Take charge of your health
Summary
A Hero is someone who leaves the familiar world, faces their fears in the unfamiliar world, and returns a changed person. Every Hero realizes that the challenge of personal transformation is theirs alone.
Unfortunately, all the institutions of modern healthcare suggest to patients that they have no say in their own health journey. The insurance approvals, the co-pays, the referrals, and the authorities of modern medicine strip agency from the patient by communicating that other people or bureaucracies have control over patient health.
Ice baths are not for the timid, or the compliant, or the subservient. They are for the people who are ready to become Heroes in their own health journeys. It's not for everyone.
Doctors Are Not Our Health Care Heroes.
What is a Hero?
The Hero's Journey is a familiar story archetype described by Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero With A Thousand Faces (Campbell 1949). Campbell realized a reliable pattern in stories of personal transformation from Ulysses to The Wizard of Oz in which the hero (heroine) must leave the familiar world, overcome challenges and despair in the unfamiliar world with the help of a mentor, and return to the familiar world a changed person. Ben Greenfield recently wrote about it, and George Lucas based Star Wars on the Hero's Journey archetype.
Remember the scene in which Yoda tells Luke he must go into the cold?
One of the critical realizations every Hero must confront on their journey is the fact that the real struggle is always inside themselves. That is, the personal transformation requires them to confront themselves. In some cases, the hero is called upon to "slay" their old identity, to make room for a new identity to emerge.
That may be why the classic Hero will always refuse the first Call to Adventure. Their heroism is reluctant, because they only accept the call when events that are out of their control seemingly give them no other choice.
Many of the health journeys that have been narrated to me are like that. Of all the people who have shared with me their struggles with cancer, multiple sclerosis, Hashimoto's, Type 2 diabetes, low testosterone, or rheumatoid arthritis, of course none of them have told me that they would have chosen their disease for themselves. Most of them only turned to ice baths or other "alternative" therapies after conventional allopathic treatments have failed.
Their insurance won't cover cold plunge therapy, With rare exceptions, their medical doctors will not prescribe cold plunge therapy. And there are still no government agency approved protocols to guide them through cold plunge therapy.
Many of my readers enter the unfamiliar world of the ice bath as Heroes like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, or Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. That may be why some of the world's best athletes tell me they cold plunge for the mental benefits -- not the physiological.
When you enter the ice bath of your own volition, conquer your fears of pain and discomfort, and emerge from the cold water unscathed, feeling powerful and more alive than ever, you feel like you have completed the Hero's Journey and are returning to your familiar world a changed and more powerful person.
Biohacking Heroism
Many biohackers begin their journey not by choice, but out of necessity. A health crisis, a loved one's illness, or a seemingly insurmountable diagnosis serves as the "call to adventure." This call often leads them to unconventional paths, including the daunting prospect of cold plunge therapy.
These biohackers are the real Heroes, not the medical doctors who prescribe the preapproved-treatments that do not work. The real experimentalists are people like:
Dean Hall, who cured himself of leukemia with cold water swimming.
Dr. Courtney Hunt, who left her medical training behind to reverse her Hashimoto's disease with ketosis, ice baths, and cold water immersion.
Justin Hoagland, the medically retired Navy SEAL with multiple sclerosis who went from a wheelchair to road races after a program of regular ice baths.
Erin Miller, the medical safety nurse who manages her rheumatoid arthritis with ice baths.
Jason Kurchner, who reversed his Type 2 diabetes by taking a ice bath every day instead of prescription drugs.
Joe Dituri, PhD, who healed himself from traumatic brain injury using hypebarics, red light therapy, and ice baths.
When these people have the courage to try something that everyone in the medical community tells them is impossible, they alone bear the risks of their self-experimentation. But when they succeed and share their stories, every patient c can choose to benefit from their discoveries.
The Hero's Journey is so appealing because the audience experiences a vicarious emotional trajectory through the Hero, without risking their own death.
Biohacking Heroes
An Ice Bath is a Hero's Journey
Standing before an ice-filled Morozko Forge becomes a pivotal moment in this journey. Like the hero facing their first great challenge, the cold plunger must overcome the initial reluctance and fear. The mind invents excuses, urging retreat to the familiar warmth and comfort. Yet, it's precisely this moment of hesitation that marks the threshold between the ordinary world and the world of adventure and transformation.
