Episode 262 — Cold Plunges SUPERCHARGE Mitochondria
Guest: Dr. Thomas P. Seager • Date: July 1, 2025
Episode Overview
This episode explores the massive upside of cold therapy, especially for parents of a child with autism. Dr. Thomas P. Seager explains how cold plunges boost mitochondrial function, which plays a key role in healing, brain development, and emotional resilience.
About Dr. Thomas P. Seager
Thomas P. Seager, PhD, is Associate Professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering at Arizona State University and co-founder of Morozko Forge. He is the author of Uncommon Cold and Uncommon Testosterone, exploring the science and experience of cold plunge therapy. With 150+ scientific publications, Dr. Seager brings deep expertise in resilience, metabolism, and environmental systems, and is passionate about how cold therapy can support healing and neurological health.
You’ll Discover
WHY Mitochondrial Dysfunction May Be The Missing Link (7:14)
HOW Cold Exposure Supports Energy, Hormones & Brain Health (9:34)
THE 4 Categories of Mitochondrial Support (18:00)
WHY Magnesium and Vitamin D Are Game-Changers (29:24)
HOW Cold Plunges Create Internal Vitamin D (31:48)
WHEN & HOW Parents Can Start Using Cold Therapy (44:47)
WHY Cold Immersion Improves Sleep & Emotional Regulation in Kids (55:13)
Referenced in This Episode
Uncommon Living: Episode 4: What Causes Autism? With Dr. Richard Frye
Uncommon Living: Episode 5: Mitochondrial Therapies for Autism With Nicole Rincon
Full Transcript
Len Arcuri (00:01.87)
Hello and welcome to Autism Parenting Secrets. If you're looking for a way to support your own healing, mentally, emotionally, and physically, this episode explores a powerful tool you may not have considered. My guest is Thomas P. Seeger, PhD.
He is associate professor at Arizona State University and co-founder and CEO of Morosco Forge, a company known for unmatched craftsmanship and effectiveness in cold therapy. He's also the author of Uncommon Cold, the science and experience of cold plunge therapy. It's a comprehensive research back guide with over 500 citations.
With 150 plus scientific publications, Tom brings deep experience and expertise in resilience, environmental systems, and human performance. We are going to focus on cold plunging and how it can help you, the parent, by restoring energy, improving mental clarity, and balancing nervous system resilience. And while more research is needed for use with children, parents have a very unique opportunity to explore its benefits firsthand.
The secret this week is cold plunges supercharge mitochondria. Welcome Tom.
Thomas P Seager (01:35.224)
Thank you for having me, Len.
Len Arcuri (01:37.55)
All right, well, know that was a pretty long introduction, but you're a pretty accomplished guy doing a lot of things. And you don't have a child with autism, yet I know you're really focusing on what's happening with these kids, what might be behind this explosion. And mitochondrial dysfunction, which I know you're going to be focusing on, I know that's something that you're really zeroing in on, has been known for a while that that's part of the equation.
But I think as more and more science comes in, the red flags that this might really be an area for a parent to focus keep getting bigger and bigger. So I'll hand off to you maybe to share with our listeners more about your background and why you're bringing such passion to this particular topic.
Thomas P Seager (02:23.439)
I'm a professor of engineering in the School of Sustainable Engineering at Arizona State. And so one of my colleagues there, Dr. Rosie, you know, she's done quite a lot of work on fecal transplants for treating autism. It's wonderful. You might wonder what are all these engineers interested in autism for, but I'm coming at it from a personal perspective that is related to my son's type one diabetes diagnosis. When that happened to us, it was...
25 years ago, I was shocked, I was in grief, I didn't know anything about metabolism, and I had to figure it out fast. By the time I came around to founding Morosco Ford, so this ice bath company, I was getting in the ice bath because I was worried about my own health, not my son's. He was all grown up, he had the right management protocols in place, and really...
There's no reason to expect any short term or shortened life expectancy with his type one diabetes. He's got a pump. He's got a continuous glucose monitor, but I'd realized that I'd neglected my own health all this time that I was worried about his. I had to lose a lot of weight. I had to get myself in better shape and I got my labs done. My lab showed an elevated prostate specific antigen and that scared the hell out of me.
I did not want a biopsy. I did not want a prostateectomy. I wanted to do whatever I could to avoid sort of the usual sequela of medical interventions. So I got really serious about the ice bath. The prostate specific antigen test is an indication of inflammation. Ice baths are great for inflammation. So I went in there every day like my life depended upon it. And I brought my PSA from seven down to 1.8.
It took me four months to have the courage to even retest because I was afraid, you know, what if I'm going in the wrong direction? But after I got my 1.8, I tested again a month later, I got down to 1.1. And this time I also tested my testosterone. My testosterone went through the roof. It went up to 1180 nanograms per decliter. I did not know why until recently. It is synthesized. is testosterone synthesis originates
Thomas P Seager (04:40.265)
in the mitochondria and cold plunge therapy is one of the best things you can do to rejuvenate your mitochondria because mitochondria are essential in the management of blood glucose and in the understanding of in particularly type 2 diabetes which is reversible. I had this decades of knowledge about metabolism and blood glucose but I didn't appreciate the role of cold plunge therapy.
in mitobiogenesis, that is creating new mitochondria, in activating, recruiting new brown fat, in improving insulin sensitivity, and in synthesizing sex hormones. So I wrote a bunch of articles. I talked a lot about it in Uncommon Cold. I learned more and did in-depth case studies in the Uncommon Testosterone book. And then I saw a video from Jay Bhattachara.
the director of the NIH. And Jay's a friend. We don't hang out as much anymore since he's busy, but he was saying that Secretary Kennedy had charged him with discovering the origins of autism. We all want to know what causes autism. Jay said he didn't think it was the vaccines. He testified that in his Senate confirmation hearing. And Jay and I don't see eye to eye on everything, but...
