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Ice Baths: Bad Idea Or A Terrible One?
108 Plays1 year ago
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Transcript
Critique of Extreme Practices
00:00:46
chrisyzen
I guess it's time to ruffle a few feathers here, let's talk about why ice baths are a pretty dumb idea. ah Now they say they reduce inflammation, let's just hit it there, right? Ice baths reduce inflammation, they say, but why? What happens when you dunk yourself in an ice bath? And I'm not talking, look, ah if you're taking cold showers, I'm not poo-pooing on your cold showers, keep doing that if if you enjoy it, which I doubt you do, but if you feel like you're getting benefits from it,
00:01:17
chrisyzen
go ham but I'm not talking about just turning on the cold water I'm talking about the ice bath side of things that again the extreme end of the spectrum because this is kind of I don't know how deranged our society has become and why but if something is ah allegedly good then we have to always take it to the extreme for God's sake like the intermittent fasting now people are doing you know one meal a day and if you're gonna fast like For a day or two now, people are like, I'm doing a five day fast whilst still working and taking care of my kids. And it's like, why?
00:01:55
chrisyzen
Have we glorified the um the stressing out of our body to the to the max, to the extreme? like why Why do we have this sort of like almost like a self-hatred that's expressing itself in what we do to ourselves and our bodies, like with this starving ourselves, with these horrible diets, and other kind of ah exercise regimens? you know like long like These guys, now now this outro running is so big, right?
00:02:24
chrisyzen
guys running a hundred miles. Like, why? what What are you trying to prove? You know what I mean? to And to whom? Who are you trying to prove it to? I think the social media plays a big role in this. hook and Who can sit in a friggin ice bath the longest?
00:02:44
chrisyzen
as if you were you're such a big man because you can endure more stress. That really just indicates that you're a priest, not you obviously, not the listener, but I'm just talking about a high to a hypothetical hypothetical sort of this kind of, you see this macho-ness in the fitness space, the health and fitness space where guys are like,
00:03:06
chrisyzen
look how much I can endure I'm a bigger man than you you know that's so dumb man it's just really dumb and they're just they're being manipulated by this stuff right so here's the thing let me just hit the the most important part right so is it true that the ice bath it reduces inflammation yes yes it's true yeah however
Health Implications of Ice Baths
00:03:35
chrisyzen
How does it do that? Well, it suppresses the immune system, right? Okay, you don't have to take my word for it. Go to, I'm sure Google will tell you, and if you type it into chat GPT, just say, so what what I did was just to get some prompts. I said, what are the physiological effects of cold exposure? Okay, and it gave me a bunch of points. So one of them is temporal immunosuppression, temporary suppression of the immune system,
00:04:11
chrisyzen
prolonged or frequent cold exposure can temporarily suppress the immune system potentially increasing the risk of infections and don't forget cancer proliferates with a suppressed immune system um and there's a a bunch of other stuff which you know you don't you're not necessarily gonna have these problems but it does increase blood blood pressure vasoconstriction so it causes the blood vessels to constrict that increases blood pressure and it can put a strain on your heart and there's a risk of arrhythmias in that case. Now obviously that's with older folks but again this you see it's a lot of younger folks that are doing this stuff and then it kind of
00:04:56
chrisyzen
I suppose, you know, as older folks, if I can lump myself in the older folk, I'm not in my early 30s anymore, where when I could have all of these things like I was doing, in and um I could take them, you know, but that's the thing, you can take them until you can't take them. So you're wearing out your body, you're you're just stressing yourself into health problems.
00:05:19
chrisyzen
And that's, is it any wonder and that a lot of people are going to develop serious chronic health problems in their 50s and onwards? It's not. So so that's that's when you look at it. So what is what when you say something increases?
00:05:35
chrisyzen
blood pressure, constricts the blood vessels. What is that indicative? What what what is this response um a part of? The fight or flight nervous system response, the but the sympathetic response, right? So that what does that mean? It means that it's a stress response, okay? so And I think I've covered this already, but if not, I will in the future.
