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

Two Atlanta entrepreneurs discovered something more valuable than any business strategy: a daily practice that builds unshakeable mental resilience while creating thriving communities nationwide. Kyle Ponton and Sam Maxwell share how their journey from DIY ice barrels to building Cold Life into a revolutionary wellness company reveals the power of customer-driven innovation and authentic product development. From Mark Wahlberg’s 4am routine to Coffee & Chill events transforming social wellness culture, see how cold plunging is creating alcohol-free communities focused on health, connection, and personal growth. COLD LIFE: THE ULTIMATE HUMAN PLUNGE: ⁠https://bit.ly/4eULUKp Join the Ultimate Human VIP community for Gary Brecka's proven wellness protocols!: https://bit.ly/4ai0Xwg Connect with Sam Maxwell & Kyle Ponton of The Cold Life Website: https://bit.ly/3IcsvK6 YouTube: https://bit.ly/465iQhz Instagram: https://bit.ly/4pGxEer TikTok: https://bit.ly/3K29r1K Facebook: https://bit.ly/3K4F3Ui X.com: https://bit.ly/47LsWFG LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3KoNbis Thank you to our partners H2TABS: “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4hMNdgg BODYHEALTH: “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: http://bit.ly/4e5IjsV BAJA GOLD: "ULTIMATE10" FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3WSBqUa EIGHT SLEEP: SAVE $350 ON THE POD 4 ULTRA WITH CODE “GARY”: https://bit.ly/3WkLd6E WHOOP: JOIN AND GET 1 FREE MONTH!: https://bit.ly/3VQ0nzW MASA CHIPS: 20% OFF FIRST ORDER: https://bit.ly/40LVY4y VANDY: “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: https://bit.ly/49Qr7WE AION: “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4h6KHAD A-GAME: “ULTIMATE15” FOR 15% OFF: http://bit.ly/4kek1ij CARAWAY: “ULTIMATE” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3Q1VmkC HEALF: 10% OFF YOUR ORDER: https://bit.ly/41HJg6S BIOPTIMIZERS: “ULTIMATE” FOR 15% OFF: https://bit.ly/4inFfd7 RHO NUTRITION: “ULTIMATE15” FOR 15% OFF: https://bit.ly/44fFza0 GOPUFF: GET YOUR FAVORITE SNACK!: https://bit.ly/4obIFDC GENETIC TEST: ⁠https://bit.ly/3Yg1Uk9 Watch the “Ultimate Human Podcast” every Tuesday & Thursday at 9AM EST: YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPQYX8 Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3RQftU0 Connect with Gary Brecka Instagram: https://bit.ly/3RPpnFs TikTok: https://bit.ly/4coJ8fo X: https://bit.ly/3Opc8tf Facebook: https://bit.ly/464VA1H LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4hH7Ri2 Website: https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU Merch: https://bit.ly/4aBpOM1 Newsletter: https://bit.ly/47ejrws Ask Gary: https://bit.ly/3PEAJuG Timestamps: 00:00 Intro of Show 02:06 Starting the Cold Life Journey 13:17 Engineering behind the Cold Life 16:54 Debunking the Myths on Cold Plunging 20:01 Evidence-Backed Benefits of Cold Plunge 25:09 Mammalian Dive Reflex 26:25 Recommended Duration and Temperature of Cold Plunging 34:37 Community-Building through Cold-Plunge and Wellness Activities 38:24 Cold Exposure is Not Just a Trend 42:31 The Absence of Dopamine is the Presence of Addiction 46:37 Best Testimonials Received 49:39 Contrast Therapy Benefits Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not provide medical advice. It is not intended for diagnosing or treating any health condition. Always consult a licensed healthcare professional before making health or wellness decisions. Gary Brecka is the owner of Ultimate Human, LLC which operates The Ultimate Human podcast and promotes certain third-party products used by Gary Brecka in his personal health and wellness protocols and daily life and for which Ultimate Human LLC and / or Gary Brecka directly or indirectly holds an economic interest or receives compensation. Accordingly, statements made by Gary Brecka and others (including on The Ultimate Human podcast) may be considered promotional in nature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  My favorite part about cold plunging is that it changed my life completely. I was diagnosed with severe ADHD when I was young. I was just Googling what can help me with an Adderall addiction. So when I found the cold therapy, being able to substitute that, I was buying ice every single day. I'm a walking testimonial of what we sell and what we created.

• 0:18Gary Brecka?

  I literally call it my drug of choice because nothing makes me feel better for longer. That aspect of getting out and just being so clear. People are realizing, man, there's so many ways to feel really good without drugs and alcohol.

• 0:31Speaker 00

  And that's when we then connected on how much he believed in cold plunging. And he was like, dude, let's stop everything we're both doing right now. Put our brains together and let's create our own product.

• 0:39Gary Brecka?

  Most people see comfort very aggressively. They avoid any level of discomfort, not realizing that some level of discomfort can make you stronger.

• 0:48Speaker 02

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

• 0:54Gary Brecka?

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

• 0:56Speaker 02

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

• 1:00Gary Brecka?

  I feel like cold exposure is one of those things that is going to still be mainstream 5,000 years from now. When you look at the intelligence, really break this down, you get into a cold punch. What is the body going to do in that situation?

• 1:13Speaker 02

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

• 1:31Gary Brecka?

  Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, human biologist Gary Brecka, where we go down the road of everything anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. Today's going to be a really special podcast because it's on a broad topic that so many people are interested in and even more people are confused about. So I'm really, really excited to run this podcast on cold plunging. And I've asked two of my very good friends and partners to come to the podcast today. So welcome Sam and Kyle from Cold Life Cold Plunges. Welcome to the podcast, guys.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  Thanks for having us on, Gary. We're pumped to be here, man.

• 2:05Gary Brecka?

  This has been an awesome journey. I mean, in full disclosure, I'm a shareholder in Cold Life, a proud shareholder. I met you guys a few years ago through my son. I fell in love with the purpose and the passion. Reminded me a lot of, you know, when I was getting going off the ground, young entrepreneur, passionate about an idea, unrelenting. But what I really appreciated about you guys was the, the level of intentionality that you had in, in bringing your product to market. You wanted it to be American made. You wanted to have the best motors. You wanted to have the most durable plunge. And I don't want to turn this into a commercial for Cold Life

• 2:49Gary Brecka?

  because I want to go into the science of cold plunging, but want to get that out of the way first. This is not a podcast to sell you a cold plunge.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 2:56Gary Brecka?

  The podcast, you know, talking about all, all of the benefits. So let's just rewind the clock a little bit. I mean, how and, and why did you decide to take the leap into cold plunging and make that your life?

• 3:08Speaker 02

  I'll, I'll start. So for, for me, my journey was, was honestly a little simple. You know, I got invited one Saturday morning. I don't know. This is probably four or five years ago now, probably right before COVID era. I'm from Atlanta. So in Atlanta, the winter time it gets pretty cold. So thankfully we have some pretty cold water near us and all the showers and such. And so I had a couple of crazy buddies of mine and we said, hey, let's just go to a local pool and do this in the morning. It's like 8:00 AM, Saturday morning. You know, what else better do I got to do than, than go jump into a pool of cold water? So I started to do this and it, and it just, it was, it was incredible for me. I literally came out of there. I had no idea what any of these benefits were. I didn't know any of this, the mental clarity, the information. I didn't know any of these buzzwords. I just knew I felt like incredible and it was just so addictive.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  So we kept on coming back and then five of us turned into 20 of us, turned into 60 of us, turned into almost hundreds of us getting together weekly back in Atlanta.

