Does Whole-Body Cryotherapy Work?

Forty years after a Japanese doctor began using whole body cryotherapy to treat patients with arthritis; the technique has made its ways to med-spas and locker rooms throughout the West. But does it actually do anything?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This delightful program is brought to you by Squarespace, beautiful
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So the name of their tour is talking is hard.
It's not that hard, guys. I'm doing it now. Most
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literally would have to cut me off one time. I
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(00:21):
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Welcome to Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.

(00:45):
There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry Rowland. So that
stuff you hi rolls and body. That's the second time
I've been able to do that on this show. Do
you remember the first one? Cryonics colon high Frozen Body
Exclamation August two thousand eleven. But cryonics is not the

(01:06):
same thing as cryotherapy. So if you think you guys
are doubling up already, nope, Well they could even toss
out medically induced hypothermia. We did that one to all different,
totally different, mostly different. Um No, we're talking cryotherapy. It's
um specifically whole body cryotherapy because cryo therapy has been

(01:28):
around for a really long time. Have you ever had
a wart? No? Oh, you never had this happen to you. Well,
actually I did have. Um I forgot, I had the
planner warts on my feet. You get them burned off? Um?
I did not? Pleasant. Yeah, and those are a bugger.
I used to get warts here there when I was
a kid. I would go to the doctor and it
would open a freezer and take out like a this

(01:51):
crazy metal thervice not a jar, boards that they collected. Yeah.
I thought they feed them to you and that's how
you get rid of your words. Yeah, I think it is.
When my mom would take me to the witch, and
that's how I would get rid of my um No.
They would just take it, take a little swab of

(02:11):
this stuff and like put the swab onto your wart
and it would just burn it off, like they burned
it by freezing it. Yeah, because they're using liquid nitrogen.
It was so cold that it burns it basically just
burns tissue. You know what I actually have at home
right now? I have a spray can of medical freezing

(02:32):
spray because I used to go to the doctor to
get my skin tags removed because my body is just
lousy with them here in my old age. And then
you just finally just stole the can so you can
do it yourself. Didn't steal a can. I bought a can.
You can buy the bo yeah on the Amazon bought okay,
And I got a little uh, the little sharp clipper,

(02:55):
not nail clippers, but like um scissors, No, not scissors.
It's sort of been between the nail clipper and a scissor.
It looks like something you get out a hardware store.
Is it like scissors? But then the ends bent at
like a forty five degree angle. No, they look like
just a pair of dykes, like in a toolbox. But
there for your toe and fingernail kit. I don't know

(03:15):
what those are. I'll just show them to you, Okay.
So anyway, I'm gonna start blasting them and cutting them
off myself, or I'm gonna have Emily do it. Yeah,
please take a video of this or Facebook live it. Yeah. Yeah,
that's the new thing. Yeah, look out for that people's book.
It's uh, it's their version of periscope. Yeah, I'm sure

(03:37):
they don't really like that, but that's exactly what we're
gonna try it out. That's medical uh burning of Moleska.
Bring your little clippers and your medical freezing spray on
tour and I will film it and we'll just see
what happened. I don't know if I could get that
through security. You just have to throw it over the

(04:00):
detector and as you go through and catch it on
the other I think. So that's what I learned in
Boondocks Saints. Oh man, what a movie man, that guy
I wanted. I've never seen the documentary about Tony Duffy.
I can't remember. I think it was the bar Owner
turned um like Hollywood wonder Kin for guy who blew it?

(04:22):
All right, Troy Duffy, great documentary. That's his name is
Troy Duffy. I want to see it, alright. So movie
sidetracked already. Oh, carylo therapy. I'm sorry. So when you
take liquid nitrogen UM, that's really how sidetracked. I just
got like I forgot what we were talking about for

(04:44):
a second. When you take liquid nitrogen and put it
on your tissue, that's um local cryotherapy. That's like, that's
there's no question that that actually works and what it does,
we understand it. The whole body crowd therapy is different.
It's kind of this trendy new thing in the health
and metas spots where you basically get into what they

