Wyatt Ewing, founder of Ice Barrel, joins me to discuss what cold therapy is, the science behind the modality, and the benefits.
Wyatt Ewing is the founder of Ice Barrel, the most accessible and effective cold therapy solution on the market.
In our conversation, Wyatt breaks down what cold therapy is, the science behind the modality, and the benefits it offers. He also shares his advice for any ‘cold curious’ folks out there who want to start experimenting with cold showers or plunges.
After struggling with stress management, anxiety, and depression for many years, Wyatt unexpectedly discovered cold therapy and describes how it immediately shocked him into a better headspace. He didn’t know it at the time, but cold therapy is one of the few hormetic practices that create short-term spikes of biological stress followed by long-term recovery and deep restoration.
Listen in to learn more about how cold therapy works to reset the body’s stress response and how you can start experiencing the benefits today.
If you are enjoying these conversations, please subscribe and spread the love by leaving a review and sharing it with your friends.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, or on your favorite podcast platform.
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Dana Frost 00:07
Welcome to Vitally You, a podcast created to introduce you to the tools that will be your roadmap for feeling younger while growing older. I'm your host Dana frost, a wellness expert, life coach and energy medicine practitioner. Here's what you can expect conversations about vitality from the inside out with guest experts in the field of health, culture and spirituality and solo episodes along the way from me where I do deep dives into the topics of aging, heart intelligence, energy, medicine, and your innate capacity to heal. If you want to feel younger, while growing older, this is the place for you.
Dana Frost 00:58
Hi, everyone, this is Dana Frost, your host of the Vitally You podcast. Now if you're in the northern hemisphere in the frozen temps of winter, this week's conversation might seem intimidating, because we are diving in to the power of cold therapy. This week's guest is Wyatt Ewing, the founder of ice barrel the leading brand in cold therapy. Clinical Research shows that exposure to cold temperature improves metabolism and decreases inflammation, swelling and sore muscles. Cold Therapy enthusiast claims it improves stress response and resiliency and decreases anxiety and depression. Now I have to tell you that in this episode, I committed to start cold therapy in the shower and I have a little bit but honestly I am I'd feel almost allergic to it so I'm gonna play around with it this year but I just want to say at the top of the hour, I didn't start it like I said it was going to start it I want you to stay tuned to hear how cold therapy change why it's life before ice barrel why it worked in corporate aviation buying and selling jets. Like so many he bought into the fiction our society tells us we're Carter sleep less and don't complain. The stress and anxiety of the 60 to 80 Hour Workweek took a toll on his physical and mental well being. Eventually reality caught up with Wyatt. He was broken, sick and desperate for a change.
Dana Frost 02:23
Shortly after hitting rock bottom, a stranger approached him at the gym and offered some candid advice saying you don't look well. The man then went on to explain the power of breathwork meditation and cold showers. Why it was skeptical but was desperate to try anything. He started researching the science of cold therapy and was hooked. It wasn't long before his wife noticed the results of these new practices. It was like he was a new man. After growing tired of cold showers and ice baths in the house. Why it decided to invent a cold therapy device that would allow him to simplify the practice. He started sharing a few of these prototypes with others and quickly realized that there were so many people looking for a solution for their recovery. That's when he set out on a mission to create the most accessible and effective Cold Therapy Solutions, helping everybody everywhere everywhere to get colder and feel better. A few months later, ice barrel went from prototype to a product. The team at ICE barrel believes that everyone is capable of a life filled with wellbeing. And they are working to introduce products that simplify the practices that release us to do the extra ordinary sounds like my kind of company. Will you please join me in welcoming Wyatt to the show?
Dana Frost 03:45
Welcome to the show, Wyatt. It's such a fun pleasure to have you here. Why don't you start by telling the listeners how were you introduced to cold therapy? First and foremost?
