Andrew Huberman· PhD
“This is cold. I want to get out, but can safely stay in”.
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“This is cold. I want to get out, but can safely stay in”.
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The temperature should be uncomfortably cold but safe to stay in for that duration.
A three minute ice bath will teach you about your adrenaline response (mental and physical) immediately and it can be done safely.
what I would do is make it colder and go for shorter periods for a while. 1 to 3 minutes. Uncomfortably cold, but still safe to stay in. With delivered cold exposure he never really want to just keep extending the time.
I suggest starting with a temp that makes you feel like you want to get out, but that you can manage for 1-4min.
If you are using deliberate cold exposure, the environment that you place yourself into should place your mind into a state of whoa, I would really like to get out of this environment, but I can stay in safely.
How cold should it be in order to invoke adrenaline release? Well, it should be uncomfortably cold but cold enough that you feel like you really want to get out, but can stay in safely.
Here's the thing, it should be uncomfortably cold, but safe to stay in for one to five minutes. Okay so uncomfortably cold, you really want to get out, but safe to stay in, not so cold that it's going to give you a heart attack and not so warm that it's comfortable that it doesn't create that adrenaline release.
If you want to get the most out of the cold water exposure and to be more specific the adrenaline, then you want to get to that point of I really want to get out of here, but I know I can stay in safely. But I really want to get out of here.
the ideal temperature is the temperature that you can safely get into and stay in for a duration of 30 seconds to 3 minutes before getting out some people op to go longer but I think 30 seconds to 3 minutes is a good duration to work with for most people especially if you're going to do it frequently so the temperature should be safe for you to stay in for that duration but uncomfortable enough that there's some impulse to want to get out that you have to of work to stay in there that you have to kind of overcome that adrenaline release and the impulse to get out
So what is the right stimulus? How cold? Cold enough that you feel a bit uncomfortable and you want to get out, but you can safely stay in and you stay in for a little bit longer.
So I would say anywhere from one to three minutes for most people, maybe 30 seconds if you're really experiencing a lot of mental barriers to getting in there.
But in any case, it should be uncomfortable. And then you should stay until you adapt to that.