cold exposure for health has collected a familiar story: brown fat wakes up, metabolism rises, and resilience follows. Otto Muzik, speaking with Scott Carney, complicates that story in a useful way.
This transcript is provided for reference and study. Timestamps link directly to the source video.
vimhof anybody can do that my problem with with Wim Hof that they say oh it's magic and it's it's kind of you know unique you don't need vimhof you don't need to go to the snitch it kind of lost its purpose it just becomes a business and I don't want to be associated with that this is going to make a lot of people angry you know this Otto it's not only what you're saying about Wim Hof it's also about what you're saying about Brown fat is great in the rodents it's not not at all important in in humans so we studied him with functional we studying the pet and looked at Brown fat actually he didn't have very much Brown fat you know we had a lot of other people off the street which have made much more Brown fat so Brown fat is actually not relevant for him Health at all this week's podcast is well a little explosive in it I am interviewing Auto music who is one of the most important neuroscientists in the Wim Hof story he analyzed Wim Hof's Brown fat content he looked at Wim Hof to explain some of the fundamental properties of the placebo effect and well he has a lot of opinions for where the Wim Hof movement is today and all also how we should really rethink the placebo effect in general and the Mind Body Connection it is fascinating and I just well let's just tune in right now Auto music thank you so much for um being on Scott Carney investigates I I just want to say um when I first met you the uh a study on Wim Hof had just come out but honestly it was way more interesting just to talk to you about the Neurology of the brain and you were you and Vibe of where um dewadker who is your associate and partner on on these scientific things you guys were instrumental in in helping me come up with this idea of a neural symbol and I just want to thank you for being there at that time and uh at this
podcast what we are talking about are is how the brain works how Consciousness Works uh and and how it relates to all these methods like vimhof tumor meditation and all the thing because it's always kind of re-warming the same thing from different angles exactly and I think the the first question that I had for you what you're best known for in my tiny Circle maybe the scientific worlds they know you for other things but in my tiny Circle you are known for studying Wim Hof putting in an MRI machine and uh figuring out how his brain works and I just want you to tell me a little bit about that experiment and and what came out of it for you so you know originally we didn't want to study vimhof at all that was kind of an afterthought what what we try to do is to study Brown fat I don't know how much you know about Brown fat a few years ago people thought that when you're exposed to cold uh that brown fat which is here supraclavicular next to the Carotid artery is activated and it uses obviously calorie because it generates Heat and the NIH thought that this will be a good way a natural way to lose weight you know you you're exposed to cold you you activate Brown fat you lose weight now uh it actually and it was based on on studies in rodents where it showed that they lost like 50 of the body weight when you expose them to cold now unfortunately the rodents are very different have different evolutionary uh kind of uh processes than humans it turned out that in humans Brown fat is really not important at all and the amount of calorie you can burn if you have 24 hours you know exposed to Coal is something around maybe 20 30 calories and a banana has 80 calories so only the
banana and you are ready okay what you're telling me is that brown fat is not what it cracked up to be is absolutely not it's it's great in the rodents it's not not at all important in in humans and if I mean if you look at the literature it was very hot and a lot of people did uh rodent studies and then they kind of transferred it to to humans which was really kind of a problem in thinking so this is going to make a lot of people angry you know this I know and it was not very popular and actually we are not quoted at all in the literature because everybody tries to you know get money from the NIH for for brown fat studies and uh but you know when you look at the literature everybody says well you know we showed this in rodents and it's going to be great in humans but it's it's actually not and actually there are good reasons for it uh that Evolution Evolution so the evolution of pressures for a rodent which has 20 grams uh has essentially no no muscle mass is very different than for a human 7 20 kilograms which is a lot of muscle it's much easier to to start shivering to generate subclinical shivering to generate heat so why would you do brown fat and brown fat is actually only important in in neonates so when when a human baby is born it doesn't have any muscle mass so how do they keep um you know so well Brown fat but then it it declines and essentially by the time you are an adult it's completely gone so why did you end up studying Wim Hof so VV so in order to activate Brown fat you need to cold exposure and with a kind of uh kind of working on some paradigms called exposure put people called exposure measuring the the calories and then putting it into pet
scanner to to measure oxygen consumption and so on and some Mr studies and somebody mentioned it in passing is like by the way there is a guy who you know is is very paradoxical response to cold you know it's vimhof that's the first time I heard about vimhof and you know we kind of just say oh let's just talk to this guy and Vim was very very uh kind of interested and said no no I'll be in Detroit you know in a few months so I would be happy to come and you know kind of do this cold exposure and and so on so we studied him really kind of as a as an opportunity but it was never intended like we have a vimhof uh program it was just yeah what did you find if you could just summarize very quickly what did you find when you studied so really what we found is was really interesting uh that um when uh vimhov uh performed the so so we studied him with function we studying the pet and looked at Brown fed actually he didn't have very much Brown fat you know we had a lot of other people off the street which have made much more Brown fat so Brown fat is actually not relevant for him Health at all but then we put him in a functional MRI scanner and we had this Paradigm where we have five minutes uh called exposure five minutes neutral exposure and you know kind of looked at what are the regulatory mechanism in the brain when you exposed a person to cold and then uh you're warm him up again and what we found is very interesting that it was in the very active Electro gray which is in the brain stem which is a relatively important structure in the upper brain stem which um does a lot of things so it works with the hypothalamus to to set uh processes in in motion like
cardiovascular you know uh the the uh vasoconstriction and so on but it also uh has some motivational motivational aspect and also what it does is it's it's um it suppresses pain so pain or or uh when you are uncomfortable from cold it actually suppresses that by by releasing um cannabinoids and opioids and what we saw it was very interesting that we saw when he actually performed his his you know his breathing and meditation that we saw a really high increase of blood flow FM rice just blood flow in this periodical periodactyl gray and then we kind of starting thinking about what is all means and we thought it's a stress induced analgesia that if you and what stress induced analgesia is that if you are in a stress situation and then you get the second stressor then the first basically you don't feel the second stress so basically you run away from a tiger you're in a stress situation you you sprain your ankle you don't feel the ankle because that's right because you have a tiger to worry about right um it's uh mediated by the periodical grade by releasing cannabinoids and opioids okay that was interesting that's why we started to think more about this mechanism regulator mechanism in the brain so what you're saying then I mean Wim Hof does have cold tolerance in and above your average Joe off the street I have cold tolerance in and above the average L3 because I do ice baths regularly I do exposure um is there do we are we generating more heat and are there mechanisms behind that so that goes directly to the to you know what we want to talk about about the brain is essentially regulatory organ it regulates the body
