The Wim Hof Method Explained - the science & research!

we are built to be happy strong and lt we got all the tools but they are not awakened but who is going to wake them up that's us [Applause] hello beautiful people welcome back to my channel sky life where I explore the world of wellness and try all sorts of health and lifestyle trends and challenges in this video I'm going to be breaking down the science and research behind the wim HOF method if you've seen my last video you know that I spent four days training with the legend himself Iceman Hoth in Poland at the beginning of January I went with my favorite youtube channel yes theory to help produce their first ever documentary frozen alive about our experience training with the Iceman wimp if you haven't seen it yet definitely check it out along with my video about the story behind how this whole thing came together and my personal experience throughout our journey if you've seen my other video you would have learned that I definitely had a lot of fear and self-doubt leading up to the trip but the only thing I really could do was get prepared so in order to prepare I actually read every scientific paper that exists on wim hof however if you've seen the yes theory video or my video you would know that none of us could have prepared for what we actually did in Poland this is for anyone who is skeptical of wim HOF being some fake charlatan guru I definitely appreciate your skepticism and I think it's really healthy to be questioning everything especially now in this age of information that we live in and the era of fake news I'm also quite skeptical of a lot which is really why I started this channel so that I can explore all of these health and wellness trends and topics that I'm interested in but really want to get to the bottom of in terms of the science and research behind them and if they're actually legitimate I want to bring that into this video and kind of dispel any myths that exist around wim HOF and his methods before going to train with wim I also read a book called what doesn't kill us that was written by an investigative journalist named Scott Carney who actually set out to prove that wim HOF is some charlatan fake guru and ended up finding along the way that the method really worked for him and now he's a regular practitioner of the method itself so I read that book it was trying to get various opinions about really who this guy is wim HOF and what he's all about based on the research that I've done he is really one of the only gurus out there who has a lot of scientific research behind what he's doing and I know that that is something that is personally really important to win and all of it has been done by independent researchers so far after having spent some time with wim what I know is that he really cares about his message getting out there but he also wants to make sure that the science is entirely legitimate and he's open to any scientist who wants to study so what this video will hopefully accomplish is a comprehensive explanation of the science and research behind the wim HOF method for anybody who is dying to know more about this first I'll explain what the wim HOF method is and how it works then I'll take you through a timeline of the research that has been done on wim so far and what we understand currently and finally I will discuss what we still need to learn and any emerging research being done so what exactly is the wim HOF method and if you already understand what the wim HOF method is and you've watched the other videos and you want to get straight into the actual research behind it then just skip ahead the wim HOF method consists of three parts meditation and concentration techniques breathing exercises and gradual cold exposure Wims meditation techniques are a bit different from traditional meditation and that they aim to prepare the mind and body to stay calm and focus during stressful situations his meditation technique is based on the ancient Tibetan Touma meditation which acts to build heat in the body he also teaches a moving meditation technique in the horse stance where you're basically in a wide legged half sumo squat moving your hands back and forth following your breath when we were in Poland we actually did this for 15 minutes straight okay now let's talk about the famous wim HOF breathing technique breathing is a physiological process unconsciously regulated by the autonomic nervous system which is the part of the nervous system responsible for control of bodily functions that we don't consciously think about like breathing and our heartbeat and the digestive process the amount of oxygen we inhale influences the amount of energy that is released into our cellular body by actively training the breath we can increasingly gain control over a range of physiological processes in the body basically the wim HOF method breathing technique is designed to saturate the body with oxygen and increase the ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide in the blood by increasing the amount of oxygen in the body we're actually increasing the amount of eight in the south what is ATP you might ask ATP stands for adenosine triphosphate and is created in the mitochondria of the cell and is responsible for transporting and storing energy by increasing the amount of oxygen in the body ATP is generated more rapidly and efficiently thereby supplying the cells with an increase in energy and efficiency in the transfer of that energy to the rest of the body and the brain if you've seen the yes Theory documentary I'm sure some of you are probably curious to know what was happening during our breath work session I was getting uncontrollable laughter and Matt had a very different experience [Music] because of the high level of oxygen in the body and brain during this breath work this can elicit a variety of physical and emotional responses I always get uncontrollable laughter when I do breath work and it feels just kind of like a release of energy that's been built up now Matt doesn't actually remember any of what happened but he said that he felt really great afterwards having studied various forms of breath work it's common to have various emotional responses however we're not totally sure scientifically what is happening there yet now the cold therapy portion of this method is Wims real claim to fame but even before wim subjected himself to scientific scrutiny research supported the benefits of cold exposure and because cold exposure has been shown to boost the immune system and decrease inflammation that's why you see it being used by so many pro athletes as a method for recovery so now that we know what the wim HOF method is let's actually break down the research that has been conducted on wim and his method so far we're about to go deep this section is for my true science geeks out there 2007 was the first time that wim ever subjected himself to scientific scrutiny during one of his attempts for the longest ice bath this was not officially published however the data that was collected here showed that when may have some influence over his autonomic nervous system which in the scientific community was previously thought to be impossible and this initial data is really what paved the way for more research to come then in 2010 a case report was published where again wim was measured in an 80 minute ice bath and there's an actual TED talk about this from a scientist named Maria Hoffman from rad ban University Medical Center Wang other remarkable finding that I would like to share with you is that he increases his metabolism he can heat up his his body by doubling his metabolism during the whole procedure what he will send the 480 minutes his energy expenditure was twice as high and when that he produces extra heat which however