00:06:04
chrisyzen
when your stress hormones increase, the immune system gets suppressed. That is why
00:06:14
chrisyzen
Cortisol is our own endogenous anti-inflammatory because cortisol increases, it suppresses the immune system and infl inflammation is lowered. Now, do there's different ways to reduce inflammation? Do you think that one is the best way to just to suppress the immune system when, like I've already said, it can long-term obviously not not in the short term but long-term it can like allow cancer to proliferate and in the shorter to medium term it can allow like bacteria or or fungal can be the type of infections overgrowth to occur is that the right way to reduce inflammation you know what I mean no it's not of course it's not but here's the thing why is this so effective for athletes because
00:07:06
chrisyzen
they have to do, they have to crowbar into their week, a lot of workouts, right? So an athlete, let's say they have, they have to train today, heavy and intense. And then tomorrow they have to train and then maybe Wednesday or Thursday. So we have to like do three, four training sessions in the space of two to four days, right? Depending on, on the sport, like MMA fighters, they train twice a day, many days.
00:07:34
chrisyzen
so it's helpful for those guys if you get in do your workout do a cold plunge or in this case more like a nice bath because again a shower cold shower is not as intense so i'm not really poo-pooing it if it helps you with in any way but it could also be helping you because it's apinging andping amping you up like increasing your adrenaline and um your stress response and that does amp you up that does give you quote unquote energy but what what what's the source of the energy your body you're degenerating yourself right so yeah so athletes are gonna benefit
00:08:13
chrisyzen
because then you know they're less sore they feel recovered so then they can do their next session and that way they can accumulate enough of a ah training to induce adaptations required for their sport right so for athletes it's and it's an effective tool but athletes while they're very fit usually because they're very young they don't show How unhealthy they truly are because a lot of them are I was watching some video of I think I was talking about this before Triathletes world record holder and trying to training for the Olympics or whatever and the dude looked like he was in his 40s and he's like 27 and they were eating like absolute garbage in their compound there where they were training like oh my god it was disgusting the food and bread and pastel but uh you know what the hell was I talking about I just I'm shuddering to see oh yeah so so yeah so these folks no athletes they're kind of gladiators of our age right so they
00:09:25
chrisyzen
the reason and I finally understand why soccer players get paid so much money and all the athletes get paid so much money, like NFL, and NBA guys.
Athletic Use vs. General Public
00:09:32
chrisyzen
Why do they get paid so much money? Because all this um exertion and strain on their body is shortening their lives, right? For the most part, for most of these guys, especially with their they're kind of sub-op, nowadays it's not as bad, like ah these ah elite athletes, they're eating amazingly, like if you look at Novak Djokovic,
00:09:53
chrisyzen
Nadao and Federer are amazing, amazing athletes, amazing people. um they They've got the best like body workers and nutritionists, all that good stuff, right amazing stuff. um But a lot of these more amateur type athletes, like let's say you'rere you're an ultra runner or a triathlete,
00:10:11
chrisyzen
There's not a lot of money in a lot of these events. And then if you're like, are you just trying to settle an Olympic record, then it's probably some government subsidized sort of program. And of course, the food is going to be as cheap as possible because, you know, government did just do everything worse than, you know, private individuals or corporations would do.
00:10:35
chrisyzen
And yeah, so they're just really gonna pay the price a lot of these athletes later on but like so these more amateur style athletes they're just um really Destroying their bodies right so anyway ah enough of that tangent the the the whole point here is is why, if you have inflammation, why do you have inflammation? That's the first thing we need to figure out. And there's so many ways that you can become inflamed, right? Which means that instead of using the sort of very, it's ah it's almost like you're pulling the,
00:11:17
chrisyzen
Let's say something in your house is malfunctioning. Maybe hear you hear a buzzing or there's like smoke or something like that. And you feel like an appliance is overheating or someone appliances malfunctioning and it's causing like a smell in the house and like something something is not right. So what you could do, which is like what this ice bath is going to do is just put a trip, the switch in the house, kill all the power in the house.