that's the purpose like the heart is a pump complicated pump just pumps blood and you know there are a lot of parameters but it's a pump a kidney is a filter it filters blood there's a lot of other things but it's a field the brain is a regulatory order so how does it regulate the body regulates it reactively and predictively so let me reactively is you get exposed to cold it's it's yeah it it sensed that the there are sensory organs which sense of you know the the temperature is dropping cold temperature is dropping so uh the sympathetics and there's a sympathetic parasympathetic nervous system autonomic system they actually initiate some action in that case there's a constriction that you you know move the blood into the thing you don't radiate that much heat but but also what what it does is through the periodical gray is that you generate a a trigger for Action so making fire going taking shelter and so on and this actually relates so a reactive reactive response to a challenge is internal which is the hypothalamus it's you know cardiovascular vasoconstriction so and uh trigger for Action so the quality the the feeling of cold is actually a trigger so you actually respond to it by performing an action so if you've been following me for a little while you know that I wrote this book called The Wedge and Auto music was really really important for how I ended up conceiving of the idea of neuro symbols if you want to find out more I would love you to pick up a copy uh and there's a link down there in the description all right without further Ado back to our interview let me understand this um so what you're saying I think is that when I jump into the cold water and I control myself in that
water that I'm not actually heating myself up at all I'm just sort of like not worrying about getting colder is that right there's not actually heating mechanism so so there are several aspects let me kind of rephrase them so the brain regulates the body reactively so respect about its internal and external response triggering an action or just doing something in the body in predictive predictive means that you and reaches a much better way to to regulate the body because you want to know that it's going to be cold so then you take some actions right now which prevents you to actually being cold so if you have a correct predictive model which you need to now simulate and become and that's actually Consciousness and that's basically where we're going with it but if you can simulate that tomorrow it's going to be cold then you take an action today that you actually get firewood or you know buy a jacket or whatever which actually prevents preempt your reactive response so you not even need a reactive response which is actually much more efficient because a reactive response you already needed to move the body away from the optimum and then actually you kind of put it back by performing an action you know making fire I guess I'm not understanding you or maybe I am understanding you um here which is that in the ice water when you're actually in that condition and you're relaxed in it are you saying that that you have no biological mechanism to heat yourself when that so there's nothing there the first question is why would you voluntarily go into a ice bath that's actually what you should because Evolution that actually makes no sense you know so you move your body so you have a you have an ideal ideal physiological state which is your 37
degrees Celsius yeah and now you put in a white spot why would you do that and why you know the answer is that you say and this is actually comes into this what we call hermetic stressors that so the body this reactive response of the body has mechanisms which are mediated by the sympathetic nervous system again cardiovascular vasoconstriction right maybe activation of brown fat sure now if you now have controls deviation so you act like exercise exercise is a controlled deviation from the optimum because the more you practice your recovery mechanism which is really the sympathetic nervous system the better you're going to be in the future when when you think so when you go into the code what you do is they say okay I'm gonna I know this is actually makes no sense right now but by by exercising my uh camera regulatory system I'm gonna be better off when I actually need it and that's the same thing with exercise with a temperature with with fasting you know why would we fast you know makes no sense you know you need nutrition but you say okay uh you know eventually I'm gonna be hungry one day so if I really now exercise fasting intermittent fasting in order to uh exercise this mechanism of digestive system to deal with times of of scarcity then I'm going to be better off in the future but here and that's actually kind of the the issue which I think is most important that the reactive and predictive regulation work against each other so in plain English you lay in the bed you are absolutely comfortable and say hey that's great your brain stem says perfect this is a perfect perfect physiological uh State don't do anything
but now your predictive system say well you know that's true but you know if I don't go out of my bed you know I'm I'm going to lose my job so maybe in three months I'm not going to be able to pay the rent and I'm not going to have you have a bet so you get up now you get up and your brain says what you're doing you were just comfortable this is perfect now you're cold you have headache it's raining why are you getting up and so and that's actually work we coming back that the reactive and predictive system it sounds like you're not talking about your it sounds like you're talking about motivation in various ways right like and and the way that your brain um yeah motivation is just just the the kind of how do you exercise it but the driving force is the regulation of your body so again I'm coming back that your brain is regulates the body reactively and predictably that's kind of the Mantra no I guess you're either speaking past me or we're just not connecting on this question and my question I think is very simple um and I think you you've yeah I think you're going into like the default mode Network here and you're going to some some fascinating things yeah so when a person jumps into ice water you know if we want to look at sort of the old Nazi experiments right where they put Jews in in the Holocaust and they froze them to death in water and they measured how long they lasted them and there were some very serious both ethical and scientific problems with those studies but people didn't last all that long now you know someone like me who's been training someone like whim you know you can stay in the ice bath for um I've done a half an hour at 32 degrees I know people who've done two hours at that temperature um once you exercise your regulatory system you exercised your sympathetic nervous system the more you do it the
