The Benefits of High Heat & Discomfort w/ Health Science Journalist Bill Gifford

When a book came across my desk about the benefits of heat, my first thought was, “Really?” We’ve been in the age of cold plunges for quite a while, but now it’s heat? I also wondered, does it take an entire book to explain this? Then I saw the author was Bill Gifford. Bill is a veteran magazine writer and editor who writes about extraordinary athletes and cutting-edge health science. He is coauthor of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Outlive, which has sold more than two million copies, as well as the New York Times bestseller Spring Chicken: Stay Young Forever (Or Die Trying). He is a longtime contributing editor at Outside, and his work has appeared in Wired, Bloomberg Businessweek, Men’s Health, Bicycling, The Washington Post, and others, as well as in Best American Sportswriting. This latest book is called HOTWIRED: How the Hidden Power of Heat Makes Us Stronger, and in it he does like all the great journalist and shares his personal journey in experiencing heat therapy. What I initially intrigued myself with was Bill’s look into history where we routinely experienced long periods of high heat and air conditioning wasn’t normal until the 1950s and 1960s. We always had fire and the ability to heat up an environment, but when it was hot, for the span of our existence, we adapted to it. We discuss the issues around our seeming inability to deal with any discomfort, and how fragile we seem to be becoming in our culture. So while we can exist in temperature controlled environments almost entirely, and it may be comfortable, is this existence best for our overall health and well-being?

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