00:11:47
chrisyzen
Right? That's what this immune suppression does. It suppresses the immune system therefore less inflammation occurs. However, what a smart and individual should be doing is if if you know you have inflammation or you feel you have inflammation,
00:12:03
chrisyzen
then you you need ideally you need to work with someone like me and let's investigate what could be causing inflammation because what could be causing inflammation toxic exposures gut dysbiosis just a general state of disrepair in the gut It could be overgrowth of bacteria. It could be potentially harmful. Bacteria have become residents in there. um It could be things you're eating, like polyunsaturated fats. A lot of people don't still haven't gotten the memo, and they're eating like 20 grams is not even that bad, ah relatively speaking. But they're eating like 50, 60 grams a day of polyunsaturated fats in saturated fat and in some some cases, which is really pro-inflammatory.
00:12:49
chrisyzen
right Because therere these polyunsaturated fats, things like linoleic acid, it's literally the precursor for certain inflammatory molecules, mediators, acosanoids, and stuff like that. So there's a multitude of ways you could you could be inflamed. So rather than tripping the switch, pulling the plug on the frigging immune system with ah ah ah a cold plunge or an ice bath, I should say,
00:13:18
chrisyzen
um Maybe there's a smarter way. Now, if again, if you're an athlete, you probably don't have that option. But look, who's how many of us are athletes? A lot of people out there, like if I saw on Instagram, they were ah There was an ad for me, personally, targeting me ah for some European company that do this like ice bath capsule, really cool looking thing. And it's in the thousands. <unk>s like ah It's like getting like a sauna soa unit, ah you know those kind of more portable saunas. I spent like 3K on one of those, the clear light. They got bought over by Jacuzzi, the brand Jacuzzi.
00:14:06
chrisyzen
But a very good very good low toxin in terms of materials like bamboo mostly and low emf and stuff like that. So people are That one I bought on you know, I heard about it on a podcast and I bought it myself But if I would have seen something like that on Instagram, I probably would have bought it at some point So the reason there's ads like this on Instagram is because guys out there
Marketing and Societal Influence
00:14:31
chrisyzen
but mostly guys were We're dumb enough to do this kind of stuff. Let's face it. That's why men have a shorter friggin life expectancy than women across the board in the world. So, um no offense to any guys listening, you know. I just know how stupid I've been in my life, so I just, I'm talking from experience at least. You may be smarter than me, I'm sure you are.
00:14:54
chrisyzen
um So the the reason companies are spending good money on ads is because it's it's probably working like the guys are buying this stuff. So but how many of those guys are athletes, right?
00:15:07
chrisyzen
And look, if you have a very serious workout regimen and you feel like you need this extra boost, I'm nobody to tell you what to do with your life, but just can you at least ask yourself maybe, why am I doing this? Why am I putting my body through all of this exertion? I'm going to do a whole separate episode on, it's actually I was thinking in in maybe volume three of the How to Actually Live Longer series to talk about some of the research on how detrimental too much exercise is. Like we know with women athletes, there's the female female athlete triad where they're infertile, they lost their period, and there was one more thing. That's the triad of an athlete. right so
00:15:56
chrisyzen
Are they healthy? is Is it good for you? like my My wife is a former professional ballerina and some of her friends, like she's telling me now the stuff they're developing or the health issues they've had, um like that's that is in no way, shape or form um good for you. you know So same with any, even if you okay, a lot of those girls start early on in life.
00:16:22
chrisyzen
which is ah like gymnastics and ballet and stuff it's terrible of course but um that doesn't mean when you're when you're older it's any better for you and the older you get remember this is podcast this is a podcast about longevity the older you get the less adaptive reserve you have and the more stressors have an impact on you so in the context of that ice baths just so sum up the the discussion on ice baths are just another st stressor that is being added to your stress bucket so when we are older and
Maximizing Energy and Reducing Stress
00:16:59
chrisyzen
our stress bucket is a lot more full because we've accumulated accumulated a lot of toxicity over the years, a lot of dysfunction. We have a lot of dysfunction in the tissues, right, at the organ level. It could be because there's ah we've been exposed to a lot of polyunsaturated fats over the course of our lifetime. So a lot of our body is made of these um inferior materials basically so we are more prone to damage so stress is more damaging because we have more of this this kind of ah suboptimal building blocks in our cells right in our tissues so the older you get my my kind of view now is
00:17:42
chrisyzen
And it's taken me a few years to kind of get here. I did a lot of, obviously, like I've said before, a lot of dumb things in my 20s and 30s, including a lot of overexertion. But now my MO is, but just to give you an example, like if I, when my my daughter and my wife were away for five weeks visiting family,
00:18:07
chrisyzen
And so I was here for five weeks and I felt a lot less stressed and some days I would sleep 10 hours and it was awesome. um just Let me just reminisce here for a minute. Yeah, it was awesome.
