The Pragmatic Path to Resilience
A First-Person Account of Cold Acclimatization and Mental Toughness
The introduction to cold therapy in practical, pragmatic terms is fairly simple. An individual who has showers regularly can do this simply by having your regular shower. Do what you have to do in the shower; wash yourself all down. And when you're done your shower, as in done washing yourself, you go into the cold therapy phase. The cold therapy phase is really simple: as the water is running over top of you, you turn off the hot water, but do it in increments—ten increments. So one tenth of a turn, wait ten seconds; one tenth of a turn, wait ten seconds; keep going during that sequence until you have only cold water pouring onto you. At the point that you have only cold water pouring onto you, this is where you hold your position for ten seconds and then turn the water off. Dry yourself off and you're going to warm up. Now, the next day you do this, you increase the time under the cold water to fifteen seconds, then the next day you increase it to twenty seconds, the next day to twenty-five seconds. Every time you do a shower, you do this gradual cooling down of the water and then hold underneath the water for an increased amount of time, increasing every time by five seconds. By slowly increasing the time you're spending under the cold water, you're building up your tolerance and your expectations. Psychologically, you're getting ready for long periods, but you're doing it incrementally over a period of time; you are acclimatizing yourself to the concept of being in cold water.
As you do this over a period of time you're going to increase the amount of time to whatever your limit is or whenever you run out of time as in you're too busy. The point is that as you're doing this process your body is going to be going through changes. Psychologically like mentally you're going to be going through changes and recalibration; physically you're going to be going through changes. The way you deal with this psychologically is number one, you have to decide to commit to this. Mentally, you need to decide to commit to this and to endure no matter what. This is part of your recalibration of your mind; this is how you become mentally and physically tough. It's through increments.
You will become tougher over time by degrees. You have to decide to do that and embrace it, because when you embrace adversity, adversity becomes a challenge that can be overcome. Every time you overcome a challenge, you become more. You now know empirically in a very concrete way that you're able to endure that thing. Your self-esteem and self-confidence increase because you know you can do it; no one can tell you you didn't because you experienced it. If someone challenges you to sit under cold water for three minutes and you've done it already, you know you can do that with confidence. It's not a mystery that needs to be resolved that has unknown variables to it.
Mentally, when you gain this toughness, you have a confidence about you that allows you to move forward and to tackle challenges in a very practical way. Alternatively, as you become better at this, you reflexively take on challenges not as a recoil response, but as you run to the challenge rather than running away from the challenge. This reorients your personality, it reorients your psychology, it reorients everything about you. You become someone who actually likes the challenge and likes overcoming adversity. You want to level up the next time; when you've done five minutes, you do ten. Eventually, you're going to go into freezing cold water. And if you're surprised by getting dumped into freezing cold water, your body reflexively takes on the challenge; you start breathing, relaxing, and just dealing with it because you know you can deal with cold water. You don't panic. This framing has a lot of positive elements to it. You stay out of shock when you're in a positive mindset and you're able to think clearly and keep in charge of things. Breathing is really essential because breathing keeps you active, conscious, and in control. Because I'm actively breathing and actively enjoying the challenge, I don't go into shock like other people do.
I'm going to point out an interesting situation that a friend of mine had where we were both doing an ice challenge where we were actually in a kayak in open ocean water in temperatures that were below freezing. The ocean was wild, with five or ten foot waves sometimes. I went out and did my tour after building up with kayaking for a while, so I was very agile and had a good sense of balance. We switched, and my friend went out. He came back to a floating platform and, due to overconfidence, decided he didn't want me to steady the kayak. He went to stand up and then flips over goes into the water. I spring into action because this water is below freezing. I grabbed onto him as he came back up, and he basically locked up immediately. His body went into shock; he just literally turned into a log and could not move. I dragged him over to the deck with an adrenaline rush and pulled him straight out of the water. He was dumping onto the deck and said he couldn't move. I ended up having to fireman carry this guy up to the shelter and warm him up. Had I not been right there at that moment to reach in and grab him, he would have died because his body just froze up on him. If you don't have the strength to deadlift a 200-pound guy out of the water, they stay in the water and they'll literally die.
