Colin O'Brady's Post Antarctic Recovery Regimen | Joe Rogan

So when you're coming back from all these summits and all this time at altitude, what has actually happened to your body that causes you to be really depleted for six months? Like, what's happening other than the fact that you were at high altitude, low oxygen? Like, what's taking place? So one of the things that happens at high altitude that you don't really think about too much, which is your body's not getting... So the air actually has just as much oxygen in it as it does at sea level, but the air is less dense. So that means as you breathe in the air, you're literally getting less oxygen into your blood. It's less dense. It's less dense. So there's less nitrogen in it? It's the pressure changes. Right? So at the high altitude, it's actually the pressure that's changing. So it's not less oxygen? There's just as much oxygen, but in a less dense form. So in the same volume of breath, you're getting less actual O2 into your blood. What are you getting? At the high altitude. I guess it's carbon dioxide. Is that right? Yeah. I'm not a doctor, like I said. All I know is you're getting less oxygen. You're getting less oxygen in your body. So what ends up happening is your muscles, of course, need oxygen to perform. So normally when I'm in my most elite physical shape, I have resting heart rate during a professional triathlon career of like 35, getting out of bed, 38. Low enough that if you weren't a professional athlete and you went to a doctor with a heart rate of 35, they'd be like, oh my God, you're going to die. There's something wrong with you. But that's also a key marker of elite health performance. You know that, of course. But what happens is your body can't... Your body's getting so little oxygen, even as your blood is acclimatizing, you're sleeping with a resting heart rate at altitude on Everest at like 90, 100 beats per minute. So that's pretty elevated heart rate 24 hours a day, in my case for 139 days straight. So essentially your heart is just like, even at rest. And so what that does to your body in terms of it throws your hormones around. It obviously you lose body weight, body fat, body composition changes. All of those things really shift and happen in a pretty intense way. So coming back, like actually just getting your heart rate back down, getting your parasympic nervous system to just relax and stress free and all that kind of stuff, it takes a while for sure. So what do you do to help yourself recover when you come back? Because there's specific kinds of food that you eat or supplements that you take? You know, I'll start... There's a few different things that I find to work well. One, sleep. I mean, I think that sleep in our culture in general is really underrated. I think if you go in the corporate world and everyone's like, I pulled this all night or I work 120 hours a week, I this, I that or whatever. I'm telling you a story about pushing through the night and going 32 hours straight. There's a time and a place for big pushes without sleep, but we are not built to do that sustainably in any race, shape or form. So in my training, when I'm training for these things, I prioritize sleep. I prioritize taking a nap, the same thing when I'm recovering. So really making sure I get that sleep is for me the most natural way to recover. On top of that, soft tissue work. I'm a huge believer in massage as well as chiropractor. I've been going to a chiropractor since I was a little kid. To me, that makes a big difference just to have everything in alignment, everything kind of working well, efficiently in my body. Then yeah, supplements. Definitely reducing inflammation. So for me, gut health is huge. So getting those probiotics, getting the right stuff in, it's easy to have that leaky gut or things where you're not getting the nutrition absorbed properly. I think we all in various states deal with that. The standard American diet for sure leads to that for a lot of people. So getting that nutrition clean and right. So yeah, sleep, rest, recovery, nutrition. And then I've definitely been taking a lot of supplements through my life. I air more towards the whole food supplements these days, but I find things like turmeric that really reduce inflammation and magnesium definitely helps a lot. So there's a few things that I take daily, but really I think sleep and a clean diet will goes a long way.