My family and I have been watching “Limitless” with Chris Hemsworth. It is awesome if you haven’t checked it out. I must admit that Thor is quite easy on the eyes, and that Chris Hemsworth appears to be naturally self-deprecating. I imagine once you’ve been cast as a Norse God and had the piss taken out of you by your buddies you’d have to be. But that is only one small piece of why I wanted to watch this series after reading about it.
I started watching it because I am always interested in how we can make ourselves more resilient humans. Our bodies are so freaking cool, and are capable of so much more than we think. On top of that, our brain is such a fascinating organ. It’s soul job is to boss everything else around to keep us alive. Period. It doesn’t know that we aren’t running from apex predators anymore, it just wants to keep us safe and keep us alive.
Each episode of Limitless puts Chris in an extreme situation, and he’s given tools leading up to the task to help him be successful in his endeavor. The second episode takes place in the Norwegian Arctic, and has him swimming in the cold water. It also dives into the many benefits of using cold therapy.
If you read my post about January you’ll see that I don’t particularly enjoy being cold. I can tolerate it but I most definitely don’t enjoy it. A couple years ago when my functional medicine doctor and I were trying to work on my cortisol response, taking a cold shower first thing in the morning was one of the things she recommended. I hated it then, and I can’t say that my opinion has changed much. But, I do notice a difference when I have it in my routine.
So this month, along with abstaining from coffee for the duration of Lent I’m also taking a daily cold shower. My goal is to do it at least 5 days a week. That gives me two days to be a chicken-shit, but I otherwise have to show up the rest of the week. As of Thursday this week, I have 3 days under my belt.
I hate it. To be clear I don’t enjoy one cold second of it. I do however already feel the difference and it sucks to admit that something that you dislike really does prove to be so good for you. I know there is quite a bit of research backing the practice of cold-therapy and that is what draws me to it.
There is all kinds of fun disease that runs rampant in my genetics. Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, dementia, ALS, MS and Alzheimer’s to name a few. To be honest the cancer, heart disease and diabetes are things I know I can mostly control through lifestyle choices. It’s the others that keep me awake at night. Maybe there’s nothing I can do. When God calls my number its out of my hands. BUT, if there are things that I can do to prevent whatever waits for me as long as humanly possible than I’m going to do it.
So cold showers it is! At least for this month, we’ll see how it goes. It isn’t going to hurt me so I might as well suck up being cold and get after it. I’ll check back in next week, post an update. That will keep me accountable and force me to do it even when my brain is telling me “NO, you crazy human. It is cold and we don’t like cold. STOP IT”.
No brain, I’m doing this whether you like it or not.
What’s something you can do this month to challenge yourself, or help you to develop a beneficial habit? Let me know!
SG