The world is not safe. Your belief in the world being safe is just a belief that's not tethered to reality because everything can kill you in the world; you make a mistake, you can die. Training for cold therapy will help you survive surprise things that happen. I've had other situations since then where I've actually fallen through ice or fallen headfirst into freezing water, and because I've trained myself mentally and physically, I instinctively go to cold training methodologies and I'm able to overcome those adversities very efficiently. One of the things I did when I was first learning this cold therapy training was challenging myself with cold in very specific ways. I tried walking in snow bare feet, but I realized how dangerous that was because you can't see what's underneath the snow; you could impale your foot on a spike. So what I decided to do was to find a big rock. Big rocks absorb sunlight and the snow melts on them, but they remain ice cold. I took off my shoes and socks and stood on my target rock. I started doing the breathing techniques, trying to relax and experience the sensation. My body was screaming to get off, but my intellectual side was telling me that just because it's reacting does not mean I need to act. I chose to not act and just experience it.
It is important to understand physiologically how frostbite actually works to avoid extreme damage. Water expands when it freezes, and when the water within your cells freezes, it expands and rips the cells apart, causing massive damage. I was watching my feet go from red to white as blood drained, then back as the body re-engorged the area. I did this for a period of two months every single day. By the end of it, I actually grew more veins in my feet. Before I did this, I used to always have cold feet and had to cover them to sleep; after the treatment, I no longer could sleep with anything on them because they get too hot. Through repeated exposure, my body responded by growing a massive amount of capillaries and new blood vessels, increasing the efficiency of blood flow. Your body is anti-fragile; it will adjust to adversity and become stronger. Instead of breaking when we're challenged, we become stronger, just like lifting weights. If you're exposed to cold, you will develop the ability to overcome the cold. Your body responds to the environment; you are in a dynamic, multifaceted, very intelligent earth suit called your body. It's anti-fragile and it's a miracle.
So the introduction to cold therapy in practical, pragmatic terms is fairly simple. An individual who has showers regularly can do this simply by having your regular shower. Do what you have to do in the shower. Wash yourself all down. And when you're done your shower, as in done washing yourself, you go into the cold therapy phase and the cold therapy phase is really simple as the water is running over top of you you turn off the hot water but do it in increments 10 increments so one tenth of a turn wait 10 seconds one tenth of a turn wait 10 seconds one tenth of a turn wait 10 seconds one tenth of a turn wait 10 seconds keep going that during that sequence until you have only cold water pouring onto you. At the point that you have only cold water pouring onto you, this is where you hold your position for 10 seconds and then turn the water off. Dry yourself off and you're going to warm up. Now, the next day you do this, you increase the time under the cold water to 15 seconds. Then the next day you increase it to 20 seconds. The next day you increase it to 25 seconds. So every time you do a shower, you do this gradual cooling down of the water and then hold underneath the water for an increased amount of time, starting with 10 seconds, going to 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, and increasing every time by five seconds.
By slowly increasing the time you're spending under the cold water, you're building up your tolerance and your expectations. Psychologically, you're getting ready for long periods, but you're doing it incrementally over a period of time. You are acclimatizing yourself to the concept of being in cold water. Now, this is the technique of water application. As you do this over a period of time you're going to increase the amount of time to whatever your limit is or whenever you run out of time as in you're too busy you got to do other things. The point is is that as you're doing this process your body is going to be going through changes.
Psychologically like mentally you're going to be going through changes and recalibration. Physically you're going to be going through changes and I'll describe those changes in this podcast.
