Increase clarity of thought, strength, endurance, creativity, sexual libido & pleasure with this 6 – step recipe to counteract the ravages of a couch society…
Transcript
Hello, I’m Charles Runels. I’m a physician here. I’ve been a doctor now for quite a number of years. I’m going to talk with you about some really, I think fascinating and powerful ways to increase your performance as an athlete and to enhance your clarity of thinking and your creativity, some of the strategies that I’ve used and seen many thousands of people use, and some of the research to back it up.
In particular, I’m standing in front of a whole body cryotherapy machine. It’s the same one that the Cleveland Indians use. All the pro athlete, all the pro football teams are now using this as part of their training. I’ll get to this part, but first an idea just about how to function and how the body works. By the way, I’m in a robe because I’m about to jump in.
I’m 59, and I want to be like Jack LaLanne as best I can. Of course, I’m not going to be Jack LaLanne, but I want to be that same order of magnitude, the best I can be in functioning, thinking, physically much better than my peers. That goes to whatever age you are. If you’re a 19 year old athlete, why shouldn’t you want to be functioning stronger, faster, smarter than other 19 year old athletes? Or if you’re a 60 year old triathlete, or you’re a 60 year old mother/business woman.
I think what we owe the planet, just I’ll getting to this part, but what we as people owe the planet is our best self. George Washington, after he had climbed to fame and was the president, his mother wrote him and said, “Well you shouldn’t be prideful about it considering you were blessed with a nice brain and good health and all these advantages. It would have been a crime had you not become something helpful to the planet.” I think in that same way, we owe it to ourselves and to those around us to be our best self.
Back to how could you be your worst self. Your worst self is you never put any stress, you never think hard about any sort of problem or creativity, you don’t move. You’re never any resistance, so your muscles become weak. You don’t ever put your body into anaerobic zone. You never go in an endurance hard enough that you actually pass anaerobic threshold and go and pass and experience what your VO2 max is. You never go into ketosis because you’re always fed. You’re never hungry. You’re never exposed to cold. You never exposed to heat.
If you did all those things, you’re basically sitting on a couch or behind a desk, or moving easily through a completely controlled temperature environment, never stressing your oxygen burning capacity, never stressing your strength, never stressing your brain, just watch TV all the time, so it’s always a three second interval. Next time you watch a movie, start counting. One, two, three, 1,000, 2,000, 3,000. You will seldom get to 4,000, usually 2,000, before the camera scene changes. You’re literally, you don’t have to have an attention span longer than three seconds to pay attention to a movie or anything on television.
That’s the way you become a blob. Your muscles get weaker. Your endurance goes down. You gain fat. Muscles get weaker because you’re not doing controlled resistance training. You get out of condition because you’re not going into anaerobic threshold. You get fat because you never get ketotic. You get brain dead because you’re never using your brain.
Now let’s think of the opposite of that. If you want to be a high performance athlete, whether that means performing … As an ER doctor I trained because I thought I was a better ER doctor if I didn’t get tired as quickly. I wasn’t lifting anything heavy, but I was on my feet for 12 hours at a time. I had to think as well on the 12th hour as I did on the first hour, so my brain needed to be clear. So, if you want to be the not only the fastest and the strongest at your sport, but you’re out thinking everybody and you’re seeing what’s coming before everybody else, and so you’re performing, whether it’s an athletic situation or an intellectual situation … You know that Bobby Fischer trained for chess matches by lifting weights.
The great intellects were usually, they claim that Leonardo da Vinci could grab a horse by the harness and stop a horse. Leonardo da Vinci, people when they saw him walking, we have records that when they saw him walking through town, he was a physical specimen that was also very amazing. Just his physique and his … Many of the intellects were also athletes and vice versa. The dean of my medical school said they have never had a college athlete fail medical school. The discipline required physically and to be able to get through college successfully while playing a college sport pretty much meant that medical school was a slam dunk.
Back to this machine. Here’s my plan for being a super athlete, super intellect, super momma, super executive, super salesperson, whatever it is you do. You’re always … Stress is not the enemy. It’s not dealing with stress. There’s a limit, but your body needs to be stressed to a certain extent on periodic basis. Obviously if you fasted every day, well shoot that’s malnutrition and you die, but periodically going into ketosis is good for you. Jack LaLanne, who was lived to be almost a hundred and is still exercising, I think he celebrated his 70th birthday by pulling a boat with 70 people in it, swimming shackled across to Alcatraz. One of his birthdays he walked up the Washington monument on his hands. He was always a juice faster every seventh day. He was a big student of Paul Bragg, who preached juicing. They were into ketosis before ketosis was cool. That’s a hundred years ago. You should be going into ketosis, in my opinion, once a month at least.
