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Does Whole-Body Cryotherapy Work? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works
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Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:45
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry Rowland. So that
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Speaker 1: stuff you hi rolls and body. That's the second time
0:54
Speaker 1: I've been able to do that on this show. Do
0:56
Speaker 1: you remember the first one? Cryonics colon high Frozen Body
1:02
Speaker 1: Exclamation August two thousand eleven. But cryonics is not the
1:06
Speaker 1: same thing as cryotherapy. So if you think you guys
1:11
Speaker 1: are doubling up already, nope, Well they could even toss
1:14
Speaker 1: out medically induced hypothermia. We did that one to all different,
1:18
Speaker 1: totally different, mostly different. Um No, we're talking cryotherapy. It's
1:24
Speaker 1: um specifically whole body cryotherapy because cryo therapy has been
1:28
Speaker 1: around for a really long time. Have you ever had
1:30
Speaker 1: a wart? No? Oh, you never had this happen to you. Well,
1:34
Speaker 1: actually I did have. Um I forgot, I had the
1:36
Speaker 1: planner warts on my feet. You get them burned off? Um?
1:40
Speaker 1: I did not? Pleasant. Yeah, and those are a bugger.
1:44
Speaker 1: I used to get warts here there when I was
1:45
Speaker 1: a kid. I would go to the doctor and it
1:48
Speaker 1: would open a freezer and take out like a this
1:51
Speaker 1: crazy metal thervice not a jar, boards that they collected. Yeah.
1:57
Speaker 1: I thought they feed them to you and that's how
1:58
Speaker 1: you get rid of your words. Yeah, I think it is.
2:03
Speaker 1: When my mom would take me to the witch, and
2:05
Speaker 1: that's how I would get rid of my um No.
2:09
Speaker 1: They would just take it, take a little swab of
2:11
Speaker 1: this stuff and like put the swab onto your wart
2:13
Speaker 1: and it would just burn it off, like they burned
2:17
Speaker 1: it by freezing it. Yeah, because they're using liquid nitrogen.
2:21
Speaker 1: It was so cold that it burns it basically just
2:24
Speaker 1: burns tissue. You know what I actually have at home
2:27
Speaker 1: right now? I have a spray can of medical freezing
2:32
Speaker 1: spray because I used to go to the doctor to
2:36
Speaker 1: get my skin tags removed because my body is just
2:40
Speaker 1: lousy with them here in my old age. And then
2:42
Speaker 1: you just finally just stole the can so you can
2:44
Speaker 1: do it yourself. Didn't steal a can. I bought a can.
2:46
Speaker 1: You can buy the bo yeah on the Amazon bought okay,
2:51
Speaker 1: And I got a little uh, the little sharp clipper,
2:55
Speaker 1: not nail clippers, but like um scissors, No, not scissors.
2:59
Speaker 1: It's sort of been between the nail clipper and a scissor.
3:01
Speaker 1: It looks like something you get out a hardware store.
3:03
Speaker 1: Is it like scissors? But then the ends bent at
3:05
Speaker 1: like a forty five degree angle. No, they look like
3:09
Speaker 1: just a pair of dykes, like in a toolbox. But
3:11
Speaker 1: there for your toe and fingernail kit. I don't know
3:15
Speaker 1: what those are. I'll just show them to you, Okay.
3:18
Speaker 1: So anyway, I'm gonna start blasting them and cutting them
3:21
Speaker 1: off myself, or I'm gonna have Emily do it. Yeah,
3:25
Speaker 1: please take a video of this or Facebook live it. Yeah. Yeah,
3:29
Speaker 1: that's the new thing. Yeah, look out for that people's book.
3:32
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's their version of periscope. Yeah, I'm sure
3:37
Speaker 1: they don't really like that, but that's exactly what we're
3:41
Speaker 1: gonna try it out. That's medical uh burning of Moleska.
3:48
Speaker 1: Bring your little clippers and your medical freezing spray on
3:52
Speaker 1: tour and I will film it and we'll just see
3:55
Speaker 1: what happened. I don't know if I could get that
3:56
Speaker 1: through security. You just have to throw it over the
4:00
Speaker 1: detector and as you go through and catch it on
4:02
Speaker 1: the other I think. So that's what I learned in
4:06
Speaker 1: Boondocks Saints. Oh man, what a movie man, that guy
4:10
Speaker 1: I wanted. I've never seen the documentary about Tony Duffy.
4:14
Speaker 1: I can't remember. I think it was the bar Owner
4:17
Speaker 1: turned um like Hollywood wonder Kin for guy who blew it?
4:22
Speaker 1: All right, Troy Duffy, great documentary. That's his name is
4:25
Speaker 1: Troy Duffy. I want to see it, alright. So movie
4:29
Speaker 1: sidetracked already. Oh, carylo therapy. I'm sorry. So when you
4:35
Speaker 1: take liquid nitrogen UM, that's really how sidetracked. I just
4:40
Speaker 1: got like I forgot what we were talking about for
4:44
Speaker 1: a second. When you take liquid nitrogen and put it
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Speaker 1: on your tissue, that's um local cryotherapy. That's like, that's
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Speaker 1: there's no question that that actually works and what it does,
4:53
Speaker 1: we understand it. The whole body crowd therapy is different.
