Cold Exposure to Heat Up Performance

Cold exposure has been a topic of discussion for a while. I want to dive deep into what its benefits can mean for you professionally.

While enduring long-term cold exposure has destructive effects, short bursts bring many benefits. These include physical effects that will improve your health over the longer term and mental effects you will feel immediately.

Physical Benefits 

Most people think of their bodies' fat as unfavorable. The truth is that the body has different kinds of fat. White fat stores energy and keeps us warm, while brown fat generates heat to help regulate body temperature. This is why you can increase the amount of brown fat by practicing short-term cold exposure.

Before you call me crazy because I’m talking about increasing fat, you must understand that the average person has about 60 grams of this type of fat. The goal is to get this number up to about 150 grams. While this increase will not be noticeable, what this brown fat will do to your body will be very evident.

Brown fat is like a little furnace inside our bodies. Its main job is to generate heat to keep us warm by burning calories to produce heat. Regularly forcing your body to reheat will increase the brown fat and calories it burns. 

Furthermore, having more brown fat helps improve insulin sensitivity, which is crucial for metabolic balance. This, in turn, lowers the risk of obesity and related health issues over the longer term. 

This was proven in a study conducted in 2018 by Lee et al. They found that 30 to 60 seconds of cold showering four times a week increased brown adipose tissue activity by 150% in participants ("Cold-activated brown adipose tissue is an independent predictor of higher insulin sensitivity in humans" Lee et al., 2018).

Adding exercise is very powerful, as training and cold exposure have a powerful synergetic effect. When we exercise, the body produces irisin, which is crucial in converting white fat into metabolically active brown fat. It also further increases the quality of the already existing brown fat.

Cold exposure also improves vascular health. The practice dilates blood vessels and strengthens existing ones, which helps regulate blood pressure and optimize circulation.

These longer-term benefits allow you to enjoy the fruits of your hard work for longer!

Let’s get into more immediate benefits on the mental side!

Mental

As our skin contains many cold receptors, cold exposure brings enormous amounts of electrical impulses to the brain and nerve endings, which causes adrenaline to skyrocket up to 500%. The clarity this allows you to feel is genuinely profound and one of the main reasons I take cold showers in the morning.

This exact procedure increases dopamine by 200 to 250%. The size of the increase is impressive, but what is most profound is that dopamine levels stay elevated for many hours afterward. As dopamine is responsible for feelings of motivation, having it this high for such a long time will bring wonders to your productivity.

Cold exposure also triggers the release of endorphins, which are natural mood enhancers, leading to euphoria and reduced stress. A study published in Molecular Psychiatry in 2016 investigated the effects of whole-body cold exposure on depression. Ten participants with treatment-resistant depression underwent cold exposure sessions three times a week for six weeks. Significant improvements in depressive symptoms were observed, along with changes in biomarkers associated with depression.

Conclusion

While all these benefits might convince you to get into the cold water on a logical level, you might still need to be there emotionally. In this fact lies yet another benefit!
When you practice staying calm in stressful situations, like cold exposure, you train yourself to be less susceptible to feelings of anxiety and panic. This will lead to better decision-making and problem-solving abilities.

Regular exposure to cold will also help build mental resilience by training the mind to tolerate discomfort and adapt to challenging situations. This ultimately fosters a stronger mindset and increased emotional stability.

Over time, this can encourage continued engagement in cold therapy or activities involving cold exposure, as individuals may seek out the dopamine-mediated rewards associated with it. 

I hope you found this edition interesting and that you try cold exposure. As I’ve mentioned, you can start off with a very short period and build up to about 2 to 3 minutes over time. It’s best to do it in the morning, as this is when your body will want to heat up, and all the added motivation and clarity will be best used!

Best of luck,

Philippe