The old school bodybuilders even, Vince Gironda who trained Clint Eastwood back when Clint was kick ass, went back in his early western days, he trained at the bodybuilding gym in Beverly Hills. Vince Gironda was the trainer back before they had steroids. The way you got bigger was you actually fasted once a month. You put yourself into ketosis just long enough … Then when you came back out of ketosis, you got strength and clarity and more endurance. That’s been a strategy for over a hundred years, actually over a couple of thousand years because most of the prophets did it too. You should be going into ketosis once a month. It could just be a 24 hour fast.
If you want to see more about that, it’s all over the Internet now. I have a course called the Three Day Fat Burn that you can Google. Okay, if you want to … So, it’s once a month at least ketosis, once a week if you can tolerate it. I know the big thing now is doing it sort of eat every 24 hours and you’re doing it every day. I think that’s maybe not necessary, but if you’re eating healthy the other seven days, but once a week. Then you get your body, you should go, I think you should have at least one or two days a week where you go anaerobic for a short time. That could just be going a little faster than you normally do until you get, you’re huffing and puffing. You’re anaerobic when you start huffing and puffing. Then you need a long distance. Most people need about 21 to 25 miles a week on foot walking or running at a comfortable pace to stay aerobically fit.
That covers your aerobic stressor and your ketotic diet stressor. For resistance training it can be just, depending on what level of athleticism you aspire to, it can be of course extremely weight training if you’re trying to perform an athletic feet that requires strength, but now we have exercise, even people in their seventies and eighties who are trying to maintain mobility, weight training now has been shown to be associated with clarity of thought, maintaining bone mass, maintaining muscle mass. Everybody should be doing at least two times, two episodes a week of some sort of thoughtful resistance training.
Now all that’s old hat to you. What I’m going to add to this is that what’s also been known, at least since Roman times, is that using heat and cold stressors. We think that we’re supposed to be in this controlled temperature environment, but I can remember I was born in 1960, we didn’t get an air conditioner in the sunny south where temperatures are often close to 100 degrees until I was in high school. I remember going to people’s houses that had air conditioners thinking this just doesn’t feel healthy. It Just didn’t feel healthy to me. It felt too cold because my body was adapted to the heat.
But there’s actually research showing that if we expose to heat … In the Seventh Day Adventists world there’s some really beautifully written ideas about health that came out of their holy scriptures that have to do with being healthy. They advocate doing what they call fever therapy. They have their own medical school in Loma Linda that’s done research in this area. Where you get your core temperature up to 105. Most people when they finish a marathon have a temperature of 104 degrees. Most people that just do a regular workout, you’re going to finish your workout at 100 to 101 degrees.
Why would you want to have a fever? When you get your body temperature that high, interferon kicks in, which helps your immune system. Your white cells demarginate. They’re normally stuck to the blood vessels, but they actually get unstuck and float free, so your immune system is functioning. But also you recover better, your body just goes to a different level, so the heat is helpful. You should get your temperature up. You’ll do it some from exercise, but I think you do like the Romans and at least, and the Orient, I think they understand baths better. When I’m in Atlanta I always go to the Jeju Spa. There’s a Korean bathhouse there where they have really hot hot tubs.
The normal hot tub and most places where we live is kept at about 103. The health department cuts off at 104 because they’re fearful that little children would get in the tub and be hurt, which they could be, but adults can handle 105 and 106 hot tub if they’re healthy for a short time. I recommended, if you have to turn the bath on in your house, or if you can get to a steam bath, get to somewhere and artificially raise your body temperature, which I think is easier.
You can do it in a sauna, but the water helps conduct heat better, so a steam bath, which blows steam, or not a sauna, which is dry heat with usually wooden planks that you’re sitting on. A steam bath usually has tile. People get those confused. Usually a steam bath or a hot tub. If it’s your hot tub and you don’t have little kids, set the temperature at 105. But most of the public hot tubs around here are not enough. Or just run a bath at your house and if you want to put a thermometer in your mouth and sit there until you have a temperature of at least 102.
