Lately, I feel the word “hack” is used far too often.
Pretty much any slight improvement on something is a “hack” nowadays - So it’s not too
often you see the word used properly as in referring to gaining unauthorized access to
a computer or system.
However, the word “hack” is actually pretty appropriate to describe the The Wim Hof method.
Bio-hack, body-hack, mind-hack, whatever you want to call it, what it lets you do is consciously
access something you shouldn’t be able to- the autonomic nervous system.
This system is the primary mechanism in control of the fight-or-flight response.
Wim Hof’s method seems to be a path towards achieving incredible feats like withstanding
freezing temperatures and things like climbing mountains or running marathons without any
prior training.
But how, and what other effects does it have on your body?
Well, The Wim Hof breathing method has 3 components.
30 or more deep breaths, Followed by exhaling and holding the breath
for one to three minutes Followed by a deep inhale which is held for
about 15 or 20 seconds.
Depending on how many deep breaths you did and how long you held the exhale, that last
deep inhale should give you a noticeable rush.
No, not like that.
Less than that.
Maybe that's a little closer.
Anyways, that rush feeling will last for maybe 10 or 20 seconds.
Afterwards, you will be left feeling more alert physically and mentally than before
you started the breathing.
This effect comes from stimulation of the endocrine system.
Something about breathing in the way Wim Hof instructs causes your body to pump out certain
hormones like adrenaline and noradrenaline to levels that you don’t normally see in
people’s day to day life, which suggests the breathing is manipulating the fight or
flight response.
So what changes in the body does this breathing cause?
One has to do with blood pH.
If you’re a fan of Michael Crichton, you may remember the scene in The Andromeda Strain
where one of the infected characters was told to hyperventilate to raise his blood pH to
stop the infection from growing.
■The reason this works is because breathing deeper than necessary means you exhale a lot
of carbon dioxide.
Because most carbon dioxide is converted to bicarbonate and carbonic acid in the blood
stream, lowering carbon dioxide levels through deep breathing will raise your blood pH.
Your blood becomes less acidic and more alkaline.
While making your blood alkaline can have some interesting effects when it comes to
exercise performance and resisting the cold, alkalosis can lead to constriction of the
brain’s blood vessels, and reduced calcium levels, leading to increased nerve and muscle
excitability.
This is one of the reasons why you feel pins and needles when doing the breathing, and
if you do the deep breathing step for a particularly long time, you may experience cramps or muscle
spasms.
"You get these tingling sensations throughout your hands and your body so it feels like
everything's vibrating."
"Mine was so weird, my hands were like this, just locked and I could not move them and
I just..."
Your blood doesn't stay alkaline for very long after the deep breaths.
A study involving people trained in the Wim Hof method, shows that blood pH returns to
normal just 85 seconds into the breath hold, and blood pH levels out and stays in the normal
range after stopping the breathing techniques.
I don't mean to say the Wim Hof method is dangerous, I just mean to clarify the enhanced
alkaline state of the blood is only temporary and that's probably for the better.
Other than the raise in pH, another thing that happens when you exhale so much carbon
dioxide is most of your oxygen becomes stuck in the blood.
This is because carbon dioxide is what releases oxygen from the blood so your cells can use
it.
So after the deep breaths, you hold your breath on an exhale.
Holding your breath will allow carbon dioxide to build up, and it will start to pull oxygen
out of the blood and into the tissues.
Because no new oxygen is coming in and there’s no air in the lungs, your blood oxygen saturation
begins to quickly drop.
Here a pulse oximeter my oxygen saturation dropping and the graph shows how my heart
rate is changing.
One of the effects of this, is that your body will try to adapt to these low blood oxygen
levels.
That is, it adapts you to environments where the air has low oxygen ...like high altitudes.
This is why people doing the Wim Hof method could climb Mt.
Kilimanjaro in record time.
People normally have to slowly climb mountains over several days to avoid acute mountain
sickness, because the body needs to acclimate to low oxygen levels at that altitude.
However, since the Wim Hof method acts as a sort of high altitude training, the Wim
Hof trained group could move much faster.
The way this works is:
Erythropoietin, known as EPO, is secreted in response to reduced oxygen levels in the
blood.
EPO stimulates the production of red blood cells- this increases oxygen delivery capability
in the body.
So, after a while of holding your breath, receptors in the brain will be triggered either
by too high carbon dioxide levels or too low oxygen levels.
These receptors will then urge you to breathe.
You should try and fight against this signal as long as you can but be careful to not pass
out.
Then breathe in deeply and hold that breath for at least 20 seconds, and you should be
left feeling calm, but at the same time focused and alert.
So, some point in this sequence will stimulate your endocrine system, leading to a strong
release of hormones- adrenaline and noradrenaline in particular.
Matthijs Kox and Peter Pickkers of Radboud University led an experiment where individuals
who were taught the Wim Hof method were injected with a bacterial endotoxin, a component of
the E. Coli bacteria.
