AMA #47: Cold therapy: pros, cons, and its impact on longevity

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
Hey, everyone, welcome to a sneak peek, Ask Me Anything or AMA episode of the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. At the end of this short episode, I'll explain how you can access the AMA episodes in full, along with a ton of other membership benefits we've created. Or you can learn more now by going to peterattiamd.com forward slash subscribe. So without further delay, here's today's sneak peek of the Ask Me Anything episode.
Welcome to Ask Me Anything episode 47 I'm once again joined by Nick Stenson. In today's episode, we dive into all things related to cold therapy. For those of you who are regular listeners of the podcast, or maybe follow me on social media, you probably notice I spend quite a bit of time talking about the benefits of heat exposure in particular around saunas.
But we do receive just as many questions about cold exposure and the benefits thereof. So we decided to do a dedicated AMA around the topic where we incorporated all of those questions. For this AMA, we focus on what we do and don't know around cold therapy, including the different types of cold therapies. This would be showers, cold plunges, and cryotherapy as the three main types. How can cold therapy affect mood or even be a treatment for depression? Talk about claims that cold therapy can help activate brown adipose tissue or BAT for metabolic health. Talk about what happens if you exercise in the cold.
Any potential downsides around cold therapy. Talk about potential zero protective benefits around cold therapy. That is to say, does cold therapy provide any benefit in terms of slowing aging and or delaying death, living longer? And then we talk about the consensus or lack thereof around what an effective cold therapy protocol should look like.
One thing to note is this is an audio only AMA. There's no video for it. However, the show notes will display anything I reference and more. So without further delay, I hope you enjoy AMA 47

**Nick Stenson** (2:10)
All right, Peter, welcome to another AMA. How you doing?

**Peter Attia** (2:15)
I'm doing very well.

**Nick Stenson** (2:17)
So Peter, for today's AMA, we're really focusing on one core topic that we get asked about a lot, which is everything around cold therapy.
And so for people who listen to the podcast, follow you on social media. We've spent some time recently talking about the benefits of sauna and heat. And way back in the day, I think it was on AMA 16, you and Bob talked about hot and cold, and we've kind of updated your thoughts on hot therapy, but we haven't touched on cold. And so what we did is we just compiled all those questions around cold exposure, cold therapy, and if that has potential similar benefits to sauna. And so we'll hopefully cover them all today, including really what we know and don't know about cold therapy, how it can affect mood or be a treatment for depression, what we know about the claims that it helps activation of brown adipose tissue for metabolic health, any potential cons around cold therapy, are there possible geo-protective benefits, exercising in the cold, and ultimately, do we know anything around a consensus for an effective cold therapy protocol? So if all goes according to plan, that's what we'll cover today.
Anything you want to add before we start jumping into that?

**Peter Attia** (3:31)
Only that I am exceptionally happy that the F1 season as of our recording is finally back. It's a very difficult time for me when F1 is not happening, so leave it at that.

**Nick Stenson** (3:47)
For those listening at the time of this recording, it's Friday before F1 starts on Sunday.

**Peter Attia** (3:53)
So practice, we've just finished FP1 and FP2 for the first race.

**Nick Stenson** (3:57)
So how many episodes of Drive to Survive have you watched?

**Peter Attia** (4:01)
I'm trying to nurse it along. I've only watched five of 10 so far.
And I will say that of the first five, number four is my favorite so far.

**Nick Stenson** (4:12)
Okay. And how are you thinking about this season? Any early predictions?
Knowing again that by the time this comes out, a lot more will be known, but we're recording this completely brand new to the season.

**Peter Attia** (4:28)
Certainly going by what we saw in the testing week, Red Bull looked incredibly strong. The top three look predictably strong in Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari. I think the two biggest surprises were the strength of Aston Martin, which were horrible last year, and not only the continued weakness of McLaren, but it looks like McLaren took a step back.