Robin Jade Conde

PODCAST: DIY cold plunges and health talk

In this episode, Reuben and Tessa discuss the trending topic of cold plunges or cold water exposure. They share their personal experiences with cold plunges and provide insights on creating a cold plunge at home. The benefits and considerations of cold plunges are explored, along with alternative methods for cold water exposure. Reuben shares his affordable and accessible setup for cold plunges. The episode concludes with a discussion on the health benefits of cold plunges and Reuben’s personal results in improving his cholesterol levels through dietary changes.

Here’s a link to The China Study: https://amzn.to/48KniBm.

Check out the link below to the blog post on cold plunges:
https://structuretech.com/cold-plunge/.

Takeaways

Cold plunges or cold water exposure is a trending topic with numerous health benefits.
Creating a cold plunge at home can be affordable and accessible with the right setup.
Cold plunges can improve immune system function, reduce stress, and provide a sense of rejuvenation.
Dietary changes, such as a whole food plant-based diet, can have a positive impact on cholesterol levels.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Topic Introduction
01:32 Cold Plunges as a Trending Topic
03:13 Wim Hof and Cold Water Exposure
04:42 Personal Experiences with Cold Plunges
06:18 Creating a Cold Plunge at Home
07:44 Duration and Frequency of Cold Plunges
08:33 Benefits and Considerations of Cold Plunges
10:24 Alternative Methods for Cold Water Exposure
13:54 Affordability and Accessibility of Cold Plunges
15:16 Personal Experiences and Motivation
18:56 Cold Plunges in Extreme Cold Climates
20:28 Logistics and Automation of Cold Plunges
22:07 Draining and Water Usage
23:10 Health Benefits and Personal Results
26:38 Dietary Changes and Cholesterol Levels
28:56 Conclusion and Appreciation


TRANSCRIPTION

 

The following is a transcription from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it may be slightly incomplete or contain minor inaccuracies due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

 

 

Reuben Saltzman: Welcome to my house. Welcome to the Structure Talk podcast, a production of Structure Tech Home inspections. My name is Reuben Saltzman, I’m your host alongside building science geek Tessa Murray. We help home inspectors up their game through education, and we help homeowners to be better stewards of their houses. We’ve been keeping it real on this podcast since 2019, and we are also the number one home inspection podcast in the world, according to my mom. Welcome to another episode. Tessa, great to see you. How are you doing today? 

Tessa Murray: Hey Reuben. It’s good to see you. How are you? 

RS: Fantastic. No complaints. Feeling energized and good.

[laughter]

TM: Let me guess, does it have to do with the topic for today why you feel so good? 

RS: We’ll come back to that. We’ll come back to that. But today’s topic, we’re taking kind of a little turn from our normal stuff. Normally we’re talking about houses and home inspections and everything related to that, but this one is kind of a weird topic for us. [chuckle] We’re actually gonna be talking about a trending thing that I recently blogged about, and I did a video about. And it’s about cold plunges or cold water exposure, because…

TM: We’re gonna dive into a new topic today.

RS: We’re gonna dive in. Let’s go. [chuckle] Or maybe we’ll put our toes in. I don’t know.

TM: I think with the cold plunge topic, you just gotta dive in. The faster you do it, the easier it is. In my experience.

RS: Get it over with. And so this is all about cold plunges. It’s definitely, you hit the nail on the head when you said it is a trending topic. I mean, I’m hearing about this all over the place. I get other home inspectors telling me they’re doing it. There’s people at my church doing this, I got neighbors who do it. I mean, everybody seems to be getting into this. And so I thought we’d talk about it a little bit, where I can share what I’ve done to make it pretty affordable and simple, which removes the barriers to doing this. So many of the things you do, if it’s tough, if there’s a bunch of resistance, you gotta get out a hose and do all this other stuff. It’s like, you’re not gonna do it. But, so let’s talk about it. Tessa, what do you know about this? 

