(Seagulls Chirping)
- I'm in Iceland and I am on
one of the most popular beaches in Iceland,
but it's completely empty and it's midnight.
But anyway, I want to tell you
about something that I've learned while I'm here.
And it has to do with hot water.
(upbeat music)
Through a lot of dipping myself,
into a lot of hot and cold water.
What I've found about this,
what I've learned about it.
Is something that's probably going to change my life.
Let me show you.
- Road Trip
- [Radio] Your in Iceland
- Look ice cream.
- It's still funny.
- Okay. Are we done?
- Then let's get started.
- A long time ago, Iceland didn't exist.
And then these two plates in the middle
of the Atlantic ocean
moved apart and let a bunch of magma
from under the crust come up.
That magma cooled and that became
an island called Iceland.
In other words, Iceland
is sitting on a literal crack in the Earth's crust
from which a lot of heat and magma vents out.
And it's because of this,
that this little stream behind me is super warm.
I'm about to get in it, by the way.
It's warm because there's heat from the Earth's magma
that is coming up, and making it warm.
The word Saturday, Laugardag in Icelandic
means pool day or hot spring day.
It's literally a part of their language.
And I've been seeing this as I traverse this country.
Everywhere we go, there is a pool or a hot spring.
They are everywhere.
There are more pools per capita in Iceland
than anywhere on earth.
And that is because they love their hot water.
It's not just hot springs.
Iceland uses the fact that it lives on a crack
between two tectonic plates to use that heat,
to do a bunch of stuff.
Right now, I'm in a greenhouse
where they use geothermal heat to grow thousands
and thousands of kilograms of tomatoes every year.
They're able to grow all sorts of things that wouldn't
naturally grow in Iceland because they have geothermal heat
that they're able to sustainably pipe into these greenhouses
and grow a ton of food.
It's pretty amazing.
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(upbeat music)
The boys are freaking out right now because
I just told them that we are swimming in a volcano.
Which we kind of are.
(upbeat music)
So yeah, Iceland is a place with a lot of hot water.
It's become a part of their culture,
but is it just because it feels good?
- Yeah it feels good.
- The answer is no, it is not just because it feels good.
So let's get into this.
Let's talk about what actually happens to your body
when you immerse it in hot water.
The first thing you have to understand is that your body
is obsessed with one temperature.
37 degrees Celsius or 98.6 Fahrenheit.
Your body wants to stay at that temperature,
especially in your core vital organs.
Your brain, your heart, your liver, your lungs.
It has to keep it at that temperature.
If it goes a few degrees above or below, you're dead.
And your body has one really important mechanism
for keeping itself cool, when it's too hot outside.
Or hot, when it's too cold outside.
And that very important mechanism is blood.
So let's say you jump into super hot water,
40 degrees Celsius, 104 degrees Fahrenheit.
Your body freaks out a little bit.
It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
This ambient temperature is way hotter
than what we are used too and what we want.
So it immediately gets to work, cooling yourself down.
And it uses blood to do this.
It says, get all of the blood
out of this center of the body,
where all the important organs are,
send them out to the extremities.
Let the fingers and the legs and the calf muscles get hot.
Don't let the heart get hot.
So your heart pumps and your blood vessels
start pulsing a little bit to push that blood
out into different parts of your body.
Your blood vessels,
literally open up to allow this to happen.
Like they like open up to make it easier
for the blood to get the hell out of the heart
and out to the extremities.
And it works, it works really wonderfully.
And honestly, it feels really good.
(upbeat music)
If you dip your body in hot water regularly,
you are giving the body,
a chance to push blood out to all of these places
that don't get a lot of blood most of the time.
Mix that with the fact that these hot Springs
are usually loaded with minerals
that are really good for the body.
And as you soak in them,
you absorb them and that helps your body too.
So it's no surprise to me that not only Iceland,
but all sorts of cultures all around the world
have discovered that soaking in hot water is a good thing.
(upbeat music)
Water break.
Ready to get some water.
Since we're in an RV,
we don't have tap water and no one sells water in Iceland.
They don't sell just natural water.
Cause every time I asked
there like you don't need to buy water
just go get water from anywhere.
So we've made it a habit to just come down
to whatever river or creek or stream
we see to fill our bottles.