Len Arcuri (05:37.932)
Yep.
Thomas P Seager (06:04.033)
I must respect his word. He's the physician. He's a smart guy. When he says he doesn't think it's the vaccines, I'm like, all right, let's find out what it really is. Now there are a dozen pet theories of autism. It's the microplastics, it's the mold, it's the heavy metals, it's the halogenated hydrocarbons, it's the pesticides, it's everything. None of those theories are united better.
then the mitochondrial theory integrates them because every single one of those environmental exposures acts on the mitochondria. So if you're one of the people that says, no, it's the acetaminophen and you might have really good reasons to say, look, the infants can't process Tylenol, this toxic to the liver. And what are we doing? Given Tylenol to an infant who's maybe had a vaccine reaction and a fever, you might say,
What is the link to the mitochondria? The reason this is so complicated to decode is because it is two steps. The mitochondria guide neurological development. So when the baby is inside the mom and the brain is forming, particularly in the late trimesters or the last trimester and in the first several years of life, these are the critical periods for brain development and the attachment.
neurons to one another is controlled by the mitochondria. When the mitochondria aren't right, then it's no wonder that the brain develops in atypical ways. But that is by itself is not autism. That is a brain that is primed for autism. It sets the table. It is this intermediary step, the mitochondrial impairment that orients that trajectory of neurological development along an atypical path.
Now it's just waiting for a trigger. And the trigger is typically brain inflammation, some immunological event. It could be a vaccine, but it could be an ordinary sort of flu or any infection that results in a fever. And that initiates the onset of autism. This is a brand new hypothesis, this two step process, mitochondrial impairment that...
Thomas P Seager (08:24.419)
creates a disordered state of neurological development that does not show up yet as the stereotypical characteristics of autism until the immunological event like a fever that would initiate the onset. Now, how did I come up with that? Len, my son was born in Northern New York in the fall, in the cold. And I didn't know until several months after his
diagnosis with type 1 diabetes, that vitamin D during the development of the immune system is the critical risk factor that governs whether a child will later in life experience the onset of type 1 diabetes. This is coming out of a study in Finland that took them over 25 years to complete, where they tracked pregnant mothers and their children and said,
What was their vitamin D status during pregnancy and the first year of life? What is the rate of type 1 diabetes diagnosis? We have nothing comparable in autism, but in type 1 diabetes, it is exactly this two stage process. A baby is born without a mature immune system. It's relying upon its mother, in particular its breast milk and the microbiome for its immune system. And that immune system develops during the first year of life.
If vitamin D is insufficient in that baby's life, as I'm convinced it was in my son's, it doesn't create type one diabetes. It doesn't cause type one diabetes. The type one diabetes shows up later in response to an immunological event. My son, he got sick like a lot of kids do during Christmas break. He was six years old. He had a fever. It was no big deal. These things go away after a couple of three days. His fever came down, but he didn't get better because that
fever initiated the onset of his autoimmune disorder, type one diabetes, destroying the islet cells in his pancreas that make insulin. The analogy that I'm talking about here is that there is a critical deficiency in this case in the mitochondria that primes the brain for the onset of autism that is triggered by a vaccine or a fever or any ordinary illness. That's a powerful
Thomas P Seager (10:41.751)
hypothesis that nobody is putting together because that two step process is very difficult to recognize. All the parent experiences is my kid seemed fine. He's hitting all his milestones and then he got vaccinated and regressed. In their mind, of course, it's the vaccine that caused the regression because there's no data of over 25 years like there is for diabetes on the
the priming of that brain for autism. But Richard Fry at the Rossignol Institute in Phoenix has published some of the best work on prenatal mitochondrial state, mitochondrial state during pregnancy, mitochondrial state during the first three years of life, and mitochondrial therapies for reversing that neurological regression. So when I talked to him about what are these therapies,
He's very nutritionally focused, support the mitochondria with the nutrients that it needs to improve its function. He's never done cold plunge. I have several friends, people that I care about and some autistic children whom I've gotten to know very well. And the anecdotes are beginning to come in. They're beginning to say, the parents are beginning to tell me, my child loves the water. They don't care what temperature it is.
They will swim in that pool all winter long. I've seen my child teeth chattering, you know, and they still don't want to get out.
I think that some children take to the water because they experience through the activation of the cold water, they experience a clarity and a relaxation that otherwise would be foreign to them. And I want to explore this in greater detail because one of the best things you can do for your mitochondria is cold plunge therapy, whether you're a parent or a child or at any age.
Len Arcuri (12:50.444)
Yeah, no, that's great, Tom. And I'm going let you continue, but I will just as an aside mention that, yes, Dr. Fry has been on this show. I'm going to put a link to that conversation, which is useful. And you had a dynamite discussion with him that I'll share that video as well. So again, if you want to get better educated in terms of this specific topic and all the nuances that Tom's diving into, those conversations can definitely help. And Tom, the whole concept that you're putting out there
The way I'm processing it is it's basically a much more nuanced and specific form of total load theory, right? Which is basically saying these kids are kind of primed for because of their genetics or because of something that happened perhaps in utero or even beforehand. There's some reason they're primed for and set up for harm. And then some environmental trigger fill in the blank, which one or a combination.
is what kind of enables these kids or gets them to a tipping point. And we definitely saw that with our son that he hit a tipping point. And, you know, a lot of times as parents, if you're trying to figure out what caused this, it's easy to go to whatever the closest event is, you know, when, when you see a downturn. And I think what you're talking about is that, you know, that's a useful data point, but what is causing this? What's where, where you really want to focus as much further back.
And so that's where focusing on mitochondrial dysfunction, again, it's a concept that's been around for a while, but like how you do that now, there's never been more ways and you're sharing many of them on how any person can look to supercharge their mitochondria.
Thomas P Seager (14:18.787)
correct.