00:18:28
chrisyzen
so
00:18:30
chrisyzen
I just had more um desire to to kind of like do weights. I have you know weights and kettlebells and stuff in the house and a bunch of actually have quite quite a lot of equipment and whatever else. And it just felt like doing more of that. But when they came back,
00:18:53
chrisyzen
now I because there is more running around you know looking after a kid and stuff like that and whatever else now um I just do less of that kind of stuff because I feel like what so I have I can waste my energy on that is kind of a waste wasted energy. If, if it's just to kind of just to stimulate muscle growth in many ways, it's a little bit of a ah waste of energy because is that let's say a few grams of muscle so you're going to build over, like let's say the course of a month or whatever. Is that additional muscle mass that will go away very quickly if if you remove the stressor, is it worth the stress to get it right?
00:19:42
chrisyzen
So I'm not saying don't try to build muscle, don't try to maintain muscle and that muscle is not good for longevity. It's very good to have functional muscle. But if it takes you a lot of exertion to build it and to maintain it, that's not a good thing because it that maintenance and building aspect is caused by putting stress on the body. Very, very simply. Very, very simply put.
00:20:05
chrisyzen
right So I have a decent amount of muscle mass already that I i almost have to do nothing to maintain. right So I feel like I'd rather be in in that kind of position and then it's I have exertion built into my day, like you know shopping, cleaning, like just rearranging stuff in the house, whatever, the garage and um lifting my kids, playing with my kids. So I'd rather spend that energy Either up here working on stuff because it is meant mentally Mental work is also physically draining because your brain requires a lot of energy. I like a full day Like if I work 10 11 hours, which I some days I do um Usually I feel pretty wrecked at the end of the day, right? So I would rather spend expend that energy into mental work that contributes for the podcast for my clients and
00:21:00
chrisyzen
you know could be a book, whatever else, could be a video, then just lift fucking man-made metal for no goddamn reason, really. I'm not saying don't exercise, if you find something you like and do it, right?
00:21:16
chrisyzen
Like I go for, we have heels here, I go on walks with my dog and oh how how quickly you walk greatly can influence how much of a you know heart rate increase you get. So some days when it's not too hot, I walk fast and i I'm doing lots of kind of circles and circuits, but now it's super hot. So I'm going i'm walking slow and I'm still sweating quite a lot. So the point is.
00:21:41
chrisyzen
that you have a limited reserve of energy that for most people becomes smaller and smaller as they age. Because most of us, including myself, and I should say all of us probably, we are rebuilding, repairing, and regenerating at a lower rate than we are dying, basically, deteriorating. It could be 1%. It could be like more. But the the gap expands ah as we age, OK?
00:22:17
chrisyzen
So the goal, at least with my longevity longevity strategy and what I teach my clients and what I do myself and i i what i what I preach, I practice 10X, if you know what I mean. So the goal is to figure out how to reduce a lot of stressors. So i.e. don't stress yourself extra just because someone told you, you need to exercise.
00:22:46
chrisyzen
five times a week for 30 minutes um because just because you know the the freaking data says so. right if you feel like If you start exercising and you just can't go on, just don't it sucks and you don't like it,
00:23:05
chrisyzen
don't ah Don't do it. Do something you like. right Even if it's buy a bicycle and just go for a leisurely bike ride. If something sucks, don't feel like you have to force yourself to do it. like I always hated running. I hated it. I liked sprinting and I was pretty good at it in school.