Yes, please.
Pretty delicious huh?
- Yeah
- See ya
- Okay but this gets juicer.
When I've been going to some of these hot Springs.
I've noticed that in the corner,
there's always like a bucket of cold icy water.
We're going in the freezing cold.
(screams)
Henry, Henry James.
At first, I was like, why on earth would they have this?
And at this relaxing hot spring.
And they have a bucket of cold water.
So I decided to dive into this.
Okay, we've talked enough about
hot water and we all love hot water.
And we know it feels good.
I think it's time to flip the script
a little bit and talk about the other side
of this whole thing.
Which is the part that I'm literally dreading.
Lets do this.
That's really cold water.
- [Women] Careful
- Wow that was adrenaline.
That waterfall is so intense.
I've been asleep all day and now I've just woken up.
Like I just see everything
in its true color for the first time.
- To put in to perspective how cold
it is I have a wool blanket
and a puffer and I am still cold.
Like shivering cold so.
- I freaking love Iceland.
Okay so remember that when you go into hot water,
your body kind of freaks out
and it uses all of these little tubes
in the muscles in your arteries and veins.
To pump blood out to your extremities,
to keep your heart cold.
When you go into cold water, the exact opposite happens.
Your body still freaks out.
It's like we're going to die because we are now freezing.
It prepares to save the most important parts of your body.
It's like, don't care about the arms
at this point, we don't care about the toes.
Get the blood out of all of those places,
bring them back to the heart and the brain
and the liver and the lungs keep those alive and warm.
So now all of your little tubes are flexing and pulsing
and pushing all of this blood
back to the center of your body.
And here's the deal, your veins and arteries,
don't get to do this very often.
Especially in our modern age where
we're like cozy all the time.
They don't have a lot of practice
pushing blood out to the extremities
when everything's hot and then
pushing it all back to the heart when everything is cold.
This is sort of like lifting weights
for your cardiovascular system.
You're giving your circulation system
a chance to work out in a way
that it never really has the opportunity
to do when you're like sitting around
cozy all the time in your nice warm clothes
and nice warm house.
(upbeat music)
Dude its freaking gorgeous.
Boys look at this.
(seagulls chirping)
Alright let's go explore a glacier.
(upbeat music)
I know this is sort of trendy right now.
Cold showers, cold baths, whatever.
Like this is something that is definitely catching on.
And the leader of a lot of this is this guy named Wim Hof.
He's like a Dutch Iceman.
He has all these world records for holding his breath
and running marathons in the Arctic circle.
Just in shorts and he's barefoot and all this stuff.
I gotta be honest.
I've been very skeptical of Wim Hof and his followers
because he sort of has this guru vibe going on.
Where he's like this wild, crazy character.
And like he has this wild, new methods.
That's going to solve your world.
However, I started looking into
study after study, after study, after study.
About cold water and what it does to our bodies.
And I have to say,
despite my deep skepticism of Wim Hof is the guru
and his followers as just another
sort of like trendy new age wellness business.
I'm convinced.
(upbeat music)
It turns out that the benefit of going into cold water
is actually incredibly well-documented.
Through randomized controlled studies
that have nothing to do with Wim Hof.
They studied people who go swimming in ice water in Finland.
And found that these people are way stronger,
more resilient, less prone to anxiety, depression,
their bodies function more effectively.
And the craziest part,
the one that blows my mind is they discovered
that when you go into cold water,
your body actually creates more white blood cells.
The defense cells that help with your immunity.
So people who dip in cold water actually
have stronger immune systems.
There's absolutely something to this.
And as I've scrutinized it and looked into it
and done it myself.
I've learned that it's actually pretty compelling
and something that I feel like I'm probably
going to start doing more and more in my life.
The data is there, it's real, it is very compelling.
And here's the deal.
As I've been here in Iceland,
I've been experimenting with this.
I've been going into cold water.
It's been horrendous, but it's been amazing.
There's this feeling you get when you come out of it,
where you're just like in this euphoria.
I freaking love Iceland.
So my little adventure into hot water,
into natural hot Springs.
Into cold water has been really interesting.
Not just because it feels good,
but because it has really amazing
health benefits that people caught onto.
And that's why they made it a part of their culture.
Because it helped people live better.