Thomas P Seager (14:35.169)
Correct. You said it very well when you mentioned the total load theory. There are a number of ways to injure the mitochondria, but that doesn't mean that you suffer, that those injuries are symptomatic right away. They accumulate over time and they stack on top of one another. And then some additional stressor can cause you to cross a threshold like
breaking through the ice. You're never gonna put the ice back together again. Once you cross that threshold, then you exhibit these characteristics. But there's two things that are really important here. Once we understand that all of these theories of autism that have some credibility, they act through the mitochondria and they stack up on top of one another, then we know that we can prevent, we can reduce the risk of an autism diagnosis in the child.
by taking care of the mother, both before conception and during pregnancy. When a child has experienced regression, we can treat that with mitochondrial therapies. is, therapies that target the mitochondria have been effective for reversing or recovering the neurological milestones that were lost. Here, Fry has had a lot of success, but we have yet to assemble a portfolio of mitochondrial support and stimulation.
that is analogous to the total load theory. So there are a number of areas in which the mitochondria could be injured. What we want now is a number of therapies that we can stack together to support the mitochondria so that they are resilient and high functioning and support the brain.
Len Arcuri (16:22.094)
And would you mind just touching high level on what some of those more well-known, maybe not so well-known ways, because I know it's basically a combination of therapies you could do, supplements. There's a number of different ways of getting at it. I know Dr. Fry talked at length about that, but just high level for somebody who's really just hearing this for the first time. What are some of those options in terms of how you could do that?
Thomas P Seager (16:47.391)
In general, think we could categorize them in four ways. The first way would be mitochondrial stimulation. this is you stimulate greater activity in the mitochondria that you have. One of the best ways to do that is red light therapy, near infrared, infrared. It's available in the sun, but you can also get it through a lamp. This penetrates the skin. It will stimulate the mitochondria with the light wavelengths and the mitochondrial activity goes up.
But there are also some foods that will do it. Hot chili peppers, for example, or supplements that will do it. Berberine will stimulate the mitochondria. So that's the first category. The second category is support. The mitochondria rely on lots of different enzymes and materials to do the redox reactions, to do the electron transfer that they have to do in order to protect.
generate ATP, that is generate energy through oxidative respiration. So some of those might be folate or CoQ10 or L-Carnitine or creatine. There are a number of building blocks that the mitochondria can put to work right away when you're taking them in either a supplemental form or as part of your diet. These support, if not stimulate the mitochondria. The third is mitobiogenesis.
So this isn't so much stimulating what you have or even supporting what you have, but creating new mitochondria. And this is much more difficult exercise. We'll do a little bit of this, but cold plunge therapy is the best way to stimulate new mitochondria. It will remove through mitophagy, the defective mitochondria, use the good ones that are still left and replicate them so that you increase your mitochondrial content.
and your mitochondrial function. The fourth category is sort of the opposite of the support. Stop doing things that will injure your mitochondria. And in this category, there are several pathways. One of those, for example, is poor light hygiene. So if you're not sleeping well because you're staying up too late under artificial lights and you have too much screen time and too much blue light coming through your eyes,
Thomas P Seager (19:11.105)
you will fail to make the melatonin that your body needs to protect the mitochondria from damage. Few people understand that mitochondria make their own melatonin, like inside the organelle. And the purpose of that melatonin is to protect the mitochondrial DNA. There's DNA in your nucleus, but mitochondria have their own DNA on which they rely to produce enzymes essential to your metabolism.
If that DNA is damaged, then your mitochondrial function is impaired. It is the melatonin that your mitochondria make that protects the DNA from that damage. You need good light hygiene, that is bright days and dark nights, to ensure that the mitochondria have the melatonin that will protect them. Second route, too many seed oils in your diet. The seed oils we think of as
high caloric content and most people would say, you should eat a low fat diet. I'm not worried about that at all. What people don't realize is that the seed oils are incorporated into your cell membranes and into your mitochondrial membranes as material, not as energy. The membranes of the cell and the mitochondria are made up of something called phospholipids and they rely upon fats in your diet as the building blocks. Whatever fats you eat,
are going to be the building blocks of these cell membranes. And because we have way too many of what's called omega-6 fatty acids relative to omega-3, our cells cannot help but grab these omega-6 in order to construct the phospholipids that become the cell membranes. The problem with that is that those phospholipids are defective compared to the ones that are built out of omega-3.
the transport processes on which the cell membrane and the mitochondria rely become defective. And that defective transport process means the efficiency, the productivity of the mitochondria is incomplete or impaired. Too many seed oils in your diet will injure your mitochondria. The third route, of course, any of the environmental toxins that we've already mentioned, aluminum is in vaccines. That's no good.
Thomas P Seager (21:28.227)
for your mitochondria. It doesn't belong injected in your body in that way, but there's mercury, there are any number of other metal metallic toxins that will act on the mitochondria and impair their function. The third is a lack of cold exposure. Here's something else that people don't realize because it's only recently that medical doctors realized there was something called brown fat in adult human beings.
Everyone understands that human infants are born with copious quantities of what's called brown fat. You can call it baby fat if you want. But the muscles in an infant, they're not developed to allow shivering. You get in the cold, your muscles shiver to keep you warm. But the muscles in a little baby aren't developed to the point where they can shiver. Instead, they have brown fat. Brown fat are fat cells packed with mitochondria. And those fat cells don't make ATP.
they make heat. So when the baby gets cold, it activates the brown fat. It's called non-shivering thermogenesis and it keeps the baby warm. But until maybe 10 or 15 years ago, medical doctors believed there was no such thing as brown fat in adult human beings. It started showing up on PET scans. So PET scanning is where you inject a cancer patient with radioactive glucose and then you see where does glucose go.
because cancer cells are so hungry for glucose, it all gets concentrated in the tumor. And then you do the imaging, you say, this is where the tumor is. Well, these cancer scientists in Sweden were discovering symmetrical deposits of fat on the PET scans. Cancer is not symmetrical. They said, we think we're identifying brown fat because these instrument rooms are cold. They use so much electricity that to keep the instrument functioning, you have to do cooling.