TM: Well, okay. So I think the first time I heard about this was a few years ago, and I can’t remember who introduced me to it. But isn’t the basic principle kind of that immersing yourself in extremely cold water or cold air improves your immune system, your health, reduces stress, reduces inflammation. It’s just good for your health in a lot of ways, physically, mentally, potentially. And I don’t, I have not done a deep dive into the science like you have Reuben, but I’m familiar with it. And also, who’s the founder of this whole theory? Is it Wim Hof? 

RS: Oh, well, he’s certainly one of the best known names. I don’t know if he’s the one who started this. I’m sure it’s been around for centuries. But he’s really kind of made a name for himself. ‘Cause he’s got some world records for, I don’t know what, like swimming under ice and…

TM: Being submerged in…

RS: Climbing to the top of mountains in his underwear. Like cold, cold weather exposure.

TM: He can run half marathons barefoot.

RS: Yes. Yes. And that’s, his name is Wim Hoff. It’s W-I-M H-O-F. And it’s funny, I was having a conversation with somebody at my church, and he is like, “Oh, yeah, I listen to this podcast and this guy does all this stuff, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And I said, “Have you ever heard of Wim Hof? You’ve never heard of him?” I gave him the info, and he is like, “Oh, I just re-listened to some of these podcasts.” And the guy is referencing Wim Hof throughout the whole thing. He’s like, it just never clicked until you said his name. But yeah, he’s a well-known dude.

TM: So, okay. So I’ve tried it recently. I actually tried it. I went up to a place in northern Wisconsin that had saunas, and then they also had a cold plunge. And so that was kind of first time I like, officially did a cold plunge, I guess. But I’ve done it before unofficially years ago when I went up to Canada and was living, [chuckle] I don’t know if I’ve ever, I don’t think I’ve talked about this on the podcast. I’ve shared this with you, Reuben and some people at Structure Tech, but I spent some time with some natives up in a First Nation in Canada, and we would do sweats and then jump in the frozen lake right afterwards. And little did I know that that was this practice, putting it into practice. And I always felt amazing after that. I can’t even explain how it just, how it re-energizes you and you just have so much energy moving through your body. And I think it does, I think it really did actually improve my immune system too. I was not getting as sick those winters.

RS: That’s, they say that’s one of the benefits of this for sure.

TM: I mean, there’s a lot of other variables that can impact health. I understand that. But I definitely just, I just felt better. I felt stronger, felt healthier, felt more alive. So I’m curious to hear kind of how you heard about it and how long you’ve been doing this.

RS: Well, we would do this kind of unofficially at the family cabin before I started learning about all the benefits of it. I mean, you heard that my parents have got this wood-fired sauna up there. And you know, sauna is how you’re supposed to say it.

TM: Sauna.

[chuckle]

RS: Sauna. And so you get the wood going in there and you keep adding wood and it takes like a couple hours and eventually it’s just ridiculously hot. You get in there, you pour the water on the rocks, and it’s just a blast of hot air. I mean, you’re melting. And then you run down and you jump in the lake. And normally we do that at night, and sometimes we do it kind of early in the season, or we do it really late in the season before everything is iced over. And that lake would get really cold and it stops your heart, but then you go back and you warm back up in the sauna and you go back. And you do it a few times. But after reading more about it, I mean, I’m kind of on a health kick. I’ve been on a health kick for, I don’t know, the last 10 years it feels like.

TM: How long…

RS: Ever since I had this big back surgery. The recovery process from that got me going down this path. And I’ve read a lot of books on health and improvement and hacks. I’ve read a lot from Dave Asprey, listened to a lot from Tim Ferriss, Tony Robbins, and I read that book, Wim Hof’s book. I think it’s called The Iceman or something like that. He’s got a few books out there. But his big thing is cold water exposure, whether it’s jumping in a frozen lake or maybe just taking a cold shower, he talks about all the benefits of that. And after I read his book, I was like, all right, I need to figure out a way to incorporate this. And the easiest way to do it, everybody’s got one, you just turn your shower to cold. And it’s like you don’t need to turn it all the way to cold and jump in that way, because you’re going to tense up. Your body is going to kind of lock up. The better way to do it is to expose yourself to where you’re still relaxed. Don’t get it so cold that you completely lose your breath and you have to tense. You got to be able to just breeze into it and be okay with it. And so you turn your shower to cool at the end of the shower and maybe take a cool shower for 15 seconds and then shut it off and get out.

