Dr. Rhonda Patrick

And when that happens, it's basically telling the brain, oh, I'm uncomfortable.

I'm uncomfortable, whether that's from exercise or deliberate heat exposure from a sauna or a hot tub, that uncomfortable feeling.

is good for you.

You have to experience that uncomfortableness because what happens is then the brain adapts and the receptors that bind to endorphins, the feel good opioids, they're called new opioid receptors, they become more sensitive to the endorphin.

So after that uncomfortableness of exercise or deliberate heat exposure, every endorphin that you make is going to feel better.

Whether that's, you know, a kiss or a hug from a loved one or a joke that you're laughing at, whatever it is that's causing you to feel good for the moment, that endorphin, you're going to feel it more and you're going to feel it for longer.

So there are things that you can do and exercise being really, you know, a key, but also deliberate, you know, heat exposure from like hot tubs or saunas.

is another one that really can help with your state of mind, your mentality, your mood.

In fact, there's actually studies by Dr. Charles Raison, Dr. Ashley Mason, some pioneering studies showing that if you do deliberate heat exposure, and this was a very tricky machine that they used, which was essentially raising people's core body temperature to a feverish state, where it's essentially like going in the sauna,

They're raising people's core body temperature one and a half to two degrees, or they're doing a sham control.

So they're getting people hot enough to think it's a placebo, like a treatment, right?

But it's a real placebo.

And they took these people with major depressive disorder, gave them this treatment one time.

This was the pioneering study one time.

And they had an antidepressant effect that lasted six to eight weeks after that, just from one sauna exposure.

Now, Dr. Ashley Mason, she's at UCSF.

She's now done follow-up studies using infrared saunas that are

sort of like these heat beds where people are laying in them, their head is out, but she's also raising their core body temperature to 1.5 to 2 degrees, and they're doing it multiple times, four to eight times.

These guys?

That's right.