4:57
Speaker 1: It's kind of this trendy new thing in the health
5:00
Speaker 1: and metas spots where you basically get into what they
5:04
Speaker 1: call a cold sauna and are exposed to liquid nitrogen
5:08
Speaker 1: gas and they're supposedly has a whole range of health benefits,
5:13
Speaker 1: which should immediately set off your skeptical antenna. Yeah, if
5:17
Speaker 1: something like Cure's ten ailments, it sounds a lot like
5:20
Speaker 1: snake old, especially when the ailments are very vague. Yeah,
5:24
Speaker 1: you want to I want is I want something that
5:26
Speaker 1: cures the one ailment I have? Right? Not, Hey, it
5:30
Speaker 1: will help with these eight things. Yeah, And I'm not
5:32
Speaker 1: faulting anybody who's saying like, well, we don't know that
5:36
Speaker 1: this how it works. We just know it works, because
5:39
Speaker 1: a lot of Western medicine has no idea how their
5:42
Speaker 1: effective treatments work. They just know they do work. So
5:45
Speaker 1: there's there's I have no issue with that. The problem
5:48
Speaker 1: with cryotherapy is we should just say right off the
5:51
Speaker 1: bat is there's really no scientific evidence that this works
5:54
Speaker 1: at all. Um it has maybe a little bit of
5:58
Speaker 1: um an impact done inflammation. But well, we'll get to
6:02
Speaker 1: all that. I'm getting ahead of ourselves. Don't spoil it,
6:05
Speaker 1: Sorry he did. Should we edit that part out? No,
6:08
Speaker 1: let's leave it in there. But first, let's go back
6:12
Speaker 1: to Japan in the nineteen seventies. Let's take the way
6:14
Speaker 1: back machine, which I bet Japan in the seventies was
6:23
Speaker 1: a pretty fun place to be. Yes to the office
6:27
Speaker 1: of Dr Toshima. Is it Yama Yamauchi, and he was
6:32
Speaker 1: supposedly the first guy, the first doctor to actually use cryotherapy,
6:36
Speaker 1: and in his case, he used it to help treat
6:39
Speaker 1: rheumatoid arthritis patients. Still doing it. Oh, I'm sure he
6:43
Speaker 1: has a clinic on an island called I believe Kyushu.
6:46
Speaker 1: I thought it was gonna be Yamauchi Island. It might
6:48
Speaker 1: as well be. I'm sure that guy is getting loaded
6:51
Speaker 1: these days. Money not well maybe both Oka Hi hi
6:56
Speaker 1: high end Japanese Scotch and money. Yeah, Japanese scott just
7:00
Speaker 1: good stuff. But yes it is. Did you know seriously?
7:05
Speaker 1: Um uh Crown Royal rye one like world's best whiskey. Recently,
7:11
Speaker 1: this is the second time he told everybody, just so
7:13
Speaker 1: astounded by it I have yet to try it, actually
7:16
Speaker 1: I have, you know, but we'll try it on the
7:18
Speaker 1: road maybe if we can get our hands on some.
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Speaker 1: So Yamauchi was trying it with the rumatroid arthritis patients
7:24
Speaker 1: and then it's spread through Europe and eventually made its
7:27
Speaker 1: way over here where it became has become a very
7:30
Speaker 1: trendy thing. And of course celebrities, if they're in on it,
7:35
Speaker 1: then you know it's the latest in Yeah, maybe not
7:38
Speaker 1: greatest treatment because celebrities they're just like us, yeah, except
7:41
Speaker 1: that more money to waste on frivolous things. So um,
7:44
Speaker 1: I love how you just kind of glossed over it.
7:47
Speaker 1: But how it got here Apparently in the Soviet block
7:50
Speaker 1: they picked up on this treatment that was being used
7:52
Speaker 1: for rumor troid arthritis in Japan Soviet athletes, and you know,
7:57
Speaker 1: it probably wasn't by choice back then. They were forced
8:00
Speaker 1: into these things, right, you know, like the all Drug
8:04
Speaker 1: Olympics guy like get down off the uh the balance
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Speaker 1: beam and get in that get in that cold saunta
8:10
Speaker 1: cold sauna. Yeah. But the whole idea um that this
8:13
Speaker 1: is that this there's some sort of benefit health benefit
8:16
Speaker 1: the cold. It doesn't lie with Yamauchi. Um, there's it
8:21
Speaker 1: goes back quite a long way. Um, there's this whole
8:24
Speaker 1: idea that taking a cold plunge, cold water immersion like
8:28
Speaker 1: the Polar Bear clubs. Yeah, and Finland they call it
8:32
Speaker 1: of a two in Ti. So they get in the
8:34
Speaker 1: sauna and then they run out and their bear skin underwear.
8:39
Speaker 1: Yes is this Finland, and they jump in the cold,
8:43
Speaker 1: icy waters of the nearby lake. And uh, it's supposed
8:45
Speaker 1: to rejuvenate them and make them gasp for air their
8:50
Speaker 1: body heels. It's it's supposed to improve mood, well, increase
8:55
Speaker 1: your metabolism, do all sorts of crazy stuff. But this
8:59
Speaker 1: whole idea, um, that that has health benefits. I was
9:04
Speaker 1: very surprised. I figured I would find like, oh, the
9:07
Speaker 1: Finns were the ones who started this, or may be
9:10
Speaker 1: in Iceland or something like that. Um. I couldn't find
9:13
Speaker 1: anything that talked about the history of ice swimming. UM.