TM: I was gonna ask you how long he recommends doing that for, because I’ve been doing that just without even realizing almost every day, or not every day, but most days at the end of a long, hot shower, I’ll switch it to cold. But I don’t know.

RS: That’s awesome.

TM: How long should you stand in the cold water for? 

RS: I think he said in his book to try to work your way up to five minutes.

TM: Okay. That’s…

RS: It gets kind of boring. It’s like I’m looking at the clock like, all right, let’s go. And it’s…

TM: Okay. Yeah, I’m yeah, maybe 15, 30 seconds for me.

RS: Well, still, I think there’s benefits in even doing that, I’m sure.

TM: Okay. You start off with the lake stuff at your family’s cabin and then the cold showers.

RS: Yeah. And then started doing it more intentionally and taking cold showers at home. And eventually work my way down to the point where the water is all the way cold. I keep turning the dial until the water dips down a little bit, then you know there’s no hot water getting mixed in. And do that. And I would do that throughout the summer. But then once it started getting really cold, I kind of wimped out. And I’m like, it takes too long to recover. I’m not into this. But this is the year that I’m sticking with it. And I was talking with another home inspector buddy of mine, Chris. He’s out of Ohio. And we talked about cold water plunges, like getting your body in. And Tony Robbins, I watched this movie of his and he’s got this cold plunge installed in his yard where it’s…

TM: Of course.

RS: It’s installed in the ground. It’s refrigerated. It’s temperature controlled, the water circulates and all that. He does that every day. But if you can’t afford something like that like the rest of us, there’s some pretty inexpensive ways to do it. And I tried starting out just doing it in my bathtub. Run cold water in your tub. That is very cold. And I tried getting it even colder by dumping a bunch of snow in there. Last year was a great year for it. I grabbed a few five gallon buckets full of snow and dumped them in. And that definitely got it colder. But then when I was done, there’s all the gunk in the snow. I didn’t do it like right after.

TM: You didn’t grab the yellow snow, did you? 

RS: There was no yellow snow. But there was all this junk in my bathtub and I was like, all right, I’m not into this. And I don’t like laying down for some reason either. It’s like, it’s much more comfortable to do it if you’re in an upright position. So my buddy Chris told me he ordered this portable ice bath and it’s basically a vinyl barrel. It’s supported with six little sticks of PVC that go around that make up the ribs. And you can set it up anywhere. You fill it up with your garden hose and you hop in. And if you’re in a cold climate like Minnesota, we’ve got cold tap water. My tap water coming out, it’s about 58 degrees. And I said this in the video I made, it might not seem like 58 is all that cold when you compare it to freezing, but I challenge anyone, try it.

[laughter]

TM: Its uncomfortably cold.

RS: It is very, very cold. And so I did that throughout the summer. I just had it sitting outside underneath my deck. I’d fill it up with the garden hose and I’d have to warm my body up first. I could usually not bring myself to just jump in unless it was a really hot summer night. And I’d have to do some cardio workout or something and then do it.

TM: Or after a workout, yeah after workout.

RS: Yeah. No, I’ve heard from bodybuilding people that if you’re doing weight training, doing the cold exposure isn’t the best thing right after you’ve torn your muscles. If you want to build muscle, you’re not supposed to expose them to cold immediately. But say it’s probably a better thing to do right after doing cardio, I think.

TM: Gotcha.

