Name: Dr. Rhonda Patrick on the Benefits of Cryotherapy (from Joe Rogan Experience #773)
Uploaded: 2016-03-20T22:01:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Dr. Rhonda Patrick on the Benefits of Cryotherapy (from Joe Rogan Experience #773)' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-03-20. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Dr. Rhonda Patrick on the Benefits of Cryotherapy (from Joe Rogan Experience #773)' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-03-20. Transcript available.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick on the Benefits of Cryotherapy (from Joe Rogan Experience #773)

Hello, freak bitches.
I want to talk for a little bit about cryotherapy because this is something
that I emailed you
when there was a disturbing article that was sort of poo-pooing the benefits of
cryotherapy.
And the article was, I thought it was really poorly done, poorly researched.
And it was also, they studied really subjective things like how sore you felt
after exercise
and whether or not it benefited from that.
But there are real positive benefits of cryotherapy that are measurable.
Yes, and that have been measured.
Well, first of all, that article that you're referring to from that, whatever
website it was,
but the article was a-
Well, Steve Novella is a guy, and I think what he did is he rushed to put this
article out
because that woman died in Las Vegas from cryotherapy.
And it was a really tragic incident.
She was by herself.
There's two different types of cryotherapy.
One of the things we should point out, first of all, I don't have any, I've
been accused of this.
I should just say right now, I don't have any vested interest in cryotherapy.
I don't own any of it.
I don't make any money from it.
Nothing.
I enjoy the benefits of it, and I use it.
But this woman who did it, she did the type, there's two kinds.
One of them, it goes from the neck down.
So you stand in this booth.
Your head is above breathing in normal oxygen, but below you is liquid nitrogen.
You can't breathe that stuff in.
That's why your head is not under.
If you do breathe that stuff in, you don't have any oxygen, you'll black out,
and that's what happened to her.
She did it by herself.
It was poorly set up, and apparently she was quite short.
So her head was kind of below the limit where you're supposed to be.
So she was breathing in the liquid nitrogen, and she fell asleep and blacked
out.
Oh, she went to one of those types?
Yes.
I thought she was in the full-on.
No, no, no.
The full-on ones are much rarer.
And what the full-on ones do is they super cool the air with the nitrogen.
So the air itself is pumped in really cold.
That's what I did.
Yes.
That's what you did, and that's what we're going to do today, too, if you have
the time.
I loved it.
Okay, let's do it again.
That one, you can breathe in.
It's just fucking unbelievably cold.
Okay, so the one that she did, she set it up by herself, which you're never
supposed to do.
You're always supposed to have supervision.
So it wasn't whether or not...
I mean, she's the only person I've ever heard of that's died from this, and it's
a horrible tragedy.
Was she committing suicide?
No, no, no.
She was just working there.
And sometimes women, they'll put their face under it because they want the
effects of a cryofacial.
Because cryofacial has been shown to improve collagen and tightens your skin up.
Well, cryotherapy actually prevents, it inhibits enzymes that break down
collagen called collagenases.
And that's actually part of the reason it helps with arthritis because collagenases
break down collagen and they break down, like, you know, the tendons, collagen
around the tendons and stuff, and it can cause arthritic pain.
So doing, it would make sense why you'd want to do something cryo because it
would have an effect on your skin.
Yeah, women love it when they get their face done, apparently.
They get, or vain men too, or any man.
Well, you don't have to be vain to want collagen.
But the point being, that article came out and all these people were saying, oh,
see, I told you cryotherapy was bullshit.
I'm like, oh my God, what a piss poor article.
And it was all talking about soreness.
And one of the things that he said that really drove me crazy was you'd get
just as much benefit from a cool down and a stretch after a workout.
I'm like, tell that to these fucking people that I see that go there all the
time that do it twice a day because they have severe arthritis and it's the
only thing that's given them any form of freedom of movement of their hands.
It's like, I know a bunch of people that go there that have had some really debilitating
arthritis and this has given them relief where nothing else has given it to
them other than like pretty severe pharmaceutical drugs or ibuprofen at high
levels or what you were talking about.
Like there's a lady that goes to my thing, but she was raving about how she can
finally stretch her hands out.
Like her hands had been like locked in this position for years.
Yeah, it has.
I mean, the cold itself is a hormetic stressor that is activating a variety of
anti-inflammatory pathways, antioxidant pathways, you know, and it's also last
time I think on the podcast we talked about it increases norepinephrine.
Well, norepinephrine itself, so cryotherapy and cold water immersion are two
forms of, you know, cold exposure.
Cryotherapy, just two minutes at like a minus 180 Fahrenheit can increase norepinephrine
twofold.
That's, you know, twofold over what you were before you went in.
And norepinephrine, in addition to the brain benefits we were talking about,
how it makes you feel good, how it helps with learning, it also is a very prone
anti-inflammatory.
So it inhibits the production of TNF-alpha, which is very, it's kind of like in
arthritis, TNF-alpha is kind of like going haywire.
You're making too much TNF-alpha.
And what happens is TNF-alpha is a signaling molecule to your immune cells that
says, hey, there's an infection here.
Because that's normally what happens when you release TNF-alpha is because
there's some bacteria or something that you need to kill.
And so your immune cells, all they see is the signal.
They don't know what's causing it.
