Hot Topics: May

We are getting a little edgy on today's episode of the Oh Health Yeah Podcast! Zach and Gus are diving into the internet's most controversial health trends to push back, compare notes, and challenge the status quo.
Inside this episode, we tackle:
The Sunscreen Debate: Daily SPF vs. critical morning sunlight and Vitamin D absorption.
Raw Milk Resurgence: Pasteurization vs. raw dairy. Is the bacterial risk worth the squeeze?
Orthorexia & Hyper Wellness: When an obsession with a perfect fitness routine pulls you away from being present.
Screen-Free Parenting: The heavy debate surrounding iPad kids and building healthy boundaries around tech.
The Truth About Cold Plunges: Gus breaks down his daily routine and why timing matters if your goal is building muscle mass.
There is no black or white answer to most of these conversations, we are happily living in the grey!
Grab a kombucha, sit down, and join the debate. If you love the show, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome into the Oh Health Yeah podcast brought to you by Healthy is Wellness. As you all know, our mission is to empower you to take control of your health and elicit a little bit of curiosity in your life when it comes to the world of wellness. Thank you so much for tuning in today. And if you have loved ones or friends that you think would benefit from this, share it with them. Let's get this thing going. What is up, Healthy Is Family? We are back with another edition of the Oh Health Yeah podcast. Today we're going to be doing an episode that ties into hot topics. We've done a few of these in the past. Zach's going to search some hot topic things in the health and wellness world, and we're going to dive into them. We might push back on each other a little bit, compare and contrast, but it's going to be a fun episode to dive into kind of hot things in the wellness world. These episodes are some of our most viewed episodes online, so it seems like the people love them. So we are going to give you guys more hot topic episodes. Zach is on the iPad right now looking up hot topic things in the world of health and wellness. Might be a little edgy, we'll see. I'm ready. Let's do this. How edgy are we going today?

SPEAKER_02 1:31

I'm going, let's go con I'm putting controversial.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Oh boy. Oh, whoa, netted.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

Let's see here. See what we got. Ooh. The blue light and sunlight debate. The long-standing advice to where SPF daily and avoid the sun is being challenged by a vocal movement focusing on quant focusing on quantum biology. The conflict. Proponents argue that morning sunlight exposure on bare skin and eyes is the most critical factor for hormonal and mitochondrial health. The controversy, some are going as far to claim that the chemical sunscreens are more harmful than the sun itself, a stance that dermatologists and cancer researchers vehemently oppose as dangerous misinformation.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

I think morning sun exposure is extremely beneficial for all aspects of health. And I think oftentimes, from my perspective, sunscreen is given too often or used too often. To where like people just go outside and they're like, gosh, I have to have sunscreen all the time. I think the way that our body absorbs vitamin D, not only through the skin, but through the eyes as well, is needed for the body to be able to do that. And it's extremely beneficial for the body. So from my perspective, I would say just a generic, I think sunscreen is probably overused. What do you think?

SPEAKER_02 2:50

Hard disagree. I'm a ginger, dude. Oh my god. If I walk outside for five minutes, I'm getting a sunburn. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Where's your vitamin D at? Have you do you remember where it was? So low? Was it super like 25? Got you. Yeah, it's an interesting thing because if you don't use sunscreen, you run the risk of getting the sunburn. But also if you use sunscreen, it may block some of the absorption of the vitamin D. What's crazy about vitamin D too is the darker the pigment of your skin, the less vitamin D you absorb. So I always talk about my dad and my family when they do concrete, early on in the summer, they're oftentimes more pale. And then as the summer goes on, they get darker and darker, and they think they're absorbing more vitamin D. It's actually less. As the skin gets darker, you absorb less. Right.

SPEAKER_02 3:33

Your body's trying to protect itself from the damage that tanning, quote unquote, causes. Yeah. Uh I my dad gets so, so, so, so dark. So dark. Does he wear sunscreen? No. Okay. He doesn't sunburn though.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Not like I do. I look like Mr. Krabs. Yeah. In my mind, even with our kids, like I try to minimize our sunscreen use. If I know that they're gonna be like if we went to Mexico, took the kids to Mexico, I'd use sunscreen. But like here, I want them to get some of the vitamin D benefits that come from the sun, but it's such a fine line. Like we talk about like alcohol consumption. You're drinking alcohol and you put sunscreen on and it blocks your pores, and then you can't sweat without alcohol.

