metabolic health through some of the Chromax and hydrogen that they have the ability to be able to add to water. This is a website called Water and Wellness. The guy who runs it is Robert Slovak. He's one of the top–Along with my father who's in the water, Robert is the other guy who I go to whenever I needed advice on all things water.

So, we launched this website. It's got everything I personally use in the morning to hack my water, like adding hydrogen to it and Chromax and Quinton. And, what he's doing, actually, conveniently enough, he's got what's called a Quinton molecular hydrogen bundle where you get the hydrogen water tablets, you get the Quinton minerals. They discount that heavily. You save 25, 30 bucks, somewhere right around in there, if you use my code. And, it's a really, really great way to upgrade your water.

It's WaterAndWellness.com/Greenfield. Then, you use code, Greenfield, for an additional 10% off. So, WaterAndWellness.com/Greenfield. And, the bundle is called the Quinton and molecular hydrogen bundle. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go listen to my podcast with Robert Slovak. Google that, and get it lined up on your phone. I think I have three podcasts with him. They're all amazing. And, go to WaterAndWellness.com/Greenfield.

And then, finally, I actually got a question when I was doing a seminar today on longevity. And, someone asked about this compound called urolithin A, which is actually this longevity-enhancing compound that's also a mitochondrial protectant that a lot of people are taking as a supplement. But, a lot of people don't know your gut can make it. With the right kind of prebiotics and probiotics, your gut can turn out its own anti-aging mitochondrial-protecting urolithin A.

Now, the probiotic I take actually has all the precursors in it and the right strains to allow that to happen. It's got quite a name. It's called the ViaCap TM 2-in-1 Daily Synbiotic. It's whatever.  Whatever, the name doesn't matter. You get it at Seed.com/Ben, S-E-E-D.com/Ben. It's an amazing probiotic. And, it makes your poop super slippery, too, which is great.

So, you go to Seed.com/Ben, and use code, BEN15. That gets your 15% off your first month of their seed probiotic. Seed.com/Ben.

Let's be fun hanging out with a MacGyver like that.

Adrienne:  It is so fantastic. Anytime I'm like, “How do I make this work?”

Ben:  He's like, “Here, we just make this barbeque grill out of an old car engine.”

Adrienne:  Yeah. Jason's like, “Here, let me put my hands on it.”

Ben:  Wow.

Adrienne:  That's what he says, “let me put my hands on it.” Then, I know I can walk away, and I'll come back to some magical masterpiece.

Ben:  Oh, my gosh. Wow. So, you've got this basically done ice tub that's actually working from an old refrigerator?

Jason:  Yeah, absolutely. It was actually two old refrigerators. I had them both draped over. And, there it is. We had our solution. And, it worked. It was very functional. And, at the same time, we're starting to look online. We're following hashtags. We're looking at who else out there is getting into this backyard personal cold exposure practice that doesn't have a product that was facing that market. And, I kept seeing the same Costco salsa and pretzel containers and people trying to make ice blocks that I was using.

And so, this is where we came to the realization that we weren't just solving a problem for ourselves. We were solving a problem that a lot of people were out there trying to solve. It was just an epiphany that this is a company, and this is a product. And, let's see how we can iterate this design forward, stop tearing apart refrigerators, learn how to build our own refrigeration systems, and integrate it all into a product that we can put in the market and meet this unmet need.

Ben:  There's, really, a few subtle nuances of this, though, that I think are important. For example, when I talked to Luke Storey, he was putting hydrogen peroxide into his tub, some people will use chlorine or other filtration mechanisms. And, when you guys came to me and you start telling me about the Morozko, I did ask you a few things. One of the first things I asked you was, because I don't skin is–I'm an alpha, and I'm super careful with what I'm soaking in on the daily. So, the cleaning actually doesn't require, from what I understand, the addition of chemicals. So, how do you actually keep the water clean?

Jason:  Sure. And, what's interesting to note is the ozone disinfection system wasn't a part of the original concept. We were happy with a refrigeration system, that the water needed to be changed once or twice a month, depending on use. We were using a little bit of chlorine bleach to extend that. It wasn't till a couple of local Phoenix Wim Hof instructors, named Michael Roviello and Jesse Moreng, approached us with wanting something for a commercial business they were working on. They're working on opening a center called Optimize. And, they had two locations now in the Phoenix area. And, it's like a biohacking salon. They've got the IR saunas. They want cold plunges, a hot bath. They want a compression therapy. Doing some other things like that.

And so, now, we were faced with, how do we take this out of the backyard and put it in a commercial setting and not have the wrath of the county health inspector come down on us? We looked in the regulations, and there were absolutely none on cold baths. So, we used hot baths as the design criteria. We thought about ozone versus UV. We decided on ozone. And so, Tom dug in on the science and the engineering and helped us design an ozone disinfection system that is designed well enough that it doesn't require any additional chemicals.

Long story short, the magic is in the contact time between the ozone and the water. And, if you have that sufficiently designed, the ozone is a beautiful disinfectant. It's beautiful in that it keeps up with the disinfection of the water and it doesn't stay in the water. Once those ozone bubbles pop to the environment, the disinfection is gone, which leaves you with clean pure chemical-pure water.

Ben:  It smells nice. And, by the way, I was going to ask you, there's no issue with the ozone bubbles, breathing that in? Is that a problem?

Jason:  No, we've done a lot of readings, both in the water and next to the water at that surface area where the ozone bubbles pop to the environment. And, they're gone so fast. So fast. We have units that are indoors. We took one to Burning Man. We had it in a shipping container. We have the reading of the ozone levels, and everything was well within.

Ben:  The way I do it, I usually have my head on the end without the ozone bubbler, and my feet are on the end by the ozone bubbler. So, if it is on, I'm far from it anyways, but it keeps the water remarkably, remarkably clean. And, there's no UV, just ozone.

Jason:  No UV, just ozone. And, we really dialed it in to make sure that there's really no necessary occasional chemicals.

Ben:  Alright. And, now, this is perhaps something you didn't run across when you were doing your initial investigation of the cold tub market or what people were doing. But, now, I think it is something that I've seen a lot. And, that is there are a lot of cold tub companies. There's a lot of cold baths out there now. And, I haven't really been able to find one yet, and I could be wrong, that actually makes it so like the Instagram video I did last night, because you guys came over, because I was having an issue with the tub. And, you had to tweak some settings to get it back down to where it would get super-duper cold because I'm a time hacker. If I can do 32 degrees for two minutes rather than 45 degrees for six minutes, I'll totally choose the former.

But, anyways, the coldness of the actual temperature gets so cold, even when it's 100-plus degrees out here in Spokane, that I have to break through the ice to get in. I use what you guys recommended to me, a steel mace, one of the steel exercise bases used pounded a few times, and boom, and you go. But, it looks to me, surveying what's out there right now, that most of the baths will go 38, 39, 40, but they won't get down to that breakthrough the ice temperature. So, what's the secret sauce there?

Jason:  I've never dissected one of the competitors popped-up products. I've seen a couple of them in person. I've seen most of them online. And, I really think it has to do with the technology they're using. A lot of them are using chiller units, which rely on moving the water through a box or a device.

Ben:  That's what Rick Rubin uses.