Now the way you deal with this psychologically is number one, you have to decide to commit to this. Mentally, you need to decide to commit to this and to endure no matter what. This is part of your recalibration of your mind. This is how you become mentally and physically tough. It's through increments. It takes time, it takes energy, it takes application. you will become tougher over time by degrees. You have to decide to do that and embrace it.
Because when you embrace adversity, adversity becomes a challenge that can be overcome. And every time you overcome a challenge, you become more. You now know empirically that in a very concrete way that you're able to endure that thing. You've did it. Your esteem goes up. Your personal self-esteem goes up because you know you can do it. And every time you increase the threshold of these challenges, your esteem goes up and up and up because you did it. You know you did it. No one can tell you you didn't because you experienced it. You know for sure you did. Your value as an individual increases. Your capacity as an individual increases. Your self-confidence increases because you know you can endure that thing. You've done it before. If someone challenges you to sit under cold water for three minutes and you've done it already, you know, hey, you can do that. No problem. You can say with confidence that you can do that. It's not a mystery that needs to be resolved that has unknown kind of variables to it. No, you actually know for sure that that thing can be done, you've done it, and you can do it again. This gives you a certain amount of self-confidence.
Now, what's important to understand here is that mentally, when you gain this toughness, you have a confidence about you that allows you to move forward and to tackle challenges in a very practical way. Alternatively, as you become better at this, you reflexively take on challenges not as a recoil response, but as you run to the challenge rather than running away from the challenge. This reorients your personality, it reorients your psychology, it reorients everything about you. You become someone who actually likes the challenge. You like overcoming adversity. You know you can do it. You've done it before. You wanna do it again. You want to level up the next time. When you've done three minutes of cold, you like to do four. When you do four, you like to do five. When you've done five, you do 10. You keep increasing in amounts. And then, eventually, you're going to go into freezing cold water. And if you're surprised by getting dumped into freezing cold water, guess what?. Your body reflexively takes on the challenge positive attribute about it and you start breathing, relaxing, and just dealing with it because you know you can deal with cold water. You don't panic. You actually accept the challenge in a positive way. This framing has a lot of positive elements to it. Number one, you stay out of shock when you're in a positive mindset. You're less likely to go into shock, even if you're in wild situations. Also, you're able to think clearly and keep in charge of things, which helps you overcome adversities.
Now, I'm going to describe the breathing technique in a second, but I'm going to point out an interesting situation that a friend of mine had where we were both doing this challenge where we were doing an ice challenge where we were actually in a kayak. We were taking turns with this one-man kayak and kayaking in open ocean water in temperatures that were below freezing to the point of extreme where we had to actually use the, we put the kayak on the ice, would get into the kayak and then use the paddles to push ourselves like a sled until we dropped off the edge of the ice into the water. That's how extremely cold this was. And this is and the ocean was wild. I mean, this is like we're talking about five foot, 10 foot waves sometimes. And we would go out and we picked a point that we were going to go to. We went out there, paddled around for a bit and then came back. Right. And this is the challenge. And we both did it. And it was a really fascinating thing. So I went out.
I did my tour, and this is after building up with kayaking for a while, so I was very agile with the kayak, had a good sense of balance. I mean, I was fairly good at staying upright, right?. You get this sense of balance after a while in a kayak where you intuitively know what's going on. You're able to skate across the waves. You're able to right yourself. You're able to do some really wild stuff. I mean, you can almost tip sideways and then use the paddles to right yourself before you totally go under. And I mean, you have to build these certain skills up. And I did that during the warmer months of summer before I ended up going out in this, uh, you know, insane, uh, very risky cold water experience.
