Sorry. Any reason my italics are no longer working with paired stars or [i]’s?
Whatever hormesis stimulation cold water provides helps wake me up each morning, but I doubt it helps exercise or recovery much. I’m more sold on the benefits of dry saunas, mainly for other health reasons.
I do not believe it is established that lactate is the important item. My limited understanding was that hypoxia inducible factor 1 alpha HIF-1alpha was the bigger factor. There are also studies investigating low levels of systemic hypoxia as a means to achieve the same ends. Dehydration might reduce blood flow which may cause local hypoxia to a hard working muscle. I dunno. Not arguing for it happening.
A new meaning to muscle memory may be worth large font bold!
We do not have a complete understanding of even the lactate pathways in muscle. There are papers saying many different things, and maybe we’ll have an answer eventually.
Lol, i do, in fact, also expose myself to cold and hot from time to time. In particular, i like to take a few steps barefoot in new-fallen snow, i swim in cold water, and i sometimes enjoy saunas and hot tubs.
As for “how much”, my general guideline is to not do more than is culturally normal for at least some culture. There’s lots of stuff that hasn’t been studied, but if it’s something lots of people do on purpose in an intact culture, it’s probably within the bounds of what our bodies can deal with. So i fast for 24 hours rarely, and for most of a day from time to time. I overeat on Thanksgiving, and a few other times a year. I observe that both cold water plunges and various heat treatments are culturally common.
To bring it back to lifting weights… I don’t actually think that “working out” is a normal cultural practice in any other culture but “Modern Western”, and it wasn’t even common in my childhood, it’s quite new. (Sports that involve running and jumping and throwing are pretty universal, though.) But most cultures required people to lift more in their ordinary life than ours does, too. I suspect the current fad for lifting working out in gym is a cultural adaptation to our sedentary and low-impact lifestyle. And without the cultural history of slowly learning what works, i suspect that a lot of lifting enthusiasts overdo it, at least with respect to optimal health.
But… We clearly do need more strength exercise than the typical desk jockey or retiree gets without explicitly engaging in it.
So anyway, i think it’s more likely that you gym rats are exceeding healthy adaptation in lifting than that i am in my rather traditional schedule of feasting and fasting.
The claims made for hot saunas are surprising, but have some consistency over the last ten years - often improvements in cardiovascular mortality, possibly even dementia risk.
https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(23)00008-3/fulltext
In case you wanted to dive deeper…
Abstract:
Full article:
Interesting. I can’t tell from the article but do they control for social connection as a confounder?
I don’t believe so. Socioeconomic status may be a weak proxy, and saunas themselves are a highly social activity in countries like Iceland and Finland.
And do they control for leisure time? Maybe that’s not as linked to socio economic status in Finland as in the US, and probably lifespan isn’t as linked, either. But i dunno.
They control for many things, but not everything. There are several similar studies. Looking at blood pressure, cardiac events, overall mortality, dementia and other things. What is impressive is the size of the claimed benefits of taking a sauna a few times a week, above 80 F, for twenty minutes.
I also put this other article (below) in the original post before editing (since it did not box the link). A summary:
Article Highlights
**•**Finnish sauna bathing, a passive heat therapy characterized by exposure to a high environmental temperature for a brief period, is linked with myriad health benefits, particularly on the vascular system.
**•**Evidence suggests that frequent sauna bathing is an emerging protective risk factor that may potentiate the beneficial effects of protective risk factors, such as physical activity and cardiorespiratory fitness, or attenuate or offset the adverse effects of other risk factors.
**•**Interventional evidence shows that 8 weeks of regular sauna bathing sessions combined with exercise produces a mean reduction in systolic blood pressure of about 8 mm Hg.
**•**Frequent sauna bathing appears to offset the adverse impact of systemic inflammation, low socioeconomic status, and high systolic blood pressure on outcomes such as cardiovascular disease, pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and mortality.