better you your recovery maker isn't going to be so if you do this for a long time then you're gonna be much more resistant and that's actually where vimhov is so what you're saying is that the sympathetic nervous system will generate heat somehow how will it do that yes I mean it will generate Heat by shivering by by invasive constriction but you don't shame no it's something to shivering you you think you don't shiver but your muscle is shivering it's upcoming a shivering it's not like this here it's your muscles are more actually more activated so if you put a a Electrical uh thing you will see that your muscles have subclinical shivering you have to that's the only way how your body generates heat so you're saying that when I'm in the ice water and I'm relaxed and I don't feel myself shivering you're saying I'm still shivering it's just I just don't notice shuffling on the subconscious yes you do great awesome I mean there's there's no other results mystery solve Sub sub uh subclinical shivering great um you know in what doesn't kill us I wrote that the science on Brown fat was suspicious to me I mean I talked about Brown fat because we talked about the heavy Mouse and the the thin Mouse um but it did seem to me that there's a mechanism by which you are able to heat yourself in ice water because I'd experienced that it's not brown fat in humans yeah it's just some other another mechanism metabolism Brown fat it's not going for shivering that's actually what it is there's a guy named Andrew huberman who's a famous neuroscientist out of Stanford and he said that um when you take an ice bath uh and uh that the best way to um lose weight was to to shiver to induce shivering yourself and to fidget he said if fidgeting was very useful now every motion that's that that's the principle of exercise yeah you know I mean it's kind of a different way of exercise you're moving your body every time you use your muscles energy ATP gets used up
so yeah by definition it has to have an impact on your metabolism energy energy metabolism so you did this study and whim cites your study all the time it's actually I was looking at this today you're mentioned in his autobiography that um you know and and you're a big deal in the Wim Hof Community Otto I don't know if you know this I want to stay away from from the community because the more you are part of the the thing the more you try to please people so you know the more you stay away from from Fame the better you will be and the more objective you will be and that is something that we need to talk about um I was going to ask you about how that study predicts the placebo effect and it helps explain the placebo effect but we can also go into the question of so that's that's all kind of related and we can talk about this it's it's you see all these terms are kind of very related and once you have the correct framework it's actually they kind of naturally fall from there so again kind of basically what would I you know kind of leading into what where we're going with it so if you have a predictive regulation by definition you you have to have a simulation system you have to have something where you now simulate which is just in your head you know a simulation which doesn't really happen in real life so okay once you have once you recognize that you need to have a simulation then that's actually kind of going into the network where we have in order to have a simulation you have to symbolic representation or something or the table of of water of and so on of cold you know symbolic representation and then you put them together and simulate what's going to happen now that's that's really important because
people get confused between the physical world and the predictive simulative one so the the physical world is cause and effect there is no purpose no meaning it's causing effect it's deterministic one thing gives the other it's a domino effect but in your simulation in your thing there there is that you can now Define in your simulation in your predictive system which we can talk about uh is is now something which is called meaning or purpose because you said an action because you simulate that you want to eventually I don't know go to the Kilimanjaro so it's like if I want to go to Kilimanjaro in my shorts then I need to do this and be to do this I need to do something else till it looks back to the to today to right now and now you set an action and in your simulation this action has a purpose that eventually you're gonna be the thing but in the real world this doesn't exist in the real world you just do one thing after the other and there is no purpose so so which is important to me that people understand that you have a physical world in a simulation predictive world and you know a lot of these these terms like motivation purpose and so on are only defined in the virtual in the simulation but the simulate and I write I talk about this stuff all the time in my podcast um and I love the fact that you're using the word simulation because usually when people in the pop culture right now say we all live in a simulation they're saying we all live in a computer but what you're saying is more right right which is that our brain creates a simulation of the world around us through our senses and then that's your cognitive apparatus right that's the definition that's actually what cognition is the cognition is just a different word for your simulation because a cognition has symbols in the way how to connect symbols together in
order to predict what's going to happen but you're also saying I believe I know that you're saying those simulations that we create in our brains affect the way our bodies respond and help with the placebo effect so if I'm sick obviously obviously they have to because that's the point it's a predictive regulation I mean if you make why do we have the simulation in order to regulate the body right now and in future so you know the meaning of life when the Neuroscience point of view is have to the optimal physiological state right now and in future so in order to do that you have to so the the simulation needs to actually look back eventually because you see the simulation is only important or simulations are only good for that that you predict what you actually what actually you're going to set right now so the simulation which you simulate something and has no effect on today it's meaningless because so again and I think this is the most important point that you understand that a simulation is only as good as it informs you both action to take right now in this moment so you eventually come to some some goal I don't know but it seems like there's more to it than that just using your own language and just using the way you're speaking about it is that it's not only an action you take such as gathering firewood to heat yourself up it's also saying look I'm gonna jump into that ice path and my body needs to be able to survive it and therefore there are unconscious processes going on in your body to let you deal with that ice path you just can't think about them you just don't know you don't think yourself listen to the micro Shivers so let's go so again so this kind of what people get confused so you have the
regulation reactive predictive and then you have two ways how to accomplish it one is using symbols so this is predictive and one is using you know emotions or the what we call unconscious but what is unconscious is that it's not symbol based so we we loop everything which is not symbol based so like hunger if you have if you are hungry and don't actually express it in the in a sentence like I'm hungry that was unconscious or non-symbolic representation and still things happening because now you know it kind of motivates you to do something and without really kind of cognitively or symbolically processing it so let me actually go back what is the brain stem doing the brain stem is the lowest level the brain stem and there are several of the parabratial nucleus the periodical hypothalamus generates a a image of the body reaches two axes the energy so arousal we call it arousal and Valence so the the on the y-axis you have how much energy do I have on my disposal and on the x-axis is how far I'm able how far am I away from the optimum so if you have a lot of and so it constantly generates that now okay so what happens now when you move away from the optimum it depends on if you have a lot of energy or you have little energy now if you have let's assume you have a lot of energy and you move away you are kind of you know highly motivated doing things working out and so on if you have low energy and move away then you might get depressed so what I'm trying to say is that the