Jason:  Yeah. And so, those just have thermodynamic limitations. And, without getting too much into the secret sauce, our unit doesn't require moving the water to drop the water temperature. That's why we use metal tubs. The metal tubs are themselves a chiller unit. They're in direct contact with the evaporator coil. And so, that's how we just keep pulling that thermal energy out. And, as long as we're pulling thermal energy out at a rate that is faster than it is being regained by the environment, eventually, we're going to freeze the water.

Ben:  So, in terms of the Morozko, basically, and then I want to get into some of the more subtle nuances of cold thermogenesis here, but basically, it's a tub. You can fit two people in it. Me and my wife will get in there, or my sons will sit in there during their workouts. Like I told you guys, I'll have one of the type of workouts that my sons do out in the patio, is I'll have them do three minutes Wim Hof breathing, hold the exhale, once you're not dizzy anymore, stand up, get in the cold tub, two minutes in the cold tub, out of the cold tub, 30 pushups. And then, you do three rounds of that. We'll put together workouts like that, that incorporate the cold. But, basically, you guys designed this to be a one-to-two person. Basically, it's a stainless-steel tub setup, right?

Jason:  We do galvanized steel. And then, we do have the stainless-steel model as well that we innovated for the commercial settings.

Ben:  And then, when people get it, do you guys have to bring it out there? Do you ship it to the house? How's it actually delivered and assembled?

Jason:  We try to self-perform deliveries in the southwest, or, at least, the West region. We do ship them LTL freight as well. So, it's a curbside delivery. They arrive completely fully assembled. They're really plug-and-play. You fill it up. You plug it in. You get the temperature setting dialed in, and you're good to go.

Ben:  So, if somebody has a local plumber or an engineer or MacGyver like you who happens to be a friend, they can probably put it together?

Jason:  There's no putting it together, really.

Ben:  You just take it out of the box?

Jason:  Yeah, you literally take the box off, plug it in, fill it up, and it's good to go.

Ben:  Cool. Get it, cool. You guys probably heard that poem 8 billion times.

Adrienne:  Never enough. Never enough.

Ben:  So, now, I want to get into some of the more subtle nuances of this. Like I mentioned, probably, the first thing is that the sports teams, for a long time, have used this for recovery. What are you, guys, thoughts on ice bathing post-workout, ice bathing for delayed onset muscle soreness? How do you actually approach that?

Jason:  What's interesting is we're finding that there's a lot of benefit in doing the workout after the ice. We did an event out in Austin at a place called ARX Fit. They make these really great strength training machines.

Ben:  They have a single set-to-failure.

Jason:  Yeah.

Ben:  Worked out against the robot?

Jason:  Yeah, absolutely. And, the data that they were gathering was showing that people were experiencing a 15 to 20% increase in their strength when they do the cold first and the strength training second.

Ben:  And, that's something that, actually, Brad Kearns. And, the show notes at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/ColdPodcast, I'm going to link to an article that Brad Kearns, he's a triathlete now. He works with Mark Sisson and their whole publishing company. But, basically, he's a super fit, sorry, Brad, I'm going to say this, older gentleman. He wrote this article about the amplification of exercise performance and the vastly reduced rating of perceived exertion when you get cold before the actual workout. And so, here's what I've seen on this. If you get cold before the workout, there's not a whole lot of evidence I've seen that that does a good job shutting down delayed onset muscle soreness or accelerating recovery, but it enhances the actual workout itself, probably, due to the adrenaline norepinephrine, the upregulation testosterone, which is one benefit of cold that a lot of people don't talk about. But, I know biohackers and Russian powerlifters who ice their balls to get the testosterone. But, you get that, and then this blunted pain response effect.

And, I think the only caution there, because I've sprained many ankles, for example, in Spartan triathlons where you cross an icy cold lake, and then you get out and you're running, or you'll see some people who will get an injury doing a very complex movement when cold, and so, I think it depends on the complexity of the workout. If you're going to practice your clean and jerk form and do some snatches and engage in some other somewhat more complex lifts, getting cold beforehand is something that you'll want to be cautious with, because some of your motor function, if you get really cold, can be impaired. But, before, let's say, doing a pushup Airdyne pullup squat type of workout where the movements aren't as complex, all I've ever found is that you feel amazing during the workout when you're doing it after the cold. Do you have any thoughts on the idea that if you do the cold afterwards, despite it reducing soreness and, perhaps, reducing your body's core temperature and allowing you to recover a little bit faster, that might blunt some of the hormetic effects of exercise, like shut down, and that's what people talk about, it shuts down mitochondrial cell proliferation or shuts down satellite cell proliferation, so you don't see as big of a fitness response if you get super cold right after your workout?

Jason:  I think that's a little bit above my research level. I defer to you for the knowledge on that one.

Ben:  Really? Well, real quick, I'll tell you right now, it's usually most of the studies that show that happen are 10-plus minutes at a pretty cold temperature, usually, somewhere between about 32 and 38 degrees where the muscle's internal temperature is dropping considerably, compared to a quick one to two-minute dip in the Morozko or a quick cold shower or something like that, it's a pretty stark difference. So, it depends on the length and the temperature and the intensity of the cold.

And, what I tell people is, if you're going to do one of those long ice baths, where you're just sitting in the ice for a while, reading a book or doing your breathwork or whatever, save that for at least a couple hours after the workout. In the same way, you'd save a high dose of antioxidants for a few hours after the workout, so that your body has a chance to mount its own inflammatory response. So, just basically do your longer ice bath later in the day after your workout, not right after your workout. Although, a short exposure is just fine.

Adrienne, I'd love to hear your take on this. There seems to be a real interesting psychological effect, that, I guess, it seemed like you experienced a little bit. But, have they done much research or do you know much about anxiety depression, stuff like that, in response to cold?

Adrienne:  Most of my contact with that is experiential base. So, working with clients that are moving through those things, as well as myself. So, part of going through chronic illness, you get this super fun side effect of depression and anxiety. You feel like you're dying all the time, you're scared of everything, you don't know what's going to make anything worse. So, you become, or I became, paralyzed within myself, just in this illness, chronic illness, with depression anxiety.

One of the things that I've seen, not only through my experience, but through that of my clients, is, when you take an ice bath, you get that surge of norepinephrine and dopamine. And, that just makes you feel good. Everything that you were dealing with prior to that ice bath suddenly seems so much smaller. One of my favorite examples of this —

Ben:  Like when you hit your thumb with a hammer and your body feels really good?

Adrienne: Yes. And, you're like, “I totally forgot about that back pain from putting this roof on my house.” One of my favorite examples of this, and this is when it was the most effective and when it really dawned on me, the impact of mental wellness and deliberate cold exposure. This was when we still had our first ugly prototype. But, we had 24/7 ice bath. Jason and I were on the patio. And, I was arguing with him about something. I don't know what. But, I was emotionally dysregulated. I was crying. I couldn't get a sentence out. And, in my head, I'm thinking of therapy. I'm thinking of dialectical behavioral therapy. Just stand up and change your physical state. Just stand up. If I could just stand up and change my physical state, then I may be able to change my emotional state.

Ben:  Like Tony Robbins says, motion creates emotion.