• 4:00Gary Brecka?

  Really? To jump in the lake?

• 4:01Speaker 02

  To just jump into a pool.

• 4:03Gary Brecka?

  There used to be something in Chicago. I, I lived, I went to grad school in Chicago. It was called the Polar Club.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 4:09Gary Brecka?

  Do you remember that? Like once a year they'd all go, I actually didn't do that for the record, but they would all go bum rush, Lake Michigan. I was like, that's crazy. Yeah, yeah. But it was like women.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, everybody, kids, the whole nine. Yeah. It was a big community of everything. So that, and that's what this turned into was just a big community, which is why I loved it. And then Sam and I had, you know, had met and we were doing some different, you know, business things on the side. And so one day. I walk in, this is while I'm doing these events and such, I walk into Sam and I'm going over there to say, hey, you need to come check out this cold plunge thing we're doing. We're doing pools, you know, next weekend, you gotta come by. And I walk in and I'll let Sam share his side of the story on that, but that's really where I discovered, wait, you're doing cold plunging too?

• 4:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, I had, I had just discovered cold plunging and my favorite part about cold plunging is, is that it changed my life completely.

• 4:56Gary Brecka?

  You know, so a lot of people do say that and for people that are watching this are like, okay.

• 5:03Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 5:04Gary Brecka?

  I get it. Where's the affiliate link, guys?

• 5:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, seriously, but for me, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm a walking testimonial of what we sell and what we created. And going into that, I was diagnosed with severe ADHD when I was young. And when I met Kyle, I was just trying to get over my addiction of taking Adderall. As I got older, I hated that I was absolutely dependent on a medication. And the older I got, the more I was aware of how horrible of a person it made me.

• 5:31Gary Brecka?

  That's a tough one too, man.

• 5:32Speaker 00

  My, my family, my, everyone that was close to me was scared to confront Sam about his addiction of Adderall. I wouldn't sleep for days. I would take multiple a day. I got down like 145 pounds and I was oblivious. So the older I got, I was looking for an outlet, a natural way to battle my ADHD, but not take the medication anymore.

• 5:53Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 5:53Speaker 00

  So after doing some research, I saw that cold therapy was a possible solution to fix that. And I tried Cryo and just for me personally, it didn't, didn't make me get over that edge. I was still craving the medication. Then I discovered Ice Bass. So I bought a plastic barrel at my office. I didn't want to spend thousands of dollars on the few that were on the market at the time. And I bought a barrel and I was buying ice every single day and I didn't miss a day for like 14 days.

• 6:21Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 6:21Speaker 00

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

• 6:25Gary Brecka?

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

• 6:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it actually wasn't me. I won't take the credit for that. I came in, it was completely independently, which is probably why we're doing this together.

• 6:35Speaker 00

  I saw like an article, I think, I was like up at the office, like late at night, didn't have my prescription, I was just struggling, right? Drinking so much caffeine every single day, and I was just Googling, out of curiosity, like, what can help me with an Adderall addiction? And I looked at cold therapy. There was a few articles at the time that said that it could help.

• 6:54Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 6:54Speaker 00

  Um, which we'll dive into in a little bit, but I started doing ice baths in a plastic barrel, and he walked into my office at the time when we were doing a different venture together.

• 7:04Gary Brecka?

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

• 7:06Speaker 02

  What do we got going on here?

• 7:07Speaker 00

  No, he's like, what's this Jeffrey Dahmer bucket in the corner of your office?

• 7:12Gary Brecka?

  It is true.

• 7:13Speaker 00

  This crusty thing.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  Who's hiding over there, man?

• 7:15Speaker 00

  He walks over to it and he's like, dude, this water's disgusting. And I'm like, I'm like, dude, I don't care. I'm like, I get ice every day. I'm like, I'm tired of buying ice, but I was like, I don't miss a day, dude. And that's when we then connected on how much he believed in cold plunging.

• 7:29Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 7:29Speaker 00

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

• 7:38Gary Brecka?

  And what were you guys doing at the time?

• 7:39Speaker 00

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

• 7:44Gary Brecka?

  Okay.

• 7:45Speaker 00

  Um, I used to always follow trends, and what I like to say about the cold plunge is that I'm not in this because it's a trend, I'm in this because it changed my life.

• 7:52Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 7:52Speaker 00

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

• 7:54Gary Brecka?

  Good for you.

• 7:55Speaker 00

  So, yeah, I'm very proud of myself for getting off that drug, and now every day communicating with customers and possible prospects to join the cold life and be a customer.

• 8:04Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 8:04Speaker 00

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

• 8:07Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, you know, um, I talk about this a lot, you know, because I've studied genetic methylation pathways and how the body converts nutrients and what have you. One of the nutrients that we make in the human body, we make dopamine, we make serotonin, we make norepinephrine, we make the neurotransmitters that create our mood. That create our emotions. And so for making them inside the body, when we take things from outside the body and put them in, in an effort to try to fix that deficiency, it never works, right? I mean, it works for a period of time, but it creates dependency or creates something called tacophylaxis, which is desensitization. So, I mean, unknowingly, you stuck, you basically stepped on a physiologic secret

• 8:50Gary Brecka?

  in that your body can produce these chemicals.

• 8:53Speaker 00

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

• 9:02Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I literally call it my drug of choice. And the reason why I say drug of choice is because nothing makes me feel better for longer. And there's no downside to it.

• 9:12Gary Brecka?

  Other than, other than the apprehension right before you get it.

• 9:16Gary Brecka?

  But then that gives you that kind of sense of accomplishment. Down the road, you know, doing that hard thing, yeah. What are the top three reasons why I prefer a vertical cold plunge versus a lay down tub? Well, I've used both. When you're in a vertical position, your body naturally regulates your breathing better. So if you're holding on to the sides and you're in a vertical position, you can just focus on your breath work and you can stay calm. A lot of people feel more calm when they're in a vertical position than when they're laying down in the water and think they might slip under the water. So when you're vertical plunging, you're fully immersed faster. You can focus on recovery, inflammation reduction, and you're not struggling to just stay in a lie down position. Your body floats in an awkward way sometimes. So it's just a more efficient, comfortable experience, in my opinion. It takes up way less space, too. It has a smaller footprint.

• 10:00Gary Brecka?

  So you can put these on your patio, your garage, your bathroom, your locker room. You can really put it anywhere. I've got one on my balcony. I've got two in my bathroom. So this is why Cold Life is my favorite cold plunge on the market. So click the link below and you can order yours today. Make sure you get the Ultimate Human version. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.

• 10:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's great. So how about you? What was your first kinda?

• 10:21Speaker 02

  For me?

• 10:22Speaker 00

  You're into the cold plunging now.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  You got a little bit of background. You walk in, he's in the dirty algae water.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  He's in the dirty algae water.

• 10:29Speaker 00

  That's a guy I want to be in business with. The dude in the fucking fucking pool algae. Give him the honest great choice dude.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  Well, you know what? It's, you know this because you know, now we've gotten to know each other for some years now. And so we know this, but in life, everything is about relationships.