Plunging into the ice bath is like accepting Campbell's Call to Adventure. The shock of the cold water represents the departure from the known, comfortable world into a realm of challenge and potential growth. It is in these moments of intense physical discomfort that the plunger often discovers untapped reservoirs of mental resilience.
Each subsequent immersion becomes a trial on this heroic journey. Like Hercules, who overcame 12 trial, the cold plunger must confront their own limitations to explore the boundaries of physical and mental endurance. In this way, the ice bath can teach the lessons of resilience, courage, focus, and self-mastery.
Every Hero has an Origin Story
The Loneliness of the Hero
It seems that America's most beloved Heroes are all orphans. For example, Dorothy, Luke Skywalker, and even Peter Parker (Spiderman) were all raised by their aunts and uncles. Superman was the lone survivor of the planet Krypton and as a boy Batman witnessed his parents being murdered on the sidewalks of Gotham.
Every fictional Hero has an origin story that explains to the audience why they most go through their journey alone. But in real life, you don't have to be an orphan to realize that you are by yourself, at the center of your own adventure novel.
I wrote about the origin of my health freedom journey in Ice Bath for Fast Keto, when I described what it was like when my 6-year-old son was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes more than twenty years ago.
I would have gladly traded places with him then. I wished that it was me that was required to prick my finger to test my blood glucose several times a day, take insulin shots in the back of my arm every time I ate.
As a Father, I felt ashamed and ignorant. Although I know it isn't true, I think it's natural for a parent to believe that their child's diagnosis is somehow the parent's fault -- and that's how I felt.
Type 1 diabetes is irreversible. It is an auto-immune disorder associated with a deficiency of Vitamin D in the first year of life. For reasons that remain unknown, in Type 1 diabetics, the immune system attacks the cells inside the pancreas that make insulin and destroys them.
They will never grow back, which means Type 1 diabetics will depend on insulin injections for the rest of their lives.
Because he was so young, I felt it became my job as his Father to keep him alive by checking his blood sugars, calculating his carbohydrate intake, learning everything I could about metabolism and ketosis, administering the correct insulin dose, and teaching him how to eventually live independently of me. I kept scrupulous records of everything he ate, all of his exercise, every blood glucose reading, and all of his insulin injections.
Along the way, I discovered that most of the advice from dieticians, the American Diabetes Association, and endocrinologists was wrong. I had the data from my son's records to prove it. For example, pure protein will convert to increased glucose levels in the bloodstream, even though we met with a dietician who insisted that it could not. I learned later that a process called gluconeogenesis in the liver will form new blood glucose from protein precursors. It takes hours, but it explains why a lunchtime cheeseburger with no bun and no ketchup would boost my son's blood sugar before dinner.
It was caring for my son that convinced me that I could not rely on doctors, nurses, institutions, schools, or professional associations to manage my son's blood sugar. It was up to me.
No medical school, clinical trial, or epidemiological study mattered more to me than my own personal experience.
My son is 29 years old now, in excellent health, and so you might say I did I good job. I probably could have done better.
It was about twenty years after my son's diagnosis, when my wife and I were separating, that I discovered I had failed to give my children the most important lesson of personal health that any Father can impart: a good example. I had neglected my own health to the point at which my weight ballooned to 250lbs, which for me was morbidly obese. (I'm almost 6ft tall).
As part of my new resolve to get myself healthy, I ordered a routine male blood panel. It included lipids (cholesterol), CRP (inflammation), and Prostate Specific Antigen (PST). It was the results of the PSA that were most worrisome. Mine came back elevated, which is associated with an increased risk of prostate cancer.
That was when I decided to get serious about ice baths. As I wrote in What Happened to My Testosterone After Using Ice Baths for My Prostate, instead of the usual prostate exam, biopsy, and what seemed like an inevitable prostatectomy and lifetime of erectile dysfunction, I resolved to get my prostate inflammation under control with ketosis and ice baths.
It worked.
None of this is meant to suggest that my story should be yours. We must be our own heroes. What worked for me won't necessarily work for you.
Mentors
In Campbell's archetype, the Hero will always meet a Mentor in the unfamiliar world who imparts upon them some secret knowledge. At some critical moment in the Hero's Journey, when the Hero's strength and wits are found lacking and the Hero teeters on the brink of despair, only then will the Mentor's secret knowledge restore the Hero's confidence and prove critical to the Hero's success.
The Mentor is someone who has faced a similar challenge and as a consequence has secret wisdom to impart, if only the Hero has the courage to trust it. A Mentor is not a Guru, or a Savior, or even a Champion. The Mentor can't do the healing for you.