(05:04):
call a cold sauna and are exposed to liquid nitrogen
gas and they're supposedly has a whole range of health benefits,
which should immediately set off your skeptical antenna. Yeah, if
something like Cure's ten ailments, it sounds a lot like
snake old, especially when the ailments are very vague. Yeah,
you want to I want is I want something that

(05:26):
cures the one ailment I have? Right? Not, Hey, it
will help with these eight things. Yeah, And I'm not
faulting anybody who's saying like, well, we don't know that
this how it works. We just know it works, because
a lot of Western medicine has no idea how their
effective treatments work. They just know they do work. So
there's there's I have no issue with that. The problem

(05:48):
with cryotherapy is we should just say right off the
bat is there's really no scientific evidence that this works
at all. Um it has maybe a little bit of
um an impact done inflammation. But well, we'll get to
all that. I'm getting ahead of ourselves. Don't spoil it,
Sorry he did. Should we edit that part out? No,

(06:08):
let's leave it in there. But first, let's go back
to Japan in the nineteen seventies. Let's take the way
back machine, which I bet Japan in the seventies was
a pretty fun place to be. Yes to the office
of Dr Toshima. Is it Yama Yamauchi, and he was

(06:32):
supposedly the first guy, the first doctor to actually use cryotherapy,
and in his case, he used it to help treat
rheumatoid arthritis patients. Still doing it. Oh, I'm sure he
has a clinic on an island called I believe Kyushu.
I thought it was gonna be Yamauchi Island. It might
as well be. I'm sure that guy is getting loaded
these days. Money not well maybe both Oka Hi hi

(06:56):
high end Japanese Scotch and money. Yeah, Japanese scott just
good stuff. But yes it is. Did you know seriously?
Um uh Crown Royal rye one like world's best whiskey. Recently,
this is the second time he told everybody, just so
astounded by it I have yet to try it, actually
I have, you know, but we'll try it on the

(07:18):
road maybe if we can get our hands on some.
So Yamauchi was trying it with the rumatroid arthritis patients
and then it's spread through Europe and eventually made its
way over here where it became has become a very
trendy thing. And of course celebrities, if they're in on it,
then you know it's the latest in Yeah, maybe not

(07:38):
greatest treatment because celebrities they're just like us, yeah, except
that more money to waste on frivolous things. So um,
I love how you just kind of glossed over it.
But how it got here Apparently in the Soviet block
they picked up on this treatment that was being used
for rumor troid arthritis in Japan Soviet athletes, and you know,
it probably wasn't by choice back then. They were forced

(08:00):
into these things, right, you know, like the all Drug
Olympics guy like get down off the uh the balance
beam and get in that get in that cold saunta
cold sauna. Yeah. But the whole idea um that this
is that this there's some sort of benefit health benefit
the cold. It doesn't lie with Yamauchi. Um, there's it

(08:21):
goes back quite a long way. Um, there's this whole
idea that taking a cold plunge, cold water immersion like
the Polar Bear clubs. Yeah, and Finland they call it
of a two in Ti. So they get in the
sauna and then they run out and their bear skin underwear.
Yes is this Finland, and they jump in the cold,

(08:43):
icy waters of the nearby lake. And uh, it's supposed
to rejuvenate them and make them gasp for air their
body heels. It's it's supposed to improve mood, well, increase
your metabolism, do all sorts of crazy stuff. But this
whole idea, um, that that has health benefits. I was

(09:04):
very surprised. I figured I would find like, oh, the
Finns were the ones who started this, or may be
in Iceland or something like that. Um. I couldn't find
anything that talked about the history of ice swimming. UM.
Further back than what this article comes up with, which
is a guy in New York named Professor Sugarman Sugarman. Yeah,

(09:27):
surely Sugarman sugar Man. Yeah, what was that in the
eight hundreds when he was the human polar bear and
he would get into the icy rivers in New York
and um, he was a help guy and so he said,
this is helping my body out. You should do it.
You know, you think I'm crazy. And by the way,

(09:48):
Graham Cracker's cure masturbation, is that a thing? Oh yeah, really, dude,
We've got to do like that whole road Dwellville sometimes.
That was such an interesting Yeah, believe so from the
serial Kellogg Kellogg. But there was a doctor Graham who
came up with Graham Crackers. Um, like there was a
whole bunch of crazy thinking at that time. That was

(10:09):
really interesting. I saw that movie way back when. But
it's been a while, Anthony Hopkins, right, yeah, and I
think I wasn't Matthew Broderick in it. I feel like
it's been a while. It wasn't made in the late eighties. Yeah,
Matthew Broderick. It was the one that he was in
The Freshman. Did you ever see that with Bruno Kirby
and part of that just the other day? Actually? Yeah? Yeah?