SPEAKER_02 4:12

Dude, I remember when I was maybe 18, 17, 18, 19, something like that. Um I was really sick and I went with my buddy to Lake Smomo. And our billings people will understand the reference, but uh I was sick. I felt like I was getting sick, but I decided to just lay in the sun. I laid on a tube in the sun for like four or five hours. And I got so sunburnt that Matt, one of my best friends, business partners, had to come to my house and rub aloe vera on me. And every time I moved, the sun sunburned would crack and I would cry. Full grown adult, right? Oh my god. And I'd have to go and have my mom rub sunscreen or aloe vera on my back every few hours. I had to sleep sitting up. I had to go to the emergency room. It was so bad. Um, the only thing that gave me any relief was tordol. As a football player, I'm sure you got a tordol shot once or twice, right? Yeah. That stuff is crazy. Um, it literally felt like a cooling blanket just got put on me. But that's have you ever had like a real like can't touch anything sunburn?

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Yeah, I had one in Costa Rica the first time we went. And in my mind, I think the answer to this question there is no black or white answer. It's very dependent on the person. It's like, okay, are you at risk for a sunburn? Then sunscreen needs to be applied in those situations. But at the same time, if you don't feel like you're at risk for a sunburn, like when I go to Asters football games when the weather's nice, I'm gonna be out there for an hour. I don't feel like I'm gonna get sunburned, at least myself.

SPEAKER_02 5:45

That's true. No, and for an hour, I don't either, but it's it's when I know that I'm gonna be outside for multiple hours. But then again, like it'd be cool to have Jen on to talk about this, our old coworker. Like, have you ever seen somebody that doesn't use SPF regularly what their skin looks like in their 50s and 60s?

SPEAKER_00 6:02

Crazy.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

So much more damaged than someone that did use SPF and SPF like moisturizer or whatever. I mean, it keeps your skin youthful and taut.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

It does. And then you think about adding to this argument how little time we spend outside now. Like there's people that are outside maybe 30 minutes a day just when they walk to their car.

SPEAKER_02 6:21

Yeah, that it's well, so I guess the other side of that is like, you know, we talk, we push, I mean, we push hard vitamin D supplementation. So I guess in your opinion, like, do you think absorbing vitamin D through the sun is more beneficial than a supplement? Because if not, if you can avoid the damage to your skin, the aging, the risk of melanoma, skin cancer, and you just supplement, like I feel like that's the best route for most people, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

I think it would be interesting to see how people's metrics change. Like, there's got to be studies out there where it's like, okay, somebody with a vitamin D level of let's say 40 spent time outside for X amount of time for let's say two weeks, and their vitamin D went up however much. I think it's very dependent on how your body best absorbs vitamin D and figuring that out. And I think it comes back to like retesting and being like, okay, my vitamin D score is here. Throughout summer, I spend X amount of time outside, or I start supplementing with vitamin D three plus K2 and it's 10,000 I use. Here's how I increase it. But with the vitamin D sunscreen argument, I think it's very dependent on the person and the risks associated with it. Like if I have already had some form of skin cancer, I'm definitely gonna be wearing sunscreen. If I hadn't, and I'm not necessarily worried about that, then I maybe wouldn't be. So I think my answer for this is almost like I'm living in the gray, it's very dependent on the person and the situation.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

I'm just avoiding pain, bro.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

Yeah, stay away from the pain.

SPEAKER_02 7:49

My um I think one of my biggest things about sunscreen for me is I'm somebody that's prone to anxiety anyway. And one of like the symptoms of anxiety is your face feeling hot. So if your face is already hot from a sunburn because the blood vessels are on the top, like you know, are kind of opened up on the top of the skin, you're already you're quicker to anxiety, to irritation, to frustration. So I just I just be putting sunscreen on when I go fishing. I have a little tube of it. I keep it, keep that thing on me all the time.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

There you go.

SPEAKER_02 8:21

Yes, I do.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

Heck yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:23

Um also just a little novelty thing about sunscreen is it's for me, it's like I hate the taste of sunscreen when you get it in your mouth. We all have, but it's it's one of those things that's like in the dead of winter, you're like, God, I miss the taste of sunscreen and the smell of mosquito spray. You know what I mean? Tell me I'm wrong. You're like, God, I kill for a sunburn right now. But then come summertime, you're like it's like in your mouth.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

Make me think of that dude on bench warmers that's eating the two. Oh, diesel.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

Alright, on to the next. Are you ready?

