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Wim Hof’s teachings about breath work and the health benefits of cold plunges

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Re: Wim Hof’s teachings about breath work and the health benefits of cold plunges

#101

Post by jm666 »

tanto wrote: post #99

Is there a general timeframe where people experience the benefits of the breathing experiences? Like do I have to do it for weeks, month or years until I feel the effect?

Imo highly individual. In my practice, I've observed inflammation in my heel decrease in scale of a few weeks (my heel used to be inflamed after every run for a few days, with me unable to recover from 2 weekly runs of ~ 6km; after 2-3 week started to improve, now - 2 mo later - it is completely healed, can run 4-5 times a week, and bottleneck is now something else). The second effect I observe is my decreased fear of cold shower & improved ability to handle it (both psychologically and physically).

Re: Wim Hof’s teachings about breath work and the health benefits of cold plunges

#102

Post by jm666 »

rubatuga wrote: post #66

This is all pseudoscience peddled as a mental health miracle

Effects of Wim Hof method are very much backed by rigorous scientific studies, see e.g. this is a good overview of the papers, or read them yourself.

https://scienceofparkinsons.com/2020/02/06/wim-hof/

My conclusion is that some effects are very real, according to best available science. But You have to filter that from Wim Hof's persona & explanation style, which to me often feels very hand-wavy & daresay sometimes even esoteric & his explanations/rationalisations are sometimes clearly off. (e.g. he often says that the breathwork/hyperventilation increases amount of oxygen delivered to cells, while in reality it is the opposite due to Bohr effect). But he imo definitely is onto something with the practice.

Re: Wim Hof’s teachings about breath work and the health benefits of cold plunges

#103

Post by tremon »

watwut wrote: post #92
trabant00 wrote: post #50

> The Hof brothers are identical twins, but unlike Wim, Andre has a sedentary lifestyle without exposure to extreme cold. The scientists had them practice Wim's breathing exercises and then exposed them to the lowest temperature that would not induce shivering. They concluded that, "No significant differences were found between the two subjects, indicating that a lifestyle with frequent exposures to extreme cold does…

What are we supposed to conclude from that? Given two identical twins both doing those exercises, both in temperature just above shivering, their BAT and CIT was same, therefore what?

That Wim's resistance to cold isn't the product of many years of training and gradually increasing exposure.

Re: Wim Hof’s teachings about breath work and the health benefits of cold plunges

#104

Post by cookiengineer »

trabant00 wrote: post #50

> The Hof brothers are identical twins, but unlike Wim, Andre has a sedentary lifestyle without exposure to extreme cold. The scientists had them practice Wim's breathing exercises and then exposed them to the lowest temperature that would not induce shivering. They concluded that, "No significant differences were found between the two subjects, indicating that a lifestyle with frequent exposures to extreme cold does…

You know what BAT and CIT means, right?

I really think you don't know what you are babbling about.

The only thing this test might be interpreted as is that the assumption that brown fat correlates with physical cold resistance capabilities might be wrong.

Re: Wim Hof’s teachings about breath work and the health benefits of cold plunges

#105

Post by i_cannot_hack »

anonymouswacker wrote: post #71
scrozart wrote: post #14

This source is a lifestyle rag for people who hike, camp, etc. They're recently posted some super unscientific stuff about not wearing sunblock so you get all your Vitamin D.

Sunblocks often have chemicals that leach into the brain/blood with alarming effects... and more people suffer from Vitamin D deficiency than skin cancer from prolonged exposure...

Well, Vitamin D deficiency is easy to treat with supplements instead. And I would say skin cancer is rather more serious than Vitamin D deficiency. I don't think the goal should be to have skin cancer and Vitamin D deficiency be equally common.

Re: Wim Hof’s teachings about breath work and the health benefits of cold plunges

#106

Post by watwut »

tremon wrote: post #103
watwut wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are we supposed to conclude from that? Given two identical twins both doing those exercises, both in temperature just above shivering, their BAT and CIT was same, therefore what?

That Wim's resistance to cold isn't the product of many years of training and gradually increasing exposure.

1.) That does not prove what you claim at all.

2.) Also notably, neither study nor wiki claim that both brothers had equal resistance to cold.

3.) Lastly, Wim Hof claim is not so much that "gradually increasing exposure" makes him better at cold, his claim is that he found breathing techniques and has batter control over body functions. That may or may not be bullshit, but again, study is not disproving that.