9:18
Speaker 1: Further back than what this article comes up with, which
9:20
Speaker 1: is a guy in New York named Professor Sugarman Sugarman. Yeah,
9:27
Speaker 1: surely Sugarman sugar Man. Yeah, what was that in the
9:33
Speaker 1: eight hundreds when he was the human polar bear and
9:37
Speaker 1: he would get into the icy rivers in New York
9:40
Speaker 1: and um, he was a help guy and so he said,
9:44
Speaker 1: this is helping my body out. You should do it.
9:46
Speaker 1: You know, you think I'm crazy. And by the way,
9:48
Speaker 1: Graham Cracker's cure masturbation, is that a thing? Oh yeah, really, dude,
9:53
Speaker 1: We've got to do like that whole road Dwellville sometimes.
9:56
Speaker 1: That was such an interesting Yeah, believe so from the
10:00
Speaker 1: serial Kellogg Kellogg. But there was a doctor Graham who
10:03
Speaker 1: came up with Graham Crackers. Um, like there was a
10:06
Speaker 1: whole bunch of crazy thinking at that time. That was
10:09
Speaker 1: really interesting. I saw that movie way back when. But
10:12
Speaker 1: it's been a while, Anthony Hopkins, right, yeah, and I
10:16
Speaker 1: think I wasn't Matthew Broderick in it. I feel like
10:19
Speaker 1: it's been a while. It wasn't made in the late eighties. Yeah,
10:23
Speaker 1: Matthew Broderick. It was the one that he was in
10:26
Speaker 1: The Freshman. Did you ever see that with Bruno Kirby
10:28
Speaker 1: and part of that just the other day? Actually? Yeah? Yeah?
10:33
Speaker 1: And I thought how odd that Brando would agree to
10:35
Speaker 1: reprise his role from the Godfather in a comedic way,
10:39
Speaker 1: kind of like de Niro has done to lesser success.
10:43
Speaker 1: You know what else? Was a good Brando movie? Um
10:46
Speaker 1: don Juan DeMarco. Yeah, not bad. Yeah, I liked it,
10:51
Speaker 1: although I'm speaking from like when you saw it back then. Yeah,
10:54
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it in a long time. I bet
10:55
Speaker 1: it holds up. I bet it's very relevant timely in
10:59
Speaker 1: top cool. I'll chopo all over the so. Uh, like
11:05
Speaker 1: you said, they have done some studies that found it
11:07
Speaker 1: doing the ice swims helps reduce chronic pain. But I'll
11:11
Speaker 1: just go ahead and say this about all these studies,
11:13
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about a lot of them. They're just
11:15
Speaker 1: all over the map, and none of them are very
11:17
Speaker 1: controlled or very good. Yeah, so it's hard to really
11:20
Speaker 1: make a judgment call when you're not doing the good research.
11:23
Speaker 1: So the jumping in a lake um as part of
11:26
Speaker 1: a polar Bear club to make yourself guess have you
11:29
Speaker 1: already done that? Not jumping in a lake, but gone
11:31
Speaker 1: into like a cold water bath? Well we jump we
11:33
Speaker 1: Yeah I did it in high school and a frozen lake. Oh,
11:36
Speaker 1: so you have done that. Yeah, there was a church
11:39
Speaker 1: camp that had a big, like fifty ft slide into
11:43
Speaker 1: the lake and in the summer it's a lovely thing
11:44
Speaker 1: and in the winter, you know, the guys were like, well,
11:47
Speaker 1: we're gonna do it, right, and we did it. And
11:49
Speaker 1: did you go Jesus No, I didn't know. Were you like,
11:54
Speaker 1: oh this is I mean, how long were you in there? Spill?
11:58
Speaker 1: I had no idea. Well, I slid in and then
12:00
Speaker 1: quickly swammed ashore and got out and got warm and
12:04
Speaker 1: ended up on the cover of guide posts shivering in
12:08
Speaker 1: your little um polar bear skin bathing suits. Yeah. And
12:12
Speaker 1: by the way, people who sent in that cover of
12:13
Speaker 1: guide posts that they thought might have been me good
12:16
Speaker 1: investigative skills, because the way I described it, it it could
12:19
Speaker 1: have very well have been me, but it was not me.
12:21
Speaker 1: That one's yet to be found. So um, this idea
12:26
Speaker 1: of jumping in the lake, it's it kind of it's somehow,
12:30
Speaker 1: not sure how made its way into sports medicine, where
12:35
Speaker 1: it became very big cold water immersion. Yeah. Like you
12:38
Speaker 1: see the NFL player sitting in like an ice tub
12:40
Speaker 1: after a game. He likes his ice paths um. And
12:46
Speaker 1: the whole, the whole idea behind it is that you
12:48
Speaker 1: just exerted your muscles, right, and when you exert your muscles, um,
12:53
Speaker 1: they become basically infused and swollen with blood. Right, So
12:58
Speaker 1: one of the reasons your muscles ache after exercises because
13:01
Speaker 1: they're swollen like their their tissue is is just larger
13:05
Speaker 1: than normal and it causes this ache. When you immerse
13:09
Speaker 1: yourself in water, the thinking goes, the hydrostatic pressure outside
13:13
Speaker 1: of your body draws the fluid toward your skin, so
13:18
Speaker 1: it draws it out of the muscles and eventually back
13:21
Speaker 1: into the blood vessels, so it creates or it lessens
13:24
Speaker 1: that aching thing. The problem is, if you're using cold
13:29
Speaker 1: water immersion for that kind of thing, it doesn't really
13:32
Speaker 1: make any sense because cold water immersion creates vaso constriction,
13:36
Speaker 1: which means it makes your blood vessels smaller, which would
13:38
Speaker 1: make them less apt to accept the blood from the muscles. Well,
13:43
Speaker 1: there's some people that think it's actually has the reverse
13:47
Speaker 1: effect and it's not doing what it says that it's doing.
