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Speaker 2: Arrow is broadcasting from his sauna in Charlotte.
Speaker 1: Boys not the truth. Oh we can get hot down
here in the South. But I'll tell you what, I
sure have learning to love the heat though and not
necessarily run away from it.
Speaker 2: That's good.
Speaker 1: But see, and that's the thing about it. I feel
so weird that, you know, everybody's always complaining about, oh,
the planet is warming up, and am I the freak
by going I kind of really want this to happen
because I think that the heat is such a powerful
positive thing for our lives.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's it's what we evolved in for starters,
you know, we suddenly, you know, a million years ago,
our ancestors who weren't even humans, So it's even before
humans popped up. Our ancestors developed this ability to sweat randomly,
and evolution was like, hey, that's good, We're gonna mutate
that gene like ten times in like a short period
of time, and suddenly we had all these sweatlands for
cooling that no other animal has. So we are we
we are suited for for hot weather. You're not wrong.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, though, that does shock you though,
when people you know, do that, they do everything to
get away from the heat and things. They'll drink cold things,
they'll eat cold things. Everything is cold, cold, cold, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean that's that's natural thermal regulation. Right. We have
this desire to keep a stable body temperature, and so
when we sense that we're getting hot or we feel
too hot, and that's different for everybody, you do things
to try and cool off. So you you know, jump
into cold lake, right, or take clothes off, or eat
sushi or whatever, you know, anything to cool yourself. It's natural.
We want to maintain a constant body temperature and heat
is a threat and our brain knows that. So that's
why we take measures to do heat. And some of
those measures are are helpful. Right, sweating's good.
Speaker 1: But you know where I become confused, though, Bill is
when your doctor will look at you and say, go
home and put that on ice, do not use heat.
And I want to argue with that doctor because why
all of a sudden is heat not good for us?
Speaker 2: To these doctors, well, you know that's an old traditional viewpoint.
You know, you remember the old rice thing, right, rest
ice compression and elevation. So that was super popular for
decades and for like one hundred years. And then finally
the doctor who popularized that, I think his name is
Gabe Murkin. Ten years ago he came out and said,
I don't know, the ice thing might not be might
not be the greatest because some of the stuff that's
going on with the heat and even inflammation in the
injury context is actually a healing response. And same with exercise,
you get inflammation and that turns out drives a lot
of the beneficial the gains. Essentially, inflammation can be good.
Speaker 1: See short term, you're changing everything that I believe in.
And I think that's the reason why I'm so attracted
to this book, Hotwired, is because you're opening up my
eyes to a different level of thinking. And then the
thing about it is I'm one of those activators. If
I learned something new and I know that it's going
to be a positive, I'm going to take hot wired
and I'm going to make it a part of my life.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Yeah, and there's a lot to you know, there's
a lot. There's different ways to use heat, right. You
can use it in this in the sort of sauna
context and you're just kind of sitting around and relaxing
and maybe talking to friends or along with your thoughts.
You use it an athlete context right where you deliberately
and Olympic athletes do this. They deliberately train in the heat,
and they found that they initially did it so they
could survive these hotter Olympics, in the hotter Tour of
France and hotter marathons, and they're finding that training in
the heat is like altitude training, so it actually makes
you stronger in all conditions.
Speaker 1: One of the things where I kind of giggled like
a child is when I read that you've traveled around
the world to all these different saunas, And of course
my heart, because I study Native American spirituality, I thought,
but has he been inside a sweat lodge? Oh my god,
what an experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, Sweat lodge is tricky. Sweat lodge is like
the most intense. It's dark too, yeah uh and super hot,
right and take no prisoners.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you study. Here's the thing that a lot
of listeners don't understand. And I realize real readers are
going to do the same thing. They want to push
themselves away from the heat because they're uncomfortable with the
sweat or how your body's reacting. How can we convince
them to learn how to trust what is happening to
the inner core of your body.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's trial and error, but I'll say, you know,
sweat gets a little bit of a bad rap, and
people don't like to be sweaty because you think it's stinky.
There's actually two kinds of sweat. There's like the armpit sweat,
which is like the stinky, gowey, gross stuff, and the
bacteria to eat that, and the bacteria make the smells, right,
So that has not a lot to do with heat.
The other kind of sweat is just water and salt,
and that's the stuff that's on your forehead, on your chest,
on your arms, the stuff that cools you off. So
that stuff doesn't smell. It's fine, it's just water, So
don't you know, don't be uptight about it.
Speaker 1: In other words, just get over your ego and quit
being so vain.
Speaker 2: Yeah kind of yeah. I mean, you know, nobody wants
to go, you know, to a job interview covered in sweat, obviously,
but you know, sweat does get a bit of a
bad wrap in our culture.
Speaker 1: You really open up my heart, you know when you're
talking about thermal philosophy and physiology as well as mental health.
And the reason why is because I am big into meditation.
I've just never thought about pulling that warm heat in
my soul outward through that meditation. I just figured that
it all comes naturally. But it is something that you've
got to work on one day at a time, is
it not.