This injection isn’t actually harmful to the body, but it tricks the immune system
causing it to over react.
99 percent of healthy people who come in contact with endotoxin react for a couple of hours
as though they have the flu.
The test is normally used to understand the effectiveness of certain immune-suppressant
drugs.
What they found was that those trained in the Wim Hof method showed significantly less
negative symptoms when injected with the endotoxin.
Essentially they were able to prevent their immune system from overreacting.
The study says: “Healthy volunteers practicing the learned
techniques exhibited profound increases in the release of epinephrine, (epinephrine is
another word for adrenaline) which in turn led to increased production of anti-inflammatory
mediators...
This study could have important implications for the treatment of a variety of conditions
associated with excessive or persistent inflammation, especially autoimmune diseases.”
With autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis or crohn’s disease, your immune system attacks
healthy cells in your body.
Being able to tell your immune system to stand down through meditation and breathing, would
be an incredibly useful tool for people with these types of diseases.
Even people with Parkinson’s- a disease that is thought to have an auto-immune component
could potentially benefit from the Wim Hof method.
In fact, in Scott Carney’s book “What doesn’t kill us,” Carney talks about how
One man “credits Hof with saving his life.
He says that through Hof’s breathing technique and ice-cold showers he can manage the disease
with far fewer drugs than when he was first diagnosed.
He says Wim Hof has kept him out of a wheelchair.”
Carney also talks about how a man who after 2 months of cold exposure and practicing the
Wim Hof method, had drastically reduced the pain and swelling caused by rheumatoid arthritis.
Before, practicing the Wim Hof method and doing the cold exposure, the disease was so
bad that his index finger was swollen to the size of a plum and he would have to have bits
of bone removed just to help with the pain.
Carney himself says that he used to get very big canker sores every month or so, but after
doing the Wim Hof method they only appear once a year and are very small and manageable.
Also people who suffer from allergies may benefit from the breathing method considering
it raises adrenaline.
Adrenaline is used as a treatment for anaphylaxis - severe allergic attacks.
You may know someone with a serious food allergy who carries an epipen- a small device that
injects adrenaline.
So at what point in the breathing is adrenaline (or epinephrine) released?
Well, the endotoxin study says they were not able to precisely identify when the hormone
is released but, it says:
“...the effects on epinephrine are likely a consequence of both the hyperventilation
phase and hypoxia due to breath retention, as both have been demonstrated to increase
epinephrine levels.”
It may be that because both the hyperventilation and breath hold steps are stimulating the
release of adrenaline, you end up with particularly high levels.
In fact, the study says that the adrenaline levels in the individuals trained in the Wim
Hof method reached higher levels than those of people about to go into a bungee jump.
From my own experience, adrenaline being released during the breath hold sounds particularly
accurate.
Myself and others have noticed that if you hold the exhale long enough, you will suddenly
have the added challenge of... trying to not piss your pants.
Adrenaline is a key hormone in the fight or flight response.
The fight or flight response results in physiological changes like dilation of the pupils, increased
blood flow to the muscles and relaxation of the bladder.
In fact, holding their breath for as long as they can is a strategy taught to people
who have paruresis, the fear of urinating in public places.
The other clues that the fight or flight response is being triggered at the end of the exhale
hold and the start of the inhale is of course the rush you feel at that point, and, for
me at least - I consistently hear a bit of a ringing at this point and my hearing fades
out.
Another physical effect of the fight or flight response is auditory exclusion or hearing
loss.
What may be unique about the Wim Hof method is:
Because you first exhaled enough carbon dioxide to raise your blood pH and then held your
breath on an exhale so no new oxygen could come in, you are able to decrease your oxygen
levels enough to strongly stimulate the fight or flight response.
The fight or flight response presents itself when a threat to survival appears.
It’s not a surprise that your body would interpret low oxygen levels as a threat to
survival.
One concrete benefit of the Wim Hof method is that it will wake you up.
The breathing is something you can do while you’re still laying down, so it can very
quickly bust through morning grogginess and prepare you for the day.
Since adrenaline and noradrenaline have so many functions, we could speculate on various
potential benefits.
For example, fat and glucose are rapidly burned up for energy, so enhanced weight loss might
be a benefit of the breathing method.
In fact, Scott Carney apparently lost 7 pounds of fat in his first 7 days with Wim Hof.
Whether the cold exposure left Scott’s body with no choice but to burn up the fat for
heat or he consciously provoked his endocrine system to break down the fat is unclear- but
it was probably at least a combination of the two.
Now this still isn’t a full coverage of the Wim Hof method.
Along with the breathing, cold exposure is another key component to the method.
And, while the breathing has significant physical effects, personally I most appreciate the
mental benefits that come from the breathing.
I will discuss these points later on, so stick around.
Also, If you haven’t already, make sure and check out my last video on Wim Hof.
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