The Once a Week Sauna Protocol Andrew Huberman

00:00so i've seen a bunch of research about sauna i've seen a bunch of research about cold exposure contrast therapy which is huge here in austin going from sauna to cold and it seems like 20 and three three rounds is very typical is there something that we're gaining or something that we're losing by doing that cycle rather than doing a block of heat and a block of cold separately not that i'm aware of but you know that we finally have some good science to put to this and unfortunately it wasn't from my lab this is the beautiful work of susannah soberg who's over in scandinavia published a paper and cell reports medicine showing that the threshold you're trying to hit each week is at least you can do more but at least 11 minutes of uncomfortable but safe cold exposure per week total so that could be three minutes monday three minutes wednesday so yeah so on to 11 minutes and 57 minutes per week minimum size that's what they found what do they find increases brown fat thermogenesis thereby metabolism thereby comfort being

01:00you know in cold etc um clearly there's a resilience effect clearly there's a dopamine increasing effect and clearly you can do more you could do all that in one day or you could spread it out throughout the week or you could do more it kind of depends on what you're shooting for how cold people always say how cold how hot well for heat is generally between 187 degrees fahrenheit and 212 degrees fahrenheit somewhere in that range and for cold it's cold enough that you really want to get the hell out but that you can stay in safely because i don't want anyone to kill themselves but doing this stuff did i see you say that um evening time heat exposure increases growth hormone release by 16 times or something insane but subsequent sessions of the same only increase it by a very small margin yes am i talking about my asset no you're absolutely right so we can we can delineate some protocols if you want to get better more resilient

02:00cold exposure is going to be great anytime post cold exposure your body is going to heat up think of your body heating up as waking up so if you are concerned about not being able to sleep then i would suggest you do your cold exposure earlier in the day right heat does the opposite so i'm laying out some parameters here heat does the opposite you're going to heat up while you're in the deliberate heat exposure but afterwards there's a post-heating dip in temperature we talked this was all covered in an episode deal with dr craig heller on thermogenesis gets a little bit down in the weeds but take my word for it if you want to get the science you can go there to find the science behind this so sauna at night is great as well now let's think about how to combine these things so let's say you you know you're on a it's a tuesday you've done your weight training on monday and you want to do your heat and cold you don't have time to optimize everything perfectly you could say okay i'm going to do my heat and cold at 10 a.m or 8 a.m you get in the sauna for 20 minutes or so and then you get into the cold for three

03:00minutes and then you might get into the sauna again for 10 minutes and you get in the cold for another minute or so you end on cold yes why because it'll wake you up and presumably you're not you want to be woken up for the day that also means don't then if you're doing it in a facility don't then go and have a warm shower right once you've finished right coolest shower is fine because you want to clean off often i mean the ice bath is cleanish but it's you know in the depends where you're going in laboratories you're absolutely right in laboratories if we want to preserve something in particular a virus we put in the freezer if you want to kill a virus you heat it up just as dirty of a sauna as you want but the cold tub well yeah the sauna sort of its own autoclave if it gets hot enough right and the cold cold stuff needs to be cleaned out now and again you get mold growing in a in a freezer which is kind of freaky to think about but you really can't it's never going to grow in a sauna never going to grow if it gets hot enough now there is what i call the sober principle which is if you are using deliberate cold exposure to increase metabolism end

04:00on cold so finish on the cold not just because it wakes you up more but because then you have to heat your body up naturally which is a thermogenic metabolic response so end with cold and if you really want to push it you can do things like don't use a towel use evaporation spread out your limbs and don't huddle so that you have to shiver more etc i mean a lot of little games you can play but let's say you want to reduce post exercise inflammation you're not concerned with hypertrophy gains of muscle size gains or strength gains well then get in the cold after your your workout do that for one to some people can do 10 minutes reduce inflammation let's say you really want to hit growth hormone which is what you asked the biggest effects of sauna on growth hormone and they are big effects are when the sauna is only done once per week but it's done in four cycles or sets we could say of 30 minutes each so that means 30 minutes in the sauna at the temperatures i described before then a five minute break just air cooling off or ten minute break then back into the sauna for 30 minutes this is brutal then