Adrienne:  Absolutely. And, I couldn't do it. I was paralyzed in my own emotional dysregulation. And, all of a sudden, it was like a light bulb flipped on in my head. And, I thought, stand up and get me ice. And, it took a couple of repeating that inside my head before it actually did it. But, I stood up. I walked across the yard. I stripped down. I sat in the ice bath. And, I was there for a little over four minutes. And then, I got out and went over. And, I sat down next to Jason. I said, “Alright, here's the thing. I don't remember what I was upset about. And, I'm not trying to revisit it. Can we just move on and enjoy our evening?” I think I heard some fireworks go off somewhere because I don't think he'd ever heard me say anything.

Ben:  A choir of angels?

Adrienne:  Yes.

Ben:  Wow.

Adrienne:  In the course of our years-long relationship at that point, you'd never heard me do that. I'd never heard myself do that. And, I'd certainly never, in my life, been able to just let something go after that level of emotional dysregulation. So, now, I knew that I had a tool–a tool that breath wasn't doing for me, a tool that I couldn't get through meditation and yoga, a tool that I may have to wait a month or a week for a therapy appointment for. Now, I had an actual button that I could push as a reset on emotional dysregulation.

Ben:  I've never because I have–You guys have seen that my Morozko. It's right outside my office door, literally. I opened my office door, and I'm out there. And, of course, that's often my substitute for an afternoon cup of coffee. Sometimes, I'm lazy or I have my shoes on because I've been out walking and I literally just plunge my entire upper body in, and then get out and throw my head back and let it all dripped down my button over my body. It's a super good wakey-wakey call. But, I have never done that, or, more significantly, gotten out of the ice bath after a couple minutes and been in a bad mood. My wife always knows, if I do a cold soak before dinner, I'm a hoop at the dinner table. I can't stop talking, and I'm loving life, and everything's amazing. And, I also am happy because I know I can eat more food. And, we'll get into that.

And so, yeah, the mood uplifting effects, which obviously translate into a host of physiological effects, just based on, not only that motion creates emotion thing we're talking about, but also, Bruce Lipton's “Biology of Belief” and this whole idea of when you rip the cells out of that sympathetic nervous system fight-and-flight mode, which they're briefly in when you're in the cold, but then, like the sauna, just pumps your blood glucose through the roof when you're in the heat. And then, when you come out of the heat, the response is better glucose management, better insulin sensitivity.

It's like that with cold. You're super stressed when you're in there. Even if you're calm, your body's still fighting that calm. But then, when you get out, it's as though your body has learned to be much calmer, possibly due to that hitting your thumb with a hammer type of effect.

Adrienne:  And, I think that's what we're training our bodies to do when we put ourselves into those freezing temperatures. To me, it's got to be 35 or below in order for me to put myself intentionally in a state of fight-or-flight, to then allow myself to train myself, in a safe environment, how to move through fight-or-flight without becoming reactionary. So, instead of reacting to stressors in my life, I'm responding. I'm able to create that pause, that power of the pause.

Ben:  So, the thing I briefly alluded there, too, related to eating, I wear this–You can see this continuous blood glucose monitor on my left arm. I'll slap that thing on. The sensor lasts 14 days. It's a Dexcom Libre that I'm using right now. And, I'll put that on about once every couple of months. I don't wear it all the time, but I'll always do check-ins, or I'll put it on before I travel, so that I can, because I'm outside of my normal environment, learn a little bit more about where my blood glucose is at. Am I hungry right now because I'm stressed out and I just checked into my hotel and it's been a long day of travel? Or, am I actually hungry because my blood glucose is low? So, I can look at my blood glucose and see how it responds to meals and activities and stress, and everything else.

The thing, and I've said this before on a podcast, but I'll repeat it real quick for people, the one thing that plunges my blood glucose and keeps my blood glucose low the entire day, 10:00 p.m. after that last slice of carrot cake that I snuck out after you guys left, my blood glucose was at 70. We ate at 7:15, 7:30. I did my Morozko soak about 5:30 or so. But, if I time a cold soak anywhere in the 20 minutes to two hours prior to dinner, the impact on blood glucose is absolutely staggering. Have you guys messed around much with continuous blood glucose monitoring?

Jason:  No, I'm on the list for Levels, which I don't really know when that's going to circle around. It's something that I want to look into.

Ben:  Levels, being an app that a lot of consumers are using for blood glucose or experimentation with their glycemic variability?

Jason:  I might look to see what else is more readily available. And, I'll dig in on the one that that you're wearing.

Adrienne:  And, Tom wrote an article about ice bath and ketogenesis, which is on our website under the journal section.

Ben:  Really?

Adrienne:  Where he talks about those type of benefits for deliberate cold exposure and glucose. His son is diabetic. And so, this is type-1 diabetic. So, this is close, near and dear to his heart. And, it makes a difference. Deliberate cold exposure makes a difference.

Ben:  Have you guys looked into much of the research on the androgen or on the endocrine system, impact on testosterone related to all the old-school powerlifters icing their balls and stuff like that?

Jason:  Tom and I have gotten our testosterone checked. I got mine checked right about my 40th birthday, and then again on my 41st birthday. I'll be 42 in October. So, I'll probably get another data point there. But, for me, between those two data points, I got about a 30% increase, which is, again, I'm in my early 40s. And, a lot of men in our society are on the downward slide with their testosterone levels. And, I'm actually increasing. It'll be interesting to see what kind of increase there may be on this second, I don't know, on this third data point. Tom, likewise, got his checked. And, his testosterone level is insane. He basically have the testosterone level of a 19-year-old, and he's in his mid-50s.

Ben:  It's a little paradoxical because the other thing that happens is, if my wife and I are getting it on at night and I've actually been in the cold tub prior to that, it's really hard to get it up.

Jason:  Really?

Ben:  Yeah.

Jason:  I'm the opposite.

Ben:  Well, I get [00:54:45]_____. It's hard for me to get it up. Maybe, I've got a leaner dick than you. I don't know. But, anyways, it takes me a little while to recover from that when it comes to the shrinkage, or the blood flow, I suppose.

The thing that I've been asked and that I'd be remiss not to ask you guys this and see if you have any perspective on it, is, obviously, when you get into cold water, there is a sympathetic nervous system response. There's a fight-or-flight response that, if you tackle that properly, and I want to talk to you in a little bit here, Adrienne, about the type of meditation breathwork that you've designed, pairing with cold tub, but if you don't manage that fight-and-flight sympathetic response properly, you freak out, you do the nine-second Adrienne thing. And, I'm curious, are there people who you think should be super careful? Have you ever seen an indication that folks might have a heart attack when they get in cold water or something like that?

Jason:  We'd like to say that our lives are the product of the story we tell ourselves. And, Adrienne has a wealth of experience. She's guided thousands of people through. And, the ones that I've witnessed in events, I can always tell who's not going to make it to two minutes because they're already telling themselves the story. They're already anxious about it. And, one of the things that we, all in our company, in our culture, in our coaching try to do is to help people reduce that anxiety that they're experiencing before the sensation. The past and the future don't exist. That's our memory and our anxiety. So, bringing them to that present moment is very important.

We've never really seen anybody suffer any, I'll say, real problem. It's all been just a limiting belief. And then, they'll jump out of the bath. And then, we've got the sauna right there.

Ben:  I think, if anybody is concerned about something like that, just in the same way that you would probably, if you had vagal nerve issues or hypotensive issues or something like that, you wouldn't want to do Wim Hof breathwork by yourself, because you're probably passed out. Anything like this, any of these hormetic stressors, if you are nervous, just have a watch or have a sitter, have a facilitator. And, those type of words might seem like word you'd hear more thrown around in meditation or yoga or plant medicine, but it leads to the idea that this could be approached as a very deep meditative practice similar to some of those type of protocols.