SPEAKER_00 8:57

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 8:58

This one's controversial, man. It's really been up in the news lately, and I have a pretty pretty uh pretty harsh position on it. Harsh. Raw milk. Oh, raw milk. Okay. Tell me more. What does it say on this? Despite Gemini says, despite significant warnings from the FDA and CDC regarding bacterial risks like salmonella and listeria, raw dairy is seeing a massive resurgence. The conflict. Advocates claim pasteurization kills beneficial enzymes and probiotics, making dairy harder to digest. The controversy, public health officials view the promotion of raw milk as a major step backward in food safety, especially given recent concerns regarding avian flu and zoonotic diseases. What's your take? Pasteurization all day, every day.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

Milk is such an interesting one. And we talk about all natural and all that good stuff, but in this situation, it's like it's boiling.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

Pasteurization is just boiling.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:03

You don't eat freaking noodles raw. It's true. It's a good point. You know, I I've seen a lot of food scientists touch on how dangerous raw milk can be. And I've tried it, don't get me wrong, I tried it when I was young. It's good, it's real good. Have you ever had raw milk?

SPEAKER_00 10:18

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:19

It tastes good. I'm not gonna lie. But it's like drinking water out of a mountain stream. Are you gonna get sick? Probably, you know, you're gonna get giardia. Exactly. So that's why I filter my freaking water. Yeah. So I I have you ever seen like prion diseases? Have you heard of them? It's like misfolded proteins you can get like mad cow, mad cow disease is like a misfolded protein that can that can happen from stuff like this. It's just stuff that I'm not willing to mess with, dude.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

Yeah, no, the pasteurization makes sense to me too. I think I would stand on that side as well. The other thing that comes to my mind is like how much our soil quality, our natural, our natural environment for animals to be able to feed, because the the milk obviously comes from a cow. Yep. And so what is this cow eating on? Well, oftentimes our soil quality has changed, the food that it's eating has changed. So in turn, they're not getting the natural things that they did 100, 200 years ago. So in my mind, I'm thinking I'm pasteurization all the way as well. Yeah, I'm with it.

SPEAKER_02 11:22

The juice isn't worth the squeeze. Definitely not. I'm sure I I'm not gonna disagree. There might be some more prebiotic pre-biotics that get destroyed and benefits that get destroyed during the pasteurization process. Yeah, not gonna lie. But is that worth getting some unidentifiable misfolded protein disease or just being getting salmon? No, it's not, it's not. I go get a freaking kombucha and sit down.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

Yeah, I agree. I think about it with my kids. That's what I'm taking my mind right now.

SPEAKER_02 11:55

Like you're gonna risk their lives.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

What would I do with my kids? I mean, the raw milk side of things, if I knew where it was coming from, maybe, but at the same time, it's like pasteurized whole milk. Yeah, that just seems like a lower risk way to go.

SPEAKER_02 12:08

Yeah, seriously. Okay, let's see. What do we got? We're not gonna go there. Skip. Skip. Oh. Let's see here. You know what? I'm just gonna go off the cuff, not off of this list. What do you think of orthorexia?

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Orthorexia.

SPEAKER_02 12:36

Tell me what you mean by that. Being so like you have two, you have health and wellness is a spectrum to me, right? On one end, you have somebody that's sedentary, doesn't take care of themselves, is unhappy, obese, all of the it the indicators that you know you're not present in the moment. Excuse me. You don't work out, you don't exercise, you don't get sunlight, you don't spend time with people that you love. All of those things. Oh my gosh, I have the hiccups. Sorry. Orthorexia is the opposite end of that spectrum where you're so obsessed with exercise and fitness and wellness, you're hyper well. Like to the point where if you don't, if you miss those workouts, you you're depressed, you're anxious, you're you're obsessed with it.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

I think both sides of the spectrum can be just as unhealthy. I think I've said that before. Yeah. But what's interesting is like like we've talked about many times, our our definition of health is your ability to be fully present in any moment, and things that pull you away from that ability to be present, I believe, are considered unhealthy. So like if I have a relationship with exercise where I have to work out seven days a week, or if I have to get 200 grams of protein a day, or else I can't be myself, I can't be fully present with you in this moment, then I think that is just as unhealthy as the opposite, where it's like, okay, I have to eat X amount of food to be able to be fully present in the moment. So from my perspective, the person that is 99% body fat can be just as unhealthy as the person that is 1% body fat. And it's all about the way that you perceive it and the way that you the way that you view health. Because if it's so addictive to you that it pulls you away from being you, then at that point it's unhealthy. The relationship with it is.