brainstem generates a map of your current state of the body and your periodical brain now says okay giving where I am in this space how much energy you have and how far away I I am from the optimum generates which we call you know motivational drives but it's but you know X Trigger action triggers which are emotions that you see I'm hungry hungry means okay I have you know I don't have enough uh glucose so you you now uh move the way to to eat or you know or temperature or or physical Integrity you know pain what is pain pain actually tells you you moved away you are you know your physical Integrity is compromised so there is a certain reaction to it that you know now you move your hand away you you run away whatever so that's kind of so that's the first level this is the first level which is non-symbolic it's just kind of and it works by generating emotions just the thing now the first level of prediction is what we call the the conditioning that you have the hippocampus which kind of remembers certain things and um and uh says okay if but it is very simple it have a very simple structure that it's only if this then that so kind of follows the structure of the world kind of this deterministic you know Pavlov's Pavlov's uh you know dog if if the Bell then I get food it's kind of very very simple simple correlation yeah I know it's actually it's fascinating listening to you use these words because my so my background is in anthropology you know I got to my um to my dissertation uh for the PHD and then I dropped out to do journalism but we also in anthropology talk about symbols we
also talk about energy expenditure in terms of culture and deterministic factors and non-deterministic factors and it's it's interesting that Neuroscience is used using similar ideas that anthropologists have have oftentimes realize that they don't know what the hell they're talking about when it comes to symbols when it comes to what energy really is and how people actually operate we have these deterministic ideas of how cultures work you know that one one idea in the 50s was that the a culture would always um you I optimally use the resources of its environment uh and and that and and it would be and the culture would be deterministic by using its optimal resources so a coastal living um tribe would get all the mollusks before it went for pine nuts you know that's a sort of a that solids and and that sort of it turns out that's totally wrong it turns out that humans act in totally weird and unpredictable ways and culture sort of forms in unusual places so when I hear you use the word symbol when I hear you use the word um you know we have accesses and we have optimal ways that humans work I I think to myself maybe neuroscientists don't know what they're talking about because you you've obviously created a heuristic um that is very much within the deterministic model which is what anthropologists were doing in the 50s before the anthropologists were like oh man and they ended up in the post you see the problem is anthropology that they're kind of obviously in the simulation space that you know you eventually need to see how it's implemented in the into your regulatory system and that's actually I think it's the strength of Neuroscience that we say okay you know you can have any any idea you want because you're in simulation space you can simulate whatever you want fantasy is actually sure you know simulation that's the advantage and disadvantage of of a simulation that you
can have pigs that fly that never exist but you can have it the Neuroscience doesn't work so it doesn't operate outside of culture right so your brain is doing all these simulations in in a real world that's out there right and it's interacting with other brains in a cultural medium and you can and we cannot say that a brain exists on its own right you could you can that's one way to look at it right we can say you know here's the brain stem and here's how sensation moves from the outside world but these simulations are also based on the simulations of other people and Collective imagination no you need to react to the other people and actually these are these uh so what are the motivational drives it's food you know energy and nutrition it's sex you know reproduction it's it's physical Integrity that you you know pain and it's social status why social statues and that's actually where we're coming with anthropology we're just studying why social status important why do people buy impressive uh clothes and things because it's you know because Society or if you put people together if people collaborate they generated adult edit value edit resources and if you have social status of resources it's like talking to Marshall silence it seems like you're you're in my favorite era of anthropology because anthropology was really useful in that time period this is when anthropologists would be on Verandas drinking gin and tonics it was the most fun period of anthropology and I agree with you that because it made sense but the problem is is that humans ended up being more complex than we wanted them to be in our simplified models and irrational actors as well and when we try to why why are human irrational people want to have food they want sex they want to have comfort they want to have high social status and they want to explore because uh you know the thing that's basically tell me a
situation where this doesn't apply this is basically you can reduce I mean reduce their you know Shades but essentially these are the motivation drives because this drive you to boards you know physiological Optimum if you have a high social status then you get disproportional resources from the added value it's it's advantageous for you and that's why you know people you know there is so much to talk to you about here and I would totally nerd out with you on this particular point for a long time um I would say I I just but but I think our listeners may go somewhere else I would recommend David graber's new book about um the unfolding of human evolution uh which touches on these points uh and I'll put a link in the show notes but let's move on and leave this here for now because I don't think we're going to resolve the Neuroscience topology um uh discussion anytime soon I will say is that so you're so important in the Wim Hof community in the cold community that you're written in his book I've written a book about Wim Hof uh and as you know as I've talked to you about I I am in the process of releasing a new video about um real problems with Wim Hof especially with him becoming more famous and become and saying more and more irrational things and the number of deaths associated with the Wim Hof method um but that's exactly you know vimhov exactly supports what I'm just saying that you know basically why is Wim Hof now getting more and more [Music] um uh you know why is he Addicted to Fame because it increases the social status so you know now he can he did disproportional uh resources he can travel people give him free stuff and people uh kind of bow down to you to him so this is exactly social status