00:23:31
chrisyzen
but I long distance running I always hated and every once in a while i would try to kind of like force myself into it but then I had my broke my I broke my leg in my mid 20s and then after that less and less I liked it because sometimes my my um my my my uncle would be sore and after i kind of understood what long-distance running can do and i'm talking about obviously not just doing like a 5k run or something like that but chronic running and kind of marathon runners how how basically unhealthy they are and they look at you know um i was like well the running is not running is bullshit like running is um we can run
00:24:16
chrisyzen
But it's it's not something you would do naturally for a long period of time out of your own your own volition if you if you were like a natural human being. If you look at these cultures, like who's running? i know maybe Maybe when you're hunting, you might be running, but the rest of the time, all animals in the jungle are pretty much chilling and kind of you know playing and whatever else. So I don't think running is a really good idea. Point is,
00:24:47
chrisyzen
Just let me summarize the point here. This was a about ice baths going off on tangents again. So the point is you have limited adaptive reserve. You want to use that kind of limited energy throughout the day to, you unique ideally, I'm just saying like this is kind of my my philosophy. I'm not saying you should do that.
00:25:17
chrisyzen
But so we have a limited adaptive reserve. We should use that energy. kind of um we We should economize it. So where where is the highest return on investment? Do you think running for an hour has a ah good return on investment? If you really do think so,
00:25:39
chrisyzen
more power to you. do you If you think um reading a book for an hour has a good return on investment, do that. If you want to ah spend time with your kids for an hour or be out in nature or whatever else, or just kind of sleep, take a nap, use your time to to get the most return on investment, right? this is This is the most important part. Just let's not do things that
00:26:08
chrisyzen
we are that we are forcing ou ourselves to do just because they said it's good like eating a lot of vegetables or you know making sure you um you know you get your 30 minutes of aerobic exercise and stuff like that just because the government guidelines are that or whatever else you you have to trust your body and the thing is the thing is a lot of this mainstream bullshit is making us go against our own sort of instincts, right? We're told that butter is bad and and steak is bad and saturated fat is bad. And we're told that spinach and kale are amazing things. and And like they're just disgusting sheep food, right? So really we have to a little bit trust our our own instincts. But remember when it comes to exertion, anything that stresses you out as well,
00:27:05
chrisyzen
is that the stress response can give you a buzz.
Addiction to Stress and Societal Norms
00:27:09
chrisyzen
That's why a lot of runners get addicted to running and they have to run or they don't feel normal. It's because they get like this, ah um, endorphins, uh, the ah kind of opioid like, um, um, proteins and they get the adrenaline, the runners high.
00:27:32
chrisyzen
You know, you have adrenaline junkies. So you can get addicted to to this. so I suppose ah many of us are kind of addicted to stress, you know? So keep that in mind. It can be a little bit of a treacherous thing. What feels good?
00:27:49
chrisyzen
if if it's And this is where you obviously have to use your own discernment. But if it's a stressful practice, and it makes you feel better, could it be because of the stress the stress hormone response that's making you kind of giving a little bit of, making you feel alive as it were, you know? um If that's the case, you kind of need to use your own judgment. but ah let let me Let me just, I suppose, conclude this one, because I will ramble on for hours otherwise. not but I suppose it's not rambling, but I'm sure you're getting somebody out of this.
00:28:25
chrisyzen
but um what i Most of my clients with that that come to me with health health problems, not not the longevity that are coming purely for longevity reasons, but obviously ah over the the the course of my my career, my relatively short career, um I've worked more with folks with fairly fairly to very serious health issues. So in those cases,
00:28:54
chrisyzen
sometimes a person comes to me and they're doing the gym like for three to five times a week and I'm almost in disbelief how how they are able to To maintain that in spite having a health problem which goes goes goes to show you how resilient first of all the human body is and and how much stress and punishment we can endure. But one of my first recommendations is, look, let's just take a break from the gym or the running or whatever it is, whatever combination of things it is. Let's just try it. Humor me. One month. Give me one month, two months.
00:29:38
chrisyzen
And yeah, look just generally people feel better because think about it this way. If you have a health problem, there's clearly not enough energy and nutrients or so there's some block as well.