SPEAKER_02 14:20

But what about the people that would say that it's part of who they are though? So like I know people that run and that's their antidepressant. I don't necessarily think that that's a bad thing.

SPEAKER_00 14:31

Yeah, I think when you when I'm thinking of this analogy, I'm not thinking of the person that's running just to reduce stress. I'm thinking of the person that's running and now has osteopenia and now like sarcopenia is kicking in, their joints hurt them, they're doing it, they they feel like they have to do it to be themselves, but it's negatively impacting every other aspect of their health.

SPEAKER_02 14:50

Gotcha. Does that make sense? Negatively impacting their relationships. I've seen that before.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

Yeah. Well, and I think too, like when it comes to lifespan and quality of life, if you get to the point where you are so addicted to movement that you're actually decreasing your quality of life and your lifespan on this earth, is it actually serving you? Because I would argue that it's not. Like if my lifespan was a hundred years and I got so addicted to lifting weights that I took 20 years off the end of my lifespan because I had to lift three times a week. I wasn't or three times a day. I wasn't eating enough protein, I was not sleeping, I was up all night lifting weights. It was taken away from my lifespan. I would say that's pretty dang unhealthy. So that's my thoughts.

SPEAKER_02 15:29

I've got a really good one. I think that you're gonna enjoy talking about this, and I'm really interested to hear your perspective. What do you got? Screen-free parenting. This is the most heated debate in every neighborhood group right now. The argument. Some parents believe tablets and educational apps are essential for a child's future in a tech-driven world. The controversy: the zero tech movement argues that screens are literally rewiring kids' brains for shorter attention spans, and that any amount of screen time before age 12 is damaging. It has turned iPad kids into massive insult in the wellness community. That's a tough one, man.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

It's so hard. We walk it every day with our kids. I think to come back and like talk about the health side of things, our def definition of health is being fully present in any moment. I want my kids to think of their time with tablets similar to that. Like if you want to get on a tablet because you believe that it's gonna optimize your life or help you be a better human, great. Like if you're gonna get on your iPad and you're gonna do math games so you can be a better person in math class and a better student, hell yes, do it. If you're gonna get on your iPad and just watch YouTube shorts and rot your brain, is that helping you be the best version of yourself or the most present human in the moment? Absolutely not. So, like at our house, we try to make rules based around the tablets. Like, okay, one of our strict ones is no tablets after dinner. Minute that we're done eating, we eat dinner as a family, no tablets. If you grab it, I'm gonna get on your butt. And that's not, hey, like you can't be on a tablet. That's it's gonna help you sleep better, it's gonna help you be a better student, it's gonna help you be a better child. Like if you are on your screens before bed, it's gonna keep you awake. So we're fighting that battle there. And two, it's just naturally getting off screens. So they have to talk and interact with us. But what's crazy, and you know this as well, is if you get behind the time with technology, you're gonna spend a lot of time catching up. So, like our oldest one at the house is eight years old. And so by the time he is 18 years old and he's ready to go into the workforce, the jobs may look a heck of a lot different than they do right now, and it may be more tech-based, it may be more like how can you program this, that, or the other. We'll be. So it's one of those fine lines where it's like, okay, I want to build, I want to build strict rules in that help you be the most present child and the most present person in your life with your family because family is an essential pillar of our relationship, our lives. But at the same time, I don't want you to get so far behind from all the other kids. Right. You don't want to set them up for failure. Yeah. It's a tough one though. Like our strict rules are usually no tablet after bedtime. And like the reason behind that is the sleep because they sleep better when they're not on it, they have to interact with each other before bed, and then the other rule that I'll oftentimes bring up is no tablet before school. Like this morning we took them to school, or I took them to school, and before they were trying to get on their tablets, and so you just build in little rules. That's the way that we've framed it. I know some people that do strict no tablets though, and like that's pretty intense. What are your thoughts on it?

SPEAKER_02 18:36

I'm gonna be real with you. I don't feel like I deserve to touch on it too much. I don't have kids.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

If you had kids, how would you frame it? You have any idea?

