3 Minutes at Negative 100 Degrees Celsius: My Introduction To Cryotherapy

I walked by the Onnit booth at PaleoFx in Austin this year and stopped to chat. There were seemingly 100+ booths there this year, but I wanted to chat with Onnit.

They’re endorsed by Joe Rogan and a bunch of other athletes. I knew about their supplements, but didn’t know much else.

I don’t push supplements very much (if you’re eating right, you don’t need a ton of supplements. Supplements should be just that – supplementary – not replacements for quality food & nutrition from your daily diet), so I almost wrote them off.

That said, after spending about 90 seconds talking to them, mostly because they bribed me with Alpha Brain (1 of 2 supplements I take that I can’t get from food)…

#awesome

I found out that in addition to their supplement line, they just opened up a gym this past winter in Austin, about 15 minutes away from where we were.

#awesome #awesome

I also found out that they had a cryotherapy machine, that it’s open to the public, and that it’s relatively cheap ($30).

#awesome #awesome #awesome

I suddenly became a much bigger fan of Onnit.

If you’re unfamiliar with cryotherapy, it’s a way to rapidly expose either your whole body or specific parts “to subzero temperatures in order to decrease inflammation, increase cellular survival, decrease pain and spasms…for people seeking faster recovery and better health.”

Okay, so if we break it down, what exactly does cryotherapy do?

The Benefits of Cryotherapy

I got the whole rundown on cryo from them, but to be honest, cryo has been something that I’ve wanted to do for a long while. I talk quite a bit about cold showers and the benefits of cold, so when a cool, high-tech toy like this comes around, I want to check it out.

• Invigorating experience
• Decreased psychological stress
• Increased energy
• Improved sleep
• Relief from muscle and joint pain
• Reported decreased time for muscle stress recovery
• Immediate Effect
• Longer Lasting Endorphins Effect

Some of the studies out there (1, 2, 3), seem to support the fact that cryotherapy or cold therapy supports recovery and at least helps improve pain tolerance. Although there are some sources (4) that say the benefits might be overstated. Andrew Weil is cautiously optimistic about those.

So with that in mind, I had to try it out for myself to see what the fuss was about.

— Fast forward to the end of the conference —

3 Minutes at Negative 100 Degrees Celsius.

After grabbing a couple tacos, we head over to the Onnit facility, which is just south of the city in Austin.

We didn’t have time for a workout, but we did get a tour of the gym and the facility (which was absolutely awesome and where Joe DeFranco now trains out of), and Onnit HQ. When we finished, sure enough, the cryo chamber was there waiting for us – and they promised it only took 3 minutes.

Lets do this.

I stripped down to my boxers, put on a robe and the slippers and gloves they give you so your extremities don’t get frostbitten.

At this point, I’m nervously laughing at how I must look, while telling myself internally “this can’t be worse than a cold shower.”

Right? Right.

I popped into the cryosauna and noted that it sort of looks like a thing Superman would get into to change in modern day, now that phone booths are obsolete.

The technician goes over to the side of the machine and presses some buttons while I start to play “what terrible things might happen next” with myself.

• How cold is –100º Celsius anyway?
• What other appendages could freeze off? 0_0
• What’s the quickest way to get out of this thing?

http://instagram.com/p/1_FlpkzFlw/

This is me thinking that they’re going to pull some Jabba the Hut-type crap and Han Solo me here.

The machine turns on and a sort of white smoke starts billowing out of the machine.

Oh, and it starts to get cold.

Really cold.

But the cold is different than the cold of an ice bath. It’s not bone-chilling cold. Don’t get me wrong, it’s freezing, but it’s not that cold. If I were to make an analogy, the cryo machine is to ice baths like winters in New York are to winters in Chicago.

To explain, winters in New York are cold, but that’s it – it’s cold, but not terrible. You can still live through them. Winters in Chicago are so cold you feel it in your soul. It makes you think that a concept like “summer” is something only heard of in fairy tales and Florida.

Cryo is like New York – but this is actually a benefit. Cryo seems to go as deep as needed (skin/muscles), without turning your bones into structural icicles.

So, while I’m definitely cold, I’m not actually yelping like I typically am for the first 2–3 minutes of an ice bath.

The technician has me turn around in a circle to make sure I don’t have any warm air pockets form around me.

I wind up facing the exact area where the nitrogen is coming from.

More cold.

They tell me that I can stick my head below the walls, but to hold my breath if I do (apparently you can suffocate if you try to breathe, since the liquid nitrogen fumes can displace oxygen. And you can end up with too much CO₂ in your bloodstream and die).

Gnarly.

So of course I had to try it (minus the breathing, suffocating and dying part, of course).

This specifically was more of a novelty piece, as I didn’t feel like any of my face muscles needed recovery (although if you asked my brothers, they might disagree).

The tech started to count down and then all of a sudden it was over.

3 minutes. Done.

Boom.

Woah.

My Recommendations on Cryotherapy

Depending on how used to the cold you are (or how many cold showers you take), the 3 minutes may either seem like a split second or an eternity.

Either way, I’d be lying if I didn’t feel more alive after coming out of the cryo chamber. Part of this could be the science behind cold therapy. People will debate this all day, but a huge part of it is the feeling of the blood rushing back through your veins and coming to the surface of your skin.

It’s very similar to the feeling you get when you take an ice bath (without the 20 minutes of freezing, 10 minute warmup afterward or the horrid terror that comes from dipping your unmentionables into a freezing liquid torture device).

You get a rush from feeling the warmth race back in and getting blood pumping through your system.

There’s also a noticeable overall aesthetic that cooling down gives you. This is the same idea behind burning brown fat and using cold to tighten up your skin.

I’m not recommending that you do this as a method for weight loss.

Lemme repeat.

DO NOT DO THIS INSTEAD OF WORKING OUT.

However, it is a cool immediate reaction – for about 5–10 minutes until you warm up.

The benefits of cold therapy itself are well debated within the athletic community, but I’m on the side of “if it’s a placebo, it’s a pretty dang good placebo.”

I physically feel better after it and I notice an improvement with it as well. Whether you can recreate that in a lab or not, I think self experimentation is the best choice.

Would I Do It Again?

Yes. I would totally do it again. I think you should try it at least once.

If there’s anything that getting injured has taught me, it’s that I’d rather spend money on preventative maintenance than recovery.

I’ve opened up the pocketbook to spend money on massage therapy and while it’s been expensive, it’s also been some of the best money I’ve spent.

As an experience, it’s very cool and if you get the chance to try cryotherapy, do it.

As a piece of your athletic training, $30 for 1 time isn’t terribly expensive, but if you do it after every single workout – it can definitely add up.

The Onnit team did say they were thinking about potentially having an “all-you-can-eat” subscription option at $100/month. I would consider it at that price and do it quite often.

However, as it stands, with the $30/use pricing, I would probably do it a max of once/week after a particularly limit-pushing workout to maximize the results per usage.

I will also admit that I was curious about getting my own cryotherapy unit. They only cost $53,000 – maybe I’ll put one in my apartment** 🙂

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P.S. If you want to do cryotherapy but are still scared to do cold shower therapy – I call BS 🙂

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Want to do cryotherapy yourself? Check out a list of locations here.

http://www.mensjournal.com/health-fitness/health/laird-hamilton-why-cold-showers-are-good-for-you–20131205

http://www.fastcompany.com/3043767/my-creative-life/the-scientific-case-for-cold-showers