**•**Adding frequent sauna sessions will substantially augment the benefits of physical activity. For people who are unable to meet physical activity guidelines or are unable to exercise at all because of physical activity limitations, regular use of sauna may be an alternative lifestyle strategy to mitigate the risk of diseases due to other risk factors.
https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(23)00008-3/fulltext
The review article links to at least one RCT.
And the matched groups were divided into a control group (CON), an exercise both resistance and aerobic 3x a week (EXE), and same with sauna (EXS), with
After aerobic exercise, participants in the EXS group proceeded to the sauna room, whereas those in the EXE group waited in the gym until the participants in the EXS group completed 15 min of sauna exposure.
So social impact minimally different.
when combined with exercise, sauna bathing demonstrated a substantially supplementary effect on CRF, systolic BP, and total cholesterol levels
No mention of impact on strength. Given that study demonstrate cold stress interfered with muscle gains that would have been nice to see.
I’d also wonder whether if spending the extra time doing the aerobic exercise that much longer would have been even better.
Still very interesting.
Conducting a little experiment and not sure how to interpret the results. I want to find out how many days after a good workout it takes me to get my strength back to 100%. I have been a little concerned about slow recovery times. I added protein to my diet which did help to lower the level of soreness. but it still takes a full 5 days for the soreness to completely dissipate. I decided to do one set of pushup each day to failure and see what happens. This will be a 7 day test or until it levels off. 77 yrs old for reference., Day 1, 5 push-ups, Day 2, 7 push-ups, Day 3, 9 push ups. The numbers are climbing but is this due to resting or am I just getting stronger at push ups?
Both. Given a new stimulus you get better at it, although this will plateau at some point. You do better if muscle has time to repair itself and your nutritional tanks are full. The amount of time depends on the degree of stimulus, but also the muscle itself - calf muscles are very elastic and used to a lot of work, but your shoulder ligaments are probably going to be sore after heavy overhead lifting if you don’t do this much.
I’ve been having issues with slow recovery, as well. That could just be a factor of age, but I’ve just purchased some of this stuff that’s meant to supply various doodads that might aid recovery.
Formerly, when I wasn’t having recovery issues, I was adding a bit of glucomannan to my cereal every day. It appears to help your body more efficiently turn food into body, consequently aiding healing. It’s a component of the popular drink, Sahlep. Some of the more surprising top nations in Olympic Weightlifting are Turkey and Bulgaria, both of whom are regular consumers of this beverage. So…largely speculative on my part but it did seem to work. I’d certainly be curious whether anyone else sees an effect.
I’ll probably start that up again at some point. I was mixing it into my peanut powder, and effectively destroyed an entire batch by adding too much glucomannan - which turns liquids from liquids to snots. I need to do better at measuring, rather than eyeballing. 
So your “this stuff” is collagen, creatine, magnesium, vitamin c, and hyaluronic acid. If you are going to bother doing a protein supplement might as well make it complete protein. Collagen ain’t. Again we don’t need all protein we take in to be complete but nothing magic about collagen. Last discussion about it the best argument for it was how well it dissolved in morning coffee. Creatine may help some but likely cheaper to have it on its own.
Glucomannan is a soluble fiber. Good to have fiber in our diets, may promote satiety, but no way it does any of the special stuff it is being promoted as doing. Likely a bit less beneficial than chia seeds …
To return to sauna stuff …
I think I am like many of us - I have a finite amount of time to spend. I am convinced by my reads that there is diminishing but continued returns from cardio over 150 minutes of moderate or greater intensity a week. I am convinced that an hour a week of strength training adds lots to healthspan and function beyond that. More than more cardio does and different. Good to also have preserved strength. I am convinced that a little bit of balance focused work adds another important dimension without taking anything else away.
Some other items I think add benefit to someone not doing much of anything else but may actually interfere with gains for people who are doing other things. Seems like that for cold water immersion? And possibly metformin for the non-diabetic. (May interfere with strength gains.)
