Dr. Kevin Tracey

your response to the cold.

Those are not the same fibers that control the response to your heart.

Those are not the same fibers that control your response to breathing.

So the question is, when someone tells me, I want to do this, that, or the other thing to stimulate my vagus nerve, I say, oh, really?

Which one are you going to stimulate?

And how are you going to do that?

That's where it gets complicated.

It's incredibly complicated.

So cold plunge, you know, everyone remembers their first cold plunge, right?

And because it's awful.

I mean, it might happen by accident.

My brother tricked me on a warm spring day.

My brother tricked me into running into the freezing cold ocean.

He was standing at his ankles and he told me to do a running dive.

And when you go into that 50 degree water,

you come up and you can't breathe.

All the air goes out of your lungs and you can't inhale.

And that is a massive fight or flight response.

That is a massive fight or flight response.

You have a surge of epinephrine and norepinephrine.