• 10:41Speaker 00

  No question.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  And so when I met Sam, we actually had a whole completely different business together. I'd given him some money for really just kind of an investment into some ecommerce stuff he was doing. And it completely flopped and failed. And through that process, Sam really showed the kind of person he was by not only making me whole and making efforts to do that, but the communication and showing and being transparent, showing all the effort. And so I like to judge a character when things are not good, not when things are great. It's very easy to hide things when things are really good.

• 11:11Speaker 00

  You guys have done, proven that to me too.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  Well, thank you. We appreciate that because it's easy to hide when things are good. You know, numbers help, right? You know, when everyone's doing well and everyone wants to really poke the bear. But when things are tough, everyone looks to go point fingers. And that's not what Sam did, which I really respected. And I said, hey, I don't really, you know, I want to do something with you. Let's find a project together. And so for me, I was, I was, I was starting this cold plunges out and it was just five of us. And then so fast it turned into 20 and then 30 and then 100. And I was like, there's so much more people who want to do this.

• 11:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  There's so much more people who want to be a part of this. And so when I talked to Sam about it, I said, man, we should start something.

• 11:47Speaker 00

  Well, it happened for a reason, clearly, because he was actually coming to my office to pick up a partial check to me, to me to get him closer to being whole. I didn't want him to come by that day, just being honest with you. That's why the cold plunge was dirty. He's like, get in here, bro. Literally, I was dreading that day, to be honest with you. It was a rough like season of life I was in. The business flopped and he came by and we didn't talk about the check for three hours.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:12Speaker 00

  He was just like, we just talked about it in the corner of the office forever. He's like, dude, what do you like about it? You know, what do you want to do about this? Like, we just looked up on Google trends, like the search volume on Google of cold plunging was slowly increasing. And then thanks to Kyle, truthfully, he just was dedicated and every single day after that day, he showed me.

• 12:32Gary Brecka?

  I got a real sense for that too, when I met you guys. Because you know, the, the cold plunge space was by no means saturated, but I was actually just coming out of a very. Difficult cold plunge experience, you know, with my clinics, we invested heavily in this cold plunge company that was actually sourcing everything from China. And I don't have anything against China, except everything that comes out of China.

• 13:00Gary Brecka?

  Chinese people are great.

• 13:03Gary Brecka?

  I love Lo Man, is that Chinese?

• 13:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think so.

• 13:07Gary Brecka?

  A lot of good things come out of China, but, but, and we, we bought like 250 of these things, sold them to our biggest clients and they were thousands of dollars. And then we had a 65% failure rate in the motors. Cost my partner and I seven figures because we did the right thing. We refunded everybody's money, let them keep the cold plunge. And I was, you know, just coming off of this shell shock and I met you guys and I was like, oh gosh, here we go. But when I started talking to you, you know, American made, right here in America, American labor, the factory is right down the street from my house. I'm like, I'm going to come put a finger on that guy. You know, powder coated aluminum, durable.

• 13:48Gary Brecka?

  And I think I ran mine for about a year before I put my toe in the water with you guys.

• 13:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, we didn't hear from you. I remember we, we came and dropped it off.

• 13:56Gary Brecka?

  I was beating that thing up. I had it out in the sun, on and off and on and off. And then I brought it into the house and then I started letting everybody get in there every day. And I was like, man, these guys are pretty legit. And then I remember I was like, you know, this motor is like, you know, it's a little bit noisy. You're like, don't worry, next generation we've got. And you brought the motors over, they're whisper quiet. I was like, okay, I like, I like these guys dedicated to customer quality, dedicated to customer service. What I like too is that you shaped your company, at least from my perspective, on the backs of the feedback you were getting from your customers. You thought they needed.

• 14:29Speaker 00

  We still communicate with our customers frequently. And no matter how big we get, I mean, since July 1st of this month, nearly every day I've been helping with sales, being on the phone.

• 14:39Gary Brecka?

  With sales opportunities or even we call customers to get feedback.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:43Gary Brecka?

  Ask them how it's going.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:45Gary Brecka?

  And it's been a great way to get

• 14:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:47Gary Brecka?

  Good clarity that we're at a great position and we have been that the products had a good.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  It's it's hard to it's hard to I think do anything, right? If you don't have customer feedback.

• 14:55Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  Because you're just sitting in your own kind of siloed world, thinking, I think I have the best sauce of whatever it is. Even whatever we for selling products, services, media companies, whatever, you know, if you don't hear the feedback from the people, then you're never really going to know how to make the best thing.

• 15:07Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  So for us, we kind of knew we knew some of the things right early on by going out there and testing the market a little bit. We knew American made was going to be a massive one.

• 15:16Gary Brecka?

  That is massive.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  That's a huge thing.

• 15:17Gary Brecka?

  I mean, this is even, you know, pre the current administration, which is

• 15:21Speaker 02

  A hundred percent.

• 15:21Gary Brecka?

  Really incentivizing that.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly.

• 15:23Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  And I saw some of your competitors get smoked by the tariffs and whatnot. And it was tough because we know some of our competitors, people, they're not bad people. It was just a really challenging thing that, like you mentioned about China, there's, you know, there's, there's people have their opinions on China and there's certain things that we use every single day that come from China and chillers should just not be one of those things.

• 15:41Gary Brecka?

  Right, yeah. Yeah, our supposedly had ozone filtration and all this stuff. I mean, it sounded great.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. It's it's super gimmicky, right? Kind of looks like a shiny toy object syndrome is what I call it, you know, looks good, sounds good, has a cool screen and all that. But our philosophy is very simple when we go about building products. I don't want this to turn into a whole Cold Life episode about our products, but we're passionate about it. We have a lot of passion behind what we build and we we really take a simple approach behind the engineering and the development of these things, which is just build simple products that look beautiful.

• 16:09Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 16:10Speaker 02

  And and the more you complicate things, the more get, you know, gadgets and widgets and things and this you put inside of these machines, the more likely you're going to have something break. And that was our biggest problem. If you go call any cold plunge company or an act guarantee you, you know, they're they're struggling because the failure rates are high. Because most of the machines do come from overseas. So we really wanted to stand on that and say, we wanted to make an American made product, which by the way, takes a significant more time, significant more resources, significant more energy. Money, everything. It's very challenging to do things here in America. It's also way more expensive. So we we went that journey though, and it took us, you know, coming up on, it took us over a year of just development, you know, before selling anything.

• 16:49Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  To really go out there and

• 16:51Gary Brecka?

  The tub itself.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  And and build these things, so.

• 16:53Gary Brecka?

  So let's delve, let's delve a little bit into, you know, the science and the benefits. I mean, clearly I'm a I'm I'm a believer. You know, cold plunging was definitely a tipping point for me. But now that I'm Out there and, and looking at the research and of course you can't, you know, you're on Instagram. The stuff comes into my feed. You see the people are all over the place on, on, on cold plunging. I think the hardcore cold plungers like, like myself, um, try not to go a day without it. I mean, in Colorado, I've got a hundred and sixty-five dollar cattle trough that I jump in because I can't, I don't have electricity, right? Literally. So there's, I can't run it. I can't run a chiller. So I, I just, uh, I bought a hundred and sixty-five dollar aluminum cattle trough.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  There we go.

• 17:34Gary Brecka?

  The water comes out of the glacier at like forty-two degrees and I jump in and I don't let it get moldy like yours. Change it every day.

• 17:43Gary Brecka?

  But I guess it's not, I wasn't in my office, you know?

• 17:45Speaker 00

  Extremely healthy then.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:47Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. You, you hadn't taken my mold detox class yet.