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely? And there there are monks and yogis who
can there's such powerful it's maybe it's not even just meditation,
but their minds are so powerful. They can actually control
their body temperature right, like they can make one side
of their body hotter than the other. Or they're these
these months in the Tibet who do this meditation that
that generates heat within their body and in their extremities.
So the I found that like the mind body connection
kind of runs through heat to a certain extent, and
getting warm, the sensation of warmth has sort of mysterious
effects on your mind that we don't fully understand. I'll
give you an example. There is a kind of a
great study that they did where they sent students up
to do like an interview with a person, and the
person acted the same every time. But what happened was
in the elevator, the person guiding the subject up would
I hand them either a warm cup of coffee or
a cold cup of coffee iced coffee. People who held
the warm coffee had a warmer response to their interviewee
really than the people with the cold iced coffee. So
the warmth physical warmth translated into interpersonal warmth. It's like wow,
like how how how does that work? See?
Speaker 1: I see, Oh, I gotta go real with you here
for a moment, I drank my nice, warm, hot coffee
with these interviews throughout the morning, and as that coffee
is almost well, man, you just explained something to me,
because as the day goes on and I started drinking
the cold coffee, all of a sudden, my mindset does
change on me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, really interesting. Yeah, Well, I'm a little sad too.
Speaker 1: My coffee's yeah, I just associated with my mother's womb.
I'll sit there and I'll tell myself, do you think
that's what it is? Because I thought I was insane
by thinking like that.
Speaker 2: Well, sort of existentially, warmth is comfort for us and
cold is like scary and death and going back thousands
and thousands of years our ancestors, you know, cold is
much more dangerous to us than warmth. Right, A warm
day isn't isn't in Charlotte, isn't going to Isn't that dangerous?
But it really unseasoned the cold day, A lot of
a lot of people are gonna, you know, have a
hard time. Yep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you go below seventy two in Charlotte and
we're all complaining for months. Oh my god, it was horrible.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 1: In fact, speaking of that, so because I do put
so much concentration on on heat and its strength and
what it does to the human imagination. But the thing
about it is that I do get cold quicker, and
I don't understand why that is. If the mind wants
to go back to the heat, so therefore it creates
the cold to get me to go back the other direction.
Speaker 2: Well, I think if you spend a lot of time
in hot situations, you can become heat adapted, and I
think that that can impact your your cold tolerance to
a certain extent.
Speaker 1: You did you like walking those roads when it was
one hundred degrees? Because man, there is nothing like a
path when it is so hot outside. Because it's like,
that's how I get rid of my allergies, That's how
I get rid of my body aches. That's how I
can speak to myself clearly, is through the heat. Did
you go through the same thing?
Speaker 2: Really? You know, I had an interesting experience. I did
this thing in Texas, the bike ride called the Hotter
in Hell one hundred eehaw, and it was terrifying to
think about. And I went and did heat testing. So
they tested my heat tolerance in the interested of Connecticut
and I was terrible. And I did some heat training
and then I went down as did it. But I
was really I was scared, you know, scared out of
my pants the night before. Then I did it. It
was one hundred and seven degrees on the road and
I felt fine. It was it was it was surreal. Yeah,
So I I could do more than I thought I
think it was interesting, but it was. It was also
like it was it was almost like an out of
body experience in that not meditative, but like my mind
was on a different on a different plane from it
was a journey.
Speaker 1: Please do not move. There's more with Bill Gifford coming
up next. The name of his book is hot Wired.
The hidden power of heat makes us stronger? Do you
believe in that? Oh, let's dig in a little bit
deeper with Bill Gifford. I would love to hear all
the comments from people that are going to share with
you there are bad moments with heat, something that they've
never heard.
Speaker 2: Let go.
Speaker 1: And the reason why is because mine Toungue River Reservoir
right there on the border of Montana and Wyoming one
hundred and four degrees and everybody goes, do not drink alcohol.
It will affect you, dude. I have never forgotten that
day because I didn't have that much, but I would
I went crazy because because of the alcohol, and it
wasn't even that much alcohol, but it was the heat
that infected me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So mentally, oh god, it was horrible. Yeah yeah, yeah.
I mean you know it's stress, right, heat? Heat? Stress
is stress, and you know alcohol can exacerbate that. I mean,
finish people don't have a problem, you know, drinking several
beers during a sauda session. But yeah, I mean he
could be stressful. It could be no ly stressed. So
that's what's interesting about it. It's a it's an uncomfortable,
stressful experience that can have in the right context, positive
effects on health, aging, even mental state. One of the
things environmental heat that you can't escape is a different thing,
and that can be tough.
Speaker 1: You're right about that, because it's changing. And the thing
about it is, though, is that so is the humidity,
not just here in the South but all over the world.
And a lot of people up north don't understand what
this humidity thing is. But see, I see that as
a positive. It's when it's not here that we begin
to ache and we creak like old people.
Speaker 2: I live in a dry place, right, I live in Utah.
Who hot dry, Your sweat evaporates, which is great. Humidity
is tough, and you're right, humidity is increasing in many
in many places. It's it can be tough, but it's
something that can be adapted to. Also. This heat adaptation
works in more human conditions as well.
