The Greatest Supplement of All Time with Cold Plunge

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you

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Hello and welcome to the VK podcast. Ryan Alford, your co-host, my partner, my co-host Chris Hansen is in Orlando today. I got GVega South Carolina covered as always. We appreciate you joining. For this episode, we talk about alternative wellness. We're trying to make alternative wellness the only alternative.

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And hey, this ranks up there with alternative choices. We've got Cameron Labar, also known as Cold Plunge Cam. What's up, Cam? How's it going, guys? Thanks for having me. Yeah, man. Hey, I like alliteration. I like names. I usually give people names, but you've created your own. The Cold Plunge Cam.

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It's hard to, it's hard not to go right at cold plunging when it's like in your name. Sometimes you want to have a show and we're going to build up to, build up to what it's going to be about. But we stripped that kind of out of it, but it is becoming all the rage, isn't it? Yeah. And going back to the name, that was a little bit of a strategy piece as well. Right. When it comes to search and marketing and whatever of when people would type something like that in, but yeah, big fan of alliteration over here and riding this wave of.

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cold exposure that that is becoming a lot more mainstream. Yeah, it is. It's been hitting my radar. Chris is always on the forefront of all these things. And if I used to have to before Chris and I hooked up and became good friends and partners, I have to go find all these things. But now all I have to do is it fits my feed cause Chris is like, he's on the forefront of every alternative credit and everything else. He's got all the supplements and everything else. And then

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finding a lot of our amazing guests. But Cam, let's set the table for everyone. I know you've got a story of resilience and coming back and like where the cold plunge and that therapy became a solution for you with some other things you have going on, but let's talk about a little bit of your story. Yeah, I appreciate it. I started cold plunging probably, it was summer of 2021, so it's been about three years or so.

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And I, from a young age, had a lot of diagnoses just with different neurological conditions, Tourette's syndrome, anxiety, OCD. Now I have a therapist and psychiatrist telling me I probably have ADHD too, but I just don't want to admit it. But so there's, from a young age, there's a lot of searching and a lot of root cause analysis and trying to recognize patterns and things like that. And when I moved up to Boise, Idaho a few years ago,

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I got hit with just a wave of depression that I was not experiencing and was not expecting. And there could be a few different reasons for that and we can get into it. But I was searching for anything to help. I was willing to do anything, willing to try anything. I've been on.

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all sorts of medications, I tried fixing diet and exercise and trying different types of therapy, traditional talk therapy, EMDR therapy, some neurofeedback even. And finally I got to a point where one of my friends came out to visit and he saw how close I lived to the Boise River. And I'm less than a hundred yards basically. I can walk out there, put my feet in the water and less than a minute basically. And he was like, dude, do you ever go in?

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the water and I said, nah, I'll go walk on the trail and stuff. And that's what most people do. Cause the water is cold, even the summer, the water is cold. And it's 55. And he was like, dude, I would be in there every day. Have you heard of Wim Hof? Have you heard of yes theory seek discomfort, these guys who have. Who have messed around with cold exposure and spoken to Wim Hof. And I was like, no. And so we started watching some of those videos and, and that's what started. It was. I had an outlet that was very convenient.

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So I'm fortunate in that sense to have a river that was as clean as it was and as close by. But then I just went all in. Then I thought, let me try this out. Let me see what it's all about. And within those first few times of taking an ice bath and then getting in the river, I like the two to three hours afterwards were feelings that I just couldn't even explain.

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Like the list of what I was feeling was just so long. It was calm and peaceful yet energetic and focused. It was me wanting to just be kind to everybody and just being and feeling happy. And it just, it was something that would last for hours. And it was like every time it would last for hours.

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And so I just thought, I'm just going to stick with this and see how much it can continue to help. And that's just how the whole thing started. Oh my God. I'm sitting here listening and I'm like, as I order like, if they ever develop, like if Elon Musk gets the chips in the brain, where I get to do is think about something in like Amazon is probably going to have it too, where you don't even have to hit a button. It's like ordered like I was like ordering my cold blends. Like this sounds like the greatest supplement of all time that I've never been able to find. Yeah.

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It's wild and I'm not definitely not a doctor. I have to preface everything with that. But the amount of processes that our body goes through when it's subjected to cold, it is wild. The amount of things our body does to try and adapt to survive in certain situations, it's crazy. And we're just starting to learn about a lot of that science now. So.

