"Without protective clothing, ice cold waters can knock a person unconscious within minutes."
...Unless you’re Wim Hof.
Wim Hof has become very popular recently and his method has gathered many devoted followers
quite quickly.
The fame comes from Wim’s impressive feats- he holds 26 world records for things like
staying submerged in ice for an hour and 58 minutes, he climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in shorts,
he ran a full marathon in the Namib Desert without water, and ran a marathon in temperatures
20 degrees below freezing.
This is all very impressive, but the reason why the Wim Hof Method has so many followers
is probably because if you do the method, you will get results.
With something like meditation, it takes a lot of practice and patience to be able to
say “I’ve been feeling good lately, I think I’m doing this right.”
With the Wim Hof method, however, if you do the breathing properly you will feel noticeably
different in a couple of minutes.
You’ll feel quite good.
You’ll even find you can do things like tolerate a cold shower or even sit in an ice
bath for a few minutes without too much discomfort.
Given its popularity, many people are already doing the method or are eager to try it, so
I figure it would be good to first talk about what is happening in your body when you practice
the breathing method.
By clearly understanding what is going on, you’ll have more confidence that you are
doing it in a way that gives you the most benefit.
The breathing method goes like this: Sit or lie in a comfortable place and begin
taking deep breaths at roughly this pace.
Drie.
Twee.
You want to breathe in fully but let the air come out gently.
It should feel like more air is coming in than out.
Repeat this for about 30 breaths.
When you begin to feel things like tingling in the legs or fingers or light headedness,
gently exhale and hold your breath, don’t breathe in.
Keep the breath held until you develop a strong urge to breathe - as strong as you are comfortable
with.
You want to try and hold this for at least 1 minute.-Then, breathe in fully and hold
in that breath for about 15 or 20 seconds.
-Then let it out and breathe normally after that.
This is one cycle.
Typically you are to do 3 cycles first thing in the morning, totalling about 15 minutes
of conscious breathing.
The explanation Wim has given in different interviews and podcasts about what is happening
here is usually something like the following: The heavy breathing
Depletes Carbon Dioxide.
This lets more Oxygen fill up your system.
That Oxygen fills up all your cells and because you are “charged up” with oxygen, you
feel quite good.
“What, what does happen Physiologically?
You become fully charged – carbon dioxide goes out and O2 begins to roam freely throughout
the body and fills up every cell”
My intention is not to criticize the Wim Hof method, as many people including myself have
gotten a lot of benefit from it.
However this explanation is a bit misleading.
And, it doesn't address how important that first breath hold is.
So let’s look deeper into what is happening.
Here I have a pulse oximeter attached to my finger.
It measures the oxygen saturation of the blood.
Just breathing normally, my Oxygen saturation is 99%.
This is normal; a healthy person’s moment to moment Oxygen saturation will be between
95 and 99%
Now here I am doing the first part of the Wim Hof breathing method.
Even though my blood oxygen saturation stays at 99% and doesn’t change, I do start to
feel a bit of pressure in my head and tingling in my legs and fingers.
I’m putting up my thumb and fingers to indicate how strongly I’m feeling these sensations.
At this point I could feel the tingling reach all the way up to my thighs.
In the Vice documentary on Wim Hof, after a session of this kind of breathing, Matt
shea says “Yeah, you get eventually, these white hallucinations, but it might just be
depriving your brain of oxygen.
I don't know if that's good.” and actually that’s pretty accurate.
If I were to continuously breathe like this for a while longer, I would most likely pass
out from hypoxia, a state of reduced oxygen availability.
But, while breathing heavily like this, my Oxygen saturation stays at 99% So how could
I eventually pass out from reduced oxygen availability?
Well, it has to do with where the oxygen is.
The first two points in Wim’s explanation are accurate.
As he said, when you take all those big breaths, you do end up depleting Carbon Dioxide.
And, Oxygen levels in the blood can technically increase at some point.
My pulse oximeter hasn’t gone past 99%, but people doing the Wim Hof method have increased
their blood oxygen saturation to 100%.
However, because oxygen is continuously diffusing from the blood into the cells, it’s unusual
for oxygen levels in the blood to reach 100 percent in a healthy person.
Higher than normal saturation of Oxygen in the blood is actually an indication that
your cells and organs are not using Oxygen efficiently.
As Patrick McKeown, author of Oxygen Advantage says:
“ An oxygen saturation of 100 percent would suggest that the bond between red blood cells
and oxygen molecules is too strong, reducing the blood cells’ ability to deliver oxygen
to muscles, organs, and tissues.