Wyatt Ewing 03:55
Yes, I was originally introduced to cold therapy by a stranger at a gym in Castle Rock, Colorado. I was in the process of transitioning out of my aviation career. And I was really stressed out and kind of burning the candle at both ends struggled with anxiety. And my work life balance was completely out of balance. And I was really sick at the time I remember and I was going into the gym to just get some blood flowing and get my body moving. And right when I walked in this guy came up to me and he told me how awful I looked. And I agree like looking back I was like yeah, you know, I was in rough shape. But he told me I looked terrible and recommended that I take a cold shower and try a breathing exercise. I was a little offended at his comment but I was very intrigued and also at a level of desperation. I had just been struggling with my health and with anxiety for a long time. And a lot of the modalities that I was using weren't working so I was open to try ain't anything. And man that first cold shower, I got home. It was really hard. But I was again super determined. And I stuck with it for like, like 10 minutes. And when I got out of the cold shower, I felt really good. And it was this huge contrast. Because I was feeling like so much brain fog and so much Wait, that that like cold shower just shocked me into this like really good headspace. I haven't felt like this in a while. So I stayed super consistent with cold showers for the coming months. And yeah, that's that's how I got started.
Dana Frost 05:32
Yeah, that's really interesting. Because if I remember right, at that point, you already had a big job. And you had your family, right? Because you were really young. I remember you were very young, you started out as a very young entrepreneur, right?
Wyatt Ewing 05:45
Yeah, I kind of got a really early start to life just through some unfortunate family circumstances. And yeah, I was, had a young family, I was settled into a corporate aviation career, on the outside looking in, like, you know, we we looked good, we looked like we had our stuff together. But on the inside, I really struggled with depression and anxiety, and it was affecting my relationships, it was affecting my attitude, everything that I loved most was getting really negatively impacted by my inability to handle and manage stress at the end of the day,
Dana Frost 06:19
we can never underestimate the impact that the way that we are equipped to deal with stress, right, all of us come into our adulthood, or even like teenagers have anxiety and stress, but I'm just talking to the adults. And we have, each one of us have a different set of skills for how to handle the things that life brings to us. And it's just, you know, I think that we can't underestimate the impact that those feelings that can be so depleting and energy draining have on our day to day life, even if we're still able to take care of whatever the career is, whatever the family is, we can still just feel totally weighted down when we have those emotions that are so draining.
Wyatt Ewing 07:04
Yeah, it's true. And also not having like, the tools in my early 20s. To like handle life well. And also like the physical tools, like there's this idea that if like, if you don't know what to do, then put your body in the right type of environment. And that will help a mentally and it will at least alleviate a lot of the suffering. So yeah, it's definitely very interesting.
Dana Frost 07:28
So how long did you I love the fact that you did that for 10 minutes? And was it on cold cold, because I'll do cold showers. But it's not cold, cold. So I'm like cold therapy. Curious. I've never been quite brave enough to like, pour myself fully into it. And so would you say that, like when you started out? Was it mildly cold? Or do you go for like, cold cold?
Wyatt Ewing 07:53
Yeah, I like that phrase, I'm gonna coin that cold, curious. I've always been just a very disciplined individual. And I'm all in or I'm all out. Okay, so for me, I just turned it all the way cold. And just, you know, gritted through it. Again, I tend to have a little bit more of an extreme approach in life, which is a total double edged sword. But yeah, I mean, I went all in. And it was one of those few modalities that was quantifiable. There wasn't like taking a pill. And like, I think I feel better. I don't really know, I can't tell, right with the exposure to cold, like, you know what you're feeling you know what I mean? And then when you get out, you have all those amazing beta endorphins going off. You know, your stress levels are on the decline, your body's going into this rest and repair mode. Like it's quantifiable. For me, that was huge to have something that I can hold on to that I knew, like, when I do this, I get this result. So that helped immensely.
Dana Frost 08:51
Yeah. And did did this stranger at the gym tell you to stay in the cold shower for 10 minutes? Or where did you get the 10 minutes? Or was that just some a number that you came up with?
Wyatt Ewing 09:01
Yeah, it was just number I came up with it was just like, I just want to do this. Again, I think you can to start if you're new to cold therapy, and you're have the question like, How can I start, you know, just start with turning the water like warm. And instead of taking a hot shower, take a warm shower. And then as you get more acclimated to that, start turning it a little bit colder, a little bit colder, you can try the contrast method where you go really cold and really hot and really cold and really hot. But yeah, just play around with it. Have fun with it. I wasn't having fun with it. I probably would have enjoyed the process a lot more if I was having fun with it and experimenting with it. But I was at a place of desperation. So I was like, I need something now.