This is new for me. I don't know much about it. But, I noticed on your website that you're now including some type of meditation or breathwork training or something like that to teach people how to deal with the cold. And so, I'd love to hear you walk folks through what a gold standard how to control your physiology type of practice would look like when it comes to their ice bathing protocol.

Adrienne:  So, I will say the only contraindication I've come up with for deliberate cold exposure in my experience is pacemaker. You don't want to shock your system if you have a pacemaker. So, make sure, if you have a pacemaker, you're getting some doctor consent or talking with your doctor about what that would look like. And, if you are concerned with anything like that, if you're concerned with shocking your system too much or not being afraid or not being able to do it, it is okay to experience 55 degrees. It's okay to get yourself to a point where you feel cold, maybe, not freezing cold, any amount of cold is a good amount of cold.

Ben:  And, you're not just throwing that number out there.

Adrienne:  No.

Ben:  Actually, 55 degrees is actually the temperature at which you do start to see, like with fasting, you start to see some benefits of eight hours. So, even with cold, you start to see benefits at 55 degrees.

Adrienne:  At 55.

Ben:  Not more than that, but 55 at least.

Adrienne:  Fifty-five is a good start. And, you don't have to go for two minutes. Get yourself all the way in. Get yourself all the way up. So, quickly, after I started this practice within just the first few plunges, I realized that the Wim Hof method was not the method for me. It was hyperactive. It was holotropic. It was high energy.

And then, the way that they meet a cold is with competition. So, it's that, “I'm going in the cold. I'm going to own this cold. I'm going to make this cold my bitch.” And, that's not the way that the cold works for me. I found that I needed to find a way to achieve ultimate surrender. Ultimate surrender through that fight-or-flight, ultimate surrender to the discomfort my body was going through in that cold experience. And, I've craved those freezing temperatures from the beginning.

So, even when I'm introducing people to the cold for the first time, and they have no experience, I put them in 33 degrees. To me, in ways that I've guided people, there's no such thing as too cold for an ice bath and for a first-timer. So, within my first few ice baths. And, I realized, too high energy, I needed to do something different, I started to pull from different experiences that I was learning from in my healing journey. So, a little bit of dialectical behavioral therapy, where you're engaging all five senses in order to ground yourself, a little bit of breathwork, mindful meditation, setting an intention, deciding that I was doing this even though it's uncomfortable. I was doing this even though it was hard. I was doing this even though I was afraid and anxious. And, I was going to do it anyway.

Ben:  So, when I get in the bath, I typically will focus on nasal breathing only, just so I'm not activating a lot of those baroreceptors in the chest from mouth-breathing that would amplify the cortisol response. And, what I typically do is box breathing. And, primarily because, probably, the longest I've ever spent in an ice bath was actually when I was doing the Navy SEAL, the KOKORO down in Encinitas. They do almost like a Navy SEAL hell week for civilians. And, you can go in there and basically pay guys a bunch of money to treat you like shit for a few days and beat you up and spit you out. But, in all reality, it definitely makes you a better person, going through all of that.

But during one of the so-called beatdowns or evolutions, they stuck me in an ice bath. And, I was in there for about 19 minutes, breathing through a plastic bottle, a cut-off plastic bottle, with my head under. And, occasionally, they'd splash water into that bottle. And, I had to maintain my cool. And, it was tough. But then, one thing that they taught us because they actually do teach you a lot of stress control strategies there when you're, whatever, sitting in the Pacific Ocean at 2:00 a.m. and tried to control the hyperthermic responses. Box breathing: four-count in, four-count out, four-count hold, or four-count in, four-count hold, four-count out, four-count hold. I've personally found no other breathwork practice to be as effective as that for being able to maintain nervous system calm when in the cold. What do you use, though?

Adrienne:  So, that is effective. I do love box breathing. I like it for when I'm stressed in traffic, when I'm anxious before a meeting or a podcast. And, the way that we teach, the way that I guide the Morozko Method is you want to enter the cold with stoicism in grace, you want to enter the cold with mindful meditation. So, what you need to do as you're standing next to the ice bath is bring your focus into the now. By touching base with all five of your senses–sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch–you're grounding yourself in the present moment. So, look around. What do I see? This is how I guide people. What do you see? What can you hear? What can you smell? What do you taste? What can you feel? And, that brings you into the body and grounds you in the moment.

And then, we work on belly breathing. So, when you're in an anxious state, you're going to breathe up into the chest. And, I can see this as I'm guiding people. They're breathing in the chest. I can tell they're nervous. So, I guide them into breathing into the belly. I also use a little bit of Yoga Nidra, a little bit of hypnosis, and put you in that calm state.

Ben:  Yoga Nidra being almost like a body scan?

Adrienne:  Yes. We start at the feet. You're grounded. Your feet are firm, solid beneath you, ready to carry you on your journey ahead. We move up the body, the arms, relax the shoulders, relaxed [01:03:40]_____.

Ben:  And, this is all before you even get in?

Adrienne:  All before you even get in. And, I also use the environment. If I'm outside, if I'm in an event, if there's music, if there's a lot of noise, we're going to incorporate that. We're not going to ignore it. We're going to embrace that as part of the experience. So, I also guide you to step fully in calmly, without hesitation, sit all the way down, get all the way through the neck, drop your arms and your hands. I know that the hands and the feet are uncomfortable, people, but the only way —

Ben:  That's the part people complain about the most. Their feet pop out, their heads pop out like a shrimp.

Adrienne:  And, the only way to train through that is to do it. And, you can train through that. That's your vascular system. We need to be training through that. So, I advise them to go all the way through one fluid motion, sitting all the way down. At this point, especially, if it's your first time, you're activating fight-or-flight and you're hyperventilating. When we hyperventilate, we tend to focus on the exhale. And, what I'm teaching you to do is flip that. I want you to focus on bringing oxygen into the body.

So, part of the cold is you can feel like it's difficult to take a deep breath, like me, walking and talking on this podcast right now. You can feel like it's hard to take a deep breath because your chest feels like it's constricting. So, what we're teaching is breathe in anyway. Suck that air in. Suck that. And, it's okay to do it through the mouth as you're new to the practice. You just want to teach yourself to bring that oxygen into the body. That only lasts about 30 to 45 seconds. And then, the [01:05:16]_____, the norepinephrine kick in. Everything starts to calm. And then, you are in control. You're able to slow your breath.

And, if you're not someone who can get to two minutes, that's okay. It is important to get in with calm mindful intention, step out with calm mindful intention. So, if I occasionally come across someone who's in there for 15 seconds and says, “I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I got to get out,” that's okay. Move slowly. When they get out of the cold, you're disoriented. You don't know up from down. You're still trying to catch your breath, whether you've done two minutes or not. I have you stand in a power pose. You guys can look this up. It's called Arms Akimbo. And, I learned this neat little technique from Joe Navarro in the book, “What Everybody is Saying.” It's called Arms Akimbo. So, your feet are a little more than hip-distance apart. Your hands are in fists on your hips, with your thumbs pointing behind you. Your chest is out. Your shoulders at your back. Your chin is up. And, I have —

Ben:  Like Superman.