13:51
Speaker 1: But like I said, the opposite. Did you see that
13:53
Speaker 1: study that I sent you, which one the one that
13:56
Speaker 1: had like it was the discussion part had just like
13:58
Speaker 1: a couple of different I don't think so. Well. There's
14:01
Speaker 1: this one study I came across, and it was basically
14:03
Speaker 1: a survey of studies and it it showed like this
14:06
Speaker 1: study found that these people's um cycling ability after a
14:12
Speaker 1: cold water immersion, like after not you jump in an
14:15
Speaker 1: ice bath and then jump on a cycle like the
14:17
Speaker 1: day after, their cycling ability dropped from like you know
14:22
Speaker 1: to just and the only the only factor involved was
14:27
Speaker 1: cold water immersion. Uh. There's another guy named Joseph Costello.
14:31
Speaker 1: He's an exercise physiologist from the University of Portsmouth in
14:35
Speaker 1: the UK, and he said that there's more evidence coming
14:38
Speaker 1: out that inflammation, uh is actually part of the recovery process.
14:45
Speaker 1: So you don't want to stop your inflammation, Uh, you
14:48
Speaker 1: want to embrace it. I guess right. Well, one of
14:50
Speaker 1: the ways that your muscles adapt is by basically being
14:54
Speaker 1: torn and rebuilding themselves, and they do that through inflammation. Yeah,
14:57
Speaker 1: and that was by the way, I read an article
14:59
Speaker 1: from wash Post called the Big Chill Cryotherapy Maybe trendy,
15:03
Speaker 1: but does it work? It doesn't sound the way. Not
15:05
Speaker 1: only does it not work like you were saying, like
15:08
Speaker 1: Costello's finding, there seems to be more and more evidence
15:11
Speaker 1: that it actually has a detrimental effect where if you're
15:14
Speaker 1: an elite athlete, you do not want to do cold
15:17
Speaker 1: water immersion. Yeah, all right, Well let's take a break
15:19
Speaker 1: and we'll talk a little bit about kind of the
15:21
Speaker 1: cost and what's going on today with this stuff. All right,
15:46
Speaker 1: josh U, a little bit of the nuts and bolts
15:49
Speaker 1: on cryotherapy these days. You will go. If you're in
15:52
Speaker 1: a big city, you probably already have a cryo spa. Um,
15:56
Speaker 1: it's probably just some some spa bought one of these machines. Yeah, yeah,
16:02
Speaker 1: I don't mean it's dedicated to cry out spotting. Well
16:06
Speaker 1: maybe there's some in the biggest of cities cities, but
16:11
Speaker 1: you know, look it up on your internet machine and
16:13
Speaker 1: if you want to go check it out, you can.
16:15
Speaker 1: It will cost you about forty or fifty bucks. Or
16:18
Speaker 1: you can get like a monthly membership. I saw one
16:20
Speaker 1: and um Minnesota, which I don't know why, they just
16:23
Speaker 1: don't go outside in the winter and accomplished the same thing.
16:27
Speaker 1: But it was four and fifty dollars a month. But
16:30
Speaker 1: you're unlimited cryotherapy and you don't want to use it
16:33
Speaker 1: more than once a day. So I did the math,
16:35
Speaker 1: and that's still the savings of about six hundred bucks
16:39
Speaker 1: if you went every day. Yeah, I wonder how much
16:41
Speaker 1: it costs to buy one of those. I'm sure it
16:44
Speaker 1: would pay for itself in ten years. And I wonder
16:46
Speaker 1: if you can eventually just put a tabletop on it
16:49
Speaker 1: and double it as a dining table once you inevitably
16:52
Speaker 1: quit using it to put a lamp on it. Uh
16:56
Speaker 1: so four to your fifty bucks a pop, um, and
16:59
Speaker 1: you will be in the it's really really cold, and um,
17:02
Speaker 1: it's I think that's an understatement. Yeah, and it's gas.
17:06
Speaker 1: We need to be really clear. You're not in cold water.
17:08
Speaker 1: It's dry gas, and that's what saves you from things
17:12
Speaker 1: like frost bite or freezing to death or getting hypothermia,
17:16
Speaker 1: because that's right, it's gas. That liquid nitrogen, when it's
17:19
Speaker 1: exposed to the warmer temperatures of the air and it's
17:22
Speaker 1: released into that thing, immediately gasifies. Yeah. And we're talking
17:26
Speaker 1: negative two hundred and fifty six degrees fahrenheit or hundred
17:30
Speaker 1: and sixty degrees celsius right negative. That is colder than
17:34
Speaker 1: anything on planet Earth. Right. So if you could find
17:37
Speaker 1: liquid that remained liquid at those low temperatures, right, um,
17:43
Speaker 1: you would basically immediately die when you immerse yourself in it.