Dana Frost 09:40
Yeah, I can relate to that being in a place of desperation. That's how I approached Heart Math. It was like every day I'm going to do Heart Math, because I know I can tell what it's doing to me I can I feel the results of it. And so now you actually have this business and I definitely want to talk about that but I I kind of want to just jump because I know that you know so much about cold therapy now, what are some of the like, at the time you had your, you know, your at your information, you could quantify the benefits that you were feeling? What are some of the benefits that you now like, you know, because you know, because this is what you do for a living.
Wyatt Ewing 10:20
So there's a lot of benefits from coke therapy. And there's also a lot of different types of cold therapy. So it's really important just to get educated. But obviously, the most popular form of chemotherapy would be full body immersion, and a safe body of water, where you're literally immersing your body into cold water, that can also look like cold showers, then there's also cryotherapy, where they're blasting you with cold air. That's not really air, but they're blasting you with cold. And that's a very topical experience. And then there's localized cryotherapy, right where they're doing it just like specifically on an injury site. So there's a lot of different types of chemotherapy, what we specialize in would be full body immersion, where you're getting the hydrostatic pressure of the water on the body to alleviate pain, inflammation, reduce cortisol level, boost your mood, and overall energy levels help stimulate brown fat, which will help in aiding in weight loss, as well as muscle recovery, a reduction in anxiety and symptoms of depression. And long term and consistent ice baths have also shown to help stave off cognitive decline over time. So there's a lot of benefits. If you go to our website, we have a Science page and a blog that just outlines all the different benefits of cold therapy.
Dana Frost 11:39
Wow, those are amazing results. And I just keep it's free. I mean, in essence, like you can you can buy the year beautiful ice barrels, and I want people to go check out your website. But also the entry point can be free. It can be as free as jumping in a cold pool, getting in a cold bathtub, taking a cold shower, getting into a cold body of water.
Wyatt Ewing 12:03
Absolutely any exposure and a safe body of water. And a lot of times that's free, start with your shower, your bathtub. If you don't have a bathtub, go to a friend's house. Somebody has a bathtub, find somebody with an ice Barrow. They're everywhere. So you can go to our website and find a gym near you that offers cold therapy as well. Oh, those
Dana Frost 12:22
are great suggestions. Yes, they are everywhere. I just want to preface that the ice barrel had a huge sale after for Black Friday. Right? It was on Black Friday. And you just like sold? I don't know how many. But did you set a record for your company?
Wyatt Ewing 12:41
Yeah, it was. It was definitely our biggest Black Friday ever. It was incredible. It was close to around like 400 units on Black Friday, which was amazing. And our mission is always to share the power of cold therapy with everybody everywhere. And so for us being able to introduce you know, 400 new lives to the power of chemotherapy is so exciting. We have an ice barrel on every continent except Antarctica, and every single state in the US and also all throughout Canada and Europe.
Dana Frost 13:11
That is so exciting. Congratulations. Thank you. And how long has your company been in existence? It's not that old. It's fairly young.
Wyatt Ewing 13:19
The company was formed in 2017 2018 Was that product innovation year for us. 2019 was like really bringing the product to market. And then by 2020 and 2021. We were just scaling off to the races in 2022, this year has just been building out the team around the company and just to supporting all the different facets.
Dana Frost 13:44
That's awesome. Congratulations.
Wyatt Ewing 13:46
Thank you. Thank you.
Dana Frost 13:47
And so you know, you mentioned cryotherapy, I've often wondered, what is the difference between the different cold therapies because you did mention the pressure of the water on your skin, which I would think would have stronger benefits. But I don't know. That's just I'm curious, what is the truth about the differences?
Wyatt Ewing 14:06
Yeah, that's a great question. So, Cryotherapy is a very topical experience. It's great for your hair, your skin, your nails, and it can help also reduce some systemic inflammation in the body. But again, it's such a short burst flash, like flash in the pan experience that you really miss out on like the long term therapeutic benefits. When you submerge your body and water, you get the pressure of the water on the body. It's a lot deeper, deeper therapeutic experience is it's kind of like running on a treadmill inside versus running on a trail outside. There are two very different experiences, but they can lead to similar results. But again, one of them you're gonna get deeper, more therapeutic response quicker.