Adrienne:  Yes, or Wonder Woman. Pick your king or queen. Pick your king or queen. And, I will have you stand that way still while you're catching your breath post-cold. And, the reason is, if you step out of an ice bath and you curl into yourself and you don't stand fully up and you reach for that towel, you're creating a physical muscle memory of anxiety, of fear. Whereas, if you stand in that power pose, you're doing a few things. One, you're creating a physical muscle memory of empowerment. Two, they call it Arms Akimbo, the power pose, because, by standing this way for two minutes, you're invoking chemicals in the brain that creates space of common competence. And, three, by standing fully still and breathing through and relaxing your sugar response, you're activating your brown fat, which is then going to turn your white fat into burning energy.

So, I do not say move, run, jump, do all these things. I say, be still. Let your body do the work. And so, the whole premise of the way I guide and the way that I now certify other instructors to guide the Morozko Method is meeting the cold with stoicism and grace, stepping in with mindful intention, stepping out with the same mindful intention. Everything we do around the cold is calm, intentional, and mindful.

Ben:  I love that. And, the Morozko Method, that's a great name, by the way, are you guys planning on having videos and stuff on your website that teach people this or walk them through it, like audios or things like that?

Adrienne:  So, right now, I have online deliberate cold exposure meditations. So, if you're new to the practice, go to our YouTube at Morozko Forge and look at the DCE meditations. You can select by number of minutes or by focused healing. I also certify people to do this to become guides in this practice. I like to host workshops wherever anyone will have me. My next one's in Boca Raton, September 11th. And, I will be releasing a fundamentals course where you can go online, get familiar with the practice on your own, and then decide if you want to move further along.

Ben:  I joke sometimes that one of my most popular YouTube videos is how to take a cold shower, because I'm like, “Let's get in and turn the water on cold.” But, really, in all seriousness, because I've done other videos on how to do an ice bath, there's so much more than just getting into the cold. And, as you alluded to, Adrienne, the whole idea of intentionality and setting an intention, body awareness, body scan, and mindfully paying attention to where your nervous system is going, that's where you go way beyond just, “Got to get through the cold. Got to get through the cold. Got to get through the cold,” whether it's in the shower or in the bath.

And so, if you're going to use this time anyways, use it wisely. Get as much as you can out of it. Just like when I work out, I like to listen to an audiobook or a podcast because I like to make myself smarter if I'm going to use that 45 minutes to also make myself stronger.

The couple of things I would add in that I found to be useful in addition to what you just outlined, Adrienne, was I've found eyes open seems to, for people who really struggle with the cold, almost be better than eyes closed. And, I think it's something about the distractions of the external environment and things to look at seem to take your mind off the cold. Whereas, and you might want to do this if you're really trying to turn yourself into a cold ninja, closing the eyes seems to actually make you think about the cold a little bit more.

Adrienne:  I think that's accurate. And, there are a couple of reasons for this. So, again, when we're using sensory immersive grounding techniques, we want to engage all the senses. When you're closing your eyes, you're removing one of our greatest senses that alerts us to danger. So, if your eyes are closed and you're already afraid, you're going to increase that. The other thing is, when I'm guiding someone, I'm activating their neurons. Your pupils are looking at my pupils, so that you can see that I'm calm, so that you understand that there's no need for danger.

Ben:  I love it. And then, the other thing is, in addition–And, this is something James Nestor talks about in his new book, “Breathe,” for example and even the use of carbon dioxide therapy via device called the Carbogen for people with anxiety and depression and impaired stress responses to actually be able to handle any of these type of things a little better, like ice makes you a little bit more resilient to anxiety and stress.

High levels of carbon dioxide seem to do the same. So, in addition to belly breathing, and I love your idea about just embracing the inhale, slow exhale, so you're not puffing off too much CO2. And, I realized that the box breathing is not necessarily a slow exhale. But, if you actually find yourself super stressed, and even longer exhale, you can go four in, four hold, eight out, four hold. And, for a lot of people, just that slight increase in carbon dioxide, along with the eyes open, help out with maintaining relaxation in the tub.

Adrienne:  Absolutely.

Ben:  Well, there's one thing that we haven't yet talked about. And, I'm wondering if we should tell people about the secret sauce. We are, by the way, just so you guys know, we're heading towards the river. We're going to actually go finish today's episode with a little soak in the Spokane River, with the crawdads and the trout and the scary Loch Ness — 

Adrienne:  I'm ready.

Ben:  –sea creatures that eat your toes off.

Adrienne:  I'm so ready.

Ben:  But, the secret sauce, do you guys remember the secret sauce from last night that I had in the steak rub?

Jason:  Absolutely.

Adrienne:  Yes.

Ben:  Should we tell people about it?

Jason:  Yeah.

Adrienne:  Yes.

Ben:  So, we didn't get deep into the science of these uncoupling proteins. But, basically, when you get cold, you're upregulating the activity of what are called uncoupling proteins, which cause your cells to, instead of using calories to generate ATP, using calories to generate heat. And, this is why, for example, you see people talking about white adipose tissue when you get cold, slowly, with repetitive exposure, getting converted into brown adipose tissue, which is more metabolically active. And, when they say metabolically active, they're specifically referring to the fact that this brown fat has a higher activities uncoupling proteins that just basically take calories and, boom, shove them straight into heat. So, it's like that extra metabolic boost, that extra calorie burn, that results in many people seeing really, really accelerated fat loss in response to cold, especially, if they do it fasted because then, your body is grabbing fewer of the fatty acids and glucose from your bloodstream and having to tap into that adipose tissue a little bit more intensively.

But, that all being said, there are certain secret sauces and secret things that increase the activity of that uncoupling protein. So, do you guys remember the name of that one we had last night?

Adrienne:  Grains of Paradise?

Jason:  Grains of Paradise.

Ben:  Grains of Paradise. You can buy it off Amazon. Instead of putting black pepper in my pepper grinder, I put the Grains of Paradise in there. And, you can put a few twists of that into a morning cup of coffee, if you have coffee before your cold soak. You can use it afterwards, too. Actually, just because it increases metabolic rate across a wide variety of scenarios, I'll use it on my breakfast, on my lunches, on my dinner. But, Grains of Paradise is one.

And then, the other things we were talking about were any of these so-called glucose disposal agents. These are things that people, a lot of times, will do before they eat, I don't know, four slices of carrot cake or any appreciable amount of carbohydrates or alcohol, in some cases. So, things like berberine or even dihydroberberine, which is a more active form of berberine, or bitter melon extract, or even Ceylon cinnamon, or apple cider vinegar.

Adrienne:  Apple cider vinegar.

Ben:  Some people even use metformin. Any of those actually pair pretty well with cold to increase the effects that you're looking for if you're looking for more that metabolic fat loss type of effects. So, that's one little secret that I wanted to share on today's show I guess [01:14:28]_____.

Adrienne:  I love that.

Ben:  Now, Amazon's going to sell a lot of Grains of Paradise. But then, if you're doing a sauna session, you can do black pepper. And, that heats up the body. So, the black pepper heats up the body. The Grains of Paradise increases the uncoupling protein.

Adrienne:  I love that.