Anyways, I went out and I did my tour and, uh, and I came back and we switched, uh, and I came back onto shore. We switched to the kayaks and my, my friend went out, he did the tour and then he was coming back to a place where we had to actually land on this, uh, kind of a floating platform that was down in the water and, and it was a interesting situation because it was the best way to come out of the water because with the ice it was it was really easy to get down from the ice to the water but going from the water to the ice was another situation entirely that's where it became ridiculously dangerous because if you turned upside down and then got jammed under the ice you're likely to die right so we found this way to get out on this platform so he came over to the platform and he was going to get out and it was this matter of uh overconfidence where instead of doing the usual procedure where you know I grab the kayak and steady it and he steps out from the kayak onto the platform he said no no don't don't study the kayak let me just step out right and for some reason because he had just gone through and did this really cold water you know wild experience he thought getting out of the kayak was like the easiest part so he was gonna whatever his mindset was of whether whatever his reason was he decided he didn't want me to be holding on to the kayak so i said okay i agreed to not hold on to the kayak he goes to stand up and then flips over goes into the water and uh immediately you know like i spring into action because like this water is cold i mean it's it's uh below freezing right i mean we're literally pushing through the ice in some sections.
And anyways, I grabbed onto him from the deck. I was able to actually push myself off the kayak because the kayak was turned back right side. So I was able to lay across the kayak from the deck. So my legs are on the deck. And my upper torso is on the kayak and I'm reaching out and I'm grabbing onto him as he went right into the water and then came back up. And he basically locked up immediately. His body went into shock almost immediately. Like he just literally turned into a log. He just could not move. It was a really crazy experience. So I grabbed onto him and I dragged him over to the deck we're coming off of. I pushed the kayak out of the way. And I drag him with this, you know, adrenaline rush, right?. I'm like, oh, this is wild. Like I think, okay, is he going to go into some sort of a wild shock?. I have to get him out of the water as fast as possible because that's how you reduce the shock to the system. So anyways, I grab him by basically the scuff of the neck and I drag him out of the water with this crazy herculean pull because I had adrenaline going and I was able to just do everything in a certain way that it all worked out well where I was able to just pull him straight out of the water onto the deck. So he dumps onto the deck and I'm dumping onto the deck and I'm like, are you all right?. And he's like, oh, I can't move. Right. And so I ended up, uh, uh, tying off the kayak so that it didn't float away. And then I ended up having to, uh, fireman carry this guy, uh, up to the, um, up to the shelter we're staying in and warm him up. Right. So like he just couldn't even walk. I mean, it was ridiculous. So he had I not been right there at that moment to reach in and grab him and pull him out of the water, he would have died because his body just froze up on him, just locked up on him. It was just the wild, the craziest thing. And, you know, had I not been there, he would have died. And so this is my viewing of first-person perspective of how wild it is to be in this kind of a water situation.
Now, had he been a Wim Hof guy... he would not have had such an experience. As an example, I can jump into frigid cold water and because I've mentally prepared for it and I breathe properly, which I'm going to get to the breathing part in this podcast as well, the breathing is really essential because breathing keeps you active, conscious and in control. Because I'm actively breathing and actively enjoying the challenge, I don't go into shock like other people do, like my friend did. He actually went into shock. And had I not pulled him out and warmed him up as fast as possible, he could have actually just died of shock. I mean, that's how simple it is. Your body just shuts down. It gets short-circuited, discombobulated, and just shuts down. I mean, your internal organs shut down. That's it. So that was a really pretty wild experience.
And the thing is, is that... This can happen in times that you're expecting it and times when you're not expecting it. Like this is a situation where we're literally going out expecting that, hey, if we actually fall off the kayak tips, we have to right ourselves and paddle back to shore. I mean, this is the kind of situation where there's like, there's no plan B here. You either live or die. And that's how extreme the situation was. And we both accepted it that, hey, if you go out there and something crazy happens, you might die. And before I can get out to save you, you could be dead and I could be just hauling your body in. This is the kind of crazy risk were able to accept because why we had both been kayaking for a while and we're both physically fit and fairly athletic and confident in our ability to actually be able to handle these specific circumstances with these specific conditions with this temperature the only qualifier was that there was a possibility that if something crazy happened and you went plunk in the drink it was so cold that you might just drop to the bottom you might just sink like a stone so we took the risk and it worked out. We both survived, but he almost didn't. And the only reason he survived is because I acted quickly. I grabbed him in just the right way and I was strong enough to be able to pull him out of the water fast enough for him to not go through full extreme situations experience, right?. If I had not been able to pull him out of the water, he could not have helped me pull him out of the water. He would have just stayed in the water. This is what's amazing is that if you don't have the strength to pull someone out of the water to deadlift a 200-pound guy, if you don't have that strength, they stay in the water. And I mean, you might be able to hold their head above water, but if it's cold enough, they're just going to die. Even if they can breathe, they'll literally die. They'll die.