(10:33):
And I thought how odd that Brando would agree to
reprise his role from the Godfather in a comedic way,
kind of like de Niro has done to lesser success.
You know what else? Was a good Brando movie? Um
don Juan DeMarco. Yeah, not bad. Yeah, I liked it,
although I'm speaking from like when you saw it back then. Yeah,

(10:54):
I haven't seen it in a long time. I bet
it holds up. I bet it's very relevant timely in
top cool. I'll chopo all over the so. Uh, like
you said, they have done some studies that found it
doing the ice swims helps reduce chronic pain. But I'll
just go ahead and say this about all these studies,
We're gonna talk about a lot of them. They're just

(11:15):
all over the map, and none of them are very
controlled or very good. Yeah, so it's hard to really
make a judgment call when you're not doing the good research.
So the jumping in a lake um as part of
a polar Bear club to make yourself guess have you
already done that? Not jumping in a lake, but gone
into like a cold water bath? Well we jump we
Yeah I did it in high school and a frozen lake. Oh,

(11:36):
so you have done that. Yeah, there was a church
camp that had a big, like fifty ft slide into
the lake and in the summer it's a lovely thing
and in the winter, you know, the guys were like, well,
we're gonna do it, right, and we did it. And
did you go Jesus No, I didn't know. Were you like,
oh this is I mean, how long were you in there? Spill?

(11:58):
I had no idea. Well, I slid in and then
quickly swammed ashore and got out and got warm and
ended up on the cover of guide posts shivering in
your little um polar bear skin bathing suits. Yeah. And
by the way, people who sent in that cover of
guide posts that they thought might have been me good
investigative skills, because the way I described it, it it could

(12:19):
have very well have been me, but it was not me.
That one's yet to be found. So um, this idea
of jumping in the lake, it's it kind of it's somehow,
not sure how made its way into sports medicine, where
it became very big cold water immersion. Yeah. Like you
see the NFL player sitting in like an ice tub

(12:40):
after a game. He likes his ice paths um. And
the whole, the whole idea behind it is that you
just exerted your muscles, right, and when you exert your muscles, um,
they become basically infused and swollen with blood. Right, So
one of the reasons your muscles ache after exercises because

(13:01):
they're swollen like their their tissue is is just larger
than normal and it causes this ache. When you immerse
yourself in water, the thinking goes, the hydrostatic pressure outside
of your body draws the fluid toward your skin, so
it draws it out of the muscles and eventually back
into the blood vessels, so it creates or it lessens

(13:24):
that aching thing. The problem is, if you're using cold
water immersion for that kind of thing, it doesn't really
make any sense because cold water immersion creates vaso constriction,
which means it makes your blood vessels smaller, which would
make them less apt to accept the blood from the muscles. Well,
there's some people that think it's actually has the reverse

(13:47):
effect and it's not doing what it says that it's doing.
But like I said, the opposite. Did you see that
study that I sent you, which one the one that
had like it was the discussion part had just like
a couple of different I don't think so. Well. There's
this one study I came across, and it was basically
a survey of studies and it it showed like this
study found that these people's um cycling ability after a

(14:12):
cold water immersion, like after not you jump in an
ice bath and then jump on a cycle like the
day after, their cycling ability dropped from like you know
to just and the only the only factor involved was
cold water immersion. Uh. There's another guy named Joseph Costello.
He's an exercise physiologist from the University of Portsmouth in

(14:35):
the UK, and he said that there's more evidence coming
out that inflammation, uh is actually part of the recovery process.
So you don't want to stop your inflammation, Uh, you
want to embrace it. I guess right. Well, one of
the ways that your muscles adapt is by basically being
torn and rebuilding themselves, and they do that through inflammation. Yeah,