00:29:51
chrisyzen
that is preventing the body from self-heating because it will self-heal with the right conditions. So when you are spending, but let's pretend um an hour of exercise and running and whatever expands 500 calories and you eat 2,500 calories in ah in the day. So you you've just diverted one fifth of your calories, of your energy, let's just say, towards physical exertion. Think about it this way. What if you didn't participate in that physical exertion and maybe you didn't need the same amount of cal calories because you don't need that many, but let's say you ate 250.
00:30:43
chrisyzen
on top of what you would eat without let's say 2000 and then the 500 make for the exercise that's 2500 instead of exercising you eat 2000 plus 250 calories right half of what you would get otherwise if you were exercising now the body doesn't have to you know deal with strain and potentially repair itself from the damage inflicted upon it because like that's what lifting weights does, it damages you. That's the whole point, you damage yourself and then you rebuild yourself and the body has to adapt and become stronger because that's how it kind of deals with stress.
00:31:26
chrisyzen
um At the expense of other things though, don't forget the older you get there there's trade-offs So imagine this scenario now this person instead of spending those calories lifting weights and running They go for a walk and do low stress activities, right? Maybe maybe go to Pilates or yoga now you have more energy and less damage being inflicted on you and there's more of that resource those resources that can be diverted to healing and regeneration and rebuilding type processes. And once people get this, they're like, well, this kind of makes sense because I kind of hate running. And then I'm um not like, now that I'm married or like I have a ah steady a partner, I don't feel like I need to impress other people.
00:32:21
chrisyzen
so I don't have to like be super thin or super jacked or whatever the case may be for the person and that takes a big weight off their shoulders and they become more confident in who they are not how they look it's not dependent on how they look and a lot of beautiful things happen but the the most important thing is that the body now is under less stress and has more energy and nutrients potentially with which to repair itself. I mean, it's not rocket surgery. It friggin works. And then I have clients that tell me I i want to exercise. I like, I want to do stuff. I feel like I have energy and depending on where they are in their health journey, if it's just two months later, sometimes I tell them just wait, ah wait another couple of months, do me a favor and unless you really, really want to and
00:33:17
chrisyzen
And sometimes like a person is just genuinely like in really good shape after a few months, they're much better. Maybe they're younger ah or they had less health problems or whatever the case may be. And I just tell them, look, just do what feels right for you. You know, do what feels right for you.
00:33:35
chrisyzen
The most important thing is to listen to your body. if after Let's say you you go for a wait session and after it's in you're like, okay, it's gonna to be 45 minutes. And after 20 minutes, you kind of feel tired, low energy. it's its so I believe it's okay to call it quits. Now, the internet will call you a wussy. You've got no determination. You need to do more ice baths to build mental toughness and nonsense like that.
00:34:06
chrisyzen
That's kind of dumb. you know like yeah if you're If you're tired and you don't want to do something, that's your body telling you you don't want to do something. So why go against your instincts? now I know you could you could probably say, yeah, in that case, we don't be eating Doritos and stuff like that.
00:34:26
chrisyzen
Yeah, but look, let's not kind of conflate the argument to the extreme. The the fact is that the reason these things work, the reason you become fitter is because of the stress you put on yourself. The reason you become stronger and your muscles become bigger is because of the stress you put on yourself. So you just have to evaluate your life situation and say, am I under enough stress already?
00:34:55
chrisyzen
such that I should not be adding more stress to my life. I should be thinking of waste of reducing stress. right If you have a job or a business and like one, two, three kids, whatever, and then you have a social life and you know you might have a cocktail or two on the weekend. Or if you do traveling for work or leisure or whatever but the case may be and and you drive in traffic and you sit near a Wi-Fi router and you don't sleep eight hours every day. I mean, just look at all of those things. All of those things are
00:35:29
chrisyzen
pretty pretty stressful in their aggregate when you put them together they become quite stressful so why just why for God's sake add more stress to it why I know it's the society we live in but if you want to be wrong follow the masses if you you know if you want to if you don't want to become a statistic like most people will to two out of three people will die from heart disease and cancer, right? So
00:36:04
chrisyzen
If you want to end up like that, do what people are doing. know And what are
Evaluating Personal Stress Levels
00:36:11
chrisyzen
people doing? They're living very stressful lifestyles. And they ah many people don't even realize how stressful their lives are. So ice baths, yes, this was a thing about ice baths at the beginning. So ice ice baths are just another stressor that you may not need and you may you may not have the adaptive reserve to deal with on ah on a chronic basis, right? That's why a lot of people give up these... these strip that what Why do people not stick with going to the gym?