Dana Frost 14:49
That makes sense to me because the skin I mean, just the sensory aspect of the skin and those are the receptors that we have on our skin and turn cuz of how it's communicating with the nervous system and with the blood flow and with the immunity, there's a lot of communication that's happening simultaneously. Just because they have that physical touch to I would imagine.
Wyatt Ewing 15:14
Absolutely, yeah, absolutely.
Dana Frost 15:17
And so let's go back to your story, Wyatt and the benefit you felt after 110 minute cold shower. You noticed right away, you recognized? Oh, this did something to me.
Wyatt Ewing 15:32
Yeah, you know, it's kind of like, you know, when you're sick for a long period of time, and then you get better. And you're like, Oh, I forgot what it feels like to feel better. I do know, yes, it was that experience. Like I had, I was struggling with stress and anxiety for so long. That whatever that response was in my body, after the Cold Shower, it was like mental clarity. Like, oh, I forgot what this feels like. And it was so impactful to me. Later that day, I took another cold shower. And then I realized, over the next coming days and weeks, man, I'm so much more patient, with my kids at home with my wife, with life. And my attitude started to change, which I think people don't really understand, like the benefit of when you have a good attitude towards life towards yourself, towards your spouse, towards your family, you just handle and manage life so much better. The two things you can control in life are your attitude, and your effort. And you leave the results up to those two things. So I'm really big on just focusing on attitude and effort, not results. And cold therapy is amazing. And just supporting a healthy attitude.
Dana Frost 16:42
What have you learned? Like, what is the mechanism? Where that is the transfer? That's what's happening from a biological, it must be a neurological it's like a full body system. There's something that's happening during that cold exposure. Do you know what those mechanisms are? Do you have you learned? Yeah, clues about that.
Wyatt Ewing 17:05
So what you're doing is you're resetting the stress response in the body. So it's like a total system reset, you're resetting your nervous system, or shocking your nervous system. So you're either in the fight or flight response, or you're in the rest of the repair mode. And you go in between those throughout the day. And that's totally normal and healthy. But you need to be able to understand and to healthily quantify what real stress is versus perceived stress. Because there's a lot there's a, there's a difference of getting triggered because somebody left something on the floor and you tripped over it, versus getting chased by a bear. Those are two different types of stresses and a lot of times, right, the stresses that live in our perception that aren't real stresses, they're just, you know, triggers and irritants and things like that, those should not evoke the same biological response in the body as it does getting chased by a bear. And unfortunately, for a lot of us, that's all white jumbled and mixed up. And we're responding to these little things in life, like their big things. And so when we can healthily reset that, your response is completely different for both internally and externally. I remember, my background is in corporate aviation, and I would sit in these boardroom meetings, and be working on putting these aircraft deals together. And I would start swallowing really big, my palms would get sweaty, I would start to sweat, alright, and I'm perceiving the stress. That's not real stress. But to me, and my perception it was. And as I practice cold therapy, and I found myself in these different aircraft negotiations, I would just be remaining so calm, and it took me a minute to notice it. But I was like, wow, usually I'm like, anxious here. Usually, I'm like, my physical body is responding a certain way. And it was just like this, like equanimity that would just come over which again, it was quantifiable and sustainable, which was huge. So again, we're resetting the stress response in our bodies is what's happening.
