Bob Y.
Google
The Bespa facility is clean and tranquil, and the owner is friendly. They offer a variety of wellness services, and I've been coming here since 2019.
A review on contrast therapy [this is the closest location for me, that offers this service]:
I tried contrast therapy today, extreme heat [145F]and cold plunge [45 F].
TLDR: Try it! It's tough at the beginning but after a few minutes it gets manageable. $100 for 60 minutes.
I saw this all over tiktok, so I decided to give it a try.
I wanted to see what it felt like to do a cold plunge and see if the effects were real (mental clarity, after burn, etc).
I booked my contrast therapy at bespa in Redonodo beach, and arrived 15 minutes early. They have a 30 min option or a 60 min option and the price difference was only $25 so I figure why not try the longer session?
Anyway, you have to shower when get in the room, and the protocol is 1 - 3 minutes cold plunge, 7-9 minutes infrared, then repeat.
The room is quite large, I'd say 200sqft.
You take a quick shower, and I opt'ed for the infrared sauna first. I sat there in 135F heat for 9 minutes, and headed over to the cold plunge.
Samantha said I should set an intention before I drop in the water, and my intention was to try to go for 1 minute. LOL, and to try to be present (I'm reading the Power of Now by Eckart Tolle)
I dropped in the water, they recommend up to your neck. I immediately felt sharp pain in my knees, and in my lower left stomach area. It's far worse then jumping in a swimming pool and you start to seize up and contract all your muscles and feel like you're going to have a seizure.
After a minute, I jumped out, frozen and went to the IR.
My head was tingling, and I felt a little dizzy. My skin felt extremely cold. After about 5 minutes, the 145F heat warmed me back up and I was nearly ready to go again. The tingling in my head started to go away and I could feel my body again.
After repeating this a few times, it go easier and easier. Although I theorize that I heated up the water with my body temp and that's why? After the 3rd time, I didn't feel tingling in my head any longer, and was able to drop straight into the plunge without problem. My knees no longer hurt, but my feet were freezing.
Anyway, I was able to get up to 5 minutes in the plunge a few times, and ended on the IR so that I wouldn't feel like a human popsicle at the end.
Afterwards, my stats to see if anything happened, so my stress level have jumped up all day since the plunge, by about 20 points, whatever that means, I'm normally around 43.
My resting heart rate also jumped up by 13 bpm to 73 bpm.
But the one thing that surprised me the most is that my HRV hit 73, which I never have during waking time of the day. HRV is the beat to beat measurement, which also indicates how stressed you are, and higher is better (less stressed).
My ketones around this time of day is around .3 with my current diet, and that is unchanged.
I'll likely try it another 2-3x to see what happens. Let me know if you want to see stats and let me know if you try it!
#coldplunge #infraredsauna #ketones #HRV