• 17:51Speaker 00

  Not yet.

• 17:51Gary Brecka?

  You can sign up for that challenge. So, um, you know, but one of, one of the, uh, articles I read lately, it's studies, um, was that cold plunging actually reduces the, um, benefits of exercise. And I think that this threw a little, no pun intended, but cold water on the cold plunging space. And maybe clarify that or, um, talk about that a little bit, you know, timing or, or whatnot, you know?

• 18:18Speaker 02

  I, I can share some stuff on that. So there, there was a recent study that came out and I think it kind of scared people a little bit thinking like, oh no, cold plunging is bad. And, and it's really kind of like anything. It's a very nuanced discussion. It's not, uh, general. It's very nuanced. And so, um, when they talk about inflammation, uh, being bad after a workout, they're talking about the concept of when you were working out after a heavy lift, right? In a heavy, in a, in a gym exercise where you're actually inflaming the muscles. And that's the intention of the exercise. Then, uh, immediately following the exercise, you probably don't want to now de-flame the muscle.

• 18:52Gary Brecka?

  I would agree with that.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  Now, you might know more about this. I'm sure there is a time period and that's, I think where the nuance comes in. Is it an hour? Is it four hours? Is it three hours? I think that's where the kind of the conversation comes in. I think safely, just for everyone's purposes, if you wait a couple of hours and just use logic and then you go hop in the cold punch recovery, you're going to be okay.

• 19:11Gary Brecka?

  Or if you do it prior to exercise.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  Or just do it prior to exercise.

• 19:15Speaker 00

  And I think that's where people misunderstood. It makes, it seems like common sense. Right after the workout, we're going to get in the cold punch recovery, which like you just said though, now I cold punch before I work out.

• 19:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. I do too. Yeah.

• 19:28Speaker 00

  I don't have to take pre-workout or caffeine or nothing. That's, that's, that's it right there for me. And then additionally, if I want to do it again. I just wait until later in the day.

• 19:36Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, and you know, I I've actually used it as a contrast therapy sometimes even before I go to bed. And I won't get in for a long time, but I'll do a short sauna session and I'll just go in the cold plunge for about thirty seconds.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  Quick.

• 19:47Gary Brecka?

  Dunk, come up to my neck, hang out for about thirty seconds and then get out. So it doesn't actually give me that massive spike of, you know, norepinephrine, dopamine.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:56Gary Brecka?

  Um, and I find that I sleep really, really well.

• 19:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:59Gary Brecka?

  On on those nights, but let's go into the science a little bit of cold plunging. I mean, we we know that there are stresses you can apply to the body called hormesis or hermetic stresses. These are stresses that we apply to the body and the body strengthens in response. I I often say, we were talking about it before the podcast, that, you know, aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort.

• 20:19Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 20:20Gary Brecka?

  And most people seek comfort very aggressively. And they avoid any level of discomfort, not realizing that some level of discomfort can make you stronger.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:32Gary Brecka?

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

• 20:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. I actually, interesting enough, so my wife, who you've met, Kayla, um, when I was doing this whole cold plunge thing, she she never, uh, really got into to cold plunging. Um, I I kind of did it.

• 20:51Gary Brecka?

  Mine took a solid two years.

• 20:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:53Gary Brecka?

  That's that was slow.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  Right on the right on that timeline. Yeah, that's about right, so.

• 20:58Gary Brecka?

  Hey, guys, let me tell you about one of my favorite new hydration drinks. Now, this is for distance athletes, HIIT's cardio exercisers, people that sweat a lot or exercise intensely. And A Game is a hydration drink. It has eight essential vitamins. It has all of the electrolytes, the entire suite of B vitamins. Before you freak out and read that it has twenty one grams of sugar, which it does, the sugar is coming from natural cane sugar and honey. My preferred mechanisms for getting glucose into the blood during intense exercise. It also has natural flavors, but these natural flavors don't come from bacterial fermentation. They actually come from real citrus fruits and the color is from vegetable juice, not artificial dyes. So next time you're looking for a great hydration drink and you're exercising intensely, A Game is your choice. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  You know, for me, you know, it was more like a hurrah, you know, get in there, hard thing to do, you know, that kind of thing. And so that's why, you know, she'd see me do that. And she's like, I'm not doing that. I don't need any of that stuff. So until, you know, about a year ago, she ended up getting like a health coach. And one of the things that she particularly was challenged with was she had high cortisol. And she tended to maybe just say mismanaged stress in that sense, right? And so because of the high cortisol, because of the high stress, when more stress would come on situations, it'd be very high stressful and she'd have a hard time managing that. And so one of the recommendations that her coach, you know, gave to her was, hey, have you considered cold plunging? She's like, well, funny enough, you know, I've got access to one.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  So she started to cold plunge regularly and there was a absolute massive change in her behavior. And I think the reason why, which, which I've actually come to learn a lot more about this, even just being in the space is, yes, it's one of those hard things to do, which is probably one of my favorite benefits from it. People talk about the science and the benefits and the mental and the inflammation and all those things, which are great things. But for me, it's very difficult to do and I do it every single morning. And so doing that very hard thing in the morning is just, there's nothing else. It sets me up for my day and that doesn't get talked about enough because there's, there's, there's, there's really something to be said about doing difficult things, like you said, kind of pursuing the discomfort to where then when stuff comes at you, you just feel like you got it. Yeah, and doing them early, doing the difficult things early.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  Morning is hard, your day will be easy. Exactly. And so to go deeper into that though, but one of the things that I found very interesting was, and I didn't really learn about this really until this past year or two is, you know, when you go into a cold plunge, everyone talks about it. I think even one of your listeners might've asked a question about this. You know, hey, it's, it's so hard to get past that first 30, 60 seconds. That's shock. I want to get out. I want to get out. And when you experience this, you know, we see a lot of first time cold plungers come in and they want to just get jumping and jump out. And when you jump into a cold plunge, as you know, you, you know, you go into a fight or flight response state.

• 23:44Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  You go into that sympathetic state.

• 23:46Gary Brecka?

  Forget to breathe.

• 23:46Speaker 02

  You forget to breathe and you're pretty much, you know, your body is thinking, okay, I need to kick in because I'm going to die, right? Your brain knows you're just in a cold plunge, but your body is, is telling you something is off.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  And so doing that, and then we know that if you get past that 30 seconds, 60 seconds, 90 seconds marker, it's different for everybody. And you get on to that kind of parasympathetic state where your, your heart rate comes down, you start to find calm, you start to find peace, you start to find that balance again. And then all of a sudden, everything's okay. And you can actually stay in that cold plunge at that point for probably as long as you want, really. You know, we don't recommend anything past a couple of minutes, but it's a lot easier at that point.

• 24:23Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  And what I learned was that there's actually a lot of data behind that transition of going from sympathetic to parasympathetic and it actually training the nervous system to, to, to combat and activate in, in the normal world. And so, and so, so for my wife, I've seen that transformation where, you know, those same situations will come up or those challenging things can come up and it can be very stressful, but it's not that same level of stress or that same reactivity.

• 24:49Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  That's there because you've trained the mind, you've trained the nervous system that, hey, stress is coming, it's coming, I'm going to go through it, I know I'm going through it. Now on the back end of this, I know there's kind of a smooth sailing coming. And I think that's, that's a very powerful thing because there's a lot of people who deal with high stress, high cortisol, that's, that's a very challenging thing.

