Huberman Lab
Essentials: Increase Strength & Endurance with Cooling Protocols | Dr. Craig Heller
07 Aug 2025
In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, my guest is Dr. Craig Heller, PhD, a professor of biology at Stanford University and a world expert on the science of temperature regulation. We discuss how the body and brain regulate temperature in different conditions and why conventional cooling methods, such as placing ice packs on the neck, do not effectively reduce core body temperature. Dr. Heller explains why cooling glabrous skin areas—the palms, soles and upper face—efficiently releases body heat and can significantly enhance physical performance and endurance. We discuss how targeted palmar cooling improves both short-term performance and long-term training adaptation in aerobic and anaerobic exercise. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Carbon: https://joincarbon.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00) Craig Heller (00:26) Deliberate Cold Exposure, Cold Showers, Ice Baths; Vasoconstriction (02:26) Cold Shower vs Cold Immersion, Boundary Layer, Tool: Improve Aerobic Exercise Performance (04:54) Anaerobic Exercise & Overheating, Muscle Failure, Muscle Fatigue (07:19) Sponsor: Carbon (09:06) Anaerobic Exercise, Cool Down with Ice Water or Cold Towel? (11:28) Should You Cool Body/Head to Lower Body Temperature?, Hyperthermia, Heat Stroke (15:17) Body Sites for Quick Cooling: Palms, Soles & Upper Face, Glabrous Surfaces (17:48) Tool: Loosen Grip & Performance; Gloves & Socks (19:21) Cooling Brain via Upper Face (20:41) Sponsor: AG1 (22:05) Cooling Brain to Offset Concussion? (23:01) Enhance Anaerobic Performance & Cooling Palms, Heat Loss (26:17) Improve Aerobic Endurance & Cooling Palms (27:11) CoolMitt; Ice Cold Is Too Cold (30:11) Sponsor: Function (31:44) Tool: Use Palmer Cooling to Enhance Performance; Cooling Palms, Soles & Face (35:28) Acknowledgments Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, I have the pleasure of introducing Dr. Craig Heller as my guest on the Huberman Lab Podcast.
And now for my discussion with Dr. Craig Heller. Great to have you here. It's good to be here. I know that I and many people have a lot of questions about the use of cold. So one of the things that's happened in recent years is that For many reasons, people have become interested in things like taking cold showers and taking ice baths for many different purposes.
Could you just tell me a little bit about what happens when I get into a cold shower or an ice bath?
Well, first of all, you get a tremendous shock. And what that's going to translate into is a bit of a shot of adrenaline. And I think this is really the so-called benefit, but it doesn't necessarily translate into any benefit in terms of your physiology or performance and so forth. Now, if you take a cold bath or a cold shower, a couple of things are happening.
One is you're going to stimulate vasoconstriction. So if anything, it's going to make it a little bit more difficult for your body to get rid of heat because you're shutting off your avenues of heat loss. If you're in a true cold bath, the overall surface area of your body is so great that it doesn't matter if you've acid constricted, you're still going to lose heat.
The primary sites of heat loss, which we're going to get into, are the palms of your hands, the soles of your feet, and the upper part of your face. And the reason these are avenues for heat loss is they're underlain by special blood vessels.
And these blood vessels are able to shunt the blood from the arteries, which are coming from the heart, directly to the veins, which are returning to the heart, and bypassing the capillaries, which are the nutritive vessels, but high resistance. So you can tell when you shake someone's hand what his or her thermal status is. The hand's hot or it's cold.
A couple of questions before we get into these specialized vascular compartments on the soles, the palms, and the upper face. Is there anything that's really important to understand about the difference in the physiological response evoked by cold shower versus immersion in cold?
Well, there are differences that are more physical than anything else. So if you are in a cold bath and you're still, you develop a boundary layer. It's best to explain it in terms of a hot bath because everybody's experienced that. You get into a hot bath and, oh, my God, it's really hot. almost painful.
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