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Cam, you strike me as someone that I can, mental health is nothing to fuck with, but have a little bit of fun, just being honest. When I read your background and I heard you talk about the Tourette's, I was a little concerned that we were gonna get some F-bombs, unexpected on the show. I was hoping for it, because I thought it might make for, but in all jokes aside, but I did think about it, I was trying to brace myself a little bit, but talk to me about what that was like for you, or was it those kind of outbursts,

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I mean, you seem like 100% normal. So, hole plunging really like that powerful? Yeah, so a few things to tackle there. First, the percentage of people with Tourette's who have coprolalia or the vocal outburst, the cursing, those types of things, is closer to 10 to 15% of those people. All right, that's more than I know. So, I'm uneducated and ignorant. And that's a big piece of awareness that I think I try to bring up all the time is

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Most of my tics now are kind of motor tics where I'm shrugging my shoulders, my arms, my neck, stuff like that. And I don't quite experience them to the extent that I did growing up, which is also very common for folks with Tourette's where the severity of the tics are usually in adolescence. And after about 18 or 19, they start to subside. They're still there. And I still feel them on a daily basis. And for some folks with Tourette's, it's more more extreme where they...

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prolonged through their whole life. But for me, I feel blessed because I was given that experience of trying to understand what types of environments, stressors, triggers would make my tics increase, go down, and what I could, the places I could be, all of those types of things. So it can be, it's a long range of things that affect my tics. It's uncomfortable environments I'm not familiar with, loud noises, caffeine, video games.

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not enough sleep, traveling, it's all sorts of stuff. And so starting to recognize those types of patterns, I think, put me in a spot where I could start learning how to be more self-aware from a younger age. And that was a huge piece. Now with the cold, I actually, this is what's interesting. I actually think it's an adverse effect for my tics. Because of the, yeah, the adrenaline spike.

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that you experience like the norepinephrine epinephrine increase from cold exposure. I feel like in the hours after my crea my ticks increase a little bit, but it is worth the trade off of how it helps with my anxiety and depression every time because it's like those things got so much better for me. It felt like the central nervous system reset, but

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sometimes my tics were a little bit higher. So I always like to point that out, that it's not, it wasn't something that cured me at all from that. Whatever it is, you speak eloquently and I would have had no idea if I hadn't. I think whatever, whether it's helping or hurting, stick with what you got. But maybe talk to us, I'd love to know, let's get into the cold plunge thing. Like it's all the, a lot of people talking, you've talked about the benefits, you've made everyone listening order a cold plunge tongue while you were talking, including me.

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Can I just put ice in my bathtub if I could fit in it? Like I'd have to order a lot of ice. Is that even an option? Yeah, definitely. And my affiliation, I love the ice barrel. That's the one I've been using for the last couple of years. One of my favorites. And there's a lot of options out there now and there's lots of ways to get started. You can start with cold showers. That's a great proxy, I'd say, for a plunge itself. It's not exactly the same experience, but you're gonna get a lot of the same types

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physiological response and the increase in heart rate, breath rate, needing to learn how to bring that back under control. But yeah, an ice, a bathtub is great. A cold shower is great. I would recommend starting with that if, cause that's what's most readily accessible to people. A hack I haven't quite mentioned yet that I want to, but I've seen around a few people posting about it is you stay at a hotel, go to the ice machine, just go grab a

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bunch of ice and take it back to your hotel room and do it there too. That's a lot of free ice. There you go. I like it. You have free ice right there. What's the routine? So like how long, how often are there protocols and things like that? Yeah, there's, there are protocols and I think rule number one for me is listen to your body. It's all about listening to where you are. And I think that's, it's more than just a safety thing.

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it's also a self-awareness thing in learning how much you can control, how much you can handle, and what types of symptoms per se you start to notice as you go through something like that. The first thing to be aware of is the temperature of the water for people who are just.

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learning or are experiencing it somewhere around 55 Fahrenheit, maybe even 60. It's a good place to start. It's a little bit warmer. It probably isn't like a true ice bath necessarily, but the 55 to 60 is a good starting point, especially for folks who, you know, aren't quite sure how they're going to respond to that level of cold. You can work your way down in terms of time.

