Curious about those wellness trends flooding your social media feed? Karen dives headfirst into the world of middle-age wellness experiments, testing four popular treatments that promise everything from mental clarity to glowing skin. Ever wonder if that Instagram-famous head spa is worth the hype, or whether you could actually survive a cold plunge? Karen transforms from skeptical observer to brave guinea pig, documenting her real experiences with head spas, cold plunges, infrared saunas, and red light therapy. Her mission: separate the wellness wheat from the trendy chaff and give you the honest scoop on what's worth your time and money.
Ready to invest in yourself without breaking the bank? Karen shares vulnerable moments of panic in ice-cold water, blissful relaxation under flowing halos, and surprising discoveries about her own resilience. From the $10 red light session that left her skin surprisingly soft to the $100 head spa experience that felt "absolutely heavenly," she breaks down costs, benefits, and whether you should book your appointment today. The conversation takes an empowering turn when Karen realizes these experiments aren't just about wellness—they're about proving to yourself that you can do hard things. Her biggest takeaway? "If you can teach your brain that you can do hard things and you're not gonna give up, there's endless possibility in our life." Listeners will walk away with practical cost breakdowns, honest reviews, and the courage to try something new. In this episode:
Resources:
YouTube Video Footage - Visual documentation of all four wellness experiences Groupon - Discounted wellness services and local business deals ThirtyFiveSixtyFour Website - Links to featured wellness facilities
About:
ThirtyFiveSixtyFour is a podcast for listeners between the ages of 35 and 64. Available on all major podcast platforms, the show offers an engaging journey through the various challenges and experiences of midlife. ThirtyFiveSixtyFour presents a distinct departure from the traditional midlife crisis storyline. Instead, it champions the perspective that midlife should be viewed as a period marked by play, discovery, transformation and possibility.
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Episode Transcript: The team here at 3564 decided to do what I am calling the Middle Ager experiments. We've taken all sorts of different things that we've seen in our newsfeed that we've chatted about with friends and strange health and wellness trends. That we just wanted to try, we wanted to report back.
Are they worth the money? How much did they even cost? What was it like, and would you do it again? So let's dive into some of these really cool things that we did. This is one of those episodes that might be best viewed on YouTube. We have a bunch of videos and pictures of all these experiences, so check out our social media or the link in the show notes if you wanna see a really brief version on YouTube of what all these really looked like.
I actually took all these pictures, or someone on my team was taking the pictures of me during these services. Okay. The first service that I want to talk about is the head spa. So a head spa experience is all about your neck, head, hair, and scalp.
Okay. I just got in the room and they asked me to put on this terrycloth rope. Here we go. Looks pretty amazing.
Okay, this is what it looks like. I haven't started yet, but I'm waiting for them to come in.
And you go through this really interesting series of relaxation pieces where they first massage and wash your face almost like a mini facial.
Then they start washing your hair. Then they start massaging your scalp. It's like one of those moments you don't wanna stop. You know what I'm talking about? The moment in the salon where they're washing your hair and it just feels like you could melt into that bowl behind you. This lasts for a good 15 to 20 minutes.
It's absolutely heavenly after that shampooing and massaging of the hair. They start brushing your hair. It's really, really soothing, especially if you have shoulder length hair or more to have your hair brushed by someone. It almost feels parental in a really kind and sweet loving way. But someone then starts brushing your hair and really starting to stimulate your scalp.
Once all of the shampoo is out and your hair is perfectly brushed, they place you under this water halo. Now, this is probably the picture you've seen all over. It's the one that you see on Instagram or people taking when they're getting the service done. It's like a little headband. If you want to call it that, that sits, you know, a couple of maybe a foot above your head.
And it has a continuous stream of water that flows down in the most calming and relaxing way. It is not high pressure, but it's not just a drip. It's this low. Calming continuous stimulation and sound of the water. That just is really quite unreal for a moment. You almost feel out of body if you are completely relaxed.
You could imagine yourself under a waterfall, really under rain. It is really a cool experience, especially if you're able to relax under someone else's hands. I do think that this is a really great opportunity for you to try something new if you haven't. After the water treatment, I got a little bit of a neck and a shoulder massage, and I sat up and simultaneously where all those other things were going on, I was laying in a full body massage.
A chair table and my entire legs, back sides were being massaged by this machine table. So lots of stimulation happening everywhere. Once that was completed, we exited the room with those tables and sinks, and we went on to have some. Really cool LED light treatment on our scalps. So these women went through and really parted our hair very carefully and did all this yellow light therapy all over our scalp, mostly to stimulate the hair follicles.
And also they mentioned it was moisturizing and. And just something that really helps. Your hair maintains a healthy state. That took some time to do. It's almost like this massaging brush, and it has this light on the end, and it's really interesting. I had never seen that before. I looked at the machine and the writing on it was, not in a language that I knew.
So I knew that this is a pretty unique machine. It was probably imported from somewhere after that. My hair was blow dried. I'm not gonna say it was a full blowout, but I did not walk outta the facility with dripping wet hair like I thought I would, and it was a 90 minute experience. It costs about a hundred dollars, and I gave the staff a $20 tip, and I definitely think that the experience is worth doing.