00:36:46
chrisyzen
Because why it it takes a lot of pigheadedness to keep going back for more punishment if you don't like it. It's like the ice baths. Why don't people maintain the cold showers and stuff like that? Because it sucks. It's not fun unless you're some kind of weird masochist, which I'm sure there's plenty of. ah So why don't we maintain our our running regimen?
00:37:14
chrisyzen
because it sucks the body does not want to exert itself unless truly needed and the thing is the nice thing about weights you can do weights in such a way where it's very low stress right So the way I have the weights, at least when my wife and my kid were were away, I'd have them in the in the living room. Then i you know I'm listening to a podcast or like listening to some records. And you can just do some weights. You can do some ab wheels, some dips.
00:37:52
chrisyzen
whatever and then you do a few and you don't have to like do two-minute rest this kind of sort of bodybuilding regime do a few reps or if you have like a you can set up a pull-up bar do one pull-up every time you pass it by or just hang for 30 seconds what it depending your on your level of strength and fitness just do a little bit where the you're giving the body a stimulus so a stimulus as opposed to like a real stress sort of a damaging type thing you know when you're like your muscles are all pumped up and swollen and then you're sore for two, three, four days after that that's that's because of damage and I know that's what makes muscles bigger and a lot of guys that's what they want but you are paying a price here because damage
00:38:40
chrisyzen
and inflammation and all that stuff that's occurring, that costs energy and nutrients to repair.
Muscle Mass and Energy Trade-offs
00:38:46
chrisyzen
And those that energy and those nutrients could have been put to use elsewhere. And one I have a theory on why there's so many guys nowadays that have lost their hair, they've gone bald, is because you know maintaining the the the big muscles and whatever else um has put ah has put their body into enough of a stress state where the body's like well this hair is not entirely essential at all in fact so i can I'm gonna let that go because there's a lot of other systems in the body that require um energy and nutrients and maintenance but we keep getting stressed for some
00:39:34
chrisyzen
Unbeknownst to us reason the body's like why is this why is this freaking guy making me do this every single day? I have to like start throwing ah Things that are not essential for survival of board of the of the ship, you know And here's here's one of the first things to go. You know, I've not actually noticed a lot of big jacked guys lose their hair. I have seen that now. Because every once in a while i dip into like YouTube, the fitness influencer, see what they're talking about, what's the latest sort of trend du jour. And definitely, and I see like, oftentimes a big dude, big jack dude, I don't know if it's my own sort of bias, but I see like they're, they've gone bold. And I'm starting to, I'm starting to think there's a correlation between the two.
Longevity and Stress Management
00:40:24
chrisyzen
So yeah ice baths if your goal is longevity Not once ever is is Is a good amount to do one why why would you do it? You want if you want to see if you can handle it one time here if you're at like a retreat and they're doing ice baths Whatever the hell, but I'm saying like chronic stress you don't need it if your goal is longevity if your goal is to be a the the most macho guy and the the toughest cat in the neighborhood do it but if you're listening to this podcast you want to do things that are conducive to your longevity i'm telling you right now
00:41:08
chrisyzen
Ice baths ain't one of those things that are conducive to to longevity. Very simply, it stresses the body, raises your stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol suppress your immune system and that's why anti it's anti-inflammatory. What's a better solution? Figure out the things that are causing you inflammation, address those and keep stress low. That's it.
00:41:33
chrisyzen
Okay, damn. That was another long one. hope you Hope you're getting value out of this. If um if you're not, you know you can send me you can send me an email and and um tell me give me some feedback.