RS: Yeah, I don’t know. But I had it outside for a while and then I didn’t want to keep going outside in the winter. So I was thinking about this through the summer. So in the fall, I ran a water line. Now, we’ve talked about this in the past where I’m a big proponent of not running softened water to your kitchen faucet. Sorry, I said it backwards. Not running hard water to your kitchen faucet. You should run softened water to your kitchen faucet just like everything else in your house. In a lot of houses, you find a bypass where they don’t do that. They intentionally run hard water to the kitchen faucet. And one of the first things I did after moving into my house was I rerouted my water line so it softened. So I had this extra water line in my utility room and I just tapped off of that. I ran a little water line along the ceiling and I put a garden hose fitting on the end and then I picked up like a $50 sprinkler timer from Menards, connected that on and then connected a little garden hose running down into my tub. So this way, I can pull out my phone, hit a few buttons on there and hit go and then it fills the cold plunge, the portable ice bath, it’ll fill it with cold water and then I can get in. It’s not, it’s like I don’t have to go down and watch it and see, wait till it’s two-thirds full and then shut the water off.

RS: You just hit the buttons and go. So I’ve made it really easy all for the cost of the cold plunge was probably a hundred bucks. The timer was about 50 bucks and the rest of the stuff, it was just, it was parts and piping that I had sitting around my house. So my total investment was like 150 bucks and now I’ve got a cold plunge that I use regularly.

TM: So yeah, you just go into your basement, take a supply line, connect it to a hose, make sure everything’s connected well, install a new tub, connect it to the drain, a floor drain or some other kind of drain, put on a little sensor timer that will connect to your phone so you can just turn it on, and let it fill up by itself with smart switches and then you’re done, right? 

RS: That’s it.

TM: It seems very easy.

RS: Yeah, I know you’re mocking me.

TM: I guess I can say, I did read your blog before this podcast and I read that and I just started chuckling because Reuben, you may not realize how unique you are but I don’t know anyone that could just like, okay, I’m gonna whip together this homemade little spa system, cold plunge in my basement and you did it for like a few hundred bucks and like maybe an hour of your time, right? 

RS: That’s exactly it.

TM: Exactly, yeah, like you… I don’t think there’s anything that you won’t try or do. If we were living in like a time period like with Benjamin Franklin, I’m pretty sure you would have just been an inventor, right? You would have been tinkering with things all the time.

RS: I do like to tinker. For sure.

TM: Yeah, exploring, experimenting, discovering and inventing for sure. It is one of your gifts, I will say, but I was inspired by the fact that you could do this at home and I’m sure there will be people that are listening to this and think, okay, if he did it, maybe I can try it. Maybe I can do this too. I’m not an inventor, but yeah.

RS: Well, and I’ll give you a tip too. If you’re gonna try this and you’re in a warmer climate, if you’re like Texas or Florida or something like that.

TM: Yeah, where the groundwater is warm, what do you do? 

RS: Yeah, you can’t take cold showers. You can take cool showers, that’s it. And your cold plunge is not gonna be all that cold, but I’ve got a buddy down in Florida, another home inspector friend, his name is Brian, and he said what he would do is he’d get these little six-quart storage containers, you get them at Home Depot, they’re like $1.99 or something, and he’d fill those with ice, stick them in his freezer, and then you pull it out and you’ve got the world’s largest ice cube, and so he would…

TM: Wait, fill it with ice? Oh, fill it with like water, put it in the freezer, let it freeze.

RS: Oh, fill it with ice, sorry.

TM: You need a freezer big enough where you can put like these things in there.

RS: You need some extra room. Yeah. That could be a limiter.

TM: A hindrance.

RS: And I don’t have that room in my freezer.

TM: Me neither.

RS: But I got cold water too, so I’m good to go there. But it seems like a great way if you want to get it down, if you want to get that water temperature down, just make your own homemade gigantic ice cubes. I guess it’s really effective.

TM: Yeah, or if you live in Minnesota, you don’t need to do all this amazing creating a whole spa in your basement like Reuben did. You can just literally go outside. We’re doing this show right during the coldest snap of the winter, right? It has been so cold the last few weeks. It’s like the highs have been in the negatives and the wind chills have been like what, -20, -30? 