is important because and that's actually and this is the problem that if you don't recognize that one of the motivational drives is social status you will be surprised that each of the gurus and Wim Hof is one of them eventually kind of sells out you have to be very careful not to fall into the Trap of follow your motivational Drive which is social status which is a very important motivational Drive which is actually and that's my point it's actually a really hard coded into your brain step it's not like you know people make this up or you need the Consciousness you know even on the subconscious level you already want to have high social status and if you take a group of 10 people together eventually a structure is going to emerge automatically without anybody planning it or thinking about it or or symbolically representing it or scheming so that's and and so basically with respect to vimhof you know once you get and that's actually kind of I think the problem once you make this a business where a business model that you need to succeed in a business you want social status because your social status gives you directly advantage in your business that means money and and fame and and influence so I think it's impossible for humans to not do this if they con if they make this as their uh kind of the means of living you see if even would have to do something else even another job and this is on the side he probably wouldn't develop like that but because that's his full-time job he has it's inevitable and actually so does many other gurus it's not alone and this so you have to be careful with with I think that the more you you one tries to
you know be important the less one is objective that's unfortunately you know related to you know our drive for social status and this is why you don't want to work with him anymore that's what you told me the other day well I want basically I disagree with the business model so you know vimhof went into this that you know I want to help people you know I went through a tough time and you know I came up with as a method which we can you know it's a matter it's kind of a variation of G2 more meditation and and things people did many you know many many times in different different variations and it's fine you know and he said okay I want to help people that's great just do it but once it becomes now a business where they have you know uh luxury hotels in in Poland where they you know and Vim not him shows up anymore and doesn't really try to you know motivate people then it kind of lost its purpose it just becomes a business and I don't want to be associated with that um I mean I've gone through a very similar um Journey uh as you have it's interesting that we've done it separately um and and are able to talk about it now um when you said the uh when I look at your paper on Wim Hof we talk about how the placebo effect works um Wim Hof touts your study as proving that his method is the key to the placebo effect how do you uh it's responsive it's nonsense really so hopeless people essentially now so the so now we're coming into the simulation we can talk about this the network the salience network the default mode Network and the central executive Network which do different things and we can talk about them so once you have
simulations uh so you make a simulation and then you you predict something happening and if your prediction is correct you get rewarded obviously this is this makes sense evolutionary because why would you want to have a simulation that it's not true you know that's it's actually it's worse than having no simulation so so you your brain or your word system rewards you if your simulation is confirmed and that's a that's kind of the basis of motivational reasoning now where is this placebo effect come in now in the real world it's not black and white so essentially you can so you make a simulation and then something happens and there is a vehicle room you can interpret it in many different ways right you can improve oh this is what I say yeah I didn't express it executive way but this is actually what I meant or not so so your placebo effect means that you have you get a you make a prediction you get a sensation back which is difficult to interpret but you interpret it in the correct in in a way which confirms to your simulation because you know it's it's uh inconclusive essentially the information is inconclusive now but this now confirms gives you a dopamine release in your nucleus accumbens and now you actually say oh no this is really true so you actually believe it and your lower level networks kind of go along because they say well you know that's really true so you kind of influence your lower level networks by making this prediction making these these um the being rewarded interpreting it in a certain way and by interpretation interpreting it in this way you you now
so let me maybe I need to rephrase it because because this is important point and you know I kind of didn't didn't say it in the client so all these systems this this uh non-symbolic and symbolic they always run in parallel you see you don't have like oh just just the non-symbolic no only the emotion only the thing they're all running parallel and they they as we talked about they need to suppress each other so that means that if you're interpreting something in a certain way which is you know you are in the forest in the darkness and your your uh kind of unconscious or non-symbolic brains to say oh this is danger this is the thing so you're starting getting afraid but if you now see something symbolically and say no no I interpret it as a shadow or whatever this interpretation now suppresses your non-symbolic thing so this that it's going both ways mutually these these systems the reactive predictive symbolic nonsible they always suppress each other and that's actually the basis of the of placebo effect so is does the placebo effect in your mind and the way you're describing it it sounds like to me that you're sort of saying the placebo effect is all in your head so it it so absolutely it's in your head but you're in your head but you see when you say in the head it you know the the brain is a regulator organ which regulates the body so if your regulatory system regulates the body in a certain way it actually has an effect on the body it's there is you know that's actually the problem that people think it's in your head the brain is a regulator organ which regulates the body so whatever happens in the regulatory organ affects actually the body it's kind of the same thing
you see that's that's my problem that people always say it's on your head yeah it's in the regular system which regulates the body so now I am convinced that something happens I'm regulating my body in a different way so obviously it will have an effect on your body so yes so so then when we talked about the difference between the material world and the SIM simulation and if you have an underlying condition that is a medical problem such as let's we can throw in an autoimmune list or you can throw in cancer I don't care whatever you want and then you Placebo that up with your predictive modeling and maybe it's the power of positive thinking whatever it is that you have to do to get into that Placebo mindset does that have clinical healing power absolutely so it's basically vvv we know that and so you go to the doctor and they they show you oh I was in Harvard shows you kind of the thing now you actually convince or whatever this guy is legit so if they give you a sugar pill and say this is going to help you because I started this for 20 years okay now you say hey that you know look at that the guy's a accomplished person so now every feedback from your body now you interpret very different you know so now you have like some sensation in your body and uh before you would say oh you know this is pain and this is bad and I said no no now this is different because you interpret it different and because you interpret it different different mechanism in your brain same as set in motion that's kind of the important thing in Texas place we call psychosocial stimulation what is the best way if I'm gonna make the best Placebo right if I'm gonna gonna make a placebo Factory and and create something which optimizes the exact processes that you're talking about how would I go about doing it so the most important is that that the people believe in it so that their