17:46
Speaker 1: And the reason why gas you can expose yourself to
17:50
Speaker 1: temperatures of gas like that rather than liquid, because liquid
17:53
Speaker 1: is UM has a higher heat capacity, which means it
17:56
Speaker 1: absorbs heat more readily, and it's a great conductor of heat,
18:00
Speaker 1: so it wits that heat away from your body. UM
18:03
Speaker 1: I think twenty five times faster than air does. So
18:09
Speaker 1: you can withstand this this cold cold temperatures again negative
18:13
Speaker 1: two d and fifty six degrees fahrenheit. Right, that's the
18:17
Speaker 1: coldest temperature on Earth right there in that little cryo sauna.
18:21
Speaker 1: There's nowhere else on Earth that's even remotely close to that. UM.
18:24
Speaker 1: But you can withstand it for a certain amount of time,
18:27
Speaker 1: Like I think three minutes is the maximum time that
18:31
Speaker 1: they suggest. They say two to three minutes is, which
18:33
Speaker 1: I guess that's a plus. You pop in there, you're
18:36
Speaker 1: gone five minutes later. Oh yeah, If you want one
18:38
Speaker 1: of these things, it's like printing your own money aside
18:41
Speaker 1: from the lawsuit payoff UM. And you will, like I said,
18:44
Speaker 1: two to three minutes at the most, and it penetrates
18:48
Speaker 1: no more than a half millimeter below the surface of
18:51
Speaker 1: the skin UM in the case of the gas. And
18:54
Speaker 1: here are some of the things they say will help
18:56
Speaker 1: with UM anytime. The first one is destroys toxins, and
19:01
Speaker 1: my radar is up. Yeah, because that's such a broad claim.
19:05
Speaker 1: You know, uh, increases metabolism, that's another one that so
19:09
Speaker 1: you'll actually lose weight, right, boost your immune system, and
19:13
Speaker 1: slow aging. Like all of these sounds like something you'd
19:17
Speaker 1: see on the subway at in New York. What are
19:19
Speaker 1: the four broadest health concerns you have? Human? Yeah, well,
19:24
Speaker 1: that happens to take care of all of them. I'm
19:27
Speaker 1: surprised it doesn't say like, helps you get sleep or
19:29
Speaker 1: helps you if you're getting too much sleep. Right, there's
19:33
Speaker 1: probably a spot advertises that. Probably so. And the reason
19:37
Speaker 1: that they can do this is because, chuck, it's unregulated. Yeah,
19:41
Speaker 1: there are some states that now offer suggestions on I
19:46
Speaker 1: believe one state, just one, Nevada, the one where a
19:51
Speaker 1: lady died doing it. Well, let's go ahead and talk
19:54
Speaker 1: about her, because we're not laughing at her a tragic accident,
19:59
Speaker 1: because it was awful. We're laughing at the ridiculous lack
20:02
Speaker 1: of oversight on this extraordinarily dangerous machine. Exactly. This was
20:07
Speaker 1: in the July, a place called Rejuvenile rejuven Ice. But
20:13
Speaker 1: think for real with that, Yeah, I think so maybe
20:17
Speaker 1: that's an all cryospa. It's a med spa and Henderson, Nevada,
20:21
Speaker 1: and um, this lady who worked there when in one
20:25
Speaker 1: day and notice that the machine was already on, and
20:27
Speaker 1: then on the floor next to the machine, she's oh,
20:31
Speaker 1: she was still in the machine with it on. Oh.
20:35
Speaker 1: I didn't think you could lay down in this thing.
20:36
Speaker 1: I thought it just set you up with your next
20:38
Speaker 1: sticking out. I think she crumpled. Okay, Yeah, so this
20:41
Speaker 1: thing is kind of shaped like a barrel. Um. It's
20:43
Speaker 1: not like a bed that you laid down in. No,
20:45
Speaker 1: it's like you remember that one um or onlike old
20:50
Speaker 1: timey cartoons where like a guy's taking a Schwitz like
20:54
Speaker 1: they go into that machine and like their head sticks out,
20:56
Speaker 1: but inside it's basically like a wet sauna. I don't
21:00
Speaker 1: know what you speak, I can picture it. Okay, say
21:03
Speaker 1: you got into an iron lung and then they stood
21:05
Speaker 1: you up. Okay, looks like that. Well, at any rate,
21:09
Speaker 1: she found her coworker, um Chelsea, I have no idea
21:13
Speaker 1: how to bring a akey Selbassian found her frozen solid
21:21
Speaker 1: dead obviously, And what they think might have happened was
21:26
Speaker 1: that because this lady knew how to work in machine.