So the world is not... It's not safe. Your belief in the world being safe is just a belief that's not tethered to reality because everything can kill you in the world. You make a mistake, you can die. You make a mistake, you drown. You make a mistake, you can get suffocated by stuff falling on you. You can hit and bang into a tree. I mean, there's a lot of ways you can die in the world. Training for cold therapy will help you survive surprise things that happen. And I've had other situations since then where I've actually fallen through ice. I've... falling into water that was just... weird situations where it just you know things happen and you go headfirst into a water you didn't expect and it's freezing and because i'm because i've trained in cold therapy i'm able to just reflexively as a reflex you know like you tap your knee your your leg jerks that's a reflex action because i've trained myself mentally and physically i instinctively go to cold training methodologies and i'm able to overcome those adversities very efficiently, very quickly. I bounce back. I'm able to dry off quickly. I'm able to warm up fast. I'm able to not go into shock, right?. These are things that I've built up over time.
And what's amazing is that the building it up over time is not only psychological, but physical. So I think I've explained this in another podcast, but one of the things I did when I was first learning this cold therapy training, when I was reading through the Wim Hof books... It's important to challenge yourself with cold in very specific ways. Some people put ice water into bowls and soak their feet or they do the shower thing or they do different types of ways of getting cold and then warming up, getting cold, warming up. And this actually changes your body physically. And I'll get to the breathing methods in a second here. But this one challenge I did was when I was reading this book, I was actually in an area where it was wintertime and there was snow on the ground. And so I actually tried, you know, doing the old walking in snow thing. And walking in snow is... it's dangerous. Why? Because you can't see what's underneath the snow. You could have a, um, a stake or a stick or a sharp rock or a metal spike sticking straight up. You could step right on that and pill your foot. So I tried walking through snow bare feet for a couple of times and I just realized how, you know, even though I successfully did it, I just seemed like this is a bad idea. Like this is just asking to eviscerate my foot on something or impale my foot on a spike or something.
And I have actually gone through this in my life where I've stepped on spikes and nails and whatever and it went right through my foot. A couple of times this happened to me where I actually stepped on a board that had a nail in it and I stepped on it with my full weight and the nail went right through my foot sticking up through the top. And in that moment, you have to make a decision. You know, are you going to pull that thing out or do something else?. Because sometimes, depending on what's going on, it might be better to just cut the board off and keep the nail in place. And pull it out in a better position. Sometimes you just got to pull that thing out. As in drag, you just pull the opposite direction and let the blood gush. And that's what I've done generally when I was a child. When I stepped on... boards with with uh nails in it whatever i just pull my foot off and it would bleed like crazy and it would heal up and it'd be fine and i've got all kinds of wild scars from things like that that happen i mean you just got to deal with this stuff part it's part of being you know it's a mental toughness a physical toughness you overcome it you get over that fear you know i'm not worried about stepping on boards and nails because i know what happens i just pull my foot off bandages it up i heal you know that's what happens.