simulation really is really so the belief and that's why you know all these people like vimhof they need to have kind of this Aura of you know they are special because that's actually it's like the guy who puts puts the Harvard or I mean he might have gone to Harvard or not or might have been completely it really doesn't matter it's only matters what you actually believe how you actually set up your simulation so so this is you know really really the point that convincing you that that uh this is actually that your the breathing and the core exposure is going to help you that's actually the more I mean what is cognitive behavioral therapy I mean cognitive behavioral therapy is only that you know the the psychotherapist put you in a situation where you have to succeed and then then makes you believe that it's based on the breeding or based on the amulet he gave you so it's it's so again the placebo effect is important because it's Placebo effects kind of you know derogative if psychosocial stimulation is a better way that psychologically you you generate in the other person a prediction or a simulation model which not gonna interpret Sensation from the body in a very in a way you want him to them to interpret that helps you it it decreases pain or whatever sure so what you're saying is that the brain creates this simulation you have an idea for what you where you want to be you have a firm belief in that and somehow your body because you're sending the right signals to your body um figures out a way to optimally for example you go into an ice bath yeah it's uncomfortable if you but if
you say hey this is going to help me you know uh two weeks from now then you actually interpret the pain very differently right let me say hey I'm gonna be here for for four hours and nobody's gonna help me and I'm gonna diet why is that it's basically the same sensation but it's a different simulation because now you say oh I have control over it I can get all anytime I want but in the real world it's still the same Sensation that nothing changed with your sensation your your temperature is going down but your interpretation of this the sensation is very different and that's actually makes it now that's actually generate because for example you say no no you know it really hurts like hell but this is good for me because I'm closer to my goal on I don't know going to Kilimanjaro in my show so now you get rewarded because now you're closer to your eventual goal which is it's not only you being rewarded it's all of the cells in your body also being rewarded right it's also all of those those semi-conscious and unconscious processes not rewarded what's going to happen is that your sympathetic nervous system which actually tries to bring your body back to the optimum so the sympathetic nervously the autonomic nervous system essentially it's just the execution mechanism which makes sure that if your body goes away from the optimum physiology Optimum it brings it back and now all these things what we're doing this G2 movies this the thing is that we exercising this this mechanism and now we're interpreting it differently where so are the the limits to the placebo possibilities right because obviously there's Placebo has a certain range where it can work right you know I feel a little muggy today maybe my bowels a lot of it maybe you can Placebo that out but I can't do it for a gunshot wound right I
mean yeah yeah really right so where how would we demarcate the the territory of the placebo effect would you say well you know it's it's the more you use it the better you get into it then the more extensive it's going to be so at the beginning it's like this exercise you know you you ran for five minutes if you never run before you exhausted you know after you do this for for a six months you're gonna be much better and then you can push these things so the more you exercise it the more you're gonna be and you know obviously there is a physiological limit you know if I cut off your hand you know no simulation is going to help you but you know you can go pretty far and actually that's that's what what what's happened I mean yeah if you look why do people I mean people put so much on onto them I don't know explore us why do they go to the North Pole they freeze it's they hungry why do they do this because they think same first of all exploration that they try to uncover hidden hidden rewards and secondly social statues that say Hey you know I'm freezing right now but you know I'm gonna be famous and you know a lot of women are gonna want to have sex with me or whatever it is so your simulation is that that this is this gives gets you closer to eventually the goal of higher Social statues and that's actually why you don't feel the pain as as much as you do so you can call it placebo effect or you can call it a suppression that you have a plan that you're gonna do this feed you're gonna go to the North Pole Barefoot and in short while you do it because you're going to be famous and then you get all these rewards so you're saying you're seeing three levels here here when you're describing this you see there's the neurological there's the brain and it's nerves that shoot out to the body right there's your projection of the how the world how you want it to be you know your fantasy of getting all the women because you went to the North Pole and
then you also have and I think this is really important and I don't think we've been able to quite point at it but you also have the physiological responses in the body that are below that right that that you know you may say hey I want to go via North Pole Explorer and that that happens in the words in your brain right the words in your brain Say Hey I want to be a North Pole Explorer but your body also is like well to do that to get to my optimal cross hatch of energy versus what was the other axis you had the energy versus deviation from physiology to uh you know homeostasis right then what's happening is that your body is responding to the ideal that you have right but to the dream or to the desire your body is changing in relation to that which how does that make you different from Tony Robbins and the power of positive thinking no it's it's basically we're talking all about the same thing and the only thing which I'm telling you is how it's actually executed in the brain stem and in the limbic system and in the cortical system but the you know and that's actually you know my problem with with Wim Hof that they say oh it's magic and it's it's kind of you know unique no it's all we're always talking about the same thing in different variations it's always about a regular system which is reactive predictive symbolic non-symbolic and you know every and now you kind of do different variation on this but this is actually what what is happening and you know so vimhof anybody can do that you don't need vimhof you don't need to go to the snooze God once you understand that say okay if I'm gonna and you know we can talk about the vimhof about you know this breathing and and the thing it's kind of all natural physiological uh kind of processes in the body you know the tingling because your CO2 is now low and and so on the the stress
