Transcription
So here's what I alluded to yesterday in yesterday's video about cold. I'm going to teach you how to use cold on your face in order to support, yes, the cold adaptation, support brown adipose tissue activation, but also this is very soothing to the nervous system. And so I encourage you, if the idea of cold is something you despise, this is where you start. You start with cold exposure to the face. This is actually where I start; I started not even with what I'm going to teach you today, which is called cold face plunges. I actually started with just splashing cold water on my face.
So you know, going through a morning skincare routine, at some point when I became a mom, I uh, I pretty much had to give that up. And so all I began to do is I, instead of using warm water uh to splash on my face, I began splashing it with cold water. And it took a little getting used to, and now I love it. My face really feels rejuvenated from that cold water splashing.
Now here's the deal, right? Here's the deal. You can do that; it's not going to really stimulate a whole heck of a lot, but it's good to start to get comfortable feeling cold water on the face. And when you're ready, you're going to do a cold face plunge. I'll teach you how to do it, and then I'm going to teach you some of the benefits from that. So get a big, big bowl. Like what I what I picture or what I use um in my house is a six-quart crockpot. So a big, a big bowl that I could be able to plunge, fit my head basically, and plunge my face in. You want it to be able to fit your face all the way up to your hairline, because the skin on your forehead is called glabrous skin, and it has really specific cold receptors that then can signal systemic um, like cold adaptation effects. So you can get you can get total body cold adaptation by by stimulating those cold receptors on the forehead called glabrous skin or glabrous receptors. So um, get one that fits your whole face.
So I have my six-quart crockpot, and what I do is I put cold water in, and I put approximately a full tray of ice, dump that in as well, and I let that set for about five or ten minutes for that ice. And I'll stir it, making sure that that cold water goes all the way through. Um, then when I feel ready for it, you know, tie my hair back, and then I um, I I go ahead and take a nice normal inhale, and then on that inhale I hold my breath and I plunge my face in, like I said, all the way through from my hair, right, so all the way up to my forehead. And I hold my face underwater as long as I feel comfortable holding my breath. So I actually am pairing a cold face plunge with a conscious breath hold. Both of them are very supportive of the body; they actually turn on the parasympathetic nervous system, which is our calming nervous system. And so it's interesting, right, that putting cold water on the face can do that, but we have a specific reflex built into us called the mammalian dive reflex, meaning when mammals dive underwater, which is colder typically than their body temperature, it turns on the calming aspect of their nervous system. So that their heart rate slows, their their their um, their breath, the need for to take another breath uh lowers. And that's because if we were to dive underwater to to likely gather fish or gather maybe some some uh sea creatures from the bottom, some from the bottom of the ocean floor or the river or the lake that we were looking to get the to get some food source from, if if that were to stimulate my sympathetic nervous system, my fight or flight, then my heartbeat would would increase, my blood pressure would increase, and I would utilize the oxygen in my breath so much faster. I wouldn't be able to stay down as long. And so we have this built-in reflex that we actually lowers our blood pressure gently; it lowers our breath rate rate or our need to breathe; it lowers our heart rate; it turns on the parasympathetic nervous system, which would which allowed mammals to stay underwater longer to be able to find food. And so it really it really makes sense why that ties in, and we still have that built into us, even though we're no longer, at least most of us are no longer diving into cold water to find food. And so we can take advantage of that, because what I see happen, what happened with me and what's happened with many clients is they start to love how it feels to have cold to do these cold water face plunges and to hold their breath, because a conscious breath hold is also is it's actually is anti-anxiety; it builds up carbon dioxide in the body, and carbon dioxide, our ability to tolerate more and more carbon dioxide is calming; it's anxiolytic; it's anti-anxiety. And so it's another really good thing that we can um pair together, and that gives the body a very good um relationship with the cold, right? The cold on the face like this becomes something that feels good to the body, feels healing, feels supportive.
And so um, even if you have some sort of a nervous system disregulation, I've had many clients who say this is very supportive, and they love how this makes them feel, and it does not increase their stress response; it does not disregulated their nervous system. And so I don't just do that once. I hold my breath, plunge right, and keep it underwater as long as I can, and then I come up and I, you know, I typically dry my face off a little bit; I take some recovery breaths, so maybe a minute or two of recovery breaths, and then I do it again, and I'll plunge it in, and I'll do this three to five times. Um, and it's just very, very supportive; it feels good; it feels it feels healing; it feels calming. And it feels so calming for some people that they actually love doing this before bed because it can facilitate um a very calm state and a calm nervous system to get them into a very deep sleep. So this is something that you can do at any time throughout the day. Some clients love it in the morning, especially if they wake up in more of a stressed-out state. Some clients love it during the day, anytime they can fit it in, and some clients really love it before bed because it does provide some um very calming sensations to the brain and to the nervous system. So I I would say give it a try; it's a really great way to get that cold exposure.
Now I have had an experience one time where I did feel systemic cold effects from it, right? I actually only had my forehead getting cold, but ultimately my full my full body felt like it needed to heat up from that. And so there is some small but still impactful brown adipose tissue activation that happens with this. So don't underestimate the importance of this in terms of cold adapting. Um, I really do recommend this as the place where most people start with cold, uh, especially if you have you despise it, if you're hesitant, if you're worried at all about it, feel free to go ahead and do this, and then combine this with some ENT air exposures, and that can go a long way towards supporting your body's ability to heat itself up and actually start to like being in the cold all winter long.