21:28
Speaker 1: She used the machine for herself, worked there and was
21:31
Speaker 1: an advocate, so she knew the dangers. Um. So they're
21:34
Speaker 1: thinking is that maybe she bent down to pick something up,
21:37
Speaker 1: got too much nitrogen in her body because you need
21:40
Speaker 1: that proper mix of oxygen, and UH just passed out
21:44
Speaker 1: and then froze. Because they found that she died from afphixiation,
21:48
Speaker 1: not from being frozen, right, and she was. Had she
21:51
Speaker 1: taken one, maybe even two breaths, it would have been
21:55
Speaker 1: virtually pure nitrogen and at that concentration or that lack
22:01
Speaker 1: of oxygen um in the air she was breathing, it
22:04
Speaker 1: would just take one or two breaths for her to
22:06
Speaker 1: immediately lose consciousness. Once she lost consciousness, she was using
22:10
Speaker 1: this thing alone. There was no one to see her,
22:13
Speaker 1: which is why she didn't die of being frozen. To us,
22:16
Speaker 1: she died from asphyxiation. It's that inert gas asphyxiation that
22:20
Speaker 1: we talked about in the lethal injection episode. Like it
22:23
Speaker 1: just takes one or two breaths and that's it. Yeah,
22:25
Speaker 1: And now Um stated in the Nevada has Um some
22:28
Speaker 1: recommended Uh. They basically said, hey, why don't you just
22:34
Speaker 1: say you've got to be over eighteen, you gotta be
22:36
Speaker 1: taller than five ft. Uh, no history of stroke, seizure
22:40
Speaker 1: or high blood pressure. It's almost like to write a
22:42
Speaker 1: roller coaster. Yeah, except for the age thing. Not be pregnant,
22:46
Speaker 1: and not have a pacemaker. And these are just suggested
22:48
Speaker 1: guidelines in Nevada at this point. Uh. And they also
22:52
Speaker 1: said it'd also be good if in your office you
22:55
Speaker 1: knew CPR and you had defibrillators and um, a working
22:58
Speaker 1: phone that could call a nine one one. But again
23:02
Speaker 1: all just recommendations at this point. They also Nevada also
23:05
Speaker 1: recommended that um spas who offer crowd therapy post signs
23:10
Speaker 1: that say, um, there's no scientific evidence that this does anything,
23:15
Speaker 1: so let's we'll talk about You to sign a waiver
23:17
Speaker 1: too that says I could die. You want to talk
23:21
Speaker 1: about the science after a break, so chuckers. Um, there's
23:49
Speaker 1: again there's a lot of people who are like, this
23:51
Speaker 1: is all whui, which is weird that it doesn't do
23:54
Speaker 1: anything beneficial. But the only thing that it's been shown
23:58
Speaker 1: to even remotely have an e act on is inflammation.
24:02
Speaker 1: There's very little um discussion about whether it affects inflammation. UM,
24:08
Speaker 1: and that's why Yamauchi originally was using this stuff too,
24:12
Speaker 1: to decrease the inflammation in uh rheumatoid arthritis suffers. Right, Yeah,
24:18
Speaker 1: so it definitely does decrease inflammation. But other than that,
24:22
Speaker 1: everything else is UM kind of a bogus claim, or
24:25
Speaker 1: at the very least, it's a claim that's not backed
24:27
Speaker 1: up by any real science. Yeah, and again there UM
24:31
Speaker 1: supposedly is mounting evidence that inflammation you don't want to
24:34
Speaker 1: reduce necessarily as an athlete, and that could be a
24:37
Speaker 1: vital part of the process of healing and regenerating. Uh So,
24:41
Speaker 1: in two thousand fifteen, there was one study UM that
24:44
Speaker 1: only had sixty four participants, And what I found was
24:48
Speaker 1: that they basically picked like young, fit, white dudes for
24:54
Speaker 1: the study, and you just can't do that if you're
24:56
Speaker 1: going to get an accurate uh result. And I think
24:59
Speaker 1: that's what happened. They got a result that most legit
25:02
Speaker 1: scientists have just had to throw out basically, Right, Well,
25:05
Speaker 1: the two thousand fifteen study was a survey, and it
25:07
Speaker 1: pooled all of the like all of the available studies,
25:11
Speaker 1: and all the available studies together only came to a
25:15
Speaker 1: population size of sixty four and Yeah, like you said,
25:18
Speaker 1: they were homogeneous basically, So that's not good. There's not
25:23
Speaker 1: a lot of investigation about this stuff. There's not a
25:25
Speaker 1: lot of oversight. Yeah. They found another two thousand twelve
25:29
Speaker 1: study that said they found no difference between cryotherapy and
25:34
Speaker 1: just the regular ice bath that um, like an athlete
25:37
Speaker 1: might take in the locker room. So why pay all
25:41
Speaker 1: this money to go to a cryotherapy session? So the
25:43
Speaker 1: people who say that say, well, your chances of hypothermia
25:46
Speaker 1: are a lot less because you're wet, Yeah, which makes sense. Yeah,
25:49
Speaker 1: Well you're not wet in the cryoson all right, So
25:52
Speaker 1: you're gonna your body is going to um maintain it's
25:56
Speaker 1: it's temperature a lot longer. It's not gonna lose its
25:58
Speaker 1: temperature heat as quickly. So it's not as dangerous as
26:02
Speaker 1: what some proponents would say, unless you're wet going in. Yeah,
26:05
Speaker 1: which has happened. This this story just is mind boggling
26:10
Speaker 1: to me. Which one the guy, um, the sprinter Yeah,
26:14
Speaker 1: who who really should have known better? Right? His name
26:16
Speaker 1: is um Justin Gatlin. He's an American sprinter for Team USA,
26:21
Speaker 1: world famous world class sprinter, right, um, And he was
26:24
Speaker 1: training down in Orlando for Korea, the World Games, I
26:29
Speaker 1: think the World Championships, and it was hot because it's
26:31
Speaker 1: almost always hot in Orlando, right, and he goes straight
26:35
Speaker 1: from his workout to the cry o sauna. Yeah, Like,
26:38
Speaker 1: what I want to know is why don't they have
26:40
Speaker 1: people with towels saying the one thing you don't want
26:43
Speaker 1: to do is get in here wet. Yeah, I just
26:45
Speaker 1: don't understand. I don't understand it either, But it's difference
26:48
Speaker 1: between oversight and just being dumb, right, And but you
26:51
Speaker 1: can make the case that he was very dumb. He
26:53
Speaker 1: walked right into the cryo um sauna wearing his wet
26:57
Speaker 1: socks still and I think possibly is wet. Shoot, and
27:01
Speaker 1: then he immediately got frostbite. Yeah, his feet froze and
27:05
Speaker 1: he ended up getting he was hobble basically couldn't even
27:09
Speaker 1: put on his running spikes, so I think he had
27:11
Speaker 1: to withdraw or no, he actually ran and got and
27:14
Speaker 1: lost the Usine bolt of Yeah, it lost big time.