Ben:  Then, the other thing to be combined with cold–And, I wanted to ask you guys about this. There's some interesting things about getting the Morozko. I had Brian Hoyer, building biologist from Shielded Healing, come out to my house and do whole EMF walk. I have him test the Morozko because I wanted to make sure I wasn't cold-soaking in a manmade electrical radiation suit. He tested me. And then, he tested what's called the phase angle of my body. And, that was basically measuring how well I was grounded when in the tub. And so, you hear a lot of people talking about these grounding mats, earthing mats, going outside barefoot, laying on your back. I have a whole podcast with Clint Ober about the magnitude of anti-inflammatory effects when you're grounding. He tested me, and I was grounded. It was something like 20 times more than when I was standing barefoot on the ground when I was in that steel tub underneath the water. And so, there's this anti-inflammatory grounding effect. Did I tell you guys about that?

Adrienne:  You did. And, he also did Luke Storey's. And, he did a beautiful video explaining it all, which is on our YouTube channel.

Ben:  So, I'll link to that at the BenGreenfieldFitness.com/ColdPodcast.

There was another thing because I totally forgot to ask you about this. But, do you guys actually do heat? And, if so, how do you combine that with the Morozko, like sauna.

Adrienne:  We do. We like to start in the sauna, so that you're starting at already a base state, instead of going into the cold first, lying on the sauna.

Ben:  Because then, you're just wasting your time in the sauna, trying to warm up.

Adrienne:  You're just wasting time. And, we're all trying to be efficient with our time. So, we start in the sauna, get a really good sweat going. I like to give myself a few minutes between sauna and cold, letting my body do the work. I'm not relying on the Forge to cool me off post-sauna. So, I give myself about three-ish, five minutes between. And then, I do cold plunge.

Ben:  You do same thing?

Jason:  Same, yeah, from a time management perspective. And, also, this therapy, this deliberate cold exposure therapy, as we know, works on so many different systems. But, one of the favorites for me to think about and talk about is the vasomotor constrictive response. And, again, I feel, if I'm going from hot from that vasodilation to the constriction, going from dilated to constricted, it is a lot faster and deeper than going from constricted to dilated.

Ben:  In most cases, with hot-cold contrast, as it's called, going back-and-forth hot to cold, hot to cold,  hot the cold is actually the very best.

Jason:  Yeah.

Ben:  When you look at the studies on the men, the Finnish longevity study, I've been over there to the men's Finnish sauna society. And, they will do a sauna, and then go jump in the Baltic Sea or the cold body of water nearby, and then come back up onto the deck and let themselves get warmed by not being in the sauna and just standing outside, which anytime that you let your body get warm on its own you guys, rather than go and take a hot shower after the cold, you're going to get even more benefits. And so, always try and let your body warm itself. If you got to do a few jumping jacks or burpees or whatever. But, anyways, the back-and-forth from the hot to the cold to hot to the cold, they'll do that multiple times. And, sometimes, I think they leave that out of those reports on how sauna increases lifespan in Finnish men because I've been over there. And, their sauna practice is actually sauna, then cold, then standing around for a while, then sauna, then cold, then again, multiple times — 

Adrienne:  That makes sense.

Ben:  –often sitting quietly in a little bit more meditative state inside the saunas.

So, there's a lot that you can reap from a sauna or a hot-cold contrast type of practice that goes beyond just sitting in the sauna. And, my practice is, because I don't have a lot of time to go back-and-forth and back-and-forth, is, four to five days a week, I do about 30 minutes of just flow yoga in my sauna. And then, I get out and go to, either the Morozko, or I'll go swim a few laps an above-ground cold pool that stays anywhere from 45 to 55. So, I'll go swim around in that or hit the Morozko. And then, whichever one I don't do that morning, I do later on in the day.

Alright. So, we have covered a ton. And, there's one last thing that we have to do for this podcast to really be a smash hit. And, we're going to upload some photos and videos. We have a wonderful videographer and photographer, Anna, out here with us. So, she's going to put some cool content for you all up on the website, if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/ColdPodcast. But, what we're going to finish up with is a nice little dip right here into the wonderful Spokane River. Do you guys do many open-water soaks?

Adrienne:  We're getting into it.

Jason:  We're getting into it. We just went to a place called Blue Pool in Oregon a couple of days ago.

Ben:  Here, we can sit down and keep the mics close together while we take off our shoes. So, I used to come down here to this little lagoon. This is in a little place called the Islands Trailhead in Spokane. And, I'd get in here sometimes in the morning and almost use this like an outdoor lap pool, swimming back-and-forth.

Adrienne:  It's beautiful.

Ben:  And, there's something about the open water, like I was talking about earlier. I like just to throw in every now and again because you just feel primal when you can hunt down an open body of water to do this. And so, even if you don't have a Morozko, you can, now that you've learned the secrets, go to Costco and buy yourself a bunch of pretzels and salsa and float them in your bathtub. You can hunt down a cold body of water. You can take a cold shower. I'm going to put a link to Morozko because we got–I forget what it is, but people get some special discount on your guys' tub. And so, I'll put that at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/ColdPodcast. Do you remember what it is, Adrienne?

Adrienne:  Yes. One is BENFORGE. The other is BOUNDLESS.

Ben:  Both those codes work?

Adrienne:  Both those codes work.

Ben:  Cool.

Adrienne:  One gets you 500 off the prism. The other gets you 150 off the filter or the cold forge.

Ben:  Sweet. There's a few different models. Oh, there's a duck. Duck, come over. Say hello to us. Alright. Well, folks, we're going to get into the water. And, just so I don't drop our precious microphone here and lose everything that we just talked about, I'll hit stop in the recording. But, in the meantime, if you guys want to dig into the studies we talked about, learn more about the Morozko, learn more about the Morozko Method that Adrienne was talking about, and check out some of the meditation and breathwork videos, if you have your own comments or questions or feedback, Jason, Adrienne, and I can always hop into the comments section or apply to you there, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/ColdPodcast. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com/ColdPodcast. And, that's where you can find all the show notes.

Alright. So, we're down here at the water. And, just for you listening in, I think, as I was taking off my shoes to get into the water, I pressed stop on our recording. So, it might sound like we're just leaping into a whole new discussion here. But, I decided to turn the recording back on, because we're going to go wade into the water. Come on you, guys. Come on you, guys. It will be fun.

And, there was a question that I totally forgot to ask, so I thought I'd ask it just because it's interesting. And, that's this whole idea of people taking Epsom salts baths and soaking in magnesium salts and stuff like that. Obviously, I've never put those in the hot tub because it messes up the filter. But, have you guys ever done that in the Morozko?

Jason:  Yeah, we've been putting about 8 pounds of Epsom salt into the bath. And, this accomplishes a couple of things. The first is that it softens the ice. So, sometimes, when we want to build up those good ice layers, we end up with three inches of clear solid ice on the bottom. We struggled to get it to pop up to the top, especially, in different hotter ambient environments. But, that Epsom salts in the water is going to make the ice softer, which is going to make it easier to pull up and create this [01:22:41]_____.

Ben:  Oh, my gosh. I'm totally going to do this.

Adrienne:  It feels really good.

Ben:  I bet, yeah.

Jason:  We don't have a whole lot of evidence on this, but there could be some benefit with transdermal soaking of the magnesium, the magnesium actually soaking into the skin and giving you [01:22:55]_____.

Ben:  That's why I do it in the bath. I would imagine it's going to probably soak better in hot water. But, still, even if you get out and you don't take a shower, it's going to be on your skin, seeping in.