We need the blood to release oxygen, not hold on to it.
... Increasing oxygen saturation to 100 percent has no added benefits.”
A physiological phenomenon called the Bohr effect explains this.
It says that an increase in carbon dioxide results in hemoglobin proteins releasing oxygen
into the tissues.
However, a decrease in carbon dioxide results in hemoglobin holding onto the oxygen and
it’s less available for the brain, muscles and other tissues to use.
And this is how you can lose consciousness from hyperventilation.
Carbon Dioxide is not just a waste product, it is actually very important to your body
being able to use Oxygen - it’s like a doorway that lets oxygen into the tissues.
The tingling in the hands and the legs and the lightheadedness you feel when doing the
Wim Hof breathing is not a result of super oxygenating or “charging up” your body
but actually the opposite- Reduced oxygen availability from depleted carbon dioxide.
This is why the breath hold at the end of the deep breaths is very important- It replenishes
the lost carbon dioxide.
As a result of normal metabolism, the cells in your body are constantly producing carbon
dioxide.
So, the way to restore depleted carbon dioxide levels is to simply let it build up by holding
your breath.
Wim encourages people to hold the breath after exhaling for at least a minute or until they
feel a particularly strong urge to breathe in.
Practitioners of Yogic Breathing or Pranayama, should be familiar with the importance of
this breath hold.
In fact, there are pranayama breathing exercises that are quite similar to the Wim Hof breathing
method where you breathe in and out strongly and then hold the breath.
In fact, in the extensive yoga manual Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha it says that the "The
most important part of pranayama is actually kumbhaka or breath retention."
You may wonder why you can hold your breath so long after the deep breaths.
Well, the signal to the brain to breathe doesn’t come from a lack of oxygen.
It comes from a buildup of carbon dioxide.
The deep breaths deplete carbon dioxide, so when you hold your breath, it takes longer
to build up enough carbon dioxide to create the signal to gasp for air.
This is why it’s important not to do this breathing technique underwater or while standing
up.
Depending on how much you hyperventilated, you can unexpectedly pass out from hypoxia
before you get a strong signal to breathe.
So, when doing the Wim Hof method, after the quick breaths, make sure to hold the breath
on the exhale for as long as you are comfortable with, or until you feel tightness or contractions
in the throat or chest.
This discomfort is an indication that you have replenished most of the carbon dioxide
you lost.
My last video was all about the importance of breathing through the nose.
The nose regulates airflow in a way that preserves carbon dioxide.
When you breathe through the mouth, it’s easy to exhale too much Carbon Dioxide and
your tissues get less oxygen.
There are even studies showing a link between mouth breathing in adolescence and decreased
IQ.
Understandably, some commenters questioned whether the Wim Hof breathing could be decreasing
intelligence because it involves hyperventilation.
However, I wouldn't worry about that for two reasons.
One: As mentioned, the breath hold should restore most of your carbon dioxide.
Two: In the last video I was talking about how chronic over breathing during the day
or sleeping with your mouth open at night is what you need to be careful for.
If you spend thirty minutes doing the Wim Hof breathing exercise in the morning but
are breathing properly through the nose the remaining 23 hours of the day, you should
be fine.
But, to make sure the breathing exercises don’t affect your default breathing negatively,
you can keep track of your BOLT score.
BOLT stands for Body Oxygen Level Test and it's an easy way to understand if your natural
breathing is efficient or not.
Here’s how to test the BOLT score, as described by Patrick McKeown:Take a normal breath in
through your nose and let it out through your nose.
Hold your nostrils with your fingers and stop breathing.
Time the number of seconds until you feel the first clear desire to breathe.You might
feel the need to swallow or your abdomen or throat may lightly contract.
When you feel something like this, stop the timer.
BOLT is not checking how long you can hold your breath, but how quickly your body reacts
to a lack of air.
So, the very first clear signal that you need to breathe is when you should stop the timer.
It’s best to do this test first thing in the morning as how you breathe during the
night best reflects your natural breathing pattern.
A score of 20 seconds is average and a score of 40 is particularly good.
If your score is under 20, then that’s a sign that you have a poor breathing rhythm
and may be overbreathing through the mouth during the day or while you sleep.
Keeping track of this score over the days you do the Wim Hof method is a good way to
understand if the breathing technique is affecting your normal breathing rhythm.
Hopefully this information helps with your approach to the breathing method.
The Wim Hof method seems to be safe for most anyone as long as you are not overdoing it
or have a pulmonary issue or other health complications.
The method has a lot of very interesting health benefits and I’ll talk in depth about other
aspects of it in the future so be sure to stick around.
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