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Hello, and welcome to the get lean and eat clean podcast. My name is Brian grin. I'm a certified health coach, trainer and author. And this podcast is for middle-aged men and women looking to optimize their health and get their bodies back to what it once was 10 to 15 years ago. I will give you simple, actionable items to get long-term sustainable results. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show. All right. Welcome to the get lean eat clean podcast. My name is Brian grin, and I hope you had a great Memorial day weekend. Happy Tuesday if you're listening to this on Tuesday.
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And yeah, I had an interesting weekend. I actually had it in my run-in with COVID and felt all in all pretty good. I had a sore throat for two days, so that was about it. Energy, everything else felt fine. And so, yeah, it was about a two to three day battle with a sore throat. Other than that, I was good to go. So truly blessed and yeah. Now time to move on, enjoy the summer. Right. So I wanted to touch on a topic I touched on, I think at the end of last year, talked about cold exposure. And mainly because especially with the summer coming up, obviously temperatures are going up.
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Maybe this will prompt you to, to give cold plunging a try because you know, the dead of winter, when it's 20 degrees outside, no one really wants to go into a cold, I don't know, cold bath, or even do a cold shower. So, but now that the temps are up, it might be a little bit harder to make a cold plunge because the temperature of the waters obviously warmer in your house, but it's more than doable. Might take a little time and effort. As you know, I, I put a cold plunge in my house last year. Best thing I've done, honestly, my favorite thing in the entire house. No doubt. And it's the reason I love talking about it is because there's not many things you can do that you get an instant effect from, right?
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If you think about it, obviously this is a huge supplement industry and there's a lot of things we talk about, oh, you know, you want to maybe supplement and vitamin D with K2. If you're not getting, you know, especially if you live in the Midwest and this and that, but you know, a lot of times you can't tell the difference unless maybe even you look at stuff on a blood test, I can get a and get some analysis back. But with the things that I try to find for you guys is things that could just make the biggest impact with the smallest like effort. And what's better than a cold plunge. I think it's the greatest. I think I really do think it's truly one of the greatest health hacks we could dial into.
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And I probably would have said that a year ago, but there are so many things it can do. And I wanted to just touch on some of the benefits. Again, I can tell you from personal use that this is something that for one can increase your happiness right off the bat, right off the bat cold plunging can make you happy. I'm a happy individual. I'm so blessed. I have a lot of, you know, many great things to be grateful for, but I can tell you this rush of nor epinephrin that you get from the plunge, especially when you're done with it. It just carries throughout the day. And it's almost like a it's like this.
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I want to just say like a calm happiness that you get from it. And nor epinephrin is that it's just, if you don't know, it's an naturally occurring chemical that happens in the body. It acts as both a stress hormone and a neurotransmitter. So it helps regulate mood, anxiety, other functions, and it helps mobilize the brain for action. It can help improve energy. I can tell you that and attentiveness. So if you're someone that maybe does it's affected by some type of depression or anxiety disorders, you know, this is something I really think before, you know, you, you just jump into getting some type of prescription drug.
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It's a great hack is, is, is going, is cold punching. And so I really, you know, I can tell you from experience that, you know, you, you sort of embrace and you breathe through the shock of the cold. You it's just a daily mood booster. So I am, I am truly all in on that. So that's, that was the first thing I wanted to touch on regarding cold plunging was, you know, increasing happiness. There's some studies out there that it can help boost immune system. And I will say, I mean, I had COVID, I will tell you, I felt like I handled it all in all pretty well. And I think a lot of that partly is just because a lot of the lifestyle choices that I've made over the last, over not just a year over years, that helped me combat it.
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And you know, if anything, you know, if you can talk my voice, that's about it. You know, voice little sore throat done the effects of cold water have been studied on the immune system and it can help boost what's called your white blood cell count by forcing the body to react to changing conditions. So your body pretty much gets better at activating these defenses. So extremely beneficial regarding boosting immune system. It can help combat inflammation, even arthritis. And, you know, if I'm assuming a lot of my audience is middle-aged and, and getting up there like ways to reduce joint pain inflammation, I mean, that should be top one, a top of the list.
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And, you know, cold punches can definitely counteract, you know, the side effects of even just muscle soreness and over, over, you know, over usage, pain and tightness. So what happens when you, when you go into a cold environment is your body constricts, its blood vessels, and will help reduce swelling and inflammation to certain areas of the body. So the cold can also actually numb the nerve endings and act as a pain reliever as well. So a lot of pro athletes obviously are using this. This is obviously been used for a long, long time, but that probably doesn't get talked enough about. So next I would talk about, I want to talk about boosting metabolism.