Some people in Sweden had brown fat that was showing up on their PET scans. Nobody believed them until scientists at the Sloan Kettering Institute in New York said, we've got 10,000 PET scans. We don't think there's brown fat in any of them. They found brown fat in 5 % of their scans. And what that means is 95 % of the adult cancer patients scanned had zero detectable brown fat.
Thomas P Seager (23:51.978)
Since then, there has been an explosion of research in brown fat and mitochondria. You can recover your brown fat, even if you've lost it all, by doing cold exposure. Why is that important? Because brown fat does more than non-shivering thermogenesis. Brown fat is an essential secretory organ. And what does it secrete? The first is active form of the thyroid hormone. So the thyroid will make two types.
thyroid hormone. One of them inactive and a little bit of the active form. When you activate the brown fat you convert the inactive thyroid to the more active form. The thyroid and the brown fat are in constant communication to regulate your metabolism. If you have no brown fat then it's no wonder your thyroid becomes dysregulated because it doesn't have anything to modulate its function and to help it out. So the thyroid is the first. The second is the brain.
Increased levels of brown fat are associated with increased levels of neuroprotective factors that will either protect the brain against injury or help the brain recover faster from injury. Brown fat will help reverse cognitive decline in dementia patients because we know that dementia originates in metabolic dysfunction and brown fat is indicative of a healthy metabolism. So brown fat is no longer just a nice to have.
Brown fat is the way you care for your metabolism and the way you care for your brain.
Len Arcuri (25:25.55)
All right. Well, I'm definitely learning something today. mean, the concept of brown fat is not new to me, but no, thank you for that deep dive. And also a lot of what you also just shared. You know, again, think parents listening understand a lot of these concepts. Everyone understands why sleep's important, avoiding seed oils, but you've given a very different way of deepening just how important those functions are, as well as vitamin D levels. And again, I think if you go to any functional medicine doctor,
Thomas P Seager (25:28.099)
Thank
Len Arcuri (25:55.544)
They're all maybe vary in what they recommend, but it seems like everyone agrees vitamin D, magnesium, those are things we can't get enough of. But you've identified where vitamin D, especially with respect to autism, that vitamin D levels for the mom is extremely important data point that again requires more research. And by the way, thank you for sharing.
Thomas P Seager (26:14.977)
I'm glad you're bringing up these two things, vitamin D and magnesium. And let's talk about them in that order. And then we're going to talk about carbohydrates.
Len Arcuri (26:22.446)
And by the way, thank you for sharing all those options of how you could possibly improve or enhance mitochondrial function. And I'll just say, hey, listen, you're a researcher, I'm an empowerment coach, neither of us are medical doctors. So a lot of this is just sharing what's in the research, what's evolving. And obviously for whatever you're going to do for yourself or your child, the key is having a really good medical provider who can help guide you. So with that, I'm going to hand it back to you, Tom.
Thomas P Seager (26:49.419)
You got a great point. All I can do is tell you what the library tells me. I can relate to you experiences that I've had or that other people have had, but I can't give medical advice. One of the things that shows up in that literature is magnesium. Magnesium participates in hundreds of mitochondrial functions or reactions. is magnesium is essential to mitochondrial function. And it's really difficult to tell whether you're not getting enough.
Most people will use a blood test, but a blood test is an unreliable indicator of whether your magnesium levels are sufficient because only 1 % of the total body burden of magnesium is stored in the blood. Most of it is in the bones, some of it in the muscles. You can't rely on a blood serum magnesium level to diagnose insufficiency or deficiency. If you take a magnesium supplement, which is inexpensive and really easy to do,
You might be worried that, I'll take too much. It's hard to take too much magnesium. If you overdose, you know, quote unquote yourself with magnesium, you pee it out, you poop it out. Magnesium has laxative qualities. And when you get too much, your diarrhea will let you know to back off a little bit. It is so good for the mood, so good for the brain and so good for the mitochondria that I take a magnesium supplement because I don't want to take any chances.
Len Arcuri (28:06.147)
Mm-hmm.
Thomas P Seager (28:14.371)
And it's a very safe and easy thing to do over the counter. So there's one. Vitamin D supplements are different. Vitamin D supplements can be useful for someone who is in a critical symptomatic state. And so, for example, if you do a study on children with rickets and you give them vitamin D supplements, they get better. When people are in an acute deficiency or insufficiency,
A vitamin D supplement is a way to rescue them from their distress condition. However, if you're basically healthy, a vitamin D supplement will not have the same beneficial effects as going out into the sunshine. There is no substitute for the sunshine when it comes to your vitamin D metabolism. And again, a blood test is unreliable. There are so many different forms of vitamin D in the body and the metabolism of vitamin D is so complex that you can't just grab one.
the calciferol form that is typically measured in a blood serum test and make a reasonable diagnosis about whether the patient is sufficient or insufficient. And unlike magnesium, just adding vitamin D supplements to your diet might not get you the benefits that you're really looking for. Adding sunshine will help. And here's something that's really on the leading edge. When you get into the cold and you activate your brown fat,
you create an electron transport chain that is a series of redox reactions inside your mitochondria. Remember that your mitochondria are organelles inside your fat cells. Those electron transport reactions produce light. That light is inside your body. Some of that light is in the UVB range so that when that light intersects a cholesterol molecule,
It will cleave off a hydrocarbon chain and produce what's called pre-vitamin D, but not in your skin, inside your fat cells. This means that cold exposure can be a substitute for sunlight. And it explains why some people, our ancient ancestors, could survive in these Northern climates through the winter when there's no sunshine anywhere.