Dana Frost 19:06
Yeah, so that makes a lot of sense that is freely remove. I find that remarkable. Because I mean, I look at the stress response and i There are different modalities that I apply apply to reset the nervous system, because we do need I mean, I had to learn how to manage my stress response. And I use the vehicle that I primarily used, besides movement and food and other things really has been HeartMath. I don't know if you're familiar with Heart Math. It's a Research Institute in California and I talk about it on the podcast all the time, but they it's either through scientifically researched breathing techniques and the understanding of the connection between heart rate variability and your brain and your nervous system through the vagus nerve. You can reset your stress response and I find it very powerful but what I really love is not lost. For me, is the simplicity of cold therapy and how that can reset the stress response. That's really powerful. Do you think that it for me, I'm thinking it has something to do with just really, we get so detached from our physical body? That cold therapy is really grounding you in the Now moment and the here and now grounding you with your physical body? Do you think it has anything to do with that? It's my curiosity,
Wyatt Ewing 20:29
I think your head probably has a lot to do with that it forces you into the present moment. I also think the temperature change on the body as well. Again, that's part of what forces you into the present moment. It's called a hormetic. Practice. And there's like five different hormetic practices. And the process of hormesis is short term stress for long term relief, versus what a lot of us have opted for, unfortunately, is some like mild dose of long term stress. And we avoid short pain, right? So it's kind of like pick your suffering, you know, but this idea of use to stress this good stress that you expose your body to another one would be like fasting, right? When you fast it's an it's a system digestive reset. Again, that's short term stress, and there's long term benefits to it.
Dana Frost 21:24
I like that framework, what did the other hormetic resets? I'm kind of curious, because I know about fasting. I didn't think I haven't thought about that concept before.
Wyatt Ewing 21:33
Yeah, so some other ones would be heat. So right, so cold, he fasting breathwork, the breath work one, the only one I think I would push on the most and challenge the most is breath, work slash meditation, probably need to do it more than five minutes a day. It's one of those things that I think duration is really important in practicing meditation and breath work. I think a lot of us have found these quick breath exercises that get us the desired result. But we're kind of selling ourselves short. Just doing these like three to five minute breath exercises, you know, when there are a lot, there's a lot of research shown that you should be doing breath work, if you are going to do a session for like 30 to 45 minutes. And that's really, when you're thinking of the hormetic practice around breath work. It's like you have to go the duration, you got to go for 30 to 40 minutes to really get the benefits. The fifth one, and the last one would be ultra long distance running. They call it runner's high. And it's generally everybody's different. But on average, it's between mile 21 and 27, the body releases high levels of norepinephrine, which trigger that system reset.
Dana Frost 22:51
That's really interesting. So it brings to mind so I'm familiar with all those things I hadn't, you know, I didn't have the framework of putting them all together. But it would it makes me think of is, we need to do hard things. We don't have that exposure to the raw aspects of nature, where we are not, you know, in the past, people been naturally exposed to the cold naturally exposed to the heat, naturally exposed to the elements. And because today, we aren't as exposed, we have protection. In essence, we can protect ourselves from the whims of nature, most of the time there, we do have the extreme forces of nature that can knock a community out. But because we're so protected, in essence, from hard physical things, so it's interesting, all those things are hard fit, they put they take the body through a hard physical process. And if we look at the fight and flight response, in our modern world, so many of the things that are hard are things that are imagined in the mind. And you touched on that earlier in terms of their perception of stress. So I think that that's really something for us to consider. As we take a look at the stress, you know, what, what is our stress response? And then would we benefit from a simple daily practice of cold exposure? I think you're inspiring me for 2023. I was kind of inspired last year and then I just kind of, you know, it's like, I'll go a little I'll go cold, I will go cold, but it's like, oh, at the end of the shower, I'll do some cold. That's kind of what I did and this year, but you're inspiring me to take it to a deeper level. Yeah, I think that that's really interesting. But this you know, this idea we need to do hard things with our body. We actually need to have even exercises even our bone structure, the muscular skeletal structure needs to do at least two times a week something that's really really hard.
24:57
Yeah, no, I completely agree. Here's the thing. Oh, A lot of people have said this a lot of different ways. So the way I like to think about it is like pick your heart, you can have, right the pain of regret, or the pain of discipline, and you can pick it. And the nice thing about cold therapy is, the only thinking you have to do is to turn the knob cold or too plunging. And then you can take your hand off the wheel and just surrender to the process, right? It's not like trying to do reps at the gym. It's not like trying not to eat something, it's simply you force yourself into the position and then say, right, and then set a timer, you know, but a cold shower is easier to turn off than the ice barrel, once you plunge in it, you're in, right. And then even if you're trying to, like, get out urgently, you have to take caution getting out, you need to get out mindfully. So you're, you're more submitted and surrender to the system, right into right with an ice barrel. But yeah, I guess like at the end of the day, like, you know, pick what your hard is going to be.