I'm gonna say. Do it with a friend. There's something really cool about having this experience with a friend because it's really unique and the particular facility that I went to had two tables and two sinks, and they were able to service two people at the same time. I probably wouldn't want to do that with someone else I didn't know.
But I was able to bring Megan, who's on staff here at 35/64. She loved it. In fact, I was talking during the entire thing and she was zening out over to the right of me. I know she really loved this experience and plans on doing it again. Okay, the next thing that I tried. Ooh, and I, I gotta tell you, I'm pretty brave.
I'm up for trying new things. You know, last year I went skydiving and I decided it was time to try the cold plunge.
I am about to do a cold plunge. I've never ever done this. Let's see if I can do this. Oh my gosh, I'm a little nervous.
There are so many different ways to do a cold plunge. A very traditional way is to gather a bunch of ice, fill up your bathtub, and remain inside for, you know, as long as your treatment plan calls for?
I'll tell you that, the facility that I went to had a controlled temperature, so there was a chiller attached to this big bathtub, and there was no ice in it. The water was extremely cold. So the woman at the facility told me, you should just try to stay in for three minutes. We don't recommend more than six minutes a week.
Most of our clients do two, three minute stints a week. And I thought, okay, all right, let me give this a shot. So I wore my bathing suit. I popped in and, oh shoot. I immediately, I'm gonna just fully admit this, I think I said, oh ****and I thought I was gonna give up just right off the bat. It is a full no.
Your body wants to totally reject it. Your brain is telling yourself, why are you doing this? This isn't good. Get out and everything within you. I wanted to simply get out of this tub, and the first minute was painful for me.
You just kind of start going numb, and it just starts, I don't know. I can't decide if I hate this or if I do it again,
I don't know about other people, but I had tingly sensations. I really felt a little bit of panic. What ended up happening, I was getting coached by Megan who came along with me on this one as well, and she's like, hang in there. It gets better. It gets better. How are you feeling? You're doing great. You're really doing great. And she was showing me the timer and the first time I asked, it had only been 10 seconds. But I was able to pass a minute and everything slowed down.
And by that I mean it was a moment of pure peace, quietness and laser focused, I should say,
Okay, so the first 20 seconds of that, honest to God, was hell. I didn't know if I could do it, and I actually wanted to give up. And then as I got into it. Everything slows down. All you can do is focus on your breathing. You don't think about anything else. It's one of those things, it's just like you're trying to survive and then you sort of ease into it.
I thought I'd give up. I ended up staying for three minutes. I definitely tried again.
on making it through the moment. There was not a single other thing that I was thinking about in that minute except getting through it, and for the next minute to three minutes, I was in a kind of trance-like state where I wasn't talking much.
I was highly focused and I just felt everything slow down. What ends up happening is all the blood rushes to your core organs and your body focuses on really maintaining its temperature. By drawing in all the blood to your core, and I wanna read a couple of facts about some of these cold plunges.
So they typically have to be between 40 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit, and the reported benefits of the cold plunge are reducing muscle soreness and inflammation. You know, you'll see those NFL players after their Sunday night football game jump in those big ice baths, and that's been around for a long time.
But I think some of the newer ways that they are finding benefits from these cold plunges is simply mental resilience. And I gotta tell you, that might have been the most benefit that I received from this exercise is telling myself that I can do hard things.
I won't give up and follow through with it. And in a way, if you can teach your brain. That you can do hard things and you're not gonna give up and you're gonna go for it. It's an interesting exercise in really having control of what your thoughts are and if we can control our thoughts better. You know, there's endless possibilities in our life, right?
So this exercise for me was really about believing in myself and believing that I could get through it, although I almost gave up. Multiple times through the first minute. Other re other benefits are improving circulation and even some potential benefits of supporting metabolism. Based on all the energy that your body needs to expend, it does take calories to do that.
So there are some proposed benefits there. I did have someone tell me that they had heard of people having heart attacks doing these, and I just retorted. I have heard of people having heart attacks on the treadmill. You know, people have heart attacks everywhere. I definitely, if you have heart problems, maybe consult with your doctor before you do something like this.
But all in all, this was a very good experience. I would love to be able to do this on the regular. I know my neighbor next door has a cold plunge in his backyard. A couple of other people I know have some in their garage with a chiller and even others belong to gyms that have this as something that you can book as part of their membership.
I'm not sure how I'm going to pursue it. The cost for me to do this was only $25. And, you know, there was a robe provided and a towel and everything was turnkey. I know that there's some really cool wellness clubs out there that make this really, really approachable and affordable. But the $25 cost was a no-brainer, and it's not really a service that someone does, so there's no tip required. Okay. The next thing that I tried was. an infrared sauna. So infrared saunas are really interesting. A traditional sauna is very hot when you walk in,
Whether it's dry or steam, the temperature inside is extremely hot. Now, what happens in these infrared saunas is that your body is heated. With infrared light, so that means that the average temperature inside of these.