Thomas P Seager (30:38.827)
without suffering the ill effects of vitamin D insufficiency. So some people come after me and they say, well, where's the data that a regular cold plunge practice will increase calciferol levels in your bloodstream? And I'll say there is no data and there never will be because the pre vitamin D is produced inside the fat cell where it is stored until the body needs it. It's not like producing vitamin D on your skin where then it has to be transported through the bloodstream to the fat cells. It's produced right where you need it.
And it doesn't take a lot of light when the light is made inside that cell. So we talked about magnesium and how that's an easy supplement to take that's very low risk and could be very high benefit for cognitive function and metabolic function. We talked about vitamin D supplements where the same is not true. Vitamin D supplements come with some risks and the benefits except in cases of extreme insufficiency or deficiency diagnosed by your medical professional, vitamin D supplements should be avoided.
But sunshine and cold are wonderful for producing vitamin D and balancing the vitamin D levels in the body. It's a good time for me to pause before I get on about carbohydrates.
Len Arcuri (31:50.894)
No, I think that all makes sense. And again, what you're basically illuminating is that sometimes the simplest actions parents can take are totally free. They usually involve the outdoors in some way, or form. so, think everything you're saying really underscores that. And then again, with kids, swimming is such a preferred activity for kids on the spectrum for lots of reasons, which we don't have time to go into.
And again, that's where, you know, definitely go into carbohydrates, but otherwise I'd love for you to also to paint the picture for parents in terms of if they want to start testing the waters a little bit, right, with cold plunge or cold exposure, cold showers. I'd love if you can just give some, some guidelines for how a parent can move forward with this. And then also, I'd love to also pick your brain about how can we over time, figure out how much
cold exposure might be something that a parent could do for their child in a fun way, in a way that helps to, as the title of this episode talks about, supercharge the mitochondria.
Thomas P Seager (33:02.345)
I'm glad you're asking because the tragedy of an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis is that it's often delivered in a fatalistic way. there's nothing you can do. there's no treatment. We'll do some behavioral treatment that will improve the stereotypical behaviors at the margins, but there's really no way that we could reverse the neurological regression. What a
Crocker, hooey that is Len, that fatalistic, what did we just finish? Autism acceptance month. I'm not in any sort of mood to accept autism. I'm not gonna accept these exponentially increasing graphs or rates of diagnosis. I want to intervene with therapies that target the mitochondria so they can remove that graph down. And in this way, Secretary Kennedy, I think is a little bit behind the curve. He's...
asking good questions about the cause of autism. The next logical question is, how do we reverse autism? And there's a lot that you can do. The things that are good for the child are also good for the parent. And it probably wouldn't surprise you to know that if you want to change, for example, your child's eating habits, you're going to have to change your eating habits. You're going to have to create an environment around the child.
that doesn't just model the good behaviors, makes the poor behaviors like impossible choices. One parent I know, it's very difficult for her to approach her child's eating habits because she doesn't cook, she's not sophisticated in the kitchen, but mostly because she's afraid. She's afraid that if she doesn't present her child with chicken nuggets.
and French fries and sweets, maybe the child won't eat anything at all. Because her child suffers from sensory processing issues. It's not just the taste of the food, it's the texture. She sent her daughter to feeding therapy, which I thought was a courageous act. And they helped the daughter learn coping behaviors. Well, it's not my favorite, but I think I can finish this bite. Sort of these self-talk behaviors that would help the child.
Thomas P Seager (35:29.249)
do a cognitive override on the sensory processing issues by making a different meaning of whatever her sensations were. Instead of saying, this is something that I find unpleasant and I shouldn't put it in my body, the cognitive override is telling herself a different story. Well, the taste isn't really the best for me, but I know you worked really hard to make it for me. And so I'm gonna try another bite. Things like this, when she was able to tell herself,
she could now accept new healthier foods. It didn't really resolve the fear in the parent, but it did help the child explore new options that otherwise would have been closed to her. And those options have to be outside the ultra-processed, highly refined carbohydrate domain.
We know that ultra processed foods are just terrible. We know that highly refined carbohydrates are just terrible. But I'm not telling you can't have a slice of birthday cake, you know, on your birthday. There's nothing that is so intrinsically toxic about the sugar that you can't every once in a while enjoy it as long as you go back into keto or as long as you go back into intermittent fasting or as long as you take a break from the carbohydrates afterwards.
Sugar can be a hormetic stress for the mitochondria. It revs them all up. It does a little bit of damage. Some reactive oxygen species stimulate mitobiogenesis. They cause the mitochondria to come back stronger. The problem is when there is chronic excess carbohydrate intake with no break, no fasting, no periods of ketosis, no seasonality. You know, you're still eating the refined carbohydrates in the winter, for example.
when you should be subsisting on animal fats and proteins. Without a break, the mitochondria never get a chance to recover. And it is no wonder that they're in a constant impaired state. So when it comes to carbohydrates, that can be another route to mitochondrial injury. If you go keto, you give your mitochondria a chance to recover. But very few parents are willing
Thomas P Seager (37:44.27)
to experiment, in their mind it's an experiment, at that level to attempt to get their child to comply with a ketogenic diet sounds like a bridge way too far. The parents are already exhausted. They're just happy that the child is eating something and controlling the child's diet at school, for example, if they're attending school can be just another sort of overreach setting yourself up for failure. However,
I want to encourage parents to explore ketosis for themselves first, because there is a long line of literature that says the brain prefers ketones. Ketones, for example, or a ketogenic diet is the first treatment for epilepsy. Now, because compliance is difficult in our modern world, lot of epileptic people will be taking anti-seizure medications, and some of them are especially damaging to the mitochondria.
Len Arcuri (38:16.736)
Keep posting.
Thomas P Seager (38:43.551)
If you can manage neurological disorders with ketosis, all the better. And you eliminate the pharmaceuticals. The parent who is able to explore a ketogenic diet for themselves will sort of empathetically experience what their child might experience if they're putting their child on a ketogenic diet, especially if their child lacks the metabolic flexibility. They're going to experience something called the keto flu. They'll feel bad for a little bit as they're metabolically switching over. And the parent should know what that's like.