Here I am going to quote exact same study:

> Core temperature decreased in both subjects with a smaller decrease (−0.18°C) in subject A compared to subject B (−0.40°C). As the accuracy of the measurement is ±0.1°C and due to the small range within core temperature is held, we interpreted the difference of −0.22°C as physiologically different. There was a clear difference in cold sensation and comfort between both subjects. [...] Furthermore, subject A reported that he was comfortable with these temperatures during the entire experiment, whereas subject B felt between uncomfortable and very uncomfortable. Cold exposure slightly increased heart rate in subject A (baseline: 46 beats/min versus cold: 52 beats/min), whereas it slightly decreased in subject B (baseline: 51 beats/min versus cold: 47 beats/min).

tldr; some physiological responses were different and one brother felt uncomfortable while the other felt ok.

Edit: here is direct link to study quoted on wikipedia: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4094425/

Re: Wim Hof’s teachings about breath work and the health benefits of cold plunges

#107

Post by mettamage »

prox wrote: post #83
ta1234567890 wrote: post #19

When a friend first told me about taking cold showers everyday, I thought he was incredibly motivated and a little crazy. Then when I finally decided to look into it and did the breathing technique, I realized I might be able to take a cold shower. Now I've been taking 1-2min cold showers (after my regular hot shower), every day for the last 4 months. It gives me a huge boost of energy, way better than coffee. Also,…

That is because he got it from the Buddhist Tummo techniques. >It has similarities to Tibetan Tummo meditation and pranayama, both of which employ breathing techniques.[25] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tummo I won’t say he appropriated it, because he is quite open about it and adapted it, but it did not originate with him.

I don't think so. I know that he was interested in Buddhist stuff (source: some documentary).

But when I talked to him, he told us (part of the Radboud experiment in 2014, I think) that he just jumped into cold water and was forced to learn how to breath in such a way that he wouldn't freak out.

Note/edit: As you can see from my writing my memory isn't pinpoint accurate. Given that the article was published in 2014 [1], I'm sure I'm probably wrong in the year when I talked to him as it then most likely would've been April 2013 since I had to keep the results of the study a secret for at least a year.

[1] https://www.pnas.org/content/111/20/7379

Re: Wim Hof’s teachings about breath work and the health benefits of cold plunges

#108

Post by mettamage »

rubatuga wrote: post #66

This is all pseudoscience peddled as a mental health miracle

I'm sorry Rubatuga, I flagged you. To be fair: I'm not having the best of days, so I might be a bit quicker to flag, but I find this behavior on HN unacceptable.

You make an overgeneralized claim ("this is all") and give no evidence.

There is an extreme amount of evidence on the contrary that the WHM has a lot of novel scientific elements to it. See [1] as an example.

Medlife crisis also did a good nuanced video on it [2].

[1] https://www.pnas.org/content/111/20/7379

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6EPuUdIC1E&ab_channel=Medli...

Re: Wim Hof’s teachings about breath work and the health benefits of cold plunges

#109

Post by Kelamir »

There's the paper: “Brain over body”–A study on the willful regulation of autonomic function during cold exposure (DOI:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.01.067)

From the abstract:

"Our results provide compelling evidence for the primacy of the brain (CNS) rather than the body (peripheral mechanisms) in mediating the Iceman’s responses to cold exposure. They also suggest the compelling possibility that the WHM might allow practitioners to develop higher level of control over key components of the autonomous system, with implications for lifestyle interventions that might ameliorate multiple clinical syndromes."

I was doing cold exposure for a while, plunging palms and heels into water with ice. At first I could hold it a little there, but the duration was increasing with time. It's comfy to do while using laptop, mind doesn't focus on the hell going below :)

Re: Wim Hof’s teachings about breath work and the health benefits of cold plunges

#110

Post by mettamage »

nabilt wrote: post #32

Something interesting I learned during one of his seminars was that breathing exercises can go a long way in providing most of the benefits. A lot of the media coverage focuses on cold exposure, but deep breathing is really the the core of the message. This is great because it means the barrier to entry is much lower since we all don't need to fill up our tubs with ice every week.

I agree with this, you can also read that in the PNAS article (multiple links are on this HN thread somewhere).
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