If you're looking to lose weight and burn fat, and if you've seen fitness influencers and online
health people who are just in great shape, with six-pack abs, and they're jumping in and out of a
cold plunge in their backyard and you're wondering if cold water immersion maybe it's the missing
link on your fitness journey, this video is for you. Here's what we'll talk about. Number one,
why brown adipose tissue, brown fat, why the thermogenic fat-burning benefits are
probably exaggerated and it probably is not the secret you're looking for. Number two,
we'll talk about why the real benefits of cold water immersion, the more interesting benefits,
are psychological. And number three, we'll talk about the importance of investing your
limited time and money when it comes to health and fitness, wisely. My name is Lucas. I'm a
yoga teacher, I'm a nutritional coach, I'm a huge fan of cold water immersion. Some of my
earliest memories in childhood are me and my older brother in northern Wisconsin in
the winter on frozen lakes, we'd break through the ice and jump in. That psychological cleanse,
that rush of feeling we'll talk about a little later in the video, has kept me coming back to
cold water again and again. Whenever I get a chance, cold ocean, mountain streams,
cold plunges at spas, any and all of the above, I'm a huge fan. This video is not
meant to discourage you from cold water immersion but simply to clarify how it works and where you
should put your focus. The confusion really comes down to something called brown adipose tissue,
it's abbreviated BAT. Brown adipose tissue, it's a very interesting type of fat that's located right
here on your back, for some people underneath their collar bones on the front, maybe even
a little bit down into your chest, and there's very little of this brown fat, about 50 grams,
so not much at all. What's interesting about this type of fat is that it's stimulated when
you do full cold water immersion, especially up to your neck. Meaning you start to create more of it.
How much more? Well, maybe you go from 50 grams to 60-75 grams, maybe 100 grams, still not very much.
But why we get excited about brown adipose tissue is because it's highly metabolic.
What does that mean? Well, it burns a lot of calories, it takes a lot of energy. In fact, brown
adipose tissue can actually burn white adipose tissue, so normal body fat. This little blob of
brown fat here can burn the white fat we want to get rid of. This all sounds amazing, we get
in the cold water, we get more brown fat, we get more brown fat, we get less belly fat, we get six
pack abs. Wait a minute, does this really work? Wouldn't it be great if we had like some group of
people we could look at to compare, to see if this actually works? Oh wait, we do, they're called
babies. Babies have tons of brown adipose tissue, relatively speaking. About the same as adults, so
50 grams. But they're much smaller. So, relatively speaking, they have a thermogenic powerhouse on
their back. It's designed to keep them warm in the cradle and it works really well. But surely those
babies then, since they have that metabolic chunk of brown adipose tissue on their back,
they must be in a calorie deficit all the time, they must be lean and mean, and seven percent, six
pack abs? Not really. Babies are chubby. You know what happens when they get that deficit? They just
tip the bottle up and drink a little bit more. But that's not a fair analogy, babies are not adults,
we're at a different point in our development. It'd be better if we compared an adult group who
had normal brown adipose tissue, with a group that had way more, much more, maybe double. Oh,
we do, they're called Inuit people and they live in northern Canada, and Alaska, and Greenland.
They're exposed to cold temperatures their entire lives and so some researchers theorized, hey I bet
these people have more brown adipose tissue. They did some research in 2013 and they discovered yes,
they do. In some cases as much as double on average as someone like you or me. So, surely
Inuit people look like CrossFit athletes with six-pack abs and seven percent body fat? Nope,
not really. They struggle with the same metabolic disease and obesity, pretty similar rates to most
other developed countries in the world. Why? Because weight loss is not as simple as creating
a calorie deficit. If it was we could just go outside and keep walking around the building
until we created a deficit. Pretty frustrating but it's a pretty common story. In fact, the
story repeats itself every year. This year people are talking about brown adipose tissue last year
they were talking about the soleus push-up. Do you remember that one? Your soleus is one of your calf
muscles and researchers got very excited because if you pulsed, lifting your heels up and down,
up and down for four and a half hours every day, you were supposed to create a calorie deficit and
fix your metabolism and all these wonderful benefits. And obviously, no one's ever done
that ever in their life, four and a half hours of calf raises is a ridiculous thing to suggest.
But every year there's something new. Before that you were supposed to fidget with your pens to burn
calories. And guess what? In case you didn't know, if you play chess for two hours the mental focus
required will also burn 200 calories. Surely, surely chess players are jacked, and ripped, and
thin, and lean, and sometimes yes, and sometimes no. The reality is weight loss is complicated
and while the law of thermodynamics holds true, meaning energy cannot be created or destroyed,
what happens with a typical calorie deficit, whether that's the baby with a lot of brown fat,
or the Inuit person with a lot of brown fat, or the me person with not so much brown fat, when
we have a calorie deficit from chess, from soleus push-ups, or from brown fat, we just eat a little
bit more. The baby tips up the bottle, I take another spoonful, it's very, very easy to make
up a calorie deficit. Your body is not stupid, trying to outsmart your biology by creating a
little deficit here and there it doesn't work that way. Unfortunately, the same principles, the same
complex relationship with food, and exercise, and stress, and sleep, all of those things still
apply. Hopefully, maybe someday, there will be a breakthrough with brown adipose tissue, cold
water immersion, that's not the thing. So, what is the thing? Mental and emotional health. When
you get in the cold water your body freaks out, your circulatory system contracts, it constricts,
and the reactive response is actually to relax. It's really great for your circulation. From a
mental health perspective, your body releases two of the four neurochemicals that are correlated
with happiness, specifically endorphin and dopamine, and you also get a hit of noradrenaline,
which gives you this rush. Your body switches into a fight-or-flight mode, so it's highly,
highly arousing. The analogy I like to use is if you walk over to the fuse box in your house,
pull everything down and push everything back up. If you're watching this video you've probably
experienced this at some point. Maybe you love cold immersion, maybe you love cold showers,
maybe you hate them, but you can't deny that feeling. It is like a total reset for your brain
and it's amazing, it's also well documented, well-researched and studied. Here's the thing,
should you, because of the mental health benefits, buy a cold water plunge for your backyard? I don't
know, probably not. If it costs five thousand dollars the answer is probably not, because
most people find that those positive effects, if you do it every single day they tend to diminish.
The best way to get the biggest results is with irregular use. I like to think about it like
Sunday brunch. Maybe you fill up the bathtub, throw some ice in, and jump in once a week.
The reason that I think this is important is a lot of these cold plunges they cost
five thousand dollars and five thousand dollars is a lot of money. And if you're thinking about
your health journey, a lot of money and a lot of time invested in something with kind of dubious
results probably isn't the best choice. Five thousand dollars can buy you and your family
clean protein in a freezer for probably a year or more. Five thousand dollars could help you
set up a home gym that could last you a decade or more. Five thousand dollars could help you
to hire a personal trainer or a chef probably for a year, or maybe even a couple of years,
that could really move the needle in terms of your health and wellness. And if you initially
came to cold immersion because of fat loss, you're probably gonna have better metabolic
benefits from some of those. However, if you have five thousand dollars lying around and
you'd like to buy one of these expensive cold plunges, please invite me over, I'll be the first
person to jump in. Just make sure you're using it with eyes wide open, knowing that this is not the
fat-burning machine that it's been marketed to you as. If you enjoyed this video, hit subscribe
down below. I publish science-based yoga videos once a week. You can find my teaching calendar at
yogabody.com. I'll drop a PDF link down below with some of the research and references that
I mentioned in the video here. And lastly, if you have questions or comments, I'd love
to hear from you down below. Thanks for watching, I'll see you in the next video.