Curious about cold plunges and their real benefits? This quick breakdown explores how cold exposure can enhance metabolic health by converting white fat into metabolically active beige fat. It’s a powerful tool for supporting fat loss and improving energy efficiency when used correctly.
But timing is everything. Cold plunging right after a workout can interfere with muscle recovery by reducing inflammation needed for growth. For best results, avoid routine timing to preserve the shock effect and use alternatives like saunas post-training to boost blood flow and recovery.
Highlights of the Podcast
00:04 – Why Cold Plunge?
01:30 – Don't Cold Plunge After Lifting
02:30 – Avoid Routine Timing
04:35 – Cold Plunge vs. Sauna
05:30 – Lactic Acid Myth
06:20 – When Cold Plunge Works Best
07:07 – Final Thoughts and Fat Conversion
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] So we're gonna talk about cold plunge. A lot of people have been asking me about this just because it's the thing that's popular and everybody wants to know all the fun things. It's great. Research on it's fantastic. You've got to use it right. Just like everything else. The big issue that we get into is, and this is always what I ask people like, what are your goals? If your goals for cold plunder to help you increase metabolic function. Metabolic health. Maybe maybe, you know, lose some extra fat. Fantastic. The cool thing about cold plunge is that it will turn white fat, it can turn white fat into beige fat. So if you're familiar with how fat function works metabolically, we've got white fat. You've got brown fat, which is the the real difference between white fat and brown fat is the amount of mitochondrial density that's inside the the fat cell, um, brown fat actually, uh, requires more functional energy to, to survive. And so it ends up your body has to create more ATP to keep it functioning, uh, and, you know, burn more fat, uh or sugar to maintain its function. So, uh from a metabolic standpoint, it's a great thing to do. Um,.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:30] So yeah, absolutely knock it out. From a, I have a lot of lifters and you know, I got a lot guys who were trying to, uh, gain muscle mass and that type of thing. You can use cold plunge to aid in that process. Do not do it after you work out that inflammatory response of your sore and your muscles are full of blood and all that fun jazz right after you work out, that pump, you need to maintain that as long as your body will allow you to do not decrease that inflammation. That inflammation is part of the healing process that makes your muscles bigger, stronger, and healthier. So you want to maintain that in its proper position in its proper place. So you wouldn't be fed. You want to have your sleep, all the things, uh, and then it'll start to regenerate and heal properly. Uh, the other thing that I usually will tell people to do on cold plunge is try not to make it part of your routine, try to move it around in your day. Uh, one of the reasons for that is because main functions you're trying to get from the cold plunge is the shock effect. Uh, if you do it the same time every single day, like a lot of people do it's, you know, wake up, go to the bathroom, go cold plunch for five minutes and go to everything else. The issue you run into is that you start to lose some of that shock effect. Your body gets used to it. Um, just kind of like looking at it from this point, your, your body creates systems and rhythms and patterns and programs all the time. Um.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:02:56] The easiest way to explain this is. Uh, if you wake up at the same time, every single day to an alarm at say 6 AM, your body will start naturally waking you up at five 55, five 57, you know, five 53. So like right before your alarm goes off, your buddy is like, Oh, this is when we wake up. So it wakes you up. Uh, this was one of the premise functional, uh, sets behind setting your sleep schedule. So, you, you're body gets used to these types of things. So if it starts to be like, Oh, now we're going to go get really cold. Like this is, you. This is how we do it. We just went to the bathroom and so there's a, you know, two minute walk out to the cold plunge. We're gonna get really cold and then we move on. So I would try to move that around in your day. I just wouldn't do it after you work out. Now, if you work at say 2 p.m. And you cold plunged at 7 p. M., you're fine. The issue we run into is that you don't want to go from the gym to the Cold Plunge. Give yourself an hour to separation just to kind of let that. Inflammatory process kind of work itself through. So, uh, that's the big thing on, on cold plungers that, you know, everything, like I said, everything that who they can strong enough to help a strong enough, to hurt. It's not really going to hurt you in this case, but it's going to delay the gains you're trying to get from working out in the gym. If you work out, so let's say you work at noon and then you're sore for two or three hours and you jump in the cold plunge and now you're no longer sore, you can go do some stuff. Fantastic, that's great. The thing that we, or you're gonna do it like in the morning and then work out at noon, again, you're fine, that great.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:35] Just give yourself a little bit of time between working out and doing the cold Plunge. If you wanted to do something right after you worked out, sauna would be great. Increasing blood flow throughout the body, uh, is a fantastic thing to do. Um, that will, that we'll help quite a bit. It's not going to decrease your gains as much as does the cold plunge will, because the cold plunge stops, um, inflammation and blood flow and that type of thing. When you want to increase blood flow and increase nutrient delivery and waste exportation from the muscle tissue. Um, one of the big things, and we can touch on this later. One of the big things that people get wrong about lactic acid is that it's a waste product that has to be moved out of the body. Your body uses lactate or lactic, acid, you know, the offshoot of glycogen of glucose breakdown, which is lactate, which is what the muscles are excreting. He uses that through a system called the Corey cycle, uh, to regenerate more glucose for the body Um, it re it, uh, recycles the lactate into glucose, which is a fairly simple, uh biochemical process. Um, your body also does this with all the sugar that your blood uses. So your, the way your blood actually works with blood has to run on glucose. So it brings in the glucose breaks into lactate to ATP or are released. And then your body excrete your blood excretes the lactates back into the system.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:03] The system picks it up and goes through the core recycle with it, reforming the glucose to continue on the cycle. Um Corey cycles bigger than that, but that's now, you know, the gist of the Corey cycle. Um, you don't want to break that process down. Uh, you don' want to stop that process. Uh. So again, I wouldn't really, I wouldn' really cold plunge right after you work out, uh, you want to do it throughout the day. Fantastic. Uh you want do it. Hey, I'm either going to do as soon as I wake up or I'm going to it, you know, 23 minutes before I work out. Fantastic, like knock yourself out. You can do it a little bit beforehand. Um. Because You know, you're going to, you'll immediately going to start pushing, you know, uh, blood back through those muscles. So, yeah, I would just make sure that you warm up after you freeze off. Um, but now that's the, you know, cold plunge is great. I don't do a whole lot of cold plunch cause I hate being cold. Uh, I might do it later, but it's not something I do, which is why I don't talk about it a whole a lot, but people have been asking me about it. And so that's, the big thing on it. It is great it does, you.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:07] As far as leaning out. If you're not going to be like, oh, I started cold plunging and I lost five pounds last week, but over time, like I said, it will help transition that white fat to beige fat, um, which is a healthier functional fat from a metabolic standpoint. If you not familiar with beige fat. Um, look it up. It is, it's interesting. It's, it, like, I said it's a big part of a metabolic biochemistry, but it's not something that a lot of people have heard about, so it's. It's not forefront of people's mind when they start, when they started thinking about the benefits of cold plunging or, uh, Keep that in mind. Uh, it does help in that manner, but yeah. So if you guys have any other questions, uh, hit us up, uh questions at chalmerswellness.com or you can drop them in the comments. Thanks for your time. Have a great day.
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