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duration of a cold plunge, I like to say anywhere between two to five minutes. And again, that's going to depend on the temperature of the water, who you are, your condition, and giving yourself just enough time to get your breathing back under control and feel like you're you're present again and you are in control and your heart rate's down, your breathing's down, because that initial spike

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and all of those things, that that's the biggest struggle. And just getting breath work down usually takes about a minute. And so if you can get yourself to two minutes to have all that back under control, that's a good that's a good starting point and a good place to be to feel those endorphins after a minute to win it, Chris. That's all it is. It's always been a long time. It's a long time. I see a lot of people.

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in and out, which is still progress, but you're right, Kim. It's that initial shock and getting over that, like the fight or flight kicking in where you're like, this is cold. This will kill me. And then breathing through it is it's a game changer. Yeah. And there's some breath work that you can do beforehand until people take five to 10 deep breaths, feel like you're fully oxygenated and like you have everything.

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under control before you get in. If you aren't really prepared or take a few deep breaths beforehand and you jump straight in, that's when you're really gonna get that gasp. And so it's good to take a few deep breaths beforehand and just feel like you got the oxygen you need. Does any of that choking have anything to do with like further male anatomy?

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I don't know. That's a good question. I know there's certain things that happen. Maybe it's like all of us. Yeah. You jump in. Yeah. We'll leave that there. Contraction happens to us all. Yeah. Some of us. The Chris, I know you're into this. So yeah, I know you probably got some questions for Cam. Oh.

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I guess I asked him a lot of questions before we hit record, but. You gotta ask it again, baby. I was curious how we got into it, obviously, when we talked about that. But maybe let's touch on what you mentioned today in one of your videos, which that, doing it often is good, but maybe too often, maybe you could take a little breather now and then, because it might not have as profound effects. Yeah. We can take on that a little bit. There is. Because I experienced that as well.

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And because there is a level of adaptation, that's why the body is so incredible, right? We're just very resilient, very adaptable. And the cold plunging is very helpful, but like other forms of exercise, we get used to a certain pace or a certain cadence when we practice it. And so I, it depends on how you're using it right and what your schedules and all of that. But as I did 31 days this month.

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in the river every day, I started to notice my the initial shock and the spike in heart rate and breath rate that I would normally experience. I probably wasn't getting to the same level as I did in the beginning. My body was expecting it or was a little bit more...

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in tune with the cold temperatures. And so I think that was an interesting thing that I learned. And I think because of that, because I didn't have that shock in the beginning, I probably wasn't experiencing the same level of benefits that I would if it did really shock me. Because I think the adrenaline release is very tied to the dopamine release that comes later and the feel-good endorphins that come later. And so

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I think and that's why when you see some of my videos where it's just the water is 35 degrees and I just get in it like it's nothing. I hope those videos don't come off as me trying to just impress people. Right. But it's more because I've just gotten so used to it. My my headphones cutting out. Why is that happening? Anyways, you guys still hear me. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You're a lot of. Okay. And so yeah, I know there's some protocols out there. I think.

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Dr. Susanna Soberg has said that a good time to have is 11 minutes per week and you can spread that out How you'd like over over the week and for me I'll probably continue to do it four days a week or so and split up some time I'll probably plunge longer than 11 minutes a week honestly But again, that's another thing to play around with full head underwater or just body

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I put my full head under all the time. There's some people that say no, some people that say yes. I've always liked doing it. For people who are beginning, I'd say, don't do it immediately when you get in because you're not gonna be used to that and you're gonna wanna breathe. And so if you do end up doing it, I would just say save it for a little bit later, maybe midway through at the end. But yeah, I put my head in all the time. I do a splash. I splash the water and then I literally sit like this.

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And I think the warm air breathing in my hands is there's a safety there. Maybe I'm cheating, but I always comment on his videos. I don't think people understand it. When I get into a plunge tub, the water's not moving. My body's creating a heat barrier after 20, 30 seconds. He's in running water. There's no heat barrier forming. It's just constant.

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Freezing like last night. Flow of cold water. Actually, last night I did a little makeshift plunge. We've got a sauna here. So I did the sauna and it's been like in the 50s at night. So I just hopped in our pool, which is probably 60 degrees. And it's still, like you said, it's better than nothing, but it definitely doesn't do justice to when you're in that 35, 40 degrees.