• 25:08Gary Brecka?

  Totally agree with you. There's actually something fascinating, well documented in the literature. It's called the mammalian dive reflex. And the mammalian dive reflex is germane to all mammals. And when mammals dive, whales, dolphins, when they actually dive in the ocean, as the water temperature cools and it's passing over their face, it shifts them from a sympathetic to a parasympathetic state. It actually reduces their heart rate, calms them down. So you can actually capture this benefit by putting your face in the water when you first get in, either dunking or splashing cold water on your face will activate the mammalian dive reflex and actually make the cold plunge easier.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:45Gary Brecka?

  And it's well documented in the literature. You can look up the mammalian dive reflex. It's a, it's a, it's a well-known reflex that's germane to all mammals. So that's essentially what's, what's happening there. And.

• 25:55Speaker 02

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

• 26:05Gary Brecka?

  And.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 26:07Speaker 00

  That's our less scientific way of saying.

• 26:09Gary Brecka?

  Now, if you don't count, if you don't do the Malian dive reflex.

• 26:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 26:14Gary Brecka?

  Actually shout out to Andrew Huberman, because he was the first one that said, I was like, hmm, that sounds a little. I started looking it up, and I was like, alright, Andrew, yeah, he's fairly wrong, so he was right again. But, um, so, so talk a little bit about time.

• 26:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:28Gary Brecka?

  Temperature, because that's the big one.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:31Gary Brecka?

  Is like, should it be 35 degrees, and I do 15 minutes, and it'd be, you know, 60 degrees, and I do five minutes? You know, I'd love to hear your, your, your thoughts on that.

• 26:41Speaker 00

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

• 26:46Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 26:46Speaker 00

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

• 26:51Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 26:52Speaker 00

  I, myself, rarely cold plunge at 37 degrees.

• 26:55Gary Brecka?

  That's brutal, man.

• 26:55Speaker 00

  Unless I'm having a rough day, and I want to do something extremely extreme. We do it, we generally recommend around 48 to 55 degrees.

• 27:03Gary Brecka?

  Perfect.

• 27:03Speaker 00

  Um, and we tell everybody, start at one to two minutes, and get your body used to it. Don't go in there at 37 degrees and try to do it for five minutes. You know, we have people reach out to us that say, oh, I did it for 10 minutes yesterday at 40 degrees, what should I do next? And we're like, actually, you can get the full benefits just doing 10 to 14 minutes a week.

• 27:22Gary Brecka?

  That's very true.

• 27:23Speaker 00

  Breaking it, you know, breaking it down at two to three minutes a day, even just four to five days a week. So, you know, if people don't want to do a cold plunge at first, start off with a cold shower, start doing it for 30 seconds, 60 seconds. Get it obviously as cold as it possibly can. I think cold showers, in my opinion, are actually harder than a cold plunge.

• 27:40Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 27:40Speaker 00

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

• 27:43Gary Brecka?

  Wondering what's going on, yeah. It's like, yeah, it's like being in line of the torture, you know your necks, you see it coming.

• 27:49Speaker 00

  I hate not having a cold plunge, because then I feel obligated to do my cold shower, and I'm like, this is miserable. I'd rather just be sitting all the way up to my neck in a cold plunge.

• 27:57Gary Brecka?

  Cold surmersion.

• 27:57Speaker 00

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

• 28:10Gary Brecka?

  Yep.

• 28:11Speaker 00

  But yeah, we always suggest people, you know.

• 28:13Gary Brecka?

  The same thing, 48 to 52, 55 degrees, three minutes minimum, six minutes maximum. You had all the benefits. I mean, of all the literature, and I've exhaustively gone through the literature. And, you know, if you think about it, when you get a peripheral vasoconstriction and you constrict, if you actually keep reducing the temperature, it doesn't constrict any harder, right? It doesn't like that. It's not, once you make a fist as tight as you can make it, if you keep putting it in colder water, you're not gonna make a tighter fist, right? So you're not gonna increase their peripheral vasoconstriction. What I found fascinating, which, not to completely jump topics, but the more I study the human body, the more I believe in God. Because when you look at the intelligence, the, the architecture of what happens, if you really break this down, you get into a cold punch, you get this peripheral vasoconstriction.

• 28:57Gary Brecka?

  But it vasoconstricts in a very specific physiologic pattern. It shuttles blood, shuttles the blood first to the brain. That's the first organ to receive the, um, um, blood, right up through the carotid arteries. Then it shuttles the blood to the heart, and then out to the lungs, and then everything else. And if you think about the intelligence of that, you know, let's say you're walking on the ice, and you're by yourself, you break through the ice, now you're in 38 degree water. You're alone, you have no resources. What is the body gonna do in that situation? I mean, it has no external resources. Listen, there's what I share on this podcast, and then there's what I share with my inner circle. If you've been following me for a while, you know how I hold nothing back here. But my

• 29:41Gary Brecka?

  VIP community, that's where the real magic happens. Picture this, you're struggling with energy crashes, brain fog, or just feeling like you're not operating at your peak, and you don't know where to get real answers. But here's what really sets this apart. You're not just getting my insights. When I have incredible guests on the podcast, VIP members get to submit questions for our private podcast segment. So that world-renowned expert we just interviewed, you get exclusive access to their knowledge tailored to your specific situation. This section is under the private podcast section in the Ultimate Human Community. And speaking of exclusive, you're getting my personal protocols, the exact tools I use for water fasting, gut optimization, and morning routines that have taken me decades

• 30:22Gary Brecka?

  to perfect. This isn't theory, this is what works in the real world. The community launches challenges throughout the year where you get direct access to me and my network of experts. It's like having a personal health advisory board for less than a hundred dollars a month. Your health is your wealth, and this investment pays dividends for life. Join the VIP community at theultimatehuman.com/vip and step into your ultimate potential. Now, let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. So first thing, preserve the brain. Second, heart. Third, lungs. And if you think about that sequence, I mean, if this goes out, nothing else matters. This stops, nothing else matters. And then these are not working. But you can, you can tolerate those in that sequence,

• 31:05Gary Brecka?

  right? And then, you know, after it does that, it starts this entire physiologic cascade to prepare you to best get out of that situation. Release of cold shock proteins. I think one of the most fascinating areas of clinical research now is in cold shock proteins. We're just scratching the surface of these fascinating proteins that are locked up in the liver. There's a few of them, LIN28A and LIN28B that are being investigated for improving insulin sensitivity and decreasing insulin resistance, scouring the blood of free radical oxidation. So if you think about that, and then, you know, releasing norepinephrine. Say it.

• 31:47Speaker 00

  That's nor- norepinephrine?

• 31:51Speaker 00

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

• 31:54Gary Brecka?

  He was practicing it before the podcast.

• 31:58Gary Brecka?

  We didn't want those guys like out of the screen right here, like nor- n o r e e ph e ph r e n.

• 32:04Speaker 00

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

• 32:08Speaker 02

  I told him to say the porcupine one that's harder than that, and you know that one. There you go.

• 32:13Gary Brecka?

  But if you think about it, what does that do? Widens your field of vision, makes your hearing more acute, makes you more alert, focused, concentrated, increases your short-term processing speed. Why? Because you gotta survey the environment around you, you gotta critically be able to think. And, and to me, it's, even understanding the physiologic mechanisms, it's, it's, it's an eerie form of meditation. Because I'm one of those folks, and you with an ADHD background, probably fall in the same category, that has a very difficult time quieting my mind. Like to just sit. Be still. Like, my wife and I play the silent game. I last thirty seconds. Like Sage could go three days. Right. Right. But I'm like, I need to say something, you know?