(14:57):
and that was by the way, I read an article
from wash Post called the Big Chill Cryotherapy Maybe trendy,
but does it work? It doesn't sound the way. Not
only does it not work like you were saying, like
Costello's finding, there seems to be more and more evidence
that it actually has a detrimental effect where if you're
an elite athlete, you do not want to do cold
water immersion. Yeah, all right, Well let's take a break

(15:19):
and we'll talk a little bit about kind of the
cost and what's going on today with this stuff. All right,

(15:46):
josh U, a little bit of the nuts and bolts
on cryotherapy these days. You will go. If you're in
a big city, you probably already have a cryo spa. Um,
it's probably just some some spa bought one of these machines. Yeah, yeah,
I don't mean it's dedicated to cry out spotting. Well
maybe there's some in the biggest of cities cities, but

(16:11):
you know, look it up on your internet machine and
if you want to go check it out, you can.
It will cost you about forty or fifty bucks. Or
you can get like a monthly membership. I saw one
and um Minnesota, which I don't know why, they just
don't go outside in the winter and accomplished the same thing.
But it was four and fifty dollars a month. But
you're unlimited cryotherapy and you don't want to use it

(16:33):
more than once a day. So I did the math,
and that's still the savings of about six hundred bucks
if you went every day. Yeah, I wonder how much
it costs to buy one of those. I'm sure it
would pay for itself in ten years. And I wonder
if you can eventually just put a tabletop on it
and double it as a dining table once you inevitably
quit using it to put a lamp on it. Uh

(16:56):
so four to your fifty bucks a pop, um, and
you will be in the it's really really cold, and um,
it's I think that's an understatement. Yeah, and it's gas.
We need to be really clear. You're not in cold water.
It's dry gas, and that's what saves you from things
like frost bite or freezing to death or getting hypothermia,
because that's right, it's gas. That liquid nitrogen, when it's

(17:19):
exposed to the warmer temperatures of the air and it's
released into that thing, immediately gasifies. Yeah. And we're talking
negative two hundred and fifty six degrees fahrenheit or hundred
and sixty degrees celsius right negative. That is colder than
anything on planet Earth. Right. So if you could find
liquid that remained liquid at those low temperatures, right, um,

(17:43):
you would basically immediately die when you immerse yourself in it.
And the reason why gas you can expose yourself to
temperatures of gas like that rather than liquid, because liquid
is UM has a higher heat capacity, which means it
absorbs heat more readily, and it's a great conductor of heat,
so it wits that heat away from your body. UM

(18:03):
I think twenty five times faster than air does. So
you can withstand this this cold cold temperatures again negative
two d and fifty six degrees fahrenheit. Right, that's the
coldest temperature on Earth right there in that little cryo sauna.
There's nowhere else on Earth that's even remotely close to that. UM.

(18:24):
But you can withstand it for a certain amount of time,
Like I think three minutes is the maximum time that
they suggest. They say two to three minutes is, which
I guess that's a plus. You pop in there, you're
gone five minutes later. Oh yeah, If you want one
of these things, it's like printing your own money aside
from the lawsuit payoff UM. And you will, like I said,

(18:44):
two to three minutes at the most, and it penetrates
no more than a half millimeter below the surface of
the skin UM in the case of the gas. And
here are some of the things they say will help
with UM anytime. The first one is destroys toxins, and
my radar is up. Yeah, because that's such a broad claim.

(19:05):
You know, uh, increases metabolism, that's another one that so
you'll actually lose weight, right, boost your immune system, and
slow aging. Like all of these sounds like something you'd
see on the subway at in New York. What are
the four broadest health concerns you have? Human? Yeah, well,
that happens to take care of all of them. I'm

(19:27):
surprised it doesn't say like, helps you get sleep or
helps you if you're getting too much sleep. Right, there's
probably a spot advertises that. Probably so. And the reason
that they can do this is because, chuck, it's unregulated. Yeah,
there are some states that now offer suggestions on I
believe one state, just one, Nevada, the one where a

(19:51):
lady died doing it. Well, let's go ahead and talk
about her, because we're not laughing at her a tragic accident,
because it was awful. We're laughing at the ridiculous lack
of oversight on this extraordinarily dangerous machine. Exactly. This was
in the July, a place called Rejuvenile rejuven Ice. But

(20:13):
think for real with that, Yeah, I think so maybe
that's an all cryospa. It's a med spa and Henderson, Nevada,
and um, this lady who worked there when in one
day and notice that the machine was already on, and
then on the floor next to the machine, she's oh,
she was still in the machine with it on. Oh.