SPEAKER_02 18:45

I think I like your perspective of it. I I I think my brain automatically goes to like when you and I were little boys. I feel like you and I were pretty similar, and we got into some trouble. And I'm talking like, you know, between seven and ten. Like, you know, we weren't doing bad things, but like definitely stuff we shouldn't have been. So it's like I think my mind just goes to like if you and I hadn't made the mistakes that we had at those ages, we would have never learned from those mistakes. Like, yeah, in the moment I didn't like getting in trouble, and I'm sure you didn't either. But also, we've talked about this the nature versus nurture. So I think my brain just goes to like, how different is playing on an iPad compared to you and I watching Tom and Jerry or Spongebob? It's different, but it's the same. Like, that was like a formative part of my childhood watching being so freaking bored out of my mind. I mean, like, don't get me wrong, the nostalgia in me loves Tom and Jerry. The boredom in me hated Tom and Jerry because if I was watching Tom and Jerry, I was bored out of my gourd. So bored. I just wanted to be outside. I wanted to be outside all the time. And I know that there's different motivations for tablets, and a lot of times nowadays kids would choose tablets over being outside and having fun. I don't know. I just feel like there's gotta be some type of I don't know. It's it's such a it's such a delicate subject because I've seen I've also seen what happens when kids are restricted from doing that when all of their friends aren't, and how singled out and alone they feel. But on the other side of that spectrum, I've also seen a lot of kids get bullied. Big bullied. Cyberbullying is a really big problem, and it's so much easier to hide that from the parents than it than it used to be when we were kids. It's a very intricate issue that I again I just don't feel like I'm qualified to really formally give an opinion on as a non-father.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

I think you have to dig into the why and in this situation. I talk about this a lot in every aspect of life, but like, why why does Astro want to use the tablet right now? Like, what's the why behind it? Is he trying to get on YouTube and watch a short 30-second clip and then bump to another one and just brain rot? Or is he trying to optimize his math games? Like, there's there's a why behind everything that we do in life, and with the tablets and with the electronics, it's like, okay, why do they need this in their life? And then how do we build a structure around it that's most beneficial for them? The thing that really holds me back with the tablet of like being unlimited is that it's alone. Like your tablet, although you might be playing with other people virtually, there's not two people looking over at one tablet usually. Like you're sitting there by yourself looking at your device, and I want our children to be able to work well with others, to be able to battle with others, to be able to fight others if they need to.

SPEAKER_02 21:50

Okay, okay. So, did you so I know your little brother's a little bit quite a bit younger than you, but did you what?

SPEAKER_00 21:56

Ten years.

SPEAKER_02 21:57

Yeah. See, my brother, my sister and I had. The same age guy. We were nine years. My sisters, but my brother and I were a lot closer, so we did everything together when we were boys. Man, I cannot tell you the did you ever play with your friends like 007, Nightfire?

unknown 22:14

I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 22:15

You never played James Bond?

SPEAKER_00 22:17

Um, like the games? Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was like a like some sort of outside game.

SPEAKER_02 22:21

No, Super Smash Bros. Madden, dude.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

But all those were together.

SPEAKER_02 22:24

Like that's what I'm saying. Like, we we the camaraderie that got built from play and the distrust that got built playing games like that. I mean, how many times did you call your friends like screen peeker, screen picker? All the time. God, I remember playing WWE SmackDown versus Raw with my friends. Kid. Like, we I mean, that's what I mean. It's like it's different, but it's the same. Like, you can't tell me that you didn't have a little bit of a problem with video games when you were a kid.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

Definitely. So did I. But the way that we played them back in the day was you had two console, you had two controllers. You played with friends.

SPEAKER_02 22:58

Do you remember when you'd get your friends? Like, did you guys play PlayStation or Xbox?

SPEAKER_00 23:01

I had an Xbox.

SPEAKER_02 23:03

Did you ever play PlayStation with your friends? A little bit. Dude, I remember when we go to our friend's house and then we finally got like a multi-tap. Do you know what that was? It was basically where you could plug instead of two controllers, you could plug like six in and all your friends could play. Like Madden. Playing Madden with like four to six people. It was like online before it was online, you know, it was so epic. But I don't know. I I agree with you, but I also think it is very similar because like Roblox, that's like the one that's taking the world by storm for these little kids. I'm sure you've heard Asher talk about Roblox. There's no way you haven't, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:37

Oh, I definitely have.