Speaker 1: Can we finally change the rules of the everyday life
between men and women because they always said that men
sweat and women perspire. Can we just flat out say
that it's time and it's okay for women to sweat
with us.
Speaker 2: Women sweat, women like sweating. Yeah. I was at a
sauna festival in New York City a couple of weeks ago,
and uh, yeah, there were a lot of women in
their younger women getting very sweaty, and they seem pretty
happy about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they walk around democratize.
Speaker 2: Sweat, right, we need a quality of sweat. Well.
Speaker 1: I've always believed that's the reason why people don't come
out of their their workout clothes, because they want the
world to see look at me, I sweat, I got
wet man, I did my thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but did they did they? Or they just wearing
the lemons?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, look at you see. That's that's the
honesty that people will find in Hot Wired. And the
thing is is that you really do unveil a lot
of powerful things and how heat is positive for our lives,
especially as we start growing into the spring and summer months.
But my question is I'm that guy that like that
went into the infrared sauna at the for therapy, bored,
bored out of my mind, could not wait to get
out of that thing. And and am I and I
just be in a dink here.
Speaker 2: Uh you know, wait, a lot of us are challenge
I get bored too. And I think a lot of
us are challenged to to sit with our thoughts and
not have a phone. And but yeah, I was in
the sauna yesterday. I was like, oh, it was a
silent sauna. It was, and I was on my own.
I was like, it's a little boring. They have so
in Europe they and increasingly in the States, they have
these performances that happened in a sauna. Like I'm not kidding.
They have people will do like a little they'll do
they'll dance or whatever the music. They'll put like scented
ice balls on the on the sauna rocks, they'll wave
towels around and it's a whole like performance thing. I
think because people get bored in the sauna. I once
saw like I saw play short play in a sauna,
like fifteen minute play somebody. I saw somebody do opera
what aliens called alf goose, And it's it's a whole thing.
Speaker 1: God, I would like to go in there and cut
a commercial. Man voice over a commercial. I'd be in
there going kay ron fifty five songs in a row,
listen to this voice?
Speaker 2: Is that? Because?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's good for the voice that heat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, the steam to the you know when you
put the water on the on the rocks and you
get that humidity. Yeah, and it's good for your skin too.
Speaker 1: So let's go that route when it comes to heat,
when you talk about what's coming off those rocks versus.
There have been some saun as I've been to that
have been electric and I feel like I fried my
skin rather than enjoyed the humidity.
Speaker 2: Of it all exactly. And it's it's like you're it's
like you're under the sheet lamp, yes, you know, Chili's
or whatever, and you're just kind of like parching and wilting. Yeah. Yeah,
you're grilling. You're you're being grilled. Yeah, that's not pleasant.
So you know, in Finland, I keep going back to Finland.
They're very particular about the steam they're putting the water
on the rocks, and it has like they're like they're
like wine tasters. It has it has a quality to
it and they judge it.
Speaker 1: Don't you see though, that the energy inside of our
bodies is really our superpower that we actually could become
a Marvel or a DC fanatic or even one of
these players if we would just learn to trust the
heat in our body.
Speaker 2: Oh, if we would just learn to trust our body
in general. I mean, we're tremendously capable and adaptable and
smart creatures, right, and we can handle all kinds of environments. Right,
There's a reason, you know, people lived in North Carolina,
people lived in you know, ancient humans migrated to Mexico
to Canada what's now Canada. So we can handle all
kinds of environments. But heat seems to bring out some
special abilities because that's where we evolved.
Speaker 1: Are we going to start seeing you on tour or
on Hulu or Netflix? Because I would love to see
a TV show with you on it where you travel
to every one of these places to do the sauna
and you get to have conversations with authentic people outside
as well as inside the sauna.
Speaker 2: I think that's a great idea. And you know, heat
has like a bonding like these you're in the sauna context,
it's kind of like a bonding experience, and that kind
of goes with the cold plunge as well. If you're
doing this kind of I think it's because you're in
this like crazy hot environment that is slightly dangerous and
it breaks down some In additions, so I've actually made
some great friends on this journey around the world.
Speaker 1: Wow, my favorite thing to do inside of sauna. You
don't even have to speak words. You could just look
at each other and through your eyes. Yeah, it's damn
hot in here. How you doing, I'm doing good? Yeah,
I mean it just just just the body language is
just so different.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's like, yeah, we got this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, where can people go to find out more about you? Bill?
Because I'm so in love with hot Wired, I really
think that you're tapped into something and that this is
a new way for people to explore and really discover
a truer self.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean I kind of leave it all on
the table in the book in certain ways. I'm on
you know, I'm on the usual social media at Bill
gifford x Instagram threads. Is anybody uses that, Yeah, I'm
out there. Yeah. I appreciate your interest in the book,
and I hope people read it.
Speaker 1: Absolutely well, please come back to this show anytime in
the future. The door he's always going to be open
for you.
Speaker 2: Love to great talking with you will you'd.
Speaker 1: Be brilliant today and stay hot, dude. Okay YouTube, Okay,
bye guy.
Speaker 2: Alright, Errara