They don't know that it's because your gut cells and your immune cells in your
gut are seeing bacteria because of your poor diet or whatever.
And so that's getting into the bloodstream and causing chronic inflammation.
It doesn't know that.
All it knows is that this means there's a threat.
And so they start to increase the production of your immune cells make hypochlorite,
which is like bleach.
So you're making bleach in your body to kill things.
And that's happening chronically.
That's going to cause some tissue damage.
It's going to cause pain.
They also make hydrogen peroxide.
You make that and your immune cells will make that.
So cryotherapy inhibits the signaling molecule so that your immune cells quiet
down because now they're not seeing that signal that says, come on, hey, fire
up, fire up.
It's not there.
So that's a good thing to inhibit TNF-alpha.
And like I said, with the collagenases as well.
But there are so many, you know, I just spent two weeks just researching and
reading.
I've been doing some cold exposures, you know, like cold shower and also
jumping in the ocean, ice bath.
And I really liked the cryotherapy that I did last time we were here.
And, you know, so I've been very interested in it, like understanding why you
feel so good.
And so I did some reading on it.
And there's so many different positive hormetic benefits from doing cryotherapy.
So you have, you know, the anti-inflammatory part.
And this also, it's been shown that doing like 10 sessions of cryotherapy in a
row, it increases the expression of glutathione reductase by twofold.
And another glutathione-related enzyme, glutathione peroxidase, by like 68%.
And these are, these enzymes, like you could be taking all the liposomal glutathione
you want.
Like it's not going to matter if you don't have the enzymes active to use it.
So you could take liposomal glutathione and that's great.
You're increasing, you know, you make glutathione inside of your cells, but we
can't make as much of it as we get older.
But if you take it and you don't have the enzymes that use it to actually do
the good stuff active, then it doesn't matter.
So cryotherapy was shown to activate two different glutathione-related enzymes,
which is pretty awesome.
So it would enhance your body's ability to absorb glutathione.
No, it doesn't enhance your body's ability to absorb it.
It enhances your body's ability to use it.
So if you're taking it, liposomal glutathione, and then you're using cryotherapy,
it would enhance it?
So what I'm saying is that the liposomal glutathione that you take, all that
does is increase glutathione inside of your cells.
Glutathione inside of your cells does nothing without enzymes that use it to
basically sequester damaging, inflammatory things.
And the cryotherapy increases-
Increase activates the enzymes that use it.
So it's like, great, I have all this glutathione sitting around in my cells
that I've been taking, and I also now have the enzymes that use it to do good
stuff now are being turned on.
But what was very interesting is that it took like multiple sessions before
those got active, like 10 to 20.
10 in one, at least 10.
And then the other study was 20.
And was it consecutively?
10 days.
In a row.
Yeah, 10 days in a row.
But the first day I didn't do it.
So that was also very interesting.
So it's almost like your body's saying, okay, this crazy fuck is going to do
this all the time.
Active response.
Yes.
Yeah, your body's preparing for war.
It's like, it's stressful.
You know, it's a stressful response.
The other thing that's really cool that we didn't talk about last time on the
podcast is the thermogenic effect.
When you release norepinephrine, so that's, I keep going back to that because
it's like, you can't refute that.
Steve Novella, no one.
No debunker, no skeptic, no, I don't care who you are.
You can't, it's just, it's consistent in every type of cold exposure, period.
It's consensus.
You release norepinephrine.
Well, there always seems to be some sort of a rationalization with a lot of the
debunking, like whether it's the benefits of exercise, whether it's the
benefits of cryotherapy.
That's almost like a rationalization for not doing it.
It's like you're looking for an excuse to not do it and not really very
objective.
Yes.
That was what was disturbing about us.
Like, this is like you're poo-pooing something that's offering people great.
Yeah.
Yeah, I, it was clear.
I mean, after I, especially, especially after the two weeks of research, I mean,
I think there's a kind of mentality when you're, sometimes people like to think
I'm a debunker and I'm not.
I am, I am intentionally like, because if you get in this mentality of always
debunking something, you're, it's like this spiral and you can't see the good.
Like, you can't keep an open mind to like get past your, like what's in your
box that you know, and that's very dangerous.
I think that, and I think a lot of-
It's an intellectual blind spot.
It is, and there are a lot of scientists that I know that are very smart,
extremely smart, but they are in that loop where it's like just, they have to
debunk and criticize.
Like, and it's like, you know, at some point, huge discoveries are made by like
connecting the dots and like getting past that.
Like, I mean, you have to be critical.
Being critical is very important, but you also like, I think there's a certain
threshold where you just start to like, you know, you get to this like spiral.
Well, it was also, what was infuriating about this is the data's out there.
This is not like, it's not like there's no data.
It's like he made a cursory examination of the evidence and what he chose to
focus on was, it was so subjective.
He focused on a study that tested muscle soreness post-exercise with cryotherapy.
Well, actually, the study that he referred to as a meta-analysis and it was
subjective, but it actually came to the conclusion that there were benefits.
However, it said more studies need to be done because there wasn't large enough
sample sizes and the quality of data was poor because there were not double-blinded
placebo-controlled clinical trials.
And I have to say to you, so they're actually, what he recited in that article,
there was a positive effect of the cryo.
But the problem is, is that because they followed it up with, oh, well, it's
poor quality, basically poor science.
The rea