SPEAKER_02 23:41

Yeah, and they're playing with each other, but I do understand what you mean that they're like not physically in the same space.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

No, they're definitely not. I don't think the connection's the same and the way that you interact. Like I remember playing Madden with my buddies, and like we would talk trash to each other. And not that talking trash, we don't condone talking trash, but you learn how to interact with other people when you're in the same room with them. You learn how people's body language is when they sit forward, when they sit back. Like there's little nuanced things that you learn if you're going to play video games with somebody else. When they're virtual, all you're hearing is their voice. They could be doing whatever they wanted to do. That's true.

SPEAKER_02 24:11

That's true.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

Last thing on this one, though, that I'll add is I like to use tablet as a reward system as a parent. So it's like, hey, I'm never gonna tell you no, but I'll let you on the tablet if you clean the bathroom or if you pooper scoop, they'll let you on the tablet. Yeah, I like to use it as a reward system. I get that, I get that rather than just a norm.

SPEAKER_02 24:31

Gosh, I remember when I first my parents were really strict when I was young, young, and we got Grand Theft Auto. Ooh, they were not fans. Did you play that when you were a kid? Yeah, man, that was a bad game, dude. There's a lot of those. Wow, that was a bad game. But see, here's what here's the last thing I'll add about it. I would I would argue that you and I both had somewhat of an addiction to video games when we were kids. Could care less now.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

You yeah, I don't play video games.

SPEAKER_02 25:01

That's what I'm saying, dude. I have no like every like six to eight months, I'll fire up my Xbox and update it because it hasn't been updated in six months, and I'll go through a short phase while I'll play games for like a month, and then I'm just like, yeah, I'm good. I'm past past. And then I won't play it for six months to a year. Obviously, you don't even have time for that as a dad. But I just the other part of it is like I think if I had been restricted more on it as a kid, I'd probably have more of a tendency to be addicted to it now, you know, the forbidden fruit.

SPEAKER_03 25:33

Really?

SPEAKER_02 25:34

I don't know. Were you restricted on your video game usage? In this in the same way that you restrict the kids from tablets. Like I was restricted, like, hey, it's bedtime, go to bed. That was different, but that's different than like you're only allowed to play video games for one hour. And I had friends in my life that that had that type of structure. And for some reason, I want to lean towards the fact that those kids still play video games now, but I don't.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

Yeah, I had a little more structure. My dad was on me. I remember when we got a Wii, he wouldn't let me play the Wii sitting down. Caught me playing the Wii sitting down because it's supposed to be the acting game. Oh man. There was structure there for sure. Video games and tablets are a tough one, though, as a parent for sure.

SPEAKER_02 26:18

They are. Alright, last one. Ready? Yeah, tear it. This I know this is like part of your DNA, so I think this one's close to the chest. Oh boy. Can you guess what it is?

SPEAKER_00 26:27

I have no idea. Part of my DNA.

SPEAKER_02 26:29

Yeah, it's like part of who you are.

SPEAKER_00 26:31

Okay. Oh boy, what do you think of me? I'm about to know what you think of me. Cold plunges. Oh boy.

SPEAKER_02 26:38

You ready? Yeah. The conflict. Fans swear it cures depression, resets their metabolism, and gives them an alpha edge. The controversy. Critics argue it's an expensive, performative trend that provides temporary dopamine hit but no long-term health benefits, often calling it the midlife crisis of the 2020s.

unknown 26:57

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_02 26:58

That's a tough one for you.

unknown 27:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

For those that don't know, I guess cold plunges like every day, daily, multiple times a day, sometimes probably.