• 32:57Gary Brecka?

  And I've tried guided meditation, but dude, when you're in a cold plunge, your mind is not, you're not. Nowhere else. What, did I get everything on my grocery list? I wonder if I returned that email, you know? No. You're not thinking about your Instagram post. You're like highly present. Yes. And. So good. And I think that, you know, that aspect of getting out and just being so clear. You know? Yeah. It's like, what an amazing way to start your day. Yes. And, and the fact that we can tap into this every day, God gives us an endless amount of this resource. Right. And I always tell people, look, we're trying to cold, we're trying to cold shock the body, not cold adapt the body. Very important.

• 33:37Gary Brecka?

  And that's why I say not hanging out in cold water forever is not a great idea. In fact, when I, I, I was a mortality researcher for years. And when I started in the mortality space, when I was born in nineteen seventy,

• 33:50Gary Brecka?

  Eskimos had the shortest life expectancy of any race. Really? They lived at the poles, very little sunlight, very little vitamin D three. Wow. Very high fat with high carbohydrate diet.

• 34:04Gary Brecka?

  And they were called adaptive. So, you know, they were learning, their body was adapting to the cold. So it was adding adipose layers. It was increasing the amount of visceral. That makes sense. So this is one of those tools that you throw in the arsenal. You know, you, you use it to, for its advantages and don't overuse it and don't abuse it. Exactly. And it can just really be. Exactly. Integral part of your day. So time,

• 34:31Gary Brecka?

  you know, temperature are, are, are big ones. Yep. And so what about people that have, you know, renouls or people with heart conditions? There was one question in here, there was a very specific questions he was asking about. We'll get to that in the, in the VIP community. But do you find, are you finding a wider adoption of, of cold plunge outside of like the hardcore crossfire?

• 35:00Gary Brecka?

  You know, go rocker, the, you know, high rocks racer. I get, I get that community.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  Of course, yeah. They were the first adopters. We call them early adopters.

• 35:07Speaker 00

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

• 35:11Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 35:11Speaker 00

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

• 35:14Gary Brecka?

  Hmm.

• 35:14Speaker 00

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

• 35:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:19Gary Brecka?

  We, we actually did cold plunge challenge.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  Um, yeah.

• 35:22Gary Brecka?

  On the ultimate human.

• 35:23Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 35:23Gary Brecka?

  Thousands of people, you guys gave away a cold plunge. And the family that won, um, we, we, we gave it to them because they, they brought the whole family over and they created this. I think they used, remember those little plastic, uh, um, pools that you got in as a kid? They were like half kitty pools.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  It was like a kitty pool.

• 35:41Gary Brecka?

  Little baby pool. Yeah, yeah. So they filled it full height and the entire family got in.

• 35:45Speaker 02

  That's incredible.

• 35:46Gary Brecka?

  Like the kids, the uncles, the, the.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  Wow, yeah.

• 35:48Gary Brecka?

  Her parents, they looked like they were easily in their late seventies.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 35:52Gary Brecka?

  And I was like, you guys.

• 35:53Speaker 02

  They deserve it. They deserve it. Wow.

• 35:55Gary Brecka?

  Um.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  That's incredible.

• 35:56Gary Brecka?

  My nieces do it.

• 35:58Speaker 02

  That's awesome.

• 35:58Gary Brecka?

  And they're seven and 10.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  Uh, so good.

• 36:00Gary Brecka?

  So I, I think it's becoming a really cool way to even build community, you know?

• 36:07Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:08Gary Brecka?

  Like here in Miami, I love this, uh, um, coffee and chill.

• 36:11Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:11Gary Brecka?

  You know, where you're, you, you, you walk into these parties and you would think if, if you didn't know any different, that it was like any other South Beach rager.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 36:20Gary Brecka?

  You know?

• 36:20Speaker 02

  That's, that's.

• 36:21Gary Brecka?

  Got DJ.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:22Gary Brecka?

  All this, you know?

• 36:23Speaker 02

  DJ, party, crazy people.

• 36:24Gary Brecka?

  People like, you know, but it's like safe, everyone's sober, everyone's networking.

• 36:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:29Gary Brecka?

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

• 36:36Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:36Speaker 00

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

• 36:39Speaker 02

  The community side is incredible. Coffee, coffee and chill specifically, you know, we've, we've partnered with them and that's really been a part of that, a way that we've been able to really get involved with the community, you know, outside of obviously selling the products. But, um, you know, we're now in Miami, Austin, LA, New York, San Diego, all over the place. And, and they, you know, so if you've, talking about access and accessibility for any of those markets, um, definitely go check out a coffee and chill, especially if you don't, you know, have a, a place to put one of our products or the money or whatever it is. You can go there for 20, 30 bucks and have a great time, meet great people.

• 37:10Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  Um, and go get started in cold plunging. Also fantastic way to just do a first cold plunge.

• 37:14Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  Because there's nothing like getting into the water.

• 37:16Gary Brecka?

  But you got the peer pressure, right?

• 37:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:18Gary Brecka?

  It's like, yeah.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  You got like six, seven, eight people.

• 37:20Gary Brecka?

  There's a bunch of hot chicks standing around and you're like, I'm getting in here. Oh, this is great. I love this.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  You know? Trying to be all stoic looking and everything. Um, no, but it's incredible for that part of it. We love being a part of those communities. And honestly, a lot of those types of communities are growing all over the place. I mean, we sell, um, you know, a product to those communities, the party plunge, and those products go all over the country. I mean, I would probably say any given weekend, there's got to be at least 10 or 20 of these events happening across the country.

• 37:46Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  All over the place.

• 37:47Gary Brecka?

  I'm so excited to hear that, man.

• 37:49Speaker 00

  And none of them are involved with alcohol. It's all just coffee, cold plunges, health and wellness stuff. And they're selling out almost all of them.

• 37:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. Another, another thing to touch on though, because I just want to say earlier, you mentioned, you know, access and, you know, we're a big component of just get started, right? If it's a cold shower, or you want to have a DIY setup, or if you don't want to have anything at your house, go to a gym. You know, we, we as our company, we're in over 200, I think, locations now.

• 38:11Speaker 00

  We just hit 200.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  Um, and so whether it's a cold life plunge you're going to, or another, you know, whatever, go find any gym that's carrying this stuff. But gyms and wellness centers and clinics and yoga studios and contrast therapy places. I mean, these places are popping off like they never have before. I guarantee you for all the listeners, if you go to Google right now and type in cold plunge near me, there's probably one pretty close, pretty close to you. You know, and you can usually go try. Yeah, free trial, or it's low cost, you know, to go out there and try.

• 38:38Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, man, I tell people, look, if you got a bathtub, um, just, just take Tupperware containers, put them in your freezer, freeze them, take the big block size, throw them in your tub. You'll, you know, sometimes those will last two, three days even.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, they will. Yeah.

• 38:49Gary Brecka?

  It's a good way to, you know, just get yourself into it.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  Just get started.

• 38:52Gary Brecka?

  You know, you, you bite the bullet and decide to commit to it. And I think once people commit and it becomes a regular part of their life, then they're, I mean, you see like Dana White, when they travel, they ship the cold plunge. Wahlberg is the same way.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  Crazy.