So anyways, it still causes me to be cautious because I actually have the experience. I know what it feels like. I know what kind of healing that time that is, the downtime from healing. It sucks. Limping around is not fun. So when I was walking around on the snow, you know, I'm sinking in the snow and I'm hitting the ground underneath and I'm not knowing what's underneath there. So I thought, okay, I better be smart about this. So what I decided to do... was to find a big rock because even when it's snow, you know, a foot deep in the ground, you'll find places where there's big rocks. The big rocks will absorb the sunlight and the snow will melt on the rock. And the rock itself is cold because it's in the cold ground that has snow on it. And if there's snow on the ground, you're below freezing. But the thing is, is the rock is the intermediary point where it's actually dry. But you can also see what's going on. So what I did... I picked a rock that was like my rock. I thought, okay, this is going to be my rock. This is the place I'm going to do this thing. So what I did is I, on one rock, I took off my shoes and my socks. Here I am, bare feet. And I roll up my pant legs. and i uh i step on my the rock that's my target rock which has generally a flat surface but it's cold right so i stand on there and i start doing the breathing techniques trying to relax and and experiencing the sensation trying to be in the moment of what am i experiencing what is this thing i'm experiencing and my body's like screaming to get off this thing because something's wrong this is not comfortable it's not right you know my brain's firing with all kinds of mixed signals but my intellectual side is actually telling me no I've got to, what am I really experiencing?. I know that my body's reacting, but just because it's reacting and giving me signals does not mean I need to act on it. I don't have to act to the reaction. See, when you have a signal to react does not mean you have to act. You can actually not act. You can choose not to act. And that's what I did. I chose to not act and just experience it. what this was. And it was pretty wild. The first time I did it was a very, you know, I'd call it a shocking experience because the rock was so cold. I mean, it was ice cold. It was like standing on a block of ice, except it was dry. Watched as I was reading the book, I was looking for the signs of hypothermia or cold exposure. You look for certain signs to see what happens, right?. So I actually watched my feet go from being you know, regular skin color to going to, I think it went to almost like a red flush, and then they went white, as in all the blood started draining from the area, and then it started going back the other direction. Your body actually responds by engorging the area with blood, and then disgorging the area of blood, and then re-engorging it with blood. This is a back and forth flow that happens. And I'm actually observing the color and I'm watching what's going on. I'm noticing the sensation of being able to feel sensations and then not feeling anything. My feet actually went numb. The numbness is a sign of, you know, you're progressing along this cold exposure. And there's certain signs that you get to where you start feeling like pins and needles when you start getting like really deep coldness where you could be getting into a crisis mode where it could cause damage, right?.
You have to understand physiologically how frostbite actually works. It's important to define what frostbite is. In the English world, we call it frostbite when you have skin that gets exposed to cold that actually gets destroyed by way of frostbite. And the way frostbite works is that you have your skin and then below your skin is your interstitial fluids. And you also have capillaries and blood vessels and all kinds of stuff going on underneath your skin. Now, all of that is made of water. You are a water-based creature, right?. Human beings are based on water. We have 80% water is our basic mass, right?. We have our minerals and water is basically what we're made up of. And our organs are just different formations of those minerals and water in different capacities doing different things. What happens is when you get exposed to extreme cold is that the water that is within your cells will burst the cells. And you can see this happen when you make ice cubes, right?. If you have an ice cube tray and you pour water into it, and then you put the ice cube tray in the freezer, what'll happen is the water will freeze and expand. When it expands up, it usually pops out of the tray, and you end up having these individual ice cubes, even though you started off with one big block of kind of water that froze and then breaks off into these different ice cubes. So water actually expands when it freezes, right?. It's a weird thing because water, when it turns into a vapor, as in a steam, it'll expand as well. So water condenses, so it goes from a steam, condenses to water, and then expands when it freezes. So it actually goes through two different expansions, from steam down to water, and then water expands to ice, which is very unusual in the world.