cannot explain the fact that his core body temperature does not decrease more then in 2012 finally the first peer-reviewed scientific paper on wim HOF was published in the journal psychosomatic medicine the study was conducted at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands and this was the groundbreaking endotoxin iya study on my way to Poland I actually stopped in the Netherlands to talk to one of the main researchers who worked on this study we were interested in studying Veeam HOF because he claimed to be able to voluntary modulate two systems that are normally you are not able to voluntary modulate and one is the immune system and the second is the autonomic nervous system here is what happens while practicing his meditation technique when was injected with a dead form of the e.coli bacteria called LPS which is used in laboratory settings and normally elicits flu-like symptoms for up to 3 hours after injection but instead wim showed barely any symptoms at all what was shown was a significant decrease in inflammatory cytokines in his blood but a significant increase in anti inflammatory proteins so here we saw that wim was able to control his autonomic nervous system and therefore his innate immune response up until now all the textbook the medical textbooks they say you cannot it's not possible to modulate your autonomic nervous system or your immune response at will our research challenges this this paradigm and that's that's something that I think is really exciting wim claims that he can actually teach people to do what he does and he wanted to take it to the next level by actually getting a group of his students to also be injected with this ecoli bacteria so they took a control group of 12 healthy random individuals who were not trained in the wim HOF method and then a group of 12 random healthy individuals who were trained in the wim HOF method by wim himself and they were all injected with the LP s bacteria and then they observed the differences what was shown was that the group of participants that were trained in the wim HOF method were actually able to do what wim was able to do as well and control their immune system so this study was groundbreaking because for the first time in scientific literature it was published that humans do in fact have control over our autonomic nervous system and our immune response something that was thought to be impossible beforehand so now we're going to talk about the most recent study that was published in 2018 in the journal neuro image where researchers at Wayne State University actually observed what is happening in the brain during the wim HOF method now this study is the basis for how women decided to train our group in Poland lucky us the results of this study showed that higher-order cortical areas of the brain including the left anterior and right insula which are associated with self-reflection and sustained attention during the presence of adverse external stimuli in this case the cold were activated one big question about wim HOF was actually somewhat answered in this study brown adipose tissue or ba T otherwise known as brown fat is the type of fat responsible for heat production in the body babies have a high amount of brown fat but this slowly decreases as we age wim had shown to have higher levels of brown fat than average people his age he actually was shown to have about the same amount of brown fat as that of a 20 year old so there's this big question of whether or not the brown fat in Wims body was responsible for why he's so able to withstand the cold and then the other question was well is this genetic that he has more brown fat or is it because he frequently exposes himself to the cold thereby increasing the levels of brown fat in the body the answers that last part of the question I think we're still unsure of but what we did see in this study is that the activation of brown fat was actually negligible in comparison to what was happening in the brain which is why when we trained with women Poland he kept referring to the power of the mind and the recent study that showed that to own the minds and that this is now where the research was headed to really fine-tune this and see further what this actually means and because this study showed that the parts of the brain that were being activated are the ones associated with mood and mental well-being this is actually paving the way for research to look at how this method could potentially treat mental health and mood disorders now this would support the multitude of anecdotal evidence that has emerged from people around the world who say that this method has really helped them with their mood for me this is definitely the case as challenging as it is for me to actually get into the cold every time I do it I feel so euphoric after especially when it's combined with the meditation and the breathing technique now what you saw in my last video that emotional that I had that was just a catharsis of emotion that was really healthy and that wasn't a negative I think that this type of work is very deep and can often just crack us open and everything that we've been needing to let out comes out so there is still a lot that we need to learn when it comes to the wim HOF method however we are off to a really great start with the research that we do have now there are several studies currently being worked on that had the potential to really shake up our current understanding of the mind-body connection in a relationship to treating mental health and mood disorders there are now millions of people around the world practicing the wim HOF method and I have personally met several of them who say it has absolutely changed their lives one major question that researchers still have is trying to understand which part of the method is actually doing what the breathing the meditation in the cold therapy all seem to be doing different things we are really interested in finding out which of these elements is the most important in the effects that we observe in our studies during my time in Poland wim was so adamant about us unlocking the true power of our minds we heard this all week long you are the owner of your own brain got that your own mind your own happiness strengthen help is yours I found a lot of the challenges to be really difficult without doing any of the techniques beforehand but his point was to really show us that even without his method we are capable of so much more than we think just there activating the power of our minds I know that was a ton of information and if you are still watching then you must be a true science nerd so thank you for indulging me in this in-depth explanation of the wim HOF method I hope you found it informative please comment below if you enjoyed this video and learn something and remember to subscribe and hit the bell button so you will be notified whenever I post a new video which is every Thursday thank you so much for watching and remember you have the power to thrive you have the power to live your best life ever I will see you next week bye [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] 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Channel: Sky Life

Views: 338,242

Keywords: wim hof method, wim hof method breathing, wim hof method explained, what is the wim hof method, the iceman, wim hof, yes theory, yes theory wim hof, wim hof science, wim hof research, wim hof breathing technique, frozen alive, iceman, wim hof vice, wif hof technique, cold showers, meditation technique, 30 days of cold showers, lewis howes wim hof, wim hof joe rogan, wim hof cold shower, ice bath, meditation, breathing techniques, rich roll wim hof, science of cold showers

Id: uFlUu8wi798

Length: 16min 11sec (971 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 22 2019