Len Arcuri (38:50.872)
the chance we see to work together on ourselves.
Thomas P Seager (39:13.133)
to be the child first. However, the fastest way to stimulate endogenous ketone production is cold plunge therapy. So if you want the benefits of ketones for your brain and you're not willing to go three days without eating a carbohydrate, you get in the ice bath and you will begin fat metabolism immediately. You will begin to produce those endogenous ketones and your brain will suck them right out of your bloodstream because it prefers ketones to glucose as fuel.
Len Arcuri (39:15.266)
Yep.
Len Arcuri (39:44.45)
Great. Yeah, I love everything that you shared. by the way, I am one of those parents who did experiment. And yes, a ketogenic diet, being in ketosis, super impactful for me in a positive way. But I also know that if you have functional genomic work done, certain people are more set up to benefit from a ketogenic diet. And I'm one of them. And my wife, is not. So again, that's where your experimentation to see what works for you will definitely give you more clues on what might be beneficial.
for your child. yeah, Tom, you touched on picky eating, which is another huge topic. So I appreciate your thoughts on that. And, and there is no better way to, to help. If you want your child to eat a more healthful diet, not the standard American diet, you modeling that is absolutely essential. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's interesting to me how many parents try to do special diet or cleaner diet for their child, but yet themselves and everyone else in the family is still eating.
foods that do not promote health and that just isn't a recipe for success.
Thomas P Seager (40:44.707)
It's a tough way to go. You're singling the child out in another way that they don't have to be differentiated. And so it's a courageous parent that says, okay, I'm willing to change my own diet first. I want to experience this before I put my child on it. I want to know what this is like. How do I make this more delicious? How do I get the textures right? And whatever it is, I don't know, chicken thighs or whatever it is that you're cooking. But we do have to talk about DNA. We have to talk about those genetic markers.
What people don't get enough counseling on is the difference between genetics and epigenetics. We learned what, a ninth grade biology class or something, and we learned about sexual reproduction and chromosomes and what controls eye color and all those things are fine. What we've learned since I was in high school is that the genes are turned on and off by an
epigenetic layer. That is, even if your genes are immutable, the expression of those genes is subject to design. That is, experiences and the environment will switch genes on and off. And this means your DNA is not your destiny. Now the question is, what controls the epigenetic expression of these genes? Where are the switches? And it's Richard Fry who told me
Len Arcuri (41:45.39)
Mm-hmm.
Thomas P Seager (42:11.881)
It is the mitochondria that control the epigenetic landscape. It is the mitochondria that signal these genes to turn on and off. The CEO of the cell is not in the nucleus. That's the blueprints. The executive function exists in the mitochondria. And that's not what they taught me in Schoolhouse Rock on Saturday morning. And so a lot of the things that we
thought we knew about the way our bodies and our metabolism and our brain works, they're incorrect. We're going around, you know, through our lives with these broken mental models. It is no wonder that we can't fix things because we don't know how they work.
Len Arcuri (42:53.304)
Yep. No, that's powerful. Let's segue right into, again, a parent's listening. They're really intrigued how they could improve their own mitochondrial function, understanding that cold exposure in some way is perhaps something that they can experiment and dive into. So other than doing the polar bear club that people see every New Year's Day where you see people going into the ocean, right? So talk about practical ways parents can just get started, knowing that, you
Thomas P Seager (43:16.963)
which is
Len Arcuri (43:23.266)
I know with what Morosco Forge has created are really very advanced, of top of the line ways that you can really do this. But if someone's just getting started, what kind of step by step process do you recommend?
Thomas P Seager (43:37.316)
I'll tell you why I started. I started with cold showers and I did that because I was separated from my wife. You know, they say a diagnosis like type one diabetes can tear a marriage apart. think autism is probably even worse. It is such a stress. The parents, they go through grief and one of those stages is anger and that anger, it's got to go somewhere. If it doesn't go out, it winds up going in. The couple...
that is struggling with the challenge of managing that child's diagnosis is going to go through some hard times. I don't really think that's what tore my marriage apart. I think that we got married because we wanted to have a family. We hit a certain stage in our life and we had different visions of what it was like when our youngest was leaving high school. That's an important inflection point in a marriage. And for us, it required us to separate. So I'm feeling lonely and
trying to figure out dating and reading every single self-help book that was out on the market. One of them said, hey, you should take cold showers. It'll toughen you up. And I'm like, all right, I need to get tougher, you know, because I was being pretty hard on myself. I live in Phoenix, Arizona, Len. You know, during the winter, the tap water is maybe 60 degrees. It's not even cold, right? But I got in there and I'm like, this stinks. I hated every minute of every cold shower I've
Len Arcuri (44:56.172)
Yeah, nobody feels.
Thomas P Seager (45:04.395)
ever taken and probably your listeners will hate them too. They're getting metabolic benefits but they're not getting psychological benefits. When I was invited to one of these Bim Hof style workshops, we got the ice, we poured it into the horse trough and then we filled it up with water and then we climbed. Totally different experience. The cold shower is partial body cold water immersion. It will activate the sympathetic division of the central nervous system.
And that's the fight or flight. That's why I'm getting revved up. But when you go whole body in the ice bath, and I'm talking up to my neck, you know, in chunks of ice floating in the water, that activates the parasympathetic. It's associated with what's called the dive reflex. So you have the sympathetic, which is the gasp reflex. You get in the water, right away you have an involuntary gasp. About 30, 45 seconds later, the dive reflex, it slows everything down.