RS: So cold. Yeah, I saw n-30 the other day with the wind chill. It was brutal.

TM: Yeah, it’s been awful. But okay, so question. If you’re not doing a cold plunge, there’s other options like cryogenic like capsules.

RS: I know what you’re doing.

TM: Yeah, where you can have cold air circulating around your body and stuff too. But I feel like Mother Nature is providing that for free. If you are brave enough to go outside with very little clothing on when it’s that cold, you can get an instant freeze effect.

RS: Yeah, or go out in your yard and lay down in the snow and make snow angels and lay there for a while. That would be a good thing to do, there was a…

TM: All your neighbors are, hey, is that Reuben out there making a snow angel in his boxers? 

RS: You know what? I’m going to see if I can find a photo. There was a ski trip I took with a bunch of home inspector people through IEB. And a bunch of us were sitting in the hot tub, and we all got out, and we all got in the snow, and we made snow angels, and we laid there for a while and some woman took a picture of us all laying in the snow and brought it down. I’ll see if I can find that photo. It was pretty good.

TM: Oh, crazy kids. You’re crazy kids. Yeah. It does burn. I’ve done that too. I think people that are listening to this think we’re crazy, but if you live in a cold climate like us and you’ve got snow, and you’ve been in a hot tub for a long time, I think it’s just you’re experimenting. You’re okay, what’s this going to feel like if I just go jump in the snow, right? 

RS: Yeah. You’re not going to die. It’s going to be fine.

TM: It stings a little bit. It burns.

RS: Yeah, and then you get back in the hot tub, and you feel great.

TM: Exactly. You warm back up. Yeah. [laughter] We’re crazy. We are crazy, aren’t we? 

RS: We’re crazy. But I’ll put a link to the video I made in the show notes if you want to see my setup, see how it all works. If you’re interested in doing something like that yourself.

TM: Yeah. I will highly recommend it. It is a very impressive setup, Reuben, and the idea… How did you get the idea about the sprinkler timer thing? 

RS: It just, well, I knew that a garden hose hanging into it would be the way to do it. I was thinking about having a hard pipe water line. But then the water line’s gonna be in the way. So I knew I wanted something flexible, and I’m like, well, I want this on a timer. I’ve owned sprinkler timers before. And it just seemed like, well, this is a good way so you can set it and let it go and have it shut off at a certain time. I didn’t know that there was such thing as a digital one. And it wasn’t a lot more for that, where you can have the time set exactly. And you can control it on your phone.

TM: That’s, yeah. That blew my mind. So you just, you go onto this app on your phone and you can turn it on from there and then turn it off after a certain time.

RS: Exactly. Although, I will say it’s just a little bit more involved because I have a shutoff valve on the water line that supplies water to it. And my default is to keep the water line off. So I actually do have to go down in my basement, open the water line, and then close the drain valve on my cold plunge. I gotta do that first.

TM: You know what? 

RS: And then I hit the app.

TM: To make this next level, you can replace that valve with a digital one that you can control from an app too. You just turn it on from your phone.

RS: Why don’t I have that? 

[laughter]

TM: Same too. And I’m sure next week we’ll hear an update, right? 

RS: Well, yeah. And even next level after that, have the valve open for six minutes and then close automatically, now there.

TM: There you go.

RS: That’s what I ought to do.

TM: Everything’s gonna be digital. Okay. Here’s another logistical question. How often… I saw in this setup that you’ve got the tub connected to some fittings that go to your floor drain in your basement so you can easily drain the tub. How often do you drain it? Do you drain it after every cold plunge or do you drain it once a week or what? 

RS: Yeah.

TM: Every time? 

RS: Every time. Yep.

TM: Is okay, now, is that what these experts recommend? Or is that just a Reuben thing? 

RS: I don’t know. But that’s the only way for me to make sure the water’s cold.