Alright. So, cool. Well, everybody, we are now standing knee-deep in the Spokane River. And, again, I'm going to put all of the show notes, everything we talked, about all the studies, the links to the Morozko, all the special goodies at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/ColdPodcast, where you can jump in and leave your own questions or comments or feedback or anything else you want to pipe in on. Jason, Adrienne, and I will be there to help. So, Jason, Adrienne, thanks for doing this, you guys.

Jason:  Thanks for having us.

Adrienne:  Thanks for having us, Ben.

Ben:  Do you guys want to go on a little deeper?

Adrienne:  Yeah, we do.

Jason:  Yeah.

Ben:  Me, too. But, I got to ditch this microphone. Alright.

Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com, along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful, “Ben Recommends” page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep, digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more.

Please, also, know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode helped to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So, when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes, to use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.

 

 

My guests on this podcast—Jason Stauffer and Adrienne Jezick—are the chilly, genius minds behind the Morozko Forge: the only ice bath in the world that can maintain freezing cold temperatures lower than any ice bath that exists…

…for meditation, fat loss, vagus nerve health, blood flow, and a ton of other benefits that you've heard me discuss in shows and articles such as:

• Fire & Ice: Tips, Tricks & Biohacks To Maximize The Benefits Of Sauna, Hyperthermia, Cryotherapy & Cold Thermogenesis.
• A Crazy Biohacking Adventure With Luke Storey & Ben Greenfield: Smart Drugs, Sleep Hacking, Infrared Light, Cold Pools & Beyond!
• My Latest Sleep Biohacks, Habits, Routines, Rituals, Longevity Tips, Parenting Strategies, Spiritual Disciplines & More!
• The Unfrozen Caveman Runner: How To Get A “Free” Endurance Workout & Blast Sprints On A Norepinephrine High From Cold Water Exposure.
• Episode #187: Does Cold Thermogenesis Work For Fat Loss?
• How You Can Use Cold Thermogenesis To Perform Like Lance Armstrong And Michael Phelps.
• Tips For Burning More Fat With Cold Thermogenesis (And Why Icing Really Does Work).

So what is the Morozko Forge, exactly?

The Forge is basically the first ice bath (custom designed stainless steel tub) in the world to make its own ice, and to maintain incredibly effective and potent cold temperatures even when it's 100+ °F outside! The Forge, designed for indoor or outdoor use, also uses ozone and microfiltration to maintain crystal-clear waters without harsh chemicals. More powerful than chlorine and bromine, and safer because it consists only of pure oxygen, ozone is terrific for cleaning cold water, which is why it is used in the most advanced drinking water treatment plants in the world. It allows you to maintain your desired temperature, so you can start at 55°F and work your way down to 33°F (or not), includes a two- and up to five-year warranty. Scientific studies indicate that deliberate cold exposure using a cold bath like this can:

• Boost immune strength.
• Promote potent longevity benefits.
• Enhance weight loss.
• Increase mitochondrial function.
• Regulate autoimmune disorders.

You can learn more about the different Forge models, and special offers on each when you go to this page.

Jason C. Stauffer, President of Morozko Forge, is a Phoenix native, Army combat veteran, and ASU graduate with his Bachelor’s of Science in Engineering in Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering. He has a background in healthcare analytics, game theory, and systems analysis and optimization. Jason's early civilian career in for-profit pharmaceuticals gave him intimate knowledge of the decreasing ability of synthetic medicine to treat the underlying causes of diseases, aging, chronic ailments, and post-industrial afflictions of urban human society.

Adrienne Jezick, DCE Guide at Morozko Forge, began her practice with Deliberate Cold Exposure (DCE) for healing in October 2017. In 2013, she was diagnosed with three autoimmune diseases; Hashimoto's, urticaria, and eosinophilic esophagitis. That is when Adrienne began her quest towards greater health. Since developing a regular DCE regimen, she has reversed all traces of autoimmune disease and is now guiding others to do the same. Adrienne created The Morozko Method: a sensory immersion meditation technique for Deliberate Cold Exposure and hosts workshops to certify other guides. She is also the creator of The Morozko Method Podcast, sharing the healing journey of the people she meets along her way.

During this discussion, recorded during a walk along the Spokane River, you'll discover:

-Eating and fasting habits of cold thermogenesis aficionados…04:10

• One meal a day (OMAD)
• Dinner is the main meal of the day (4-5 pm)
• High fat, low carb
• Intermittent carb refeeds
• Jessa's carrot cake
• Ben's steak recipe

-How Jason and Adrienne became fanatically involved with cold therapy…08:26

• Adrienne got sick in her early 30s
• Diagnosed with three autoimmune conditions:
  • Hashimoto's hypothyroidism
  • Eosinophilic esophagitis
  • Urticaria
• Conventional medicine essentially made her a prisoner of meds and insurance companies
• Depression, anxiety, excessive stress associated with identifying one's self as a chronically ill person
• Reading fiction and the stoics for answers
• Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

-First ice baths in 2017 show promising results…18:02

• Amateur Wim Hof lessons led by a yoga instructor in Phoenix
• Adrienne's first ice bath lasted 9 seconds
• Previously chronic pain began to dissipate after taking ice baths
• DCE: Deliberate Cold Exposure
• Difficult to take ice baths in Phoenix
• Ben got his start with cold thermogenesis during his triathlon days

-Making ice baths commercially available…24:40

• The products available were cost-prohibitive, marketed for very specific niches
• How To Lose 131 Pounds By Eating Meat: The Rick Rubin Podcast
• BGF podcasts with Luke Storey:
  • Two Nerdy Biohackers Reveal Their Secrets To Spiritual Health, Life Optimization, Plant Medicines, Rites Of Passage, Mental Models & Much More!
  • A Crazy Biohacking Adventure With Luke Storey & Ben Greenfield: Smart Drugs, Sleep Hacking, Infrared Light, Cold Pools & Beyond!
• Boundless by Ben Greenfield
• Knowledge of how refrigerators create cold environments
• Two old refrigerators were the prototype ice bath

-How ozone keeps the water clean, and how the Morozko gets the water so cold…33:30

• Ozone disinfection system
• Change water 1-2 times per month
• Ozone disinfects the water and doesn't stay in the water
• No issues with breathing in ozone
• Chiller units rely on moving water through the device; thermodynamic limitations
• Morozko doesn't rely on moving water to drop the temperature

-Ice bathing for workout recovery…40:55

• ARX Fit strength training machines
• Cold preceding strength training showed an increase in the efficacy of the workout
• Article by Brad Kearns on amplification of performance with cold before workouts
• Length, intensity of the cold make a significant difference in how the body responds, recovers from exercise
• Do ice bath later in the day, not immediately after the workout

-How depression and anxiety respond to cold therapy…45:30

• Chronic illness brings depression, anxiety, uncertainty
• An ice bath brings a surge of norepinephrine and dopamine
• Motion brings on emotion
• “Reset” button on emotional dysregulation
• An ice bath often brings out the best mood in a person
• Biology of Belief  by Bruce Lipton
• 35°F or below to get the best effects

-How an ice bath affects blood glucose levels…50:50

• Dexcom G6 or Freestyle Libre
• Levels Health
• Article on ketogenesis on Morozko website by Tom Seager
• Jason got a 30% increase in testosterone levels between data points (checked on his 40th birthday and again on his 41st)