(20:35):
I didn't think you could lay down in this thing.
I thought it just set you up with your next
sticking out. I think she crumpled. Okay, Yeah, so this
thing is kind of shaped like a barrel. Um. It's
not like a bed that you laid down in. No,
it's like you remember that one um or onlike old
timey cartoons where like a guy's taking a Schwitz like
they go into that machine and like their head sticks out,

(20:56):
but inside it's basically like a wet sauna. I don't
know what you speak, I can picture it. Okay, say
you got into an iron lung and then they stood
you up. Okay, looks like that. Well, at any rate,
she found her coworker, um Chelsea, I have no idea
how to bring a akey Selbassian found her frozen solid

(21:21):
dead obviously, And what they think might have happened was
that because this lady knew how to work in machine.
She used the machine for herself, worked there and was
an advocate, so she knew the dangers. Um. So they're
thinking is that maybe she bent down to pick something up,
got too much nitrogen in her body because you need
that proper mix of oxygen, and UH just passed out

(21:44):
and then froze. Because they found that she died from afphixiation,
not from being frozen, right, and she was. Had she
taken one, maybe even two breaths, it would have been
virtually pure nitrogen and at that concentration or that lack
of oxygen um in the air she was breathing, it
would just take one or two breaths for her to

(22:06):
immediately lose consciousness. Once she lost consciousness, she was using
this thing alone. There was no one to see her,
which is why she didn't die of being frozen. To us,
she died from asphyxiation. It's that inert gas asphyxiation that
we talked about in the lethal injection episode. Like it
just takes one or two breaths and that's it. Yeah,
And now Um stated in the Nevada has Um some

(22:28):
recommended Uh. They basically said, hey, why don't you just
say you've got to be over eighteen, you gotta be
taller than five ft. Uh, no history of stroke, seizure
or high blood pressure. It's almost like to write a
roller coaster. Yeah, except for the age thing. Not be pregnant,
and not have a pacemaker. And these are just suggested

(22:48):
guidelines in Nevada at this point. Uh. And they also
said it'd also be good if in your office you
knew CPR and you had defibrillators and um, a working
phone that could call a nine one one. But again
all just recommendations at this point. They also Nevada also
recommended that um spas who offer crowd therapy post signs

(23:10):
that say, um, there's no scientific evidence that this does anything,
so let's we'll talk about You to sign a waiver
too that says I could die. You want to talk
about the science after a break, so chuckers. Um, there's

(23:49):
again there's a lot of people who are like, this
is all whui, which is weird that it doesn't do
anything beneficial. But the only thing that it's been shown
to even remotely have an e act on is inflammation.
There's very little um discussion about whether it affects inflammation. UM,
and that's why Yamauchi originally was using this stuff too,

(24:12):
to decrease the inflammation in uh rheumatoid arthritis suffers. Right, Yeah,
so it definitely does decrease inflammation. But other than that,
everything else is UM kind of a bogus claim, or
at the very least, it's a claim that's not backed
up by any real science. Yeah, and again there UM
supposedly is mounting evidence that inflammation you don't want to

(24:34):
reduce necessarily as an athlete, and that could be a
vital part of the process of healing and regenerating. Uh So,
in two thousand fifteen, there was one study UM that
only had sixty four participants, And what I found was
that they basically picked like young, fit, white dudes for
the study, and you just can't do that if you're

(24:56):
going to get an accurate uh result. And I think
that's what happened. They got a result that most legit
scientists have just had to throw out basically, Right, Well,
the two thousand fifteen study was a survey, and it
pooled all of the like all of the available studies,
and all the available studies together only came to a
population size of sixty four and Yeah, like you said,