SPEAKER_00 27:08

So the first thing I want to call out there is expensive. They said expensive. It doesn't have to be expensive. You could literally do a cold plunge in a garbage can with a little bit of water and some ice. Like it doesn't have to be expensive. The setup that I have at my house cost me cost me 150 bucks. So it can be cost effective. The midlife crisis dopamine serotonin thing is an interesting perspective. So when I first started utilizing the cold plunge, there was a lot of benefits out about decreasing inflammation and allowing the body to rest and recover quickly. So this was back when I was playing college football. We would literally get done with two-a-day practices, and our coaches would have like those kiddie pools, like literally like 10 of those kiddie pools on the sideline. They'd show up with all these the pallets of ice and they would chuck a bunch of ice in there, and every single player would get down to their skimmies. Yeah. And we'd all get in these cold plunges. And so at that point, cold plunging for me was an decrease inflammation so that I could practice again this afternoon. Fast forward to today, eight years later, and as an adult, I cold plunge every single morning due to the fact that there's mental acuity that comes alongside it for me. Now there's a placebo effect with everything that we do in life. There's a reason that it makes you feel a certain way, whether it's a whether it's creatine, whether it's cold plunging, whether it's eating a low-fat diet, whatever. But cold plunging to me, when I get out of that, I get such a rise of dopamine, and I feel like I'm ready to kick the day's butt. And also for myself, I feel like the hardest part of my day is behind me. So when it comes to cold plunging and the benefits that I see are the reason that I do it, I do it for the mental acuity that follows, as well as like feeling like, okay, I'm about to kick today's butt. What are your thoughts on cold plunging?

SPEAKER_02 28:51

I think I have to challenge you on the fact as somebody that respectfully was a performance athlete. I know that you're still an athlete, won't take that away from you. But somebody with your intelligence level, I think you you can't argue that not only were you a performance athlete, but you have a pretty extensive background in kinesiology and in how the body works. And I think my biggest argument about cold plunging is inflammation is part of how your muscle rebuilds. And if you're cold plunging, you're stopping that process. You're you're interrupting it. You know, you're not stopping it all the way, but like if you're doing drop sets and you're tearing up those muscle fibers, the inflammation is autoph I mean not autophagy, it's hormesis. Like that is your body rebuilding itself, and you're it's it's in my opinion, like we've talked about this before, right? When you roll your ankle and the water goes to that site and it gets hot. The new science is showing that heat will help it heal faster, but cold will stunt that that healing process because while it reduces pain, the pain is the healing. So cold plunging, I I guess what what are your thoughts on what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_00 30:11

So it's timing. So, like there was a study that came out recently that showed that cold exposure decreases muscle gain. And the reason behind that is because if you exercise or you lift weights, tear muscle fibers, kind of like you're saying here, when you get in a cold plunge or cold exposure, what it does is it decreases inflammation, it stops the body from recover or it helps the body to recover more rapidly. So you don't get that huge, like, oh my gosh, I just tore my muscle fibers, I need to rebuild. So this study showed that if you worked out and then you cold plunged, there was a decrease in muscle gain that followed. Whereas if you just worked out and you didn't cold plunge, you would gain more muscle mass. So the cold plunge was decreasing inflammation, it was helping to increase recovery. So in my mind, cold plunge and cold exposure comes back to being based off your why. Like if you're an athlete and you're playing football and you have two a days, the cold exposure in between makes sense to me because at that stage, you're not trying to necessarily gain muscle mass, you're trying to be the best athlete you can be.

SPEAKER_01 31:10

And build stamina. That's a big part of build stamina.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

But if I was in the off season, let's say, and I was training for football and I was trying to gain strength, then in my mind, I wouldn't want to do a cold plunge right after the workout. The way that I use it in my own life, I like to do it before my workout. So on the weekends, if I acuity. Yes, if I have a like a whole weekend day to myself, what I love to do is get up in the morning, go outside, hit the cold plunge, do like three to five minutes at about 50 degrees, and then work out right after because you get that dopamine, that spike, and you use that as your pre-workout rather than using some NO explode that has who knows who knows what it also helps to work out when your body's cool.

SPEAKER_02 31:46

I feel like you're firing a little bit better. I but I would I would think I would have to not argue with you, but like say that if you're in the phase of wanting to build muscle exclusively, you'd probably want to go the opposite way, and it would help you hit the sauna right after sauna would be sweet, beneficial for sure. Because it would make the muscles inflame faster, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:08

Yeah. Well, the biggest thing with the muscle mass side of things is just getting that exercise in because tearing the fibers is everything there. And cold exposure after is definitely not what you would want to do if your goal is to specifically gain muscle mass, not directly after.

SPEAKER_02 32:23

I think that's all I got for you, man.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

Sweetness, cool. Thank you guys very much for tuning in. If there's ever anything that you guys want to hear on these hot topic episodes, let us know. Leave comments in on our social medias or on Apple, wherever you're listening to this, leave comments, ratings, reviews. We appreciate you all, and thank you so much for tuning in today.