Dana Frost 25:58
I do want to make one comment about what you said about the breath practice. So heart mouth research, very, very interesting. And the reason I, I'm so drawn to it, and I use it with clients is because actually what they would say to reset if you if your default is set on fight and flight, their research shows five minutes a day. But the real point of HeartMath is that it becomes it becomes the way that you are because you are tapping into the energy and the intelligence of the heart through the breath. And because the breath through the vagus nerve, it moderates your heart rate variability. There's a real connection between what the breath which I see as the manifestation of the soul. What do you do when you you know, you take that first breath, your soul, when you're born, you take your first breath, what do you do when you know you take your last breath when you leave. And if you look at when you enter the world, as a baby, you've got the greatest amount of heart rate variability. And then we know that in disease state, the heart rate variability is compromised, it doesn't have you don't have great variability if you're in a disease state. And we know that when we are transitioning it flatlines. And so when you're tapping into the intelligence of the heart, you really let their research shows that actually creates greater biological shifts than meditation does. Because you're, you're using the energy of the heart, that's this very powerful force field, that where there is a container of love and inner ease and gratitude, and you know, your prep, whereas in some meditation, you kind of detach, but in HeartMath, you're, it's like a cold therapy, you are there in the moment, you're present with the moment and you can do it, you don't have to be, you don't have to close your eyes, you could be doing it, I do it when I'm in an interview when I'm working, you know, if I'm in a discussion, or if I'm having stress, you just can do it every day, you know, all day long, it can really become a part of who you are. So I wanted to preface that. And yeah, that was kind of the main thing. I think that this is really interesting. Do you have anything else that you want to share in terms of the cold therapy and Ice Barrel?
Wyatt Ewing 28:15
Yeah, I mean, we have a, we've put a lot of work into compiling the research and the soft science around cold therapy. And we put it all in a really digestible place on our website, the Science page, we also published a white paper on the benefits of cold therapy that dive really deep into how cold therapy stimulates the vagus nerve, which creates this whole body experience. So definitely check that out. We have a lot of blogs, on the benefits of club therapy that go really really niche to specific ailments, diseases, and how cold therapy can benefit, even down to how cold therapy can help Men's Health and female health and kind of what the risks are what to look out for. So definitely visit our website and just go there to learn more about the benefits of cold therapy.
Dana Frost 29:06
That is awesome. Yes, everybody go there. I am definitely you you listeners, you can ask me mid January. If I'm holding up to my commitment to cold therapy. I'm going to start this week. I'm going to start my neck shower. I'm going to do it. Well okay, so why I ask all of my guests the question What does feeling younger while growing older mean to us? So we've you know, we've got that the chronological age that just keeps moving forward. So what is this for you? How does it feel this idea of feeling younger while growing older?
Wyatt Ewing 29:40
Yeah, I love that question. Yeah, I think it's taking a step back from the busyness, the chaos, the noise, the advertisements. Yeah, taking a step back, getting present, being where your feet are. And that taking a deep breath,
Dana Frost 30:04
I love that I want to let go. Thank you and you're you are in a very busy stage of life because you have a family, like you're in the stage of life where you have this business that you are running. You have a family. And I know that, you know, that's a time in life. And it's hard to do that. And kudos to you just to being present and aware with that. And yeah, I really I admire that I am no longer in that phase of life, but I really admire and want to support people who are because there's a lot of heavy lifting.
Wyatt Ewing 30:35
Yeah, well, thank you. Yep, we're, we're making it on through.
Dana Frost 30:39
That's awesome. Well, thank you for being a guest this week. Wyatt.
Wyatt Ewing 30:42
Yep. Thank you so much.
Dana Frost 30:44
Thank you everybody for joining us on the vital you podcast. If you are enjoying these episodes, please make my heart sing. Hit subscribe, download and share the episodes with a friend. And if you would take one step further, you could rate or you could review the show rated on Spotify. And also, you could even do an Instagram post and share the link to the show in the post. I know all these things take your time but it really helps my show grow in the podcast traffic jam. I want to just thank you welcome you to the new year. One more time. And as always, I am streaming love from my heart to yours