05:00again in the afternoon 30 minutes in the sauna then 10 minutes just air cooling off and then back into the sauna for 30 minutes so that's two hours at 187 to 212 degrees one day in one day with a maximum of what less than sort of 20 minutes of rest in between those little sessions than the big rest in between so you have to be very careful right heat can kill you you got to hydrate you need to make sure you get enough salt like it i mean this is this is work right um but you get you see in these human studies up to 16-fold increases in growth hormone so you can imagine this could exert some very strong reparative effect if you're training for a big event or endurance event or maybe you're just really wiped out from the week this is a stressor but it's a stressor that delivers a potent growth hormone response now if you do sauna more often than that you're not going to want to do two hours a day in the sauna because presumably you're doing other things you have a life you have a life and in addition to that the growth hormone effect starts to diminish if you become too heat adapted

06:00and that raises a more interesting question perhaps which is why is it that this two-hour protocol really works if you do it once a week to increase growth hormone it's because it's a stressor and certain stressors increase growth hormone does it have to be heat no you probably also do four really long rounds of ice bath and i'm guessing you'd probably see a similar effect no one's ever really looked you'd probably see a similar effect because it's all about the stress stimulus now those that work on exercise science and weight training would probably say yeah you could also do a this has been shown you know at 90 minutes 10 sets of 10 multiple exercises for 10 sets of 10 high volume german volume training work out and get the same growth hormone effects there's so many studies like this i personally like to do the sauna two or three days a week and if i'm traveling off and don't get the opportunity if i'm in austin it's great because there are all these sauna places but if i'm traveling abroad i don't have the time then i might do i might take a day i'm thinking wow i did three podcasts i'm exhausted when i'm in new

07:00york i like to go to a place i have no relation to them but i think it's called spa 88 it's a russian banya and i'll just go for the whole day if i've been working really really hard they serve food there they sort of borscht and all this other kind of like pickled vegetables and um they must think that you're russian you they must you must walk through the doors and they go hello brother sometimes i usually just don't the best way to to appear russian lex i hope you're listening is just not saying anything just just to know that's the most russian thing that you can say is nothing exactly very stoic um that place is great and they have different saunas steam sauna they have cold dunk and sometimes i'll just spend three four hours there there's one in san francisco called archimedes bonya so sometimes that's an occasional thing now most people are trying to incorporate this into their daily life and just like as we said for ice bath if you don't have access to ice or ice bath or cold tub you do cold shower or longer cool baths with heat i realize not everyone has access to a sauna hot baths do work now one thing about hot baths and hot sauna is they will nuke your sperm it's not new a nuke is a you know slang

08:00they will reduce viable sperm counts so for males that are trying to reproduce you know trying to create children you want to be careful about hot baths and hot sauna too often some people will bring a cold pack in and put in their groin you can't do that in a bath but i mean sperm are maintained outside the body the testicles are maintained outside the body um you're right the scrotum has varying elasticity in order to maintain temperature of the sperm that's why that that's the the various effects that have been described are there on purpose um so why human evolution design this way i don't know someone will say but in any case unless you're trying to you know and again the ice pack approach is interesting um some people do that actually there's a kind of interesting relationship between cold and testosterone and thermogen and spermatogenesis there's a little cottage industry out there i think on amazon people will buy these gel pack underwear of cou i think they're called snowballs this is cooling the scrotum in order to try and

09:00increase spermatogenesis okay now i'm not aware of any data on this but people report anika data and have shown their blood work and stuff that it it actually works to increase testosterone levels i am not aware of any periodic studies i am not i'm not i would not be sitting as comfortably as i am right now what's happening people if you enjoyed that then press here for the full unedited episode and don't forget to subscribe peace

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