#218 Heat and Cold Hormesis with Sauna etc - Stronger by Stress Audiobook

Siim Land (0:00)

Welcome to the Siim Land Podcast. I'm your host Siim Land. In this episode, I'm going to play you one of the chapters of my book Stronger by Stress, the audiobook. It talks about the effects of cold and heat exposure through hormesis. If you want to get the full audiobook or learn more about this, then check out the show notes at my website, siimland.com forward slash 218 That's siimland.com forward slash 218 This episode is brought to you by Kaatsu Training. Kaatsu bands incorporate blood flow moderation training that trick the body into thinking that it's lifting heavier weights than it actually is. When traditional weight lifting requires you to reach 70 to 80% of your one repetition maximum to stimulate muscle hypertrophy, then Kaatsu achieve that defect only at 20 to 30%. So it's perfect for treating injuries or use when you don't have access to heavy weights. Research about Kaatsu bands also shows it lowers blood pressure, speeds up recovery from injuries, releases stem cells, builds muscle, burns fat and prevents age-related muscle loss. These things are a game changer and I use them almost every day. If you want to try out the Kaatsu cycle bands, then use the code SIIM for a 10% discount at kaatsuglobal.com. That's kaatsuglobal.com and the 10% code is SIIM, S-I-I-M.

Chapter six of heat and cold adaptation. Because as it turns out, exposing your body to less than comfortable temperatures is another very effective way to turn on your longevity genes. David A. Sinclair.

Okay, I now officially don't feel my toes anymore, said the high school version of me at the back of an open cargo truck. We had already been driving for about two hours at a temperature of minus 30 degrees Celsius or minus 22 Fahrenheit, and there was about as much time to go. Even worse, the wind was howling from all angles, penetrating the bones of me and my companions.

I was at the back of an army unimog transporting a small squad of eight sharpshooters, which I'll belong to. There was an entire company of us from different battalions in other trucks heading to the same location. We were chosen to get our advanced training from actual snipers. It was one of the coldest feelings I've had to endure in my life. Several hours of being completely jackhammered, a condition in which you can't stop shaking and thinking I was going to lose my toes. One of the guys from another truck almost did when he fell into a small pond during a toilet break. Being the fool he was, he didn't tell this to anyone and continued to ride along as if nothing had happened. When we had reached our destination, his toes were literally blue and he had to be transported to a local hospital. Fortunately, he kept all of his extremities.

When we arrived at Dardvin to be home for the next week, none of us felt better. It was the pit of an abandoned strip mine with a stone floor and a wind tunnel. The temperatures were as unforgiving as minus 30 degrees Celsius and it got even down to minus 35 at midnight. And yeah, we had to do night patrol for at least an hour until we could change shifts with someone else. Sleeping in a tent with a small stove was the only time we could stop shivering and enjoy a brief moment of warmth.

During the day, we trained sharpshooting, the details of which I won't get into. Basically, camouflage aka lying motionless in the snow and trying to crawl towards a target, measuring distances with binoculars, making landscape maps by drawing on a piece of paper, firing long distances and so much more. The unfortunate part was that you were much more accurate and successful if you didn't have any gloves on. It was much more effective to pull the trigger with your bare fingers, but the consequences were also higher. Even several years afterward, my fingers tend to flare up with redness during the winter when they're exposed to the cold, resembling some mild neuropathy. Nevertheless, it was something I had to do in order to be a good sharpshooter. Time spent in the military sparked my interest in cold exposure and how humans have managed to adapt to various climates. Me and my squad were constantly either drenched in the rain, sleeping underneath a tree, crawling through snow, making our way through the swamp, crossing waist-deep rivers, or just walking for hours through the forest in the middle of a cold winter night. It definitely conditioned me to handle any kind of temperatures I might come across, but it also taught me unknowingly how the human body responds to stress. In this chapter, I'm going to talk about the science of cold exposure and what's the hormesis protocol for practicing it yourself. The other side of the coin is heat and humidity, which I'm not a stranger to either. We'll cover the benefits of taking a sauna, what kind of other high temperature hormetics you can try, and how to adapt to thermal stress.