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It's a whole other ballgame. Yeah. Cause there is a thermal layer, like you were saying, when you're in more of a stationary ice bath, there's a thermal layer that starts to build up around your skin to insulate you from the cold. That's just one of the incredible things that your body does. And in running water, it breaks that thermal layer, right? So it's just this constant flow of cold water. And so it's a little bit more of a difficult experience because of that, but.

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there's something about being out in nature and doing it there, that's just irreplaceable. So I'll do that, I'll do that every time. Cam, talk about some of your other wellness routines that have come along with this journey and maybe whether it's breath work or other things that you've layered on along with the cold plunging. Yeah, so I've always been frequent at the gym, exercising,

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probably five, six days a week. I had been getting this year, last year, really good at sauna and doing that more frequently. Big fan of sauna, especially in the evening. I feel like it helps me tremendously with sleep. My nutrition.

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was probably one of the harder things for me to start to dial in a little bit more. There's some pride there and some, some thoughts of, I don't want to believe that certain ingredients could be tied to how I feel or like how my mental health is even, right. I think for a long time, I didn't want to believe that how a bag of chips could be contributing to, I don't know, my, my depression or something. I was like, come on, like, I don't even want to hear about that. But my,

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that I am slowly becoming more conscious of and starting to reduce processed foods, eating more whole foods, getting a more balanced diet. That's been huge. And probably one of the biggest things I did in 2023 was get lab work done more routinely. And I doing that through a company called blokes. And they had reached out to me because I was struggling with, I shared all the time, just struggling with the depression and the anxiety a ton.

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And I was beginning this process of tapering off of medication. And I was like, what else could be contributing to my mood right now? And blokes had reached out Joshua, the founder, and he said, dude, let's just get your labs done. Let's see where your blood work is. Let's see where your hormone levels are.

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tackle things from there and come to find out I'm 32, my testosterone was getting pretty low, my DHEA was getting low. And so a lot of things people don't realize a lot of times is the...

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your hormone levels contribute to your mood, right? And that's a huge factor. And that was something I wasn't really paying attention to a lot. And so that's a big part of my routine lately is has been supplementing directly for those deficiencies that we found.

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in my blood work and it made a huge difference. It really did. Yeah, if you're getting blood work now, if you're still trusting the outside, the exterior, and not really looking at the markers that your own body has and ways with which you can see what's going on, you're really behind. It's just, I don't care how old you are. And it's sometimes...

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very revealing to a lot of issues, a lot of things like when you get with the right doctor and they can analyze everything that's going on with different things that are happening, it starts to correlate, go figure, right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, yeah, checking under the hood instead of doing guesswork and supplementing from a guess. Yeah. Yeah.

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And the other thing too is doing it routinely because doing the blood work just once every few years or so it isn't really, blood work can be, can shift pretty dramatically even over a few days, depending on how your sleep is and other factors. And so I think getting it right now, I'm getting it every six months is a better cadence for really understanding how your body's doing. 100%.

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Chris, I know you've been, you get blood work, right? Yeah, man. I was gonna touch on that. I think he's right on point. Elvis, I know, agree with it. Get your freaking annual blood work at the very least, maybe even quarterly. We had Dr. Joel, a buddy of ours, a longevity doctor. Same thing, dude. And I know when I had my blood work done and I had history of depression, history of anxiety, I had deficiencies as well that I'm supplementing that.

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game changer for me where it almost seems foolish now to think we we didn't regularly get our blood checked they just look at you and feel your ears and your knees and like all right you're good to go the car's still driving not sure if it needs any new oil but you're good to get out of here i probably went sorry i probably went from just 24 to 32 without getting anything done i don't most guys were horrible with going to the doctor

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But now with you said blokes, and I've seen you talk about them before, but these companies, it's so simple. Just do it. Yeah. Like you might, especially with the mental health stuff going on, I think none of us look at, we don't think, oh, it could be something that simple, right? Like your iron level is lower, vitamin D, or testosterone where, and if you're open to talk about it, would they explore the journey from like the medications

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getting on them and what kind of motivated you to think, okay, I want to do something different. Because I think even in my own life, I titrated it off in my depressions. It's been a long time, but I've been sure to say, there's so many people on it. And even people I speak to that are having say a rough time, their default is still, oh, maybe I need to get on meds. And I don't like that that's the default. When did you realize you needed to make a change? And how is that?

