I don’t recommend ice baths. Perhaps I should. On my podcast-filled commute, I am reminded for miles of the mental and physical benefits of this revolutionary wellness routine: Cold exposure causes a spike in adrenaline and raises your baseline dopamine, thereby giving you superhuman focus and energy. Goodbye procrastination! Eliminate your ADHD in one icy step! I’m trying to be the fashionable mustached-columnist here so maybe I should get on board.
In fact, a heavyset, similarly-mustached 32-year-old patient just asked if I do ice baths. It was meant as a compliment, I believe. Displaying poise wearing my Chief of Dermatology embroidered white coat in my toddler-art-adorned office, I could hear him thinking: “This doc is legit. On fleek.” (Note, this is an approximation and the patient’s actual thoughts may have varied). We were talking podcasts and he was curious about my daily routine.
Kaiser Permanente
Dr. Jeffrey Benabio
Now, ice baths probably do have the benefits that Andrew Huberman, Joe Rogan, and the others have described, I don’t argue. And the experience is oft described as invigorating with a runner’s high-like euphoria that follows a good dunk. I’ve tried it. I would describe it as “very uncomfortable.” To boot, following icy-cold morning showers, I wasn’t any better able to stave off opening my New York Times app on a newsy day. No, cold water isn’t my jams. But then again, I don’t journal like Marcus Aurelius or sleep on a mattress that keeps my body a chill 97 degrees like an inverse sous vide. If I were asked by Huberman in an interview what I do to be mentally strong, I’d answer, “I clean the pool.”
“Here’s how I do it, Dr. Huberman,” I’d say. “First, open the pool cover. Then with a cup with pool water from about 12 inches down, fill these little beakers with water and add a few drops of chemical reagents. Then calculate the ounces of calcium hypochlorite, muriatic acid, and other chemicals to make your pools sparkle. After skimming, take your pool brush and brush the bottom and sides of your pool. Rack your equipment when done and close the cover back up. This exercise takes about 15 minutes.” It’s a mundane task, but ah, there’s the point. Like folding the laundry, weeding the garden, emptying the dishwasher, they can be oh, so gratifying. Each of these has a crisp beginning and end and offer a lovely spot to be present. Let the thoughts flow with each stroke of the brush. Watch the water ripple the surface as you slowly pull the long pole out, dripping 7.4 pH water as you glide it in for the next pass. This is the Benabio secret to success.
Dr. Benabio
In the pool.
I hope I’ve not disappointed you with this advice. Much as I’d like to think I’m on trend, I don’t believe self-improvement in the mundane will catch fire like taking magnesium or Wim Hof breathing. I wish it would. A distinction between gardening or pool cleaning or doing laundry and taking ice-baths is that the former aren’t just about you. I’ve got rows of spinach and Swiss chard that depend on me. My self-help is to water them. Feed them. Weed them. Because of me, they are growing deep green and beautiful. Although no one is swimming in our cool pool yet, they will soon. And the water will be sparkly clean, thanks to me. A stack of bright white towels is resting on our bathroom shelf waiting for someone to step out of the shower and need one. I did that.
Speaking of Huberman and the podcast gurus, Arnold Schwarzenegger is making the rounds lately hawking his book, “Be Useful.” It has the usual common sense ideas as most self-help books for the last 100 years.That’s the advice I passed along to my hirsute coming-of-manhood patient. I don’t do ice-baths, but each day I drop in deep on taking care of my patients, providing for my family, refilling the bird feeder in our yard. Why the heck would I sit in a currently 63-degree hot tub when I could be cleaning it? Then everyone is just a little better off, not just me.
Dr. Benabio is director of Healthcare Transformation and chief of dermatology at Kaiser Permanente San Diego. The opinions expressed in this column are his own and do not represent those of Kaiser Permanente. Dr. Benabio is @Dermdoc on X. Write to him at dermnews@mdedge.com.