(25:18):
they were homogeneous basically, So that's not good. There's not
a lot of investigation about this stuff. There's not a
lot of oversight. Yeah. They found another two thousand twelve
study that said they found no difference between cryotherapy and
just the regular ice bath that um, like an athlete
might take in the locker room. So why pay all

(25:41):
this money to go to a cryotherapy session? So the
people who say that say, well, your chances of hypothermia
are a lot less because you're wet, Yeah, which makes sense. Yeah,
Well you're not wet in the cryoson all right, So
you're gonna your body is going to um maintain it's
it's temperature a lot longer. It's not gonna lose its
temperature heat as quickly. So it's not as dangerous as

(26:02):
what some proponents would say, unless you're wet going in. Yeah,
which has happened. This this story just is mind boggling
to me. Which one the guy, um, the sprinter Yeah,
who who really should have known better? Right? His name
is um Justin Gatlin. He's an American sprinter for Team USA,
world famous world class sprinter, right, um, And he was

(26:24):
training down in Orlando for Korea, the World Games, I
think the World Championships, and it was hot because it's
almost always hot in Orlando, right, and he goes straight
from his workout to the cry o sauna. Yeah, Like,
what I want to know is why don't they have
people with towels saying the one thing you don't want
to do is get in here wet. Yeah, I just

(26:45):
don't understand. I don't understand it either, But it's difference
between oversight and just being dumb, right, And but you
can make the case that he was very dumb. He
walked right into the cryo um sauna wearing his wet
socks still and I think possibly is wet. Shoot, and
then he immediately got frostbite. Yeah, his feet froze and
he ended up getting he was hobble basically couldn't even

(27:09):
put on his running spikes, so I think he had
to withdraw or no, he actually ran and got and
lost the Usine bolt of Yeah, it lost big time.
But apparently he's back to form according to this. But
the problem was he got frostbite from wearing his socks
and his shoes, and the blisters and the scars that
formed after them were perfectly lined up with the tops

(27:30):
of his socks and his running spikes because that's what
he was wearing wet in the cryosana. So that's what what.
At least one person has died. You can get hobbled
from it, even if you're an elite athlete, if you're
not using your noodle. Yeah. What else, Well, this one
lady sued a company because, um, she got frostbite on

(27:52):
her hands because they recommended she wear wet gloves. I
have no idea why they would say this, but the
recommendation was to wear wet gloves, and she ended up
getting frost bite in her hands wet gloves, so that
was it wasn't like accidental. They said you should wear
wet gloves. So here's in this article. It's pretty great

(28:12):
what the spas reply was to this lawsuit. They said that, um, hey,
she signed a liability waiver and she wasn't ensuring her
own safety. So apparently she should have been smart enough
to not listen to them when they told her to
wear wet gloves, is what the spas UM reply to
the lawsuit was. One of the thoughts on why this

(28:33):
might help is that it might just be a placebo effect. Well, okay, yes,
so now we really I I it's I've been kind
of obvious. We're both a little skeptical of this. I
think it's fair to say, right, that's right. I'm not
being judgment although, like, if you um want to try
this and you feel like you're getting some sort of
benefit from it, knock yourself out. Just do it safely

(28:53):
and smartly, please um. But there the skepticism is largely
centered around the idea that this is a placebo effect,
especially with things like pain relief. Anything that goes beyond inflammation,
uh is probably a placebo. Yeah. They did a study
in Australian two thousand fourteen. They had thirty young men

(29:16):
put them through what they call it high intensity workout.
I said, they get sore, and then they divided them up.
They had um fifteen minutes in one of three tubs
very cold water and nothing like the cryotherapy, even just
cold water. I think it said fifty degrees um, one
body temperature water, and then one tub with body temperature

(29:39):
water with magic soap. They basically said this soap will
be beneficial for your recovery, and the results showed that
they all had equal benefits. From the cold bath and
the magic soap bath. Uh, and they reported you know,
they all reported less soreness, basically equal between the cold