So, heat therapy and do that twice a week. You’re fasting, you’re ketotic once a week. You’re doing aerobic exercise, preferably six days a week, and you’re going in anaerobic at least a couple times a week. You’re doing heat twice a week. Then this is where this come in. This is not the magic thing, but it’s magic enough that every pro team in the United States now has one. This is exactly like the Cleveland Indians have. This thing costs as much as a house. I’ve put it here in the community hoping other people will understand how helpful it is, and many people have. People who are using it to treat depression, just like doing a steam bath will sometimes make you feel better, or going for a walk.
It’s stressing your body to the point where it thinks it’s going to die. That’s the bottom line. Not kill it, but acts like if you did fasting too long you’re dead. But you if do fasting along where your body thinks it’s about to die, then in adapts. You run until you’re out of breath, and if you keep running, you would just pass out and vomit, which I’ve done before. Take it to that extreme and you’re puking and lots of athletes have done that. Or you lift weights until you can’t pick up anything else again. You just go to failure is what some people call that. Your body thinks it’s going to die.
This goes down to minus 200 degrees Fahrenheit. If you stayed in there much longer … I’m about to sneeze, hold on a second. If you stayed in there much longer, you would die. But you wear gloves and you wear earmuffs, so things that dangle don’t fall off. If you’re a man, you wear underwear because there’s something down there that dangles. If you’re a woman you can just wear your panties, or nothing if you want. But you wear socks. I have all female employees, so there’s never any embarrassment if a woman comes in here. I never treat anybody in here. It’s all females working here, so females never feel uncomfortable.
But you go down to minus, we can set it at minus 160. You can start with that for two minutes. I go to minus 200, 220 for three minutes. I do a technique where I do breathing. I breathe in for 10 seconds, I hold it for 10 seconds, I breathe out for 10 seconds. It’s a 30 second cycle that calms me down while the cold is telling my body I’m about to die. If I go three minutes, that means six breaths, maybe seven if I breathe a little bit faster, and I’m out of there. Then what you will find is four the next, just like if you get out of a hot tub, you feel relaxed, your mind is clear. We have so much research showing the clarity of fault that comes after exercise and fasting and all these things.
Here’s the Plan
1. Ketosis once a week,
2. go anaerobic once a week, and do endurance exercise six days a week,
3. resistance training two to three days a week,
4. hot twice a week (core temp to between 102-105F,
5. cold twice a week (-160 to -230 for 2 to 3 mintues). You can go more on these if you want, up to three, three’s probably better. Past three maybe there’s diminishing returns. With running, I used to do marathons and was in marathon clubs and triathletes. Once you pass about 25 miles a week total, the risk of injury goes up. Less than 21 there’s less benefit. In the 21 to 25 miles a week there’s a sweet spot where you’re less likely to get injured and you’re all cause mortality is cut in half. More than one research project has shown if you’re doing that many miles on the street at any speed, your risk of dying, I don’t care if it’s from a car crash, or from a stroke, or a heart attack, or whatever, it’s cut in half. I think part of the reason is when you do all these things, you start to think differently and you crave different things. You quit craving the sweets and you start craving something else.
6. Now we’ve integrated this with also yoga. The sixth thing is that extending your body’s tendons and muscles farther than they would ever go on a normal day so you don’t get stiff. By combining this therapy, it doesn’t have to be at the same time, but it could be here because we have a yoga studio. It could be this followed by the yoga. Combining this with the yoga, there’s a great synergy that many of our, we have yoga instructors who come here and they’ll do this and then go do Bikram, or they’ll do this and then they’ll just do our regular yoga out here on the mat, either privately or with classes.
I’d love for you to come. We’ll give anybody that comes in and says they saw the video, we’ll give you four free treatments. That will give you two weeks at twice a week. This is my mission. Obviously, you can tell I’m into it. I could go on and on for hours about the research. I won’t keep this much longer.
But, if this place closed down tomorrow, this would go in my garage because I want to be another version, I want to be a combination of Jack LaLanne and Leonardo da Vinci and Walt Whitman and William Osler, all kind of in a blender with a little Batman and James Bond. I know that’s kind of high aspirations, but whatever. It’s better than watching television. If you want to be your version of a superhero, this is not the recipe, but it goes into the mixture. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you shoot me an email to tell me how it changed your life.
Contact CryoYoga
1-256-826-4140
12 North Section Street
Fairhope, AL 36532 (by the clock across from Master Joe’s)
