Cold-showers / Stress Hacking and the Nervous System Practice of Cold
Stress is not only something to avoid. In the right dose, and with the right recovery, it can become information. Matthias Wittfoth brings a neuroscientist’s lens to the Wim Hof Method, framing cold and breath as tools for transforming the way the body meets pressure.
Cold-showers / Stress Hacking and the Nervous System Practice of Cold - Full Transcript
[Music] [Music] give a short introduction of the VAM HOF method I came across the method when I was listening to Tim Ferriss Show podcast interview with wim HOF and it really amazed me that this guy was able to hold so many Guinness Book World Records that most of these record has something to do with cold water immersion and withstand the cold and so I was practice practicing the method like breathing technique and doing cold showers and I did this for a couple of weeks and yeah it changed my life really and maybe you could switch to the next slide kick you've been very nice so this is the three pillars these are the three pillars of the wim HOF method so there's a specific breathing technique that you will learn and it's really simple it's a very simple technique but it's very effect for it's not easy to do but it's simple and then you have this cold therapy so you do cold showers every day or you do an ice bath and it challenges your body and the combination of these both things are have the consequence of shifting your mindset a little bit to places where you might have never been before so it's like you experiencing that you can do a couple of minutes in an ice bath so what other things are possible in your life the third pillar is commitment so you do it on a regular basis and it's also including like meditation and different kind of consciousness and
and different kind of consciousness and the method is on the undersurface purely physical so you change your physiology and this is what really intrigued me because I'm a new scientist for almost 20 years I started with eg I started with I followed research with neuro imaging so I make these fancy pictures of the brains and the activity and the brain and I was very much amazed by this technique not by just my own experience but by research that has been done with these with the method yeah please in the next slide so this is just a picture of them Hoffs face and yeah he was going into an MRI scanner in the university of Wayne State University of Detroit this is the most recent study so there have been other studies before but wim hof has been investigated with a cold suit so he was wearing a suit where the researchers were able to induce cold a warm water and they looked at his brain and found out very amazing things please next slide so this is just a basic model the human brain and as you can see it you have the new cortex and you have lower areas like midbrain and brain stem areas like whether you the letter H is there and letter K the brain stem areas next picture please and yeah these are the results of the functional imaging imaging study of wim hof so he was scanned while just doing nothing just concentrating he had done his method beforehand but not inside the scanner and the researchers were hypothesizing that wim hof might be inducing a
that wim hof might be inducing a controlled stimulus from his frontal brain like very much in meditation what we already no from neuroimaging of meditation so frontal brain areas are controlling your body this is not what they found at all so they did not find any frontal brain activity when they compared cold and warm challenges for wim Hof's body and you might see but it's not very clear that there is no frontal brain activity but there's brain stem activity so it's maybe a a technique where you control not very consciously but just letting go of all the voluntary stuff and just given into to the cold and they use another method that is called PE tipet and this was not to investigate what what is going on in wim Hof's brain but in wim Hof's body so the theory of thermogenesis or thermo regulation was that wim HOF should have a lot of brown fat so brown fat activation is considered the underlying process brown fat is the fat that has a lot of mitochondria so many engines that are supply your cells with the energy you need in contrast to white fat and what they found was that when half has not more brown fat cells than anybody else but they found that the muscles between the ribs are getting warmer maybe because of the extensive training of the breathing technique and so they might warm up the whole body during the the blood circulation that's pretty amazing so we have some some results from science and the method is quite easy and
science and the method is quite easy and we do workshops to teach people how to do this properly to breathe in the right way and it's it's a combination of very intensive breathing so I hyperventilation it's not a comment at neke it's very stressful activating breathing technique and you have also periods where you hold your breath for as long as you can so you induce a hypoxic stress so your body and especially your brain gets less oxygen than normal and that this might be one of the reasons why this method works so well yeah just yeah so the the other very interesting study was that wim HOF was investigated in the Netherlands and University Nijmegen where they had an N doctor endotoxemia model that means they were investigating the immune system when they when the immune system was challenged so they injected that bacteria the body has to cope with the very very intense reaction flu-like symptoms but only to the point when the body realizes okay this is just that bacteria this is not a real danger for me but in these four or five hours you can see what what is going on in the blood and you can draw some conclusions what the immune system really does and they injected them half with this that bacteria why he was doing his breathing technique and they found amazing stuff so they published the study as a single case analysis and they said well them have very fine but what can we do for other people are you just a special guy
other people are you just a special guy you have special genetics or whatever can you train people to do this and he was telling you of course just giving you a group and you can investigate this group and I can train this ok how long does it take one year two years no I can do it in two weeks and they make up a study with two groups just a control group who didn't get the training and experimental group who underwent even HOF method for 4x4 for six or seven days and they trained it at home for four days additionally so it was like 10 day training of the VAM HOF method and they induced these experimental groups these n toc-toc Sima so these dead bacteria as well and they found that the VAM HOF method breathing technique induces a stress response but just the first step so usually when you get a fight of right fight-or - flight response the stress response you activate your body by releasing adrenaline noradrenaline and cortisol mainly so and they found there was no difference in noradrenaline no difference in cortisol but a huge difference in adrenaline so you get this rush of a very activating hormonal stuff but not the second or third answer of the stress response and we know that adrenalin has a huge effects on the immune system so if you are in stressful situations you don't get sick right away you have to wait till next weekend when you relax then you feel all you you flu-like symptoms right so this might be a clue how this method works and yeah this is Justin and summer summary of this and as well this is the adrenaline goes up next slide please
please please next slide yeah so when you go a layer deeper and take a look a closer look at the immune system you see the stuff that are released and these are called interleukins so cytokines and the worm half-mother has been shown that the pro-inflammatory cytokines are reduced while the anti-inflammatory cytokines are enhanced so this is like you would like to create a method that is real balancing your immune system you would like from from scratch you would like to have this kind of method to just give it to people who which is easily accessible it's doesn't costume and so much money in fact you'd everyone can breathe everyone can go into the cold water it's very easy to do and but it's so much effective and so you get so much so many benefits out of this for your health for many other purposes so many people are doing this method for enhancing their sports performance for reducing their disease symptoms and especially for all the immune diseases so diseases that are connected to the immune system there has been shown that they are quite huge effects and we have a Facebook group of the Eva muff method and we