Does sauna add something different or more to someone already at the 150 minutes of cardio? Can it interfere with anything like cold and metformin might?
It’s creatine powder, not protein powder.
I did understand that collagen is just bad protein. My wife discovered this research, though.
In general, I’m fairly skeptical of supplements that simply give you something that you can get through diet. If it would help you, probably you should just review your diet.
But, that being so, I don’t cook by throwing whole animals in a pot and letting them break down over the course of hours and hours, nor do I long for a return of the days of throwing foods into gelatine for preservation.
Ultimately, I was in the market for a new bottle of creatine and, if you ask your local friendly AI what helps recovery, it does pretty much give that list - 80% woo as may be. If it works then great. If not, I can afford the experiment and I’m not worried about vitamin C poisoning.
I believe that chia goo is largely protein (you can cook it like an egg white) and largely acts as an insoluble fiber (due to the shells).
Whether that matters or not, I couldn’t say. And whether any insoluble fiber would work or if there’s something specific to glucomannan, I couldn’t say.
The British lost innumerable soldiers to scurvy, after discovering that lemons cured it. They figured that limes were basically the same thing as lemons, and more convenient to deal with, not realizing that they were lower in vitamin C. (They also added a processing step that destroyed more of the vitamin.) So, where they had a solution, they talked themselves out of it by assuming that there wasn’t any meaningful difference from one citrus to another.
By all means, chia might be a potent or even more effective fiber for ensuring protein uptake (if that’s the mechanism of action…and if there actually is an effect). I have an amount of evidence for one and not for the other. If we want to organize an informal research study through this thread, I’d be game for it.
Given that the whole matter is speculative, as is, it would be difficult for one to really compare and so I don’t expect to see any official literature on the subject. You have to establish that there is an effect before you can start working on optimizing it.
Who knows? I am convinced creatine and sauna have benefit - but think the advantage likely modest. I know lifters who refuse to take an NSAiD for pain post-exercise since this might interfere with muscle growth. I doubt it does to any great degree, if the workout is good. I think the same might well be true for metformin, though it has mysteries we do not yet understand.
A very fair answer. Probably I’d avail myself of it if I worked out in a gym that had one, just because I like the way they feel! If I had the time.
It’s both. The collagen is the protein powder part.
Yes? That’s a study that inflicted a large wound on mice and then either forced distilled water into their stomachs or three doses of collagen partially digested (peptides) ranging from 375 mg to 1500 mg per kg. (The lowest dose would translate to over 25 grams for a 150 pound human, two and a half of those pills.) The seriously wounded mice apparently fed only water healed slower than ones force fed fairly large amounts of collagen. This tells us what?
There are human studies feeding collagen for would healing too. Like this one.
31 men, 18-60years, with 20-30% total body surface area burn were studied. Patients were randomly assigned to receive either a collagen-based supplement (1000kcal) or an isocaloric placebo, for 4 weeks
I don’t have access to the whole article but if the supplement is all collagen that’s 250 grams. No statistically significant difference on hospital course but better protein status in the group that got lots of collagen protein. Unclear if the placebo was similar amount of a standard complete protein or not. Isocaloric does not imply same protein carb fat ratio. Not quite a study that supports taking an extra 10 g a day as helping recovery.
We synthesize collagen. You don’t need to eat it in gelatin or bone broth. Nothing wrong with it as long as you have a diverse group of other protein sources, but your body makes what it needs from the complete proteins you eat.
Not the worst woo thing and no harm! I only push back precisely because it is such a popular bit of woo with so many extraordinary claims made and widely believed.
Not so. A 30 g serving of chia seeds is a fair protein source, 5 g (compared to 10 g of protein in the same 30 g of hemp seeds). What it is good on is healthy fats (9 g) and great on fiber (10 g) almost all soluble, which what gels up into the goo. I find one cite that says the fiber in chia actually is glucomannan too. Can’t find a definitive one though. Again no harm. I personally default to whole food sources for fiber as preferred. But that is just me