It is not as high, and I'm gonna say uncomfortable as a traditional sauna experience, you still sweat. You still have some of the other benefits, like the relaxation, the stress reduction, the muscle and joint pain relief, but it's a different way of experiencing it without the extreme temperature.
I was able to stay in for 30 minutes and I gave myself 15. I did a timer
starting to sweat a lot. Now it's been about 12 minutes. 30 minutes is probably gonna be a lot, but I'm gonna see how long I can last.
and I thought, you know what? I can do this for 30. That was what she recommended at the facility, the max amount of time to spend there. I turned on a gratitude meditation and I was also inside with a girlfriend, so we were chatting for part of it.
We're done. We made it in 30 minutes. Grabbing my cold washcloth with eucalyptus oil. Oh, that feels good. I'm supposed to be a little more toxin free. I thought it was pretty peaceful. We did a meditation and I will definitely do that again. I even hear some people have these at home.
But what a cool experience. This was also $25, and another one of those pieces that you can see, they're popping up at health clubs, gyms, wellness centers, and some affluent people are actually installing these directly in their homes. Well, I'm not quite there yet. All joking aside, I do think that this is a pretty cool therapy to try.
I'm not sure if it's something that I need to do all of the time, but I definitely would do it if it was at one of the spa experiences that I had, if I could walk in , and use it. So was it scary? No. Was it interesting? Yes. It was a very different experience than a traditional sauna. So I say give it a shot. The last experiment that I did with my team recently was red light therapy. Now you've seen masks. On, you know, they're selling these mass on Amazon and they're in beauty magazines and they're, they're selling scalp red light things to stimulate hair growth.
And this was one of those really spaceship-like experiences. I walked into this room, it was completely dark and it almost looked like a tanning bed, except that there was no top portion, but the bottom portion was completely. Lined with red light. Then when you laid down on it, there was a small mask area hovering over your face and that was getting on your face and neck.
Oh my gosh. This is strange. You feel immersed in a red light. It's some red light therapy and if you close your eyes, all you see is bright, bright light.
So when you closed your eyes, you were really, all you saw was a bright red light. Megan, who was with me during this experiment said she felt like she was in an alien ship and it was an interesting experience. So what's interesting about it is all of the benefits that come from red light therapy. So red light therapy is also referred to as low level laser therapy.
Sometimes you hear it as LLT, and what it does is it uses low wavelength red and near infrared. Light to improve a variety of health conditions. Skin health was one of the top reported benefits, wound healing. That's interesting. I think as we age, our wounds heal slower, especially with some of the terrible medical conditions that.
Have slow wound healing. This could be a really interesting thing for those folks. And then pain relief and hair growth are also some of the reported benefits. This therapy lasted 15 minutes. It was $10, and it was interesting. It was unique. It was not scary, it was not painful. And I'm gonna tell you, it seemed more like.
don't know it, it seemed more trendy than maybe helpful. I'm just giving you my experience. I will tell you that the attendant said this requires regular use and by regular. She said five times a week. And I thought, okay, well I just invested 15 minutes, so I'm obviously not gonna see a bunch of benefits.
But before I clown on it too much, I will tell you I had not done a scrub or anything on my skin, and my skin felt really soft, really soft. Almost like I had just put on lotion, but there was no greasy feeling. It just felt soft and supple and. As we age, that's something that always is nice when it's not crepey and dry.
So I did see that it benefited my skin in that brief treatment. It was cheap, it was approachable. I think it was fun. Would I do it again? Oh, sure. Would I pay for it? Maybe not. I'm curious if any of you had luck with infrared therapy, if you use it on the regular, if it's working well for you. I'd love to hear from you.
Like I said, reporting on just one use of it isn't gonna really give you the full scope of what it does. We have so many more experiments lined up for you. We wanna bring you the real deal, how much it costs, if it's fun, if it's scary. I'll tell you how I handled it and how I felt about it, and I hope to bring some new experiences to your life.
I have to encourage you, if you made it through the end of this episode, to invest in yourself. Yes, invest in yourself, and it doesn't have to be. A massive, you know, $500 spa day. But you know what, it's pretty approachable to go to some of these ice plunge places or to try that at your gym.
I bet one of your friends might have one if you ask around. It's also really easy to look on things like Groupon and other sales sites that support local businesses. You can try a lot of things for a really great price if you poke around. I found quite a few of these on Groupon myself, so I'll drop a couple links in the show notes to the facilities that we went to.
They were fantastic and welcoming and allowed me to film during all of these. This is one of those episodes that will be great to take a peek on YouTube if you wanna get specific, you know, what does the machine look like? What did that feel like? You can get full blown. What it looked like, what happened, and how did Karen react during these services.
It's all on video. I'd love for you to take a peek at that. We'll drop a link in the show notes to some of those. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks for being a part of this community. We believe that with intentionality you can live a fantastic life. Middle age and our mission is to bring that to you with advice, experiences, and experts.
I hope you'll tune in next week. Have a good one.
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