Anyways, what happens is when you have a cell that's full of water and the water freezes, this freezing expands the cell and rips the cell apart. So instead of an ice cube tray, imagine every cell of your body being filled with fluid and that fluid goes from liquid to frozen ice. And when it's frozen ice, it expands and rips past the container. It's like a balloon that you over inflated and it exploded. And that's what is happening at a microscopic level. Every cell of your body that is exposed to extreme cold can freeze. And if the fluids within your interstitial fluids or your skin freezes, they explode the cells causing massive damage. When you warm up again, you have all these ruptured cells that have to be repaired. Your body is repairing it as if it had a massive abrasion or a massive cut or a really bad, just abrasion would be the clinical term for it, where it's a lot of small little scrapes in one area. It causes a lot of damage. Depending on the damage, you could actually lose limbs and things like that, right?. Depending on how deep the freezing went. So there's signs to look for to avoid the extreme damage.
Anyways, so I'm conscious of this. I've had frostbite in different parts of my body because of living in cold weather conditions and doing crazy things and having body modifications. When you have ears that are stretched out, you have less blood flow, therefore you're more prone to have frostbite in stretched ear lobes. So I know this experience acutely, but also you can add it at any part of your body, the end of your nose, any skin that's exposed for long periods of times can go through frostbite. And then the healing of frostbite takes a long time because you're suffering from massive internal damage that has to repair itself. And the damage is not obvious on the surface because it's as deep as the freezing went. I'm aware of the frostbite situation, so trying to avoid that while going through this cold therapy.
So I went to the extreme of cooling down my feet to the point where I'm at the edge of maybe frostbite. And then all I do is I step off the rock, put my socks back on, put my shoes on, and go for a walk. This warms up my feet again. The next day I did the same thing. This time I went through the exact same process, a little bit less shocking, because I knew what to expect. Went for a little bit longer. The next day, again, went through the same process. Knew even more what to expect. Went for a little bit longer. Day by day, I did this until I was extending the time I was spending on the cold rock. Why? Because my body was actually adapting to the conditions and reconfiguring itself to become more resilient to the situation. And overdoing this for a period of, I think, two months, I did this for a period of two months every single day. By the end of it, I actually grew more veins in my feet. This is what's weird, is before, my feet had a certain look, and then after I did this for two months, my feet were more veiny, there's more blood vessels everywhere, and I had more blood flow going to my feet, right to the tips of my toes, to the point of such extreme that... Before I did this treatment, I used to always have cold feet. I used to have to put something over my feet to sleep at night. After I did this treatment and after the two months, I no longer could sleep with anything on my feet unless I was in extreme cold and then I put something on them. So I went from having to have my feet covered to the opposite of now having to not have my feet covered because they get too hot. The reason why is through this repeated exposure to cold, my body responded by growing more blood vessels. A massive amount of capillaries were grown. New blood vessels were grown all throughout my feet, my toes and everything. And I actually increased the blood flow to my feet. This increased efficiency so I could warm up and cool down fast. This actually completely changed the physiology of my body by simply doing nothing more than exposing my feet consistently to cold for a period of time and they adjusted.
Your body is anti-fragile. Your body will adjust to adversity. It becomes stronger. Our bodies are anti-fragile. Instead of breaking when we're challenged, we become stronger. You lift a weight, you know, you lift a heavy weight. And if it's just beyond your capacity, your body will actually respond by building more muscle mass. And then when you lift that weight again, it'll be easier. And then the only way to build more muscle mass is to have a bigger weight that don't challenge the body again. You'll build more muscle mass. You have to keep increasing the weight to keep building muscle mass. Otherwise, your body gets into an equilibrium where you have the muscle mass you need to do the job you want to do. And there's no need to actually build more muscle. Your body is constantly looking for an efficient state of being. So it's also looking for a balance of what you need at the time. So if you're exposed to cold, you will develop the ability to overcome the cold. If you're exposed to heat, you will develop the ability to overcome the heat. Your body responds to the environment. You are in a dynamic, a multifaceted, very intelligent earth suit called your body. It's anti-fragile and it's a miracle. That's a gift from God.