It lengthens out the brain waves. puts you into an involuntary meditative state. Your heart rate goes down. Your respiration rate goes down. Even as your metabolism feels like it's revving up. I loved the ice bath. And so I started getting in there every weekend. You know, me and my buddies and we'd buy a bunch of ice and we'd put it in the backyard in Phoenix. The problem is when it's 115 degrees in a Phoenix backyard, you buy 50, you know, bags of ice and it lasts like five minutes. So
Me and a former student of mine, Jason Stouffer, we said, well, we're engineers. We ought to be able to make a machine that makes its own ice. Now you go down to the, I don't know, quickie mart and it doesn't cost you more than $40, right? I spent 20 something thousand dollars to build this prototype. was economically a terrible idea, but the satisfaction of having built it was wonderful. So we had a party, people came over, people said, I want to buy this thing. Morosco Forge was kind of founded.
Not in an accidental way, because there was something we needed. I live in the hottest city in North America and for me to get cold, I need a machine to do it. Other people, you if you live in a Northern climate, you're fine. Get in the lake. If you live near the Pacific Ocean, jump in that one. The best way to get cold is to go out into nature. The next best thing to nature is a morosco.
Thomas P Seager (47:24.407)
But if you're not willing or ready to make the $14,000 leap, you know, and buy one of my inventions, then draw up the cold water in your bathtub. If it's not quite cold enough for you, go to the quickie mart and get, you know, several bags of ice. If you get in and you feel that gasp reflex, you know you have activated your central nervous system. It is cold enough. And if you're able to stay in long enough,
to where you feel the urge to shiver, now you know you've activated thermogenesis. The rule of thumb when you're starting out is go cold enough to gasp and long enough to shiver. If you do this every day for two weeks, you will recruit new brown fat into your body and your urge to shiver will subside unless you go to even colder and colder temperatures. Morosco is made for those people who know they wanna do it every day.
Not the people who are like, you know, every once in a while or before I do a workout or whatever it is. Once you've made that commitment to at least several times a week, then you want to morose code there. And we add a few more things. The water treatment, it uses ozone, no chlorine, because I will not poison my customers. It makes its own ozone. This disinfects the water. There might be some ozone benefit on the skin because we know ozone therapy is a thing, but I don't think that most people are in there long enough to get that therapy.
Len Arcuri (48:38.67)
Bye.
Thomas P Seager (48:50.071)
We also are grounded. When you get into a Morosco, you get an instantaneous electrical balancing with the earth. Most people are disconnected from the earth and so they will carry a positive charge. And this is because, you know, we don't walk around barefoot in the grass anywhere near as much as we should be doing. But when you get to the Morosco, because it's grounded to the earth, you will get a supply of electrons that rebalances you electrically. This is a good thing because it will improve
the viscosity that is reduce the viscosity of your blood and improve your circulation and reduce the probability of blood clots. These are, I'm not talking, it's not going to give you hemophilia. Like if you scratch yourself, you're still going to clot, but I'm talking about internally, the deep vein, thrombosis or stroke or the clots that result in a cardiovascular event. The third thing is that we're warrantied for Epsom salt. I put like 18 pounds of salts in my Morosco because
It reminds me of being a kid and going to the ocean. And you know, I don't shower when I come out of the ice bath. I leave that salt on my skin. So the magnesium and the potassium and the zinc will absorb through my skin and support me metabolically. So we've added these other features to make the Morales Co a little bit more like the ocean. And those are wonderful. But I can't blame anybody for saying that machine is too expensive. Why don't you make one, you know, that's cheaper that people can afford?
I can't go to China and get some cheap plastic, brominated, flame retardant, PFAS, phthalate infested slave made device and deliver it to you for cheap and say, start here. We build everything in Phoenix. use real people. Everything is handcrafted and it kind of stinks that it is expensive. I'm not knocking cheaper options. Start with your bathtub.
See if it's right for you. When you discover the benefits, maybe you're working on reversing type two diabetes, or maybe you're working on an autoimmune condition like rheumatoid arthritis, or maybe you're just trying to improve your sleep, or maybe you're doing it for longevity. These are all wonderful things. They are invaluable. When you make the commitment to going every day or nearly every day, let's say about 11 to 12 minutes a week in nearly freezing cold.
Thomas P Seager (51:15.415)
then the Morosco is going to be a terrific value. The benefit that you get in your energy levels, in your mood, in your sleep and recovery is you can't write a check for that. That is you can't put a value on that change in your energy levels and your feeling.
Len Arcuri (51:35.226)
So that would translate to a couple minutes a day if you're doing it, let's say on a daily basis. But again, if people are just starting out and just, let's say taking a shower, a regular shower, and at the end, moving it to super cold, right? Depending on where you are, that will be a different temperature. But if you do that for as long as you can kind of tolerate it and stand it, that alone will start giving you some benefits. But it's really about a degree to which you really kind of...
Thomas P Seager (51:40.483)
You got it.
Thomas P Seager (51:51.959)
Fun. Do that.
Len Arcuri (52:04.27)
can benefit your body, leading up to something where you're extended more cold plunges. So I'm guessing for a child, if you're just wanting to experiment, right? If you're at the ocean and it's cool, if your child's really intolerative, that could be therapeutic. Perhaps even with them, if you have a cold bath, cold water bath, and for them to get in it for a few seconds, again, the benefits may not be gigantic, but probably...
worth experimenting with to see how your child reacts. Would you agree?
Thomas P Seager (52:36.503)
When I was a kid, you couldn't keep me out of the water. It didn't matter what temperature it was. You know, if mom took us to the beach, I was running across the sand until I could get in. I see so many kids that are the same way. Sometimes, you you see him on Instagram. There was that great video and it's a little kid and he's got like his life. mean, his teeth are chattering. He's like, I'm not cold. I'm freezing. He doesn't care. Children are well equipped for the cold.