• 39:05Gary Brecka?

  Um, I guess we can disclose, he's a now shareholder in.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  We can now disclose that, yeah. Welcome, welcome Mr. Mark Wahlberg to the cold life.

• 39:12Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I remember when he sent me, uh, I, I, I sent him out, well, we sent him out one, and then he sent me back to the video. He's like, dude.

• 39:21Speaker 00

  Love this take.

• 39:23Speaker 02

  I'll tell you what, man, there is, there is, uh, probably had to search far and wide to try to find somebody who would beat the consistency of Mr. Wahlberg.

• 39:32Speaker 00

  4 a.m. Club, man.

• 39:32Speaker 02

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

• 39:40Speaker 00

  Before he arrives to a new city, he makes sure he has one waiting for him the next day. He doesn't miss a day.

• 39:46Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, yeah. So I, I, I send him videos sometimes and like mess with him in the mornings, cause like, uh, if I'm in a different time zone and I know that maybe I beat him up, like, you know, like, there's no, I'm not in the gym for you. I'm sorry, Mark. And, uh, yeah, so the other day I'm in my, I'm in my cold, I mean, I'm in my hyperbaric chamber. I'm actually, bro, and I sent him a video. I'm like, get out of bed, you know, what did you do this morning? You lazy bum. And, and he texts me back and he's like, just got off my knees from thanking God for everything I'm grateful for. Oh, I'm like, alright, you win, dude, you win.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  You got it.

• 40:20Gary Brecka?

  I'm just in here in my hyperbaric chamber, thought I was, I thought I was cool.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 40:24Gary Brecka?

  Um, so, so these, you, you, you see now, um, you know, before I think like you were talking about, this was a, uh, trend, fad, sort of gimmicky, if you, if you will, it's kind of like a cool thing. It was almost like a TikTok challenge. What was the big challenge that went around where everybody was?

• 40:38Speaker 02

  The ice bucket challenge. Ice bucket thing, yeah, exactly.

• 40:40Gary Brecka?

  ALS.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  ALS, yeah.

• 40:42Gary Brecka?

  And I think that really caught on, um, which was really cool. I did the ice box challenge. Um, and, but it's not a gimmick.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  No.

• 40:50Gary Brecka?

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

• 41:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:02Gary Brecka?

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

• 41:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:05Gary Brecka?

  Right? So, okay, maybe we don't have the peer reviewed randomized clinical trial that we have for X or Y or Z, but these people have been doing the same thing in the same points with the same results for 5,000 years. I feel like cold plunging, cold exposure is one of those things that is going to still be mainstream 5,000 years from now.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:24Gary Brecka?

  Um, because I find that it works.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:27Gary Brecka?

  And in your experience, when people get into this game. What kind of, what kind of feedback, are you getting feedback like this is too much for me? I'm sending this thing back, um, or this is changing.

• 41:40Speaker 00

  Tell them what their policy is.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  This is probably the easiest way to explain it in a nutshell. You know, we have sold thousands of units.

• 41:49Speaker 02

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

• 41:53Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 41:53Speaker 02

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

• 41:57Speaker 00

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

• 42:00Speaker 02

  And honestly, probably 80% of those. Fit on their balcony or something crazy. So, um, very, very, very, uh, dedicated, uh, customers and community. I mean, once you go into this thing, you're not going back. You're not going to get started in cold plunging and make this a daily part of your routine or a weekly part of your routine or whatever it may be. Because it's just, it's like you said, it works, you know?

• 42:21Speaker 00

  And so once you start doing it, you get addicted. Proud, you did something hard and we, we hear it all the time. People end up buying one for their second home because they, they hate not having it at their vacation.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  Or for their friend or for their, for their cousin or for their wife or for somebody like, hey, I need to get this person cold plunging. You know, they're going through this depressive state or they're going through this health thing or whatever it is like. Get it, you know, they'll call us, can you get to them as fast as possible, you know, ship it to them tomorrow, kind of thing.

• 42:44Gary Brecka?

  Isn't it wild that, you know, so, you know, we define depression in this country as an inadequate supply of serotonin. You know, I, we've always said in the, uh, addiction space, when I was in the mortality space, that the, the absence of dopamine was the presence of addiction. And you know, addicts weren't really seeking a high, they were seeking normalcy, right? They didn't wake up one day and go, I want to get really banged up. They woke up one day and said, I want to feel normal. It's like you with Adderall, right? Your first time taking Adderall, you weren't like, man, I just want to get high. I want to, I, I just want that buzz. I want that, you know, amphetamine hammer. You're trying to feel normal.

• 43:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, I want to be able to function.

• 43:19Gary Brecka?

  Bouncing around all over the place and you just wanted to feel normal. And I think that's where most people begin their journey to addiction is the search for normalcy. And I think what this gives people is a way to do that with a lot of beneficial consequences instead of.

• 43:39Gary Brecka?

  Having that cliff like kind of right behind you that you know you're running from a low.

• 43:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:44Gary Brecka?

  Not running towards.

• 43:44Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 43:45Gary Brecka?

  Which I commend you a lot because getting off Adderall and amphetamines is is is one of the most difficult. Because again, not because it makes you feel banged up. It's because without it, you don't feel normal.

• 43:56Speaker 00

  I was a slob.

• 43:57Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 43:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. I couldn't get anything done.

• 43:58Gary Brecka?

  And.

• 43:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, I bet.

• 43:59Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I mean, so how how was that struggle for you? And do you do you ever think about?

• 44:06Speaker 00

  Oh, no, I think it's been just about four years now that I haven't taken one.

• 44:10Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 44:11Speaker 00

  Never going back. Um, the side effects are not worth it either. The best part about the cold plunge is there's no crash. You know, four to six hours at minimum, I feel phenomenal. I'm focused. I have attention. Um, compared to taking a medication like Adderall or Vivance. I was on both of them.

• 44:28Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 44:28Speaker 00

  Um.

• 44:28Gary Brecka?

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

• 44:30Speaker 00

  No.

• 44:30Gary Brecka?

  About two hours away right now.

• 44:32Speaker 00

  No, literally, and I'd be doing too much at once, or you know, I'd be dusting my fan instead of doing something productive. I was just.

• 44:39Speaker 00

  Had me all over the place, you know, I'd be cleaning my shoes. I didn't even need to be cleaned, but I wasn't doing something actually productive I need to get done.

• 44:45Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 44:45Speaker 00

  Um, and it's crazy over the last few years now that I've been off Adderall and I love sharing my story. Um, a lot of people are currently um, starting to identify that there's more cons than pros to taking that type of medication.

• 44:58Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 44:59Speaker 00

  Um, and in particular, too, I was a hothead. So it was affecting me in business relationships, my family, um. And it was it was a struggle, but um, that was the biggest problem was I would try to get off it when I didn't have another solution.

• 45:11Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 45:11Speaker 00

  To fall on. So I would immediately after two days, if I couldn't get anything from the pharmacy, I'd be contacting people, hey, can I can I get an Adderall? Um, just to get by for a day or two until I got my subscription, my refill. Um, and a lot of people are like that. It's hard to admit it.

• 45:26Gary Brecka?

  More than anything.

• 45:26Speaker 00

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

• 45:29Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 45:29Speaker 00

  Um, so when I found the the cold therapy, being able to substitute that, I was like, this is phenomenal. Because even if I don't have a cold plunge, I can do a cold shower. Um, and sometimes I was doing like two cold showers a day. Until I had a cold plunge in my place just to get by.