Our ice bath company is called "Morozko" to evoke the idea of such a Mentor. According to Russian folklore, Morozko is a winter warlock who will bestow riches upon those people who meet the hardship of the cold with courage and grace.
But in reality, there is no magical power to the cold. The only magic is inside you, and you are in charge.
Many of the origin stories in the biohacking community are about people who overcame adversity and allopathic medicine to heal themselves are now sharing their knowledge with others. For example, the stories you read in this journal of people who have healed themselves with cold plunge therapy. Perhaps their voices could be like the Mentors in the Hero's journey. When you're thinking "This is too hard. It doesn't feel good. I don't want to do it!" remember that there was a time when they struggled, too -- and many of them still do.
As if I were living in one of Campbell's dramas, I am always reluctant to step into my ice bath. When I'm staring down at the huge chunks of ice in my Morozko, my mind will invent rationalizations about why it's OK for me to skip a day or two, even though I know the anxiety I feel before is always worse than the experience of being in the ice water. Partly because I set my forge to a temperature that frightens me, when I do enter the ice water, it is like I'm leaving the comfort of the familiar world for the discomfort and uncertainty of the unfamiliar. I become a reluctant protagonist in my own story.
Emma's journey
Few in our community are facing life-threatening illnesses. Most people who practice cold plunge have more mundane goals, like health optimization, exercise recovery, or stress reduction. Nonetheless, when you understand the psychological challenges of the ice bath, you will discover that your Morozko is a tool for training yourself to become more like a Hero in your own life.
My Daughter Emma Seager is one of those people. She's a Krav Maga instructor, and it would make sense to everyone if she was using ice baths to recover from the aches, pains, and bruises of her training.
Nonetheless, in Stress Inoculation, I wrote:
Your ice bath is the stress, not the recovery.
As it turns out, Emma doesn't use the ice bath to recover from her training. She uses it to prepare.
The day before her Level 2 belt test, Emma tried the Forge for the first time, to build up her psychological resilience. She wrote a story titled There's No Crying in Krav Maga (Except When There Is) in which she explained:
When you do Krav Maga, you’re training to fight for your life. I had heard stories about belt tests over the previous 10 months at this particular gym. The general consensus seems to be that they are far more of a psychological challenge than a physical one. They test your mental endurance, and challenge you break through the walls your brain constructs when it believes your body has been punished enough. (After 90 minutes of exhaustion, the final drill in our Level 2 belt test) was a “monkey in the middle” drill using constant attacks, including chokes from the front, chokes from behind, a choke from either side, and a headlock. I volunteered to go first. - Emma Seager, Krav Maga Instructor
Hero training
To illustrate the experience of the ice bath as training for the Hero's Journey, we put together video using cell phone footage of Justin Hoagland, Morozko co-Founder Adrienne Jezick, Emma, and several of Emma's Krav Maga classmates.
You'll notice that the video begins by creating a sense of danger, when Justin's lid blows over and "scares the shit" out of him.
Then, Adrienne's voice issues the call to adventure, when she says "Now, step into the water."
Adrienne goes first. Then Emma. Then the Krav Maga students. You can see the struggle on their faces as they enter the unfamiliar world.
Adrienne plays the role of the Mentor, to encourage them, guide them, and remind them of the promise that is on the other side of the journey.
It isn't until you hear my voice say "40 seconds!" to Emma that the old familiar world they left behind returns to their awareness.
After two minutes, our Hero's emerge from the Forge victorious, accepting congratulations and the admiration of their peers.
You won't hear Adrienne's voice again because these Heroes no longer need a Mentor.
They have been transformed, and they are ready for any challenge.
What's Your Story?
Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "Do something every day that scares you." It's in those moments that you become the Hero of your own life -- whether you're battling a life-threatening illness, or some chronic health condition, or you want nothing more but than to prepare yourself for a high level of performance, the ice bath can help.
Human beings are story-telling creatures, because stories are how humans are hard-wired to make sense of our complex experiences. That's why I'm fond of saying:
The story you tell yourself is more important than the experience you have.
Don't let anyone else author the story of your life.
Take charge.
About the Author
Thomas P Seager, PhD is an Associate Professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering at Arizona State University. Seager co-founded the Morozko Forge ice bath company and is an expert in the use of ice baths for building metabolic and psychological resilience.