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You know, this is obviously still out and about as far as, you know, there's some studies showing that cold punching can actually maybe even help aid weight loss. I would say that Mo first and foremost, losing weight takes more than just cold plunging. So don't just rely on that. But what happens is your, it can, it can almost make your body more efficient and more your metabolism actually can get revved up by going in the cold and increasing burning of what's called white fat, which is like, you're bad fat. You got your good fat, which is like your brown fat. And so what happens is a cold exposure forces your body to sort of rev your up your metabolism and get the energy needed for heat generation.
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Cause your body's in sort of, sort of this survival mode and it needs to, it needs to work that much harder to generate heat so it can increase the burning of what's called white fat. So that is another great reason boosting the metabolism increasing improving circulation. So essentially cold water immersion stimulates blood flow. What happens is your, you immerse your body into this cold water, the blood rushes to your vital organs, right? And, and it's sort of an interesting feeling like when you're in the whole punch at the beginning, it's this shock. But then after a while, there's like this warmth that comes over you because you know, your body is so efficient and it's, you know, it's in survival mode, so your heart is pumping more efficiently and it's pushing blood through all your vessels, but it's going to the vital organs, right.
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For survival. And so it, you know, you start to just sort of become like warm in this cold environment. It's sort of a cool feeling. And then when you get out of the environment, what happens is the blood will flow back out and it will, you know, look for, look for areas that, that are maybe in inflamed and help, you know, help with any type of inflammation that occurred that has occurred anywhere else throughout the body. So improving circulation, something called a lymphatic drainage. So you have a lymphatic system and this is a network of vessels that runs throughout your entire body. So what it does, it transports waste bacteria and toxins away from yourself.
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It's like almost like a garbage removal service and effectively removes anything unwanted. So it's important to, to sort of keep your lymphatic system circulating properly. And sometimes when it's not circling properly, you know, we can get colds and have infections and build up toxins in the body. So exercising is one way of keeping your lymphatic system circulating correctly, but cold plunging is another way and it sort of gives your lymphatic system, this just sort of reboot. And so you can start re-circulating and help to get rid of the waste products out of your body. So that's another, the other great reason also stimulate stimulating.
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What's called the Vegas nerve, exposing your body to these acute cold conditions. And this could be plunging or cold showering, increasing stimulation of the vagus nerve, and it helps your body adjust to the code, the code. So your synthetic synthetic activity declines in your parasympathetic activity increases, which goes back to helping your improvements in mood pain, management, wellbeing, and resilience. A few more benefits are one of them is thermogenesis cold thermogenesis. And I touched on this already sort of, this is your body. Be able to create your body's ability to create heat when it's cold, when it's exposed to cold water.
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So it's cold thermogenesis is sometimes they'll say, you know, you're sort of burning more calories because you're trying to keep your body warm and your body's in that survival mode. So that's another one. And lastly, excuse me, lastly, is heightens your discipline and focus. And this does go back to, you know, just becoming happy, but also one thing that I love about the cold plunges, it sort of kills two birds with one stone in the sense that you are in this, you know, you're, you're going through this like somewhat survival mode, right? Your brain thinks that that, you know, things are going not going well.
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Or, you know, you're in this cold environment. So you're in this survival mode, your focus becomes laser laser focused. And so your mind, it's almost like an, a mindfulness practice a little bit, right? Because you're in this environment that is not comfortable and you have to breathe and focus on your breath and just become one with like being present. You're not worried about, oh, what someone said to you 20 minutes ago, or, you know, what you have going on at work or with family. So it does bring you into this present moment and being mindful and heightens your discipline and focus. So, you know, that is such a, a great thing if, especially if you know, you're not in the meditation and I do, I do recommend meditation, but this sort of kills two birds.
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Hey, you can do some cold punching and it's a form of meditation where you can sort of stay present and not focus on what happened in the past or what's going on in the future. So that's what I wanted to touch on today. Figure it'd be a good topic to go through again, because I really think it's one of the greatest hacks for all the reasons I just mentioned above. And it's, it's just, it's a mind, body overall experience that I think is worth going through. Every time I bring it up with people, they're like, oh, you're crazy. This and that. Well, you know, there's a reason there's a whole community out there that are living and breathing this. And, and I think these are a lot of the reasons why is the benefits that I mentioned today?
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So if you have questions or, you know, you want to know ways maybe to sort of make your own cold plunge. Let me know. My buddy, Brad Kearns has a great video on YouTube where he, he goes through how he built his, I think he's out in California. I know he's out in California and he built it on the side of his house, but it wasn't anything crazy and expensive and he's able to, you know, go, go in it when, you know, when, when need be. So let me know if you have any questions and you can email me brian@briangreen.com. I hope you have a great week and I will talk to you later. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks for listening to the get lean, eat clean podcast.
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I understand there are millions of other podcasts out there and you've chosen to listen to mine. And I appreciate that. Check out the show notes@briangrin.com for everything that was mentioned in this episode, feel free to subscribe to the podcast and share it with a friend or family member who is looking to get their body back to what it once was. Thanks again, and have a great day.