• 45:45Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 45:45Speaker 00

  And then when you live somewhere where it's cold, you know, a lot of our customers, they are on the fence. They don't want to spend the money yet. It's like, earn it for yourself. Earn that reward of a cold life, cold plunge. Where do you live? You're in Minnesota. You got a hot tub? Don't turn the hot tub on. Use that as your cold plunge.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:01Speaker 00

  You already got it. You already got the body of water.

• 46:02Speaker 02

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

• 46:06Speaker 00

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

• 46:12Speaker 02

  Oh, is it really?

• 46:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, all year round. So, when I was in high school, you know, we'd go there and, you know, do stupid stuff and maybe get in the water for like thirty seconds to swim across the river. And little did I know what benefits I had in there. And back then, you might see like one guy that I thought was crazy, like laying in the cold water and I'm wondering what he's doing. But now, any natural body of water you go to, especially in the wintertime, it's so normal now.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:36Speaker 00

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

• 46:40Speaker 02

  Polar Bear Club.

• 46:41Speaker 00

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

• 46:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:47Speaker 00

  Um, and it's very fascinating seeing how normalized it's becoming.

• 46:50Gary Brecka?

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

• 47:00Speaker 00

  You gotta share one of the most recent ones.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  There's so many good ones. Um, I wish we had more time to share them all, but there's, there's one that, that sticks out to me. We have a customer, um, who is battling, uh, stage four cancer. And, um, he, uh, I, I had the opportunity to, uh, actually talk to him himself. There was something up with his delivery or something, so somehow it got brought up to me. And so, I just was talking to the customer. How'd you find us? What's going on? You know, what's your story? Um, and come to find out, he's battling stage four cancer. And, um, you know, I'm not gonna sit here and say cold plunges cures cancer, cause he's certainly, uh, still, still going through that. But to me, um, especially for the reason why I do the cold plunges, which is like, it's a hard thing to do, it's the mental benefits, it's that clarity I get coming out of it. But for me, I get that win for the day.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  That's when I do that cold plunge, I'm checked off, I got my win, I feel very great about myself. Um, for me, you know, in the days where I'm like slacking, or I don't wanna do it, or I get up into that cold water, uh, this was probably a few months ago now, I talked to that customer and it is still, it is the first thing that comes to mind, thinking, there is a man that's battling stage four cancer. Wow. Who struggles to get out of bed every single morning, who has aches and pains and is throwing up and is doing, going through the worst of worst and the fear that it's all about to come over, and that man. Is getting in to a cold plunge every single day. And yeah, it's just, it's insanely inspiring to see customers that have that level of commitment.

• 48:32Speaker 02

  And, and a lot of our customers.

• 48:33Speaker 00

  And veterans with PTSD, all kinds of stuff. It's crazy. We hear from veterans that are in their sixties that are like, this is completely calmed me down. Hanges with help of my anxiousness and just in general helps me get by on days that used to be challenging. And it's been like one after one after one. And for me, I've connected with multiple people in their fifties or sixties that are my, my dad's age. And they're all like, you know, your story about Adderall is remarkable. I hate to admit it, but I'm, I, I drink like eight coffees a day. I don't want to take a medication, but I drink a ton of caffeine. I do this, I do this. I'm a slug. And now that I've invested into a cold life cold plunge, you're like, I'm performing better than ever.

• 49:15Speaker 00

  I feel younger and the confidence I even have as a man, you know, a lot of people lack, you know, self-confidence. They're like, it's, it's elevated my own confidence within myself because I used to be weak. And I, you know, I needed to find something to overcome that weak feeling. And as a man, you want to feel, you know, like an alpha man and a lot of guys can't.

• 49:35Gary Brecka?

  Feel alpha when you get out, not so much when you get in.

• 49:39Speaker 00

  Feel like an alpha man when you get in there.

• 49:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:41Speaker 00

  Especially when we got an audience, like, you know, we're the cold punch founders, like we have a game.

• 49:44Speaker 02

  You gotta remain calm. You're like. Sit here, see, it's not that bad.

• 49:48Speaker 00

  You gotta breathe, you gotta breathe.

• 49:52Gary Brecka?

  So where do you guys fall in the, the contrast therapy? You know, there's, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of folks out there and there's a lot, a lot of, you know, gyms and wellness and recovery centers that are now using the contrast therapy. What have you found works? What have you found doesn't work? Where do you find in the?

• 50:11Speaker 02

  Contrast has always been an interesting one because I think it's, it's quite, uh, it's, it's, it's quite personal and different in the sense that cold plunge, to me at least, has a relatively specific outcome you're trying to achieve, right? For, for me, it's the mental stuff. It's the hard thing. For some others, it's recovery coming from the gym. For some others, it's inflammation, right? Everyone, I feel like kind of has their, their main. Reason why they're getting into the cold plunge. But for contrast, to me, contrast is almost more therapeutic. You know, than a recovery aspect of it. You know, you're going from, you know, you, you, you could probably explain the science behind the constricted blood vessels and then them opening up very quickly. And so you're doing that back and forth, back and forth.

• 50:51Speaker 02

  For me personally, on my own, on my own journey, I actually fell in love with contrast therapy. My wife and I, once a year, our big thing is we would go to Asheville. There's a place there called the

• 51:03Speaker 02

  Omni Grove Park Inn. And it's like a big old, you know, kind of castle thing. In Nashville, North Carolina.

• 51:09Gary Brecka?

  Beautiful area.

• 51:10Speaker 02

  It's a gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous hotel. And it's in the mountains and it's beautiful. And they have a spa that's actually in like the basement. And then it looks out of the mountains and it's just beautiful. But they have these areas and in this area, it's a cold plunge, it's a hot tub, it's a steam room and it's a sauna. And actually, right during COVID, when COVID was all happening, we got a chance to go up there. And I didn't know if I'd COVID, I was sick, whatever. And we were there and I started feeling like awful, I mean horrible. And I was taking, you know, anything I could, I was going online, taking all the Z packs and whatever I could get my hands on, I was taking. Couldn't feel better. It was just the worst couple of days. Go and do contrast therapy for like two and a half hours.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  And I came out of there and I literally felt like an absolute new person. Like I felt like better than I did before. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is the best thing ever. Why is nobody talking about this more often? Yeah. And that really let me up. So for me, I, I love contrast therapy. I don't think it for me is something that I'd recommend doing daily. Cause it's one of those therapeutic things. To me, I kind of put it in like the massage category and that, in that sense, and in my own personal view. However, if you are doing it daily or you're doing it more often, the one thing I will say is that I do highly recommend you end on cold.

• 52:22Gary Brecka?

  And on cold. Yes, I agree with that. Guys, this has been amazing. I've got a whole list of questions for you from my VIP community. So I have a special community that this is my community I've been building for the last few years called the VIP community. So I always spend private time with them. So we're going to go into a little private room now. They've got a bunch of questions for you guys. For the rest of you guys, if you're interested in joining the ultimate human VIP community, can go over to theultimatehuman.com/vip, sign up, you get private podcasts, you get one-on-one private coaching with me when we do it in a group setting. We have a course in there called Becoming the Ultimate Human Version of Yourself. You meet great guys like Kyle and Sam. Until next time, that's just science.