induced analgesia the the kind of uh meditation what they call meditation is more like um a a prediction about something where you interpret it in signals from your body in a different ways which said different right uh sympathetic uh responses in in motion which kind of are different than they would yeah so it sounds like to answer my question from earlier which is I also talk about this on the wedge as you are aware to make the best Placebo right we're gonna to package up the best Placebo what we need are the strongest Sensations and the sensations I'm saying that very broadly these could be emotional Sensations and these could be physical Sensations it could be a lot of things and then a firm belief that you believe is the most important actually both But Otto it needs to be both because it needs to be something that's visceral to you that's like ah there's a a thing and then you need to your belief needs to interact with that sensation whether it's an emotion but you see the the sensation is always the same thing it's like you know Nietzsche said there is no truth on the interpretation then well no matter what things happen but you interpret it in a different way it's actually it's a different different kind of consequences in your simulation in the placebo effect you can think that you always will gonna get the same sensation but if you have a belief or a certain simulation or a way to interpret these the the sensation it's gonna set different different recovery mechanism in in well I don't I would I I'm gonna push on you here a little bit because I think the volume of the sensation is very Salient to this question no no I mean and and so there are limits again I'm saying that you see the more you practice this recovery mechanism the more you're gonna have uh a leeway obviously if you're starting out you you
don't have very much but the more you know once you you because your recovery mechanisms are going to be much more efficient they're going to be much much stronger and so on so you get much further so you you can actually get for your placebo effect or your your simulation actually much more bang for your buck so and that's why why do people do exercise why do they fasting why do they they called exposure because they train their their recovery actually they train the the sympathetic nervous system to recover them back from once you move the body out of physiological Optimum back together and the more you do it the better it's going to be and the faster it's going and the less you're going to be affected by right and that's you know you see them yourself at the beginning when you went into the ice pad you were freezing you know you do it for a year it's nothing why because now your sympathetic nervous system is much better in once you get into the code shutting down the uh basically the blood flow to your organs keeping the thing uh kind of releasing releasing cannabinoids in your you know periactral grade that that decreases the pain perception because you've done this many times they kind of well it actually happens much quicker than that you gain the resilience in a matter of two days with it but but the interesting thing here is that I don't think you can do it with just anything like I don't think I could have a fantastic North Pole um Placebo response by um by eating bananas right I can't look at a banana be like this is going like no matter how much belief I do put into that banana um I I don't think I can have I think it needs to be no no it's something you see but what you say is that the belief or the simulation needs to be reasonable you see you know if I give you a banana say you're gonna be nothing you're not gonna believe it you can say whatever you want that in in your core in your simulations that that makes no sense so you actually don't believe it so you need to something which you
really believe if you really would believe the banana you would be able to do it it's actually how reasonable and how probably it is the the simulation you do and you know people say no but uh it's really what they believe people can believe the craziest thing it really doesn't matter if it's true or not or if it makes sense it only thing if they really believe that there is a tie in between this action the banana and actually the North Pole Expedition if they really actually have a simulation when they say okay I can see the right the correlation so the way and the way to do that is to make the banana more Salient right it's it's to make the reason why um you know you're right if there is a cultural um approach to bananas that they were truly sacred objects you would create that salience that is true but you do need to get there through a certain sensory yeah it's a religion I mean you know I give you some some piece of waffle and say this is you know I had a cat that was deathly afraid of bananas I would look at a banana it would run away this is why I bring up the banana it there was a religion with a banana and that cat um Otto I this has been a great conversation um you're a fascinating person to speak with you know I'm I'm basically I think that the take-home message really and you know I mean there are a lot of effects and we're not even talked about the cognitive system because you see the unfortunately the default mode Network you know it shouldn't be called the default mode right it was generated in the 90s by Mike Rachel from from washu University why is it called default mode so actually just just very briefly two minutes we have symbolically and the cognitive how do we create simulation they're actually three systems one is
this uh sales network which is the anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex which is concerned with the here and now so you know how do I feel what is my thing you know am I hungry I'm a thing but symbolically represented and you know kind of uh react to that oh I'm hungry or I'm not hungry you know right now then there is the second one which is a little bit more it reaches the deformable network the thing which is a a simulation which takes things from your past projects in the future does daydreaming say okay if if this would have happened I could have done this or so on now why is it called and then there's the third one the central executive which is really um actually symbolically representing all the other networks so it's symbolically represents the sales network the deformable network the brain stem and so on which which when I talk okay right now when we talk about the brain we are in the central executive because now the symbolically represent the default mode Network there is a word for it the informal Network and and the sales network so that actually controls everything else and actually generally but why why do we call it the photo Network and actually it is related to to the fact that our brain was was so our brain was designed for a regulatory organ was designed for a life of scarcity where you have little resources you need to eat a lot that's why you go to the buffet you eat because too much food was never a problem in in the world so and also and that's actually now much more relevant information information was always difficult to get but now that you have CNN 24 hours you know people thought that it's it's a glut of information your brain was never
designed for having a lot of information that was always decide for scarcity for information that's why people you know listen to Fox News or CNN or Internet and and believe everything because you know so we're using using the the kind of the brain of labor for we have a you know we have abundance now it was to shine for scarcity and that's a kind of evolution but let me just make the last but default mode so in you know thousand years ago you were in the sailings network because every every time you walked in the jungle or the thing something could have happened so you always was in the present you didn't have time to kind of Daydream and what's going to happen tomorrow what happened yesterday you were kind of like really locked in on this Here and Now because you might have died every second you know something so and that's actually was was intended so it was intended that you have the science Network where you have interception then you kind of constantly uh kind of monitor what what state you are in what your environment spell the roses and so on and then was kind of this this network this deform on it was kind of or if you are in the safety somewhere in your you know then we can kind of think about tomorrow or the thing but that was kind of an afterthought now now we're looking at today today we obviously don't need to worry about anything because we are constantly safe so now we are spending so much time in the deformal network in the you know what happened yesterday what will happen what is my career going how do I sell my book and so on because you don't need to pay attention where you're sitting there because you are safe you know that nothing's going to happen to you right and that's why so it was not meant to be a deformable network but in our society of the 21st century that's now become the default mode because we