27:16
Speaker 1: But apparently he's back to form according to this. But
27:19
Speaker 1: the problem was he got frostbite from wearing his socks
27:22
Speaker 1: and his shoes, and the blisters and the scars that
27:26
Speaker 1: formed after them were perfectly lined up with the tops
27:30
Speaker 1: of his socks and his running spikes because that's what
27:33
Speaker 1: he was wearing wet in the cryosana. So that's what what.
27:38
Speaker 1: At least one person has died. You can get hobbled
27:41
Speaker 1: from it, even if you're an elite athlete, if you're
27:44
Speaker 1: not using your noodle. Yeah. What else, Well, this one
27:47
Speaker 1: lady sued a company because, um, she got frostbite on
27:52
Speaker 1: her hands because they recommended she wear wet gloves. I
27:57
Speaker 1: have no idea why they would say this, but the
28:00
Speaker 1: recommendation was to wear wet gloves, and she ended up
28:02
Speaker 1: getting frost bite in her hands wet gloves, so that
28:04
Speaker 1: was it wasn't like accidental. They said you should wear
28:07
Speaker 1: wet gloves. So here's in this article. It's pretty great
28:12
Speaker 1: what the spas reply was to this lawsuit. They said that, um, hey,
28:19
Speaker 1: she signed a liability waiver and she wasn't ensuring her
28:22
Speaker 1: own safety. So apparently she should have been smart enough
28:25
Speaker 1: to not listen to them when they told her to
28:27
Speaker 1: wear wet gloves, is what the spas UM reply to
28:31
Speaker 1: the lawsuit was. One of the thoughts on why this
28:33
Speaker 1: might help is that it might just be a placebo effect. Well, okay, yes,
28:37
Speaker 1: so now we really I I it's I've been kind
28:40
Speaker 1: of obvious. We're both a little skeptical of this. I
28:42
Speaker 1: think it's fair to say, right, that's right. I'm not
28:45
Speaker 1: being judgment although, like, if you um want to try
28:49
Speaker 1: this and you feel like you're getting some sort of
28:50
Speaker 1: benefit from it, knock yourself out. Just do it safely
28:53
Speaker 1: and smartly, please um. But there the skepticism is largely
29:01
Speaker 1: centered around the idea that this is a placebo effect,
29:03
Speaker 1: especially with things like pain relief. Anything that goes beyond inflammation,
29:09
Speaker 1: uh is probably a placebo. Yeah. They did a study
29:12
Speaker 1: in Australian two thousand fourteen. They had thirty young men
29:16
Speaker 1: put them through what they call it high intensity workout.
29:19
Speaker 1: I said, they get sore, and then they divided them up.
29:22
Speaker 1: They had um fifteen minutes in one of three tubs
29:27
Speaker 1: very cold water and nothing like the cryotherapy, even just
29:31
Speaker 1: cold water. I think it said fifty degrees um, one
29:35
Speaker 1: body temperature water, and then one tub with body temperature
29:39
Speaker 1: water with magic soap. They basically said this soap will
29:44
Speaker 1: be beneficial for your recovery, and the results showed that
29:48
Speaker 1: they all had equal benefits. From the cold bath and
29:52
Speaker 1: the magic soap bath. Uh, and they reported you know,
29:55
Speaker 1: they all reported less soreness, basically equal between the cold
30:00
Speaker 1: and the magic soap bath and the magic so yeah,
30:03
Speaker 1: all three baths basically being equal. No, I think the
30:07
Speaker 1: normal bath didn't show as much improvement as the cold
30:11
Speaker 1: bath and the cold bath and magic soap bath. But
30:15
Speaker 1: regular warm, non magic soap bath was whatever. But that
30:19
Speaker 1: strongly suggests that there's a placebo effect in effect. Yeah,
30:23
Speaker 1: I kind of bungled. That's you get it. Everybody still
30:27
Speaker 1: loves the chuck. Okay, so um, yeah, this one, this
30:31
Speaker 1: was a this is weird. Do you have anything else?
