The Science & Health Benefits of Deliberate Heat Exposure

Sitting in a hot sauna imposes a certain kind of stress on your body called—wait for it—heat stress.

You take your nice warm shower, and at the end, direct cold water at your forehead and chest, where your cold receptors are. Yes, it will suck—for exactly three days. After that, the sudden cold will drive the level of cardiolipin in your mitochondrial membrane up, enabling your body to generate heat more quickly. It will also burn more calories al

Heat Is the New Black “Hyperthermic conditioning” (calculated heat exposure) can help you to increase growth hormone (GH) levels and substantially improve endurance. I now take ~20-minute sauna sessions post-workout or post-stretching at least four times per week, typically at roughly 160 to 170°F. If nothing else, it seems to dramatically decrease

It is sometimes argued that our body temperature is set at 98.6 degrees for the same reason that we feel comfortable in a room at 70 degrees. A little over two million years ago, humans emerged in Africa in sites where the median daily temperature is in the low 70s. Thus, a body temperature in the high 90s optimizes the necessary dissipation of hea

DBT teaches a variety of techniques to enable people to maintain and improve their distress tolerance, and to recognize and cope with their emotions—and not be controlled by them, as I had been for so long. One simple tactic that I use to cope with mounting emotional distress is inducing an abrupt sensory change—typically, by throwing ice water on