don't need to worry about the thing right now so you have the default mode which is kind of the daydreaming and then you have the Central executive which is kind of the the overall and that's kind of important because people always do this that there is like an inner Observer the in-app server is actually a central executive Network which now symbolically represents each of these other networks so if you like Daydream and then say oh man what I'm doing I need to focus that's actually where your central executive came in because now you realize that you were in the deformable network that you need to activate the the sales network that so so these three networks do different things and the default mode Network unfortunately has a has kind of a bad name but you know that's that's history anyway the I mean I love that you have these the the Neuroscience has language to describe these disparate Networks it's also as an anthropologist I listen to this and I and it's very much your central executive Network defining all of these things and they all arose in one giant Network called the brain right and you know you also state that it's so important to the culture and the environment that the organism lives in I mean our our ancestors you know uh lived in trees lived in holes in trees and spent 18 hours a day asleep and only would go out under the cover of Darkness to forage um that no human that you know that with that it like like Homo sapiens no homo sapiens um didn't have those three networks were operating all at all times because humans Homo sapiens had culture right had interactions had um all three operating uh it's just maybe were yeah but that's really the problem and that's actually the problem in with the brain that all these so the non-symbolic the symbolic the different so the non-symbolic
and the symbolic kind of operate at the same time so you have emotions which are really on the in kind of in the in on the brainstem level the non-symbolic unconscious uh and then you have the symbolic the silence Network where you say okay you know uh kind of uh experiencing things saying oh I'm hungry it's the reason why it's so hard to talk about these things is that the language of the brain is not words the language of the brain is part words but it's mostly Sensations and these other things that can only be which is really the brainstem so that's actually the brain set so but you see the the nice thing is so this is actually the important point that once you have non-symbolic representation they can be parallel so emotions can be you can be or Sensations and emotions can be you can be afraid you can be hungry you can be cold all at the same time once you go into symbolic representation the sequence of symbols has a meaning so at one time it's parallel uh it's serial so you can only have one thought at a time because the symbols when they put together in a certain certain thing as a certain temporary in structural sequence so the advantage of the non-symbolic representation is that it it's all this basically they are parallel yeah the the symbol that's why you can only do either salience Network or the default mode or the central executive you cannot have them all three at the same time it's impossible so you switch back and forth because it's based on symbols and symbols together I feel like we can talk for a long time but I do need to wrap up um real pleasure if someone needs to find out more about Otto where do they go basically they can read my
papers I mean actually a lot of this what we talked about you know we published and you mentioned vibo de vodka I'm working closely with him um on on this kind of try to understand extend the brain but you know just look up Auto music uh see some some of the papers and if they have any questions they you know I'd be happy to talk to to anybody I love it I think it's important that people realize you know what the brain is all about actually I always think that we should have in school we should have a topic where we say kind of the manual for the brain because you know it's so important that you kind of understand yourself how how your regular system works and I I'm pretty sure that eventually one day we're gonna have a topic where we just people in the school gonna learn about their regulatory system so at that's kind of my two cent students thank you so much for listening to this episode of Scott Carney investigates it means a ton that you have come out to well get this far into the episode if you are still here if you found something at all useful in this conversation please share this episode with a friend uh that is how podcasts get seen in the World At Large as always I release this first on Spotify and apple podcast and then it becomes a YouTube video uh from pokey bear LLC in Denver Colorado thank you so much this is Scott Carney investigates [Music]
Transcript auto-generated by YouTube. Verbatim — duplicates intentionally preserved.
The point is not to dismiss cold. It is to stop asking one mechanism to explain everything. Human adaptation is larger than brown fat. It includes muscle, shivering, blood flow, expectation, attention, and the brain's capacity to organize sensation into meaning.
the science of brown fat matters in infants and shows intriguing effects in laboratory settings. Muzik's challenge is narrower: in adult humans, it may not be the dominant explanation for what skilled cold practitioners can do.
That distinction matters. If the entire promise of cold exposure rests on brown fat, the practice becomes fragile. If cold is understood as a broader adaptive stressor, the value becomes more stable and more honest.
"Brown fat is great in rodents. It is not at all important in humans." — Otto Muzik
Muzik points back to muscle. Humans have a large amount of metabolically active tissue, and even subtle shivering can generate heat. This does not make cold exposure therapy simple. It makes it embodied.
The body is not passively waiting for a hidden switch to turn on. It is coordinating blood vessels, muscles, breath, skin, attention, and perception. The felt experience of cold is the surface of a much larger regulatory event.
The conversation also moves into expectation and placebo. That word is often used as a dismissal. Muzik treats it as evidence that meaning, prediction, and physiology are intertwined.
When someone enters cold with confidence, fear, ritual, or community, the brain does not stand aside. It participates. That does not make the response fake. It means the mind is one of the mechanisms through which the body adapts.
Cold exposure (our guide to cold exposure) does not need mythology to be meaningful. It asks for contact with discomfort, then gives the body a chance to organize. That is enough.
A better cold practice is not built on dramatic claims. It is built on precision: a clear dose, a safe setting, a breath that steadies, and a reason to return tomorrow.
The strongest cold practice is the one that survives a better explanation.
Do not reduce cold exposure to brown fat. Adaptation also involves muscle, circulation, attention, and expectation.
Use shivering as information. Mild shivering can signal thermogenic work; prolonged shivering after a session suggests too much dose.
Keep ritual grounded. Confidence and meaning matter, but they work best when paired with safe, measured exposure.