-Precautions to take before considering regular ice baths…54:40

• Reduce anxiety you experience before the sensation
• No real health issues after using an ice bath; limiting beliefs
• Don't do an ice bath if you have a pacemaker
• It's okay to begin at a warmer temp and work your way down
• You begin to feel the benefits of cold at 55°F
• The cold doesn't need to be your adversary

-Meditation and breathwork before an ice bath…1:00:10

• Ben swears by box breathing: 4 counts in, hold, out, hold
• Enter the cold with stoicism and grace; mindful meditation
• Meditation For Mind-Blowing Sex, Meditation For Insomnia, Meditation For Energy & Much More, with Emily Fletcher.
• Belly breathing brings into a stoic state
• Yoga nidra and hypnosis
• Focus on the inhale rather than the exhale (as you do when hyperventilating)
• Arms Akimbo power position
• What Everyone is Saying by Joe Navarro
• Morozko Method breathing regimen
• Exposure Meditations
• Morozko Forge Youtube channel
• Eyes open is better than eyes closed to take your mind off the cold
• Breath by James Nestor
• BGF podcasts with James Nestor:
  • Biohack Your Breath With Nose “Boners,” Carbon Dioxide Inhalation, Tibetan Longevity Stretches & Much More: How To Unlock The New Science Of A Lost Art.
  • The Extreme Sport You’ve Probably Never Heard Of, And How You Can Use It’s Renegade Techniques To Become Superhuman.

-The recipe for Ben's secret steak sauce…1:11:06

• Grains of Paradise in a pepper grinder increases uncoupling proteins
• Glucose Disposal Agents:
  • Berberine
  • Dihydroberberine
  • Bitter melon extract
  • Apple cider vinegar
  • Metformin
• BGF podcast with Brian Hoyer where he tests the Morozko
  • Hunting Down EMF In Your Office, Bedroom, Gym & Beyond: Is Your Home’s “Dirty Electricity” Wrecking Your Sleep, Your Recovery, Your Health & More? The Official Ben Greenfield & Brian Hoyer Low-EMF Home How-To.
• Shielded healing
• Brian Hoyer testing Luke Storey's Morozko Forge
• BGF podcast with Clint Ober on earthing:
  • My New #1 Hack For Zapping Inflammation, Increasing Deep Sleep & Recovering Faster—Earthing (The Most Important Health Discovery Ever?)

-How to combine heat therapy with ice baths…1:15:30

• Start at the sauna, get a really good sweat
• Dip into the Forge after around 3 minutes after the sauna
• Ten Scientifically Proven Reasons I Am Addicted To A Daily Sauna.

-Epsom salts and magnesium salts in the Morozko…1:21:08

• Magnesium flakes

-And much more!…

Resources from this episode:

– Jason C. Stauffer And Adrienne Jezick:

• Morozko Forge
  • use code BENFORGE to save $150 on the Cold and Filtered Forge
  • use code BOUNDLESS to save $500 on the Prism
• Morozko Forge YouTube Channel

– Podcasts And Articles:

• Two Nerdy Biohackers Reveal Their Secrets To Spiritual Health, Life Optimization, Plant Medicines, Rites Of Passage, Mental Models & Much More! with Luke Storey
• A Crazy Biohacking Adventure With Luke Storey & Ben Greenfield: Smart Drugs, Sleep Hacking, Infrared Light, Cold Pools & Beyond!
• How To Lose 131 Pounds By Eating Meat: The Rick Rubin Podcast
• Biohack Your Breath With Nose “Boners,” Carbon Dioxide Inhalation, Tibetan Longevity Stretches & Much More: How To Unlock The New Science Of A Lost Art, with James Nestor.
• The Extreme Sport You’ve Probably Never Heard Of, And How You Can Use It’s Renegade Techniques To Become Superhuman, with James Nestor.
• Hunting Down EMF In Your Office, Bedroom, Gym & Beyond: Is Your Home’s “Dirty Electricity” Wrecking Your Sleep, Your Recovery, Your Health & More? The Official Ben Greenfield & Brian Hoyer Low-EMF Home How-To, with Brian Hoyer
• My New #1 Hack For Zapping Inflammation, Increasing Deep Sleep & Recovering Faster—Earthing (The Most Important Health Discovery Ever?), with Clint Ober.
• Meditation For Mind-Blowing Sex, Meditation For Insomnia, Meditation For Energy & Much More, with Emily Fletcher.
• The Unfrozen Caveman Runner: How To Get A “Free” Endurance Workout & Blast Sprints On A Norepinephrine High From Cold Water Exposure.
• The Ultimate Breathwork Ninja Guide: How To Banish Stress & Kiss High Cortisol Goodbye.
• How You Can Use Cold Thermogenesis To Perform Like Lance Armstrong And Michael Phelps.
• Ten Scientifically Proven Reasons I Am Addicted To A Daily Sauna.
• Why You Can’t Afford Not To Meditate (& One Simple Mindfulness Exercise You Can Do Today), with Emily Fletcher.

– Books:

• Boundless By Ben Greenfield
• Antifragile By Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Biology of Belief  By Bruce Lipton
• What Everyone Is Saying By Joe Navarro
• Breath By James Nestor

– Other Resources:

• Wim Hof
• ARX Fit
• Dexcom G6
• Freestyle Libre
• Levels Health
• Clearlight Sauna
• Grains Of Paradise
• Pepper Grinder
• Berberine
• Dihydroberberine
• Bitter Melon Extract
• Apple Cider Vinegar
• Shielded Healing
• Magnesium Flakes
• Brian Hoyer Testing Luke Storey's Morozko Forge
• Ice Bath For Fast Keto
• Yoga Nidra On Youtube

Upcoming Events:

• Join me and my wife Jessa at Runga for The Gathering. Click here to grab one of the very limited spots we have open to the public for The Gathering at Runga (October 7-9, 2021).
• Las Vegas Keto Expo (October 15-16, 2021). Ben will be speaking at the Las Vegas Keto Expo along with 13 other keto experts. The first 300 guests to register here will get a free drink chip for the poolside party and a free t-shirt.
• Keep up on Ben's LIVE appearances by following bengreenfieldfitness.com/calendar

Episode sponsors:

–Kion Flex: The ultimate recovery formula, Kion Flex is a bioavailable blend to support joint comfort, mobility and flexibility, and bone health. Ben Greenfield Fitness listeners, receive a 10% discount off your entire order when you use discount code BEN10.

–The Boundless Cookbook: Optimize your physical and mental performance with nutritious and delicious Greenfield family recipes.

–Paleo Valley Beef Sticks: 100% grass-fed AND grass-finished. Keto friendly and higher levels of Omega 3 Fatty Acids. Receive a 15% discount off your order when you go to paleovalley.com/ben.

–Water and Wellness: The best solution for clean and safe drinking water. Water and Wellness also offers an amazing line of essential water additives such as Quinton Marine plasma which contain over 78 trace minerals and elements from the ocean to help restore your biological-terrain. Get 15% off your order when you use discount code GREENFIELD.

–Seed Daily Synbiotic: A formulation of 24 unique strains, each of which included at their clinically verified dose, to deliver systemic benefits in the body. Save 15% off your first month's subscription when you use discount code BEN15.