Want to Improve Gym Performance? Cool Your Glabrous Areas

Recently I’ve been researching the benefits of cold exposure to improve all sorts of health characteristics. I’ve even been swimming in my swimming pool for several minutes a couple of times a week to try it out.

Yes I know it’s Arizona. It’s still January and my pool temperature has fluctuated between about 52 and 59 degrees fahrenheit. Decently cool.

I really like the feeling I have when I get out. It’s a little chilly in the water - ngl as the youngsters say.

So I did some research about cold water immersion. I found a video with Andrew Huberman and Dr Craig Heller from the Stanford biology department and an expert at the science of temperature regulation.

He brought up some interesting information that I’m excited to try. Oh and Andrew Huberman did a deep-dive into cold exposure here.

Actually the first piece of information he brought up I’m not excited to try. However, it may just save your life or the life of a loved one.

If you’re very hot - like heat stroke hot - you might not want to drape a cool towel over your head. You see there’s a part of your brain called the Preoptic Anterior Hypothalamus (POAH). This region acts like a thermostat. It helps maintain your body’s temperature.

What happens when you hold ice or a cold rag up to a thermostat in your house? Yup. The thermostat thinks it’s cold and turns on the heat.

Same with cooling your head with a wet towel on a hot day.

There are a lot better parts of your body to help you cool down. Can you guess?

As the title of the email suggests, they are the Glabrous areas of your skin. ‘Glabrous’ as the medical people call it, are just the areas of your body that don’t have hair follicles. Primarily we’re talking:

• Palms of your hands

• Souls of your feet

• Upper cheeks and lower forehead area

Almost all the other areas have hair follicle cells. Even if you’re not growing hair in certain areas. That includes the top of the head for us bald guys.

If you or a family member or friend is suffering from heat stroke, cool these three areas first. These areas have special blood vessels that transfer blood from arteries to veins without transferring to capillaries. Arteries and veins are bigger. They can have higher flow rates and less pressure. Capillaries are small and have the opposite.

That means these special blood vessels or shunts, can transfer heat faster.

Here’s the really cool part. Dr Heller has also found that if you cool these areas (palms, souls and cheeks) in the gym between sets, or when you’re out running, you can see increases in your performance.

In the video they took an NFL player and measured how many dips they could do. At first it was about 100 in a session. A session consists of multiple sets and reps.

Then after a couple of days of working out and cooling just the palms of their hands between sets, they were able to do 300 dips in a session.

The theory behind it is that as your muscles work, they heat up. In order to prevent the muscles from overheating, your body makes it very hard to do that last rep. Or keep running past a certain point.

Cooling the Glabrous areas means you can keep going.

Pretty cool stuff. I’ll give it a try. How about you?