And I'm not saying that if you want to do cold plunge therapy with your child, it's got to be freezing cold. You get the metabolic benefits anywhere like below 50. If you're getting that gas reflex, you're doing fine. The psychological benefits for me really kick in below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. When I see the ice chunks floating in the water and I get that anticipatory anxiety, there's a little voice in my head that says, you don't have to do it. You could skip a day. No one would ever know, you know?
Len Arcuri (53:35.021)
you
Thomas P Seager (53:35.458)
And then I gotta overcome that anxiety. I gotta overcome that fear and I gotta get in anyway. And then of course 30 seconds later, I'm like, Tom, what were you even worried about? Well, what is this big deal? This feels fine. So those psychological benefits, if you're working on improving your heart rate variability, which is the best physiological measure of psychological resilience, then you've got to get close to freezing. If it's with your kid, know, 40s is fine.
Len Arcuri (53:55.937)
It really is.
Thomas P Seager (54:03.875)
50 degrees is fine. Let them go at it because they will play for an hour. They will lose so much heat out of their body. They will recruit. They will activate the brown fat that they have. They will recruit new brown fat. And when they go to sleep at night, their core body temperature will drop a little bit lower. It's called a compensatory metabolic mechanism. They will sleep hard, which is a wonderful thing because their core body temperature comes down a little bit further.
to conserve energy and help them rebuild the subcutaneous fat stores that they used when they were playing in the cold all day. They sleep terrific and their mitochondria at that time are coming back. The mitobiogenesis process is rejuvenating the mitochondria. They're gonna be ready to go again the next day.
Len Arcuri (54:56.088)
Fantastic. Well, Tom, I know as we started with this episode and mentioning more research needs to be done here. My guess is you will be involved in trying to, you know, in those studies and trying to perform some studies to see how this particular intervention, again, definitely can benefit parents, but what's the applicability for a child to be determined? So, again, if you're looking for volunteers and recruits, know my son would definitely raise his hand and volunteer.
And no, I wish you great.
Thomas P Seager (55:27.457)
He probably already has. The most important experiment is the one that you do for yourself. You don't have to sit around and wait for me to submit a proposal to the NIH and get like a half a million dollars to do some clinical trial that won't come out for another five years anyway. You can experiment with yourself. You'll know.
Len Arcuri (55:34.508)
Right, right.
Len Arcuri (55:48.686)
You can definitely do that, but at the same time, know lots of parents, you know, won't really move forward with something unless there's some science behind it, some research. So again, I think it's important that this gets looked at more closely, but yes, parents, can experiment now for sure. And I think the whole overarching theme of this discussion, you know, is that, you know, the cold isn't the enemy and that the cold really can be your ally to support the mitochondria.
Thomas P Seager (56:02.252)
Agreed.
Len Arcuri (56:18.24)
And again, is this the right area of focus for your child to focus on mitochondrial function with your doctor or practitioner? The question is, is this worth really honing in on? Because otherwise I know parents who are focused on the root cause might be at different points upstream or downstream. But I think there's a lot of evidence in a case, and you made it today, about really looking at from a strategy perspective.
really focusing on mitochondrial function for your child. They're the energy powerhouses of ourselves and definitely something not to ignore.
Thomas P Seager (56:55.747)
The last point, the brain needs a lot of energy. It uses maybe 25 % of the total metabolic requirements of the body. The standard treatment for autism is all behavioral. We're gonna teach the child using behavioral therapies, coping mechanisms. How is that child supposed to learn if their brain isn't getting the energy that it needs? If the mitochondrial are dysfunctional,
And one study of children with an ASD diagnosis in Southern California discovered 80 % of them had markers of mitochondrial impairment in their blood. And so the association between mitochondrial dysfunction and autism spectrum diagnosis is very close. It's tight. How is behavioral therapy supposed to work if the brain isn't getting the energy that it needs to learn? So if nothing else, if you don't...
by the neuroplasticity and mitochondria steer the neurological development of the child's brain, then at least get the kids some magnesium and take care of the mitochondria so that the brain can better learn the behavioral therapies that are gonna help the child.
Len Arcuri (58:11.234)
I think that's sound, sage advice. And yes, there's a lot of treatments, behavioral therapies and the like that parents might be doing that absolutely could be useful for your child, but that's not getting at a root cause. And again, everything we're focusing on today is about really getting to what's behind all those things you're seeing with your child that you would like to see improve in some way, or form.
Definitely an important conversation. Mitochondrial function is extremely important. And Tom, I look forward to having you on again. We can go deeper into other aspects of this opportunity for parents. And I really appreciate you sharing the fruits of your research and your dedication to learning more over the last several years.
Thomas P Seager (59:00.599)
Well, this was a pleasure. If you do have an appetite for more, you can go to moroscoforge.com, go to the science page. There you're going to find an article that I wrote. I've submitted it to the Journal of Metabolic Health for publication. They're reviewing it now. There's the hour long interview that I did with Richard Fry. And we're going to post an interview with a woman who's a physician's assistant who works with Richard Fry. name is Nicole Rincon. She's the mother of triplets, the two boys.
suffered a neurological regression about the age of two. So they all have the same birth date and they were diagnosed with ASD. The girl doesn't have an ASD diagnosis, she experiences seizures. One of her boys has completely recovered to the point where he's lost his diagnosis. The other boy, she says, just barely diagnosis or meets the diagnostic criteria for ASD. And she has been doing a number of these therapies targeting the mitochondria.
for her kids. if you have an appetite for more detailed knowledge and for the citations, you can go to Morosco Forge. You can find it there. That is a level of research that is so new. It is not in the uncommon cold book. You can subscribe to our journal and every time I write something or say something halfway smart, you'll get an email from me.
Len Arcuri (01:00:15.566)
All right, fantastic. Well, I will include all those links in the show notes. And again, Tom, thank you so much for taking time to share these insights and your guidance with our families. Thank you so much.
Thomas P Seager (01:00:21.699)
Thank you.
Thomas P Seager (01:00:27.715)
This is my pleasure.