(30:00):
and the magic soap bath and the magic so yeah,
all three baths basically being equal. No, I think the
normal bath didn't show as much improvement as the cold
bath and the cold bath and magic soap bath. But
regular warm, non magic soap bath was whatever. But that
strongly suggests that there's a placebo effect in effect. Yeah,

(30:23):
I kind of bungled. That's you get it. Everybody still
loves the chuck. Okay, so um, yeah, this one, this
was a this is weird. Do you have anything else?
One more study from a lady named Dane Laroche from
the University of New Hampshire two thousand thirteen study. He
found no difference in soreness, of strength or strength between

(30:45):
runners who iced and who didn't. Um, and like you said,
there was a slight drop in inflammation, but muscular benefits
were actually they what they did was what ice one
leg and not the other, And the actually found muscular
benefits from exercise were rader in the leg that didn't
get iced, right, So maybe having the opposite effect, right,
which makes sense. Again, Like number one, they're finding out

(31:07):
that inflammation in the muscles is part of recovery. It's
something you want, like you said, right, and to to
work against that seems like that would reduce recovery and
hence reduce performance afterwards. Like it might make your muscles
ache less because they're not inflamed or engorged with blood,

(31:27):
but it's not helping your performance, right, And that's ultimately
what all the elite athletes are after they're they're looking
to be better the next day rather than you know, like,
oh my muscles ache, I don't want to feel them anymore. Yeah.
I wonder how many things we were going to look
back on today, Like we look back on ancient medicine.
This is just like that road dwell Ville stuff. Yeah,

(31:48):
and think can you believe that in the people would
get into nitrogen gas chambers yea and freeze themselves. That's
why it's kind of like, what like this this? I
thought this was behind us by like a hundred years
or something, but we're still doing it. You know why?
Because I think as long as there are humans on
the earth, they're going to be looking for that fountain

(32:10):
of youth. And you're gonna pay and try things that
seems silly, but I will continue to keep an open
mind about the possibility that this does have some sort
of overlooked effect that we're not we don't understand yet,
because it is pretty serious exposing yourself to that, Like

(32:31):
that's just too pronounced of a difference than our norm.
But that at the very least it sucks to go through.
I'm never gonna try it. I don't even mind being cold. Yeah,
I think even if you don't mind being cold, you
would mind us. It's probably like torture maybe so it
looks like it. Yeah. Uh, if you want to know

(32:54):
more about cryotherapy, you can type that word into the
search bar how stepworks dot com. And since I said
search far as time, go listen to Mayo, I'm gonna
call this painful shot. Hey guys, my name is Emily.
Recently discovered your show and have been binge listening walking
around campus. I'm a freshman at Harvard University. And she
drops the H bomb. I recently listened to anesthesia and

(33:18):
loved it, but one thing stuck out. One of you,
I believe it was me, said something along the lines
of getting an injection into your gums is the worst experience,
but I think I can debunk this. When I was
in my sophomore year of high school, I broke my
nose in a high jumping accident during track practice. I'm
definitely afraid of needles, but when I went went in
and to get it reset, I got five injections right

(33:40):
up my nose. You imagine a needle in your nose, dude.
I had to be pinned down because I couldn't control
my hysteria. Not only that they didn't even numb it
high enough in the nasal bridge, and I still felt
my nose being reset. Plus my nose is still crooked.
I think he gives my face and character. Um, Emily,

(34:03):
I haven't seen you, but I bet it does. I
think the listen here is no high jumping. Yeah, she says,
I think this feature gums thing. Sorry if it made
you swarm, but I've heard you cover enough things that
made my skin crawl to convince be convinced that you
two are not squeamish. Not true. No, that one was
pretty bad. That is from Emily with a hy Well,
thanks a lot, Emily with the why we well, I
guess we kind of appreciate that yes we do. Let's

(34:26):
just go ahead and come out and say it. That
was awesome. If you want to see if you can
make our skin crawl, give us your best shot. You
can try it on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you
Should Know. You can send us an email to stuff
podcast how stuff works dot com. You can tweet to
us at s why sk podcast dot com, and you
can go type whatever you want into the homepage of

(34:47):
Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
dot com.