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change been going. Yeah, I agree with you in so many ways. I started Paxil when I was nine and I have been on SSRI ever since. And so I finally got to a point, like I said, I did the blood work, I was trying to find just what was contributing more to my mood and stuff. And that was like the final thing where I thought, I haven't even been questioning this.

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I've been on the, I've been on this for 23 years since I was a kid. And there was rationale for it when I was a kid and my parents will stand by that. And I'm like, I'm fully support because the, what it was like when I was a kid was that I was just like paralyzed with fear and I couldn't get schoolwork done. And it was hard for me to follow directions and it would just throw me into a spiral. And so they, that was why I needed it as a kid. And I do feel like it also.

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I just kind of hide in a little bit with my tics, with my Tourette's. And so I just got to a point though that I thought, I don't know what Cameron is like underneath without all this medication, right? I have no idea. It's been so long. A million different variables could have changed since I was a kid. And perhaps this could be something that's contributing to lower mood. I was on a, I'd since switched over to

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Lexapro and I was on a higher dose of Lexapro and I just thought I'm going to start tapering off of this slowly and and working my way down and I've worked the dose a little bit more than halfway down from the starting point but it was just I hadn't questioned it and I think it's a much I'm getting more passionate about the process of tapering off of medication more than anything.

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because I am not vilifying or against it necessarily. I benefited from it for years and I can admit that. I think it's important for everyone to understand their own body and their own circumstances. But the process in which we taper off of medication is it's so cloudy. We're told so many different things and most of what we're told.

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at least from what I've been seeing, is not how you should taper off a medication. It's too fast. It's cut your dose in half, go two weeks, cut your dose in half again, go two weeks, and then go to zero. And that is, I'm not, like I said, I'm not a doctor whatsoever, but I'm getting more passionate about it because that is, in my opinion, a recipe for disaster. Depending on the person and the dose that they're at, the body needs way more time to adjust.

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and deal with withdrawal symptoms than that. And it's not just like a like a I'll get by and have the sweats for a little bit and then just get over it. It's not anywhere close to that. It is putting people's lives in danger. Right. When you go too fast, it really is a tangent from our conversation. But I think that's a huge because I had a fear coming off medications, but I also felt the same way as you. Who am I underneath this?

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So I think to, and that's part of what drew me in with you is I feel like you're so vulnerable in speaking about this, but I think you're really helping empower other people. And especially if you have a fear of getting off these medications, you're in real time showing people that it's possible and that there's other ways to minimize the uncomfortability.

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Yeah, and I appreciate it. And the, I think where a lot of damage occurs is there's individuals like myself or like you, right? Who had taken the medication and you get a little bit frustrated and you think I want to, I want to taper off of this or I want to get off of it. And you start, you start thinking because I'm mad at it, I'm just going to go cold turkey or I'm just going to remove it because I'm angry or I'm mad.

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And it's, I've done that countless times over the last 15 years where I was just like done and it was always a disaster, always. And so I think it's important to, to educate or at least raise awareness that. When it comes to getting off the medication, if you're really mad at it and you want to do it successfully, it is a slow process and time is your friend. And there are resources out there like compounding pharmacies that can make you incrementally smaller.

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doses of medication with a prescription so that you can taper much smoother and have a higher likelihood for success. But yeah, too many people have messaged me saying I went cold turkey. It was the biggest nightmare of my life. Ended up going back on and it's it just we just need we need a little more education. Yeah. I had that issue with gummy bears. I tried to cut them out. And let me just tell you, if you want to see an angry man.

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I started, ah, where are my gummy bears? Dude, I like my food. Sugar man. I'm joking a bit, but it's more the craziness of sugar man. Try to cut sugar. Like it's probably the worst drug out there. Like for sure. And Coke. My nightstand is full of gummy bears and chocolate. If I'm being completely honest. Exactly. But no.

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Cam, we really appreciate you coming on. Great on social media. Everybody can watch you jump in and freeze your balls off. Where's, where can everybody keep up with you? It is listening. Yeah, Cold Plunge Cam is my Instagram TikTok handle. That is the full extent of my content at the moment. I need to start branching out into other avenues, but. It's just in the niches, baby. Yeah, for now that's it, but. Cool, man. Go check out Cam.

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great follow on TikTok and Instagram. And hey man, we really appreciate your transparency and I really believe in what you're doing. Appreciate it guys. Hey, for Chris Hansen in Orlando, I'm Ryan Alford. We'll see you next time on the Vacay Podcast.