30:34
Speaker 1: One more study from a lady named Dane Laroche from
30:38
Speaker 1: the University of New Hampshire two thousand thirteen study. He
30:41
Speaker 1: found no difference in soreness, of strength or strength between
30:45
Speaker 1: runners who iced and who didn't. Um, and like you said,
30:48
Speaker 1: there was a slight drop in inflammation, but muscular benefits
30:53
Speaker 1: were actually they what they did was what ice one
30:55
Speaker 1: leg and not the other, And the actually found muscular
30:58
Speaker 1: benefits from exercise were rader in the leg that didn't
31:01
Speaker 1: get iced, right, So maybe having the opposite effect, right,
31:04
Speaker 1: which makes sense. Again, Like number one, they're finding out
31:07
Speaker 1: that inflammation in the muscles is part of recovery. It's
31:12
Speaker 1: something you want, like you said, right, and to to
31:15
Speaker 1: work against that seems like that would reduce recovery and
31:19
Speaker 1: hence reduce performance afterwards. Like it might make your muscles
31:23
Speaker 1: ache less because they're not inflamed or engorged with blood,
31:27
Speaker 1: but it's not helping your performance, right, And that's ultimately
31:31
Speaker 1: what all the elite athletes are after they're they're looking
31:33
Speaker 1: to be better the next day rather than you know, like,
31:37
Speaker 1: oh my muscles ache, I don't want to feel them anymore. Yeah.
31:40
Speaker 1: I wonder how many things we were going to look
31:42
Speaker 1: back on today, Like we look back on ancient medicine.
31:46
Speaker 1: This is just like that road dwell Ville stuff. Yeah,
31:48
Speaker 1: and think can you believe that in the people would
31:53
Speaker 1: get into nitrogen gas chambers yea and freeze themselves. That's
31:58
Speaker 1: why it's kind of like, what like this this? I
32:01
Speaker 1: thought this was behind us by like a hundred years
32:04
Speaker 1: or something, but we're still doing it. You know why?
32:06
Speaker 1: Because I think as long as there are humans on
32:08
Speaker 1: the earth, they're going to be looking for that fountain
32:10
Speaker 1: of youth. And you're gonna pay and try things that
32:14
Speaker 1: seems silly, but I will continue to keep an open
32:19
Speaker 1: mind about the possibility that this does have some sort
32:22
Speaker 1: of overlooked effect that we're not we don't understand yet,
32:27
Speaker 1: because it is pretty serious exposing yourself to that, Like
32:31
Speaker 1: that's just too pronounced of a difference than our norm.
32:35
Speaker 1: But that at the very least it sucks to go through.
32:39
Speaker 1: I'm never gonna try it. I don't even mind being cold. Yeah,
32:44
Speaker 1: I think even if you don't mind being cold, you
32:46
Speaker 1: would mind us. It's probably like torture maybe so it
32:50
Speaker 1: looks like it. Yeah. Uh, if you want to know
32:54
Speaker 1: more about cryotherapy, you can type that word into the
32:57
Speaker 1: search bar how stepworks dot com. And since I said
32:59
Speaker 1: search far as time, go listen to Mayo, I'm gonna
33:04
Speaker 1: call this painful shot. Hey guys, my name is Emily.
33:07
Speaker 1: Recently discovered your show and have been binge listening walking
33:10
Speaker 1: around campus. I'm a freshman at Harvard University. And she
33:14
Speaker 1: drops the H bomb. I recently listened to anesthesia and
33:18
Speaker 1: loved it, but one thing stuck out. One of you,
33:20
Speaker 1: I believe it was me, said something along the lines
33:22
Speaker 1: of getting an injection into your gums is the worst experience,
33:25
Speaker 1: but I think I can debunk this. When I was
33:28
Speaker 1: in my sophomore year of high school, I broke my
33:30
Speaker 1: nose in a high jumping accident during track practice. I'm
33:33
Speaker 1: definitely afraid of needles, but when I went went in
33:37
Speaker 1: and to get it reset, I got five injections right
33:40
Speaker 1: up my nose. You imagine a needle in your nose, dude.
33:46
Speaker 1: I had to be pinned down because I couldn't control
33:48
Speaker 1: my hysteria. Not only that they didn't even numb it
33:52
Speaker 1: high enough in the nasal bridge, and I still felt
33:55
Speaker 1: my nose being reset. Plus my nose is still crooked.
33:59
Speaker 1: I think he gives my face and character. Um, Emily,
34:03
Speaker 1: I haven't seen you, but I bet it does. I
34:05
Speaker 1: think the listen here is no high jumping. Yeah, she says,
34:08
Speaker 1: I think this feature gums thing. Sorry if it made
34:10
Speaker 1: you swarm, but I've heard you cover enough things that
34:12
Speaker 1: made my skin crawl to convince be convinced that you
34:15
Speaker 1: two are not squeamish. Not true. No, that one was
34:18
Speaker 1: pretty bad. That is from Emily with a hy Well,
34:20
Speaker 1: thanks a lot, Emily with the why we well, I
34:22
Speaker 1: guess we kind of appreciate that yes we do. Let's
34:26
Speaker 1: just go ahead and come out and say it. That
34:27
Speaker 1: was awesome. If you want to see if you can
34:30
Speaker 1: make our skin crawl, give us your best shot. You
34:33
Speaker 1: can try it on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you
34:35
Speaker 1: Should Know. You can send us an email to stuff
34:38
Speaker 1: podcast how stuff works dot com. You can tweet to
34:41
Speaker 1: us at s why sk podcast dot com, and you
34:44
Speaker 1: can go type whatever you want into the homepage of
34:47
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
34:54
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
34:57
Speaker 1: dot com.