TM: Gotcha. Yes. Okay.

RS: It’s not that much water. It, I’m pretty sure it’s less water than you would use if you’re taking a bath.

TM: Oh, really? Okay.

RS: Yeah. It takes six minutes to fill this thing. So it’s not that much water. I mean, if you think about, okay, I’m gonna set a sprinkler outta my yard to water the lawn. How long do you have those sprinklers running? I’m doing six minutes.

TM: That’s true. Yeah. Okay.

RS: I got some crappy comments on Facebook about, oh, this sounds like a waste of water for a rich country and blah, blah, blah. It’s, how much water is this really? It’s not that much.

TM: Yeah. Well, and if someone takes a 10, 15 minute shower every day, they’re using more water than that.

RS: Right? Exactly. Yeah.

TM: Okay. Interesting.

RS: So that’s cold plunges in a nutshell.

TM: Have you started integrating your shampooing and your other [laughter] practices in the cold plunge so it’s a one-stop shop for you in the morning? 

[laughter]

RS: I go right into the shower after that [laughter] and if I’m doing a cold plunge, I do not take a warm shower. I start off.

TM: You don’t? 

RS: On really cool. Move it to cold, take a really fast shower.

TM: Really.

RS: And then get out. And then I think the big benefit is letting your body bring itself back to a normal temperature and it can take a while. And I’ll be honest, I’ve been slacking. I’ve only been doing it a couple times a week with this huge cold snap just ’cause it takes so long to recover. And if I gotta leave the house afterward, I don’t wanna go out in the cold when I’ve still got goosebumps.

TM: I’m with you on that. I’m totally with you on that. Have you noticed a big difference, how, I don’t know if you said how long you’ve been doing this. Have you noticed a big difference health-wise? 

RS: I’ve been doing it diligently since summertime.

TM: Okay.

RS: And I don’t know. I made a bunch of changes this summer ’cause I think you and I have talked about this off of the podcast.

TM: Yeah.

RS: I did that 75 hard challenge. I think we may have mentioned it quickly on the podcast where it’s a 75 day challenge, and you’re supposed to not drink any alcohol, follow a diet, exercise twice a day, drink a gallon of water, all this other stuff 75 days in a row. So I did that and I was like, all right. I should get my cholesterol tested. I do that every couple years and I know that it’s been going up throughout my life and it’s kind of a hereditary thing I’ve been told.

TM: Yeah, me too.

RS: Really? 

TM: Yes, I am on my… Both my good and bad cholesterol are high actually.

RS: Okay.

TM: It is a genetic thing, and if I… Yeah. I need to keep an eye on it ’cause I’m borderline medication. I’m 35 and I…

RS: You’re 35. Yeah. It doesn’t get better as you age.

TM: Yeah. I eat fairly well. And I’m healthy, but yeah, it’s high.

RS: Yeah. So total tangent on this, but we said we were gonna bring it up.

TM: Yeah.

RS: My doctor had talked about, maybe you wanna look into getting on a statin or something like that. Maybe some medication to bring that down. But I had a family member who had something similar and she recommended this book called The China Study. And it’s all about changing your diet for a lot of reasons. And for me it was for my cholesterol where I ended up eliminating pretty much anything animal-based, but also sticking with a whole food plant-based diets. And when I say whole food, it’s like you’re not eating parts of plants. You’re not eating things like sugar. Processed sugar or oils or any of that. So, you’ve got, if you had a big circle, you could say, this is vegetarian. And then you put a smaller circle inside of it. Well, that’s vegan. But then you put an even smaller circle inside of that and say, that’s whole food plant-based.

TM: Yeah.

RS: And so I switched to that in August.

TM: That’s intense.

RS: It is, but on the other hand I… What I felt like, I ate pretty well. I would eat a very low carb diet. I mean, very few carbs other than fruits and stuff like that.

TM: You already cut out all the fun is what you’re saying, before that. It was easy to transition for you.

RS: But now with this diet, I do eat a lot more carbs than I ever used to. I mean, I have…

TM: Interesting.

RS: I have oatmeal or steel-cut oats with breakfast every day and I had eliminated that before. So now it’s like it kinda opened up a bunch of new food that I wasn’t eating before.

TM: The joy of oatmeal.

RS: Now I got permission. The joy of oatmeal. You know what? I’m gonna settle this right now. Steel-cut oats are far better than oatmeal, okay? They are nutty and they are delicious.

TM: You’d have to educate me on the difference on another podcast or off air. We’ll save our listeners.

RS: I’ll make you some.

TM: Okay. So you have switched to this pretty restrictive diet of whole plant-based diet. No meat, no animal products, nothing processed, no sugar. What is your cholesterol like now? 

RS: Tessa, all right, drum roll. I tested my cholesterol 2 months after doing this diet and my bad cholesterol dropped in half. I kid you not.

TM: What? 

RS: It dropped in half.

TM: Oh, my gosh.

RS: I’m in the healthy person range now. I don’t need to get on a statin or anything like that. I’m good. It’s all about diet.

TM: How do you feel? How are you feeling? Energy and…

RS: Oh, I feel great. I feel great. I feel like I’ve never had so much energy.

TM: That’s amazing.

RS: It’s a good thing. Yeah.

TM: You’re inspiring me, Reuben. I don’t eat a ton of meat, but I do eat some. I’ve kinda switched to more plant-based as well, but I do enjoy my sweets and my breads and all of that stuff as well. That would be hard for me to give up some of that processed stuff. I’d rather try that and switch my diet than go on cholesterol medication.

RS: Yeah. If it ever gets to the point where you have to, it’s like, just try it and see what happens. Not easy at first, but you figure out what to eat. It’s like, okay, this is fine. This is my new normal. If I’m having dinner at a friend’s house and they’re cooking a brisket, I’m gonna eat it. I’m not completely nuts. I’d say I’m 98% there.

TM: Yeah. You’re not gonna make a socially awkward scene because of your restrictive diet.

RS: Exactly.

TM: Well, you know what? This was a fun podcast. We did not talk about anything house-related today or anything technical, but we did dive into some kinda health things. I think, Ruben, you’re glowing. I just wanna start calling you Benjamin Button. [laughter] Is that correct, Reuben? 

RS: There he is. Oh, I love it.

TM: With all the hacks going on and you’re thriving, let’s just say. You look well. You feel well. You’re aging backwards.

RS: I’m trying. I’m trying.

TM: You’re an inspiration to us all in so many ways.

RS: Well, I’ll put a link to that book in the show notes ’cause that book was just… It was one of the most incredible books I’ve ever read because it…

TM: The Wim Hof book? 

RS: The China study.

TM: The China… Oh, yeah. The diet book. Yeah. Okay. Yep. Yep. Yep.

RS: All right. Cool. Well, good show, Tess. I hope we didn’t lose too many people who are just here for advice on houses or home inspections.

TM: But it’s okay.

RS: We can take a turn and we can change it up as we see fit. This is our podcast.

TM: It’s true. Yeah, if anybody’s listening out there. Actually, you know what? I do wanna say thank you to all the people who took the time to write to us after our last episode of 2023 ’cause I think on that podcast, we just let people know how much we appreciate you guys for listening to the show and for supporting us all these years. We appreciate your feedback too on any ideas you have. We take them seriously and we’ve created some shows based off your suggestions. Keep it coming. How do people communicate with us, Ruben? What’s the email? 

RS: Please email us, podcast at structuretech.com.

TM: Yes. Perfect. Okay. All right. Thank you.

RS: Tessa, great seeing you.

TM: Good to see you too.

RS: We will be back next week with a first time guest. That’s as much as I’m gonna tease it just in case it doesn’t work out. But I’m already looking forward to next week’s show.

TM: Me too. All right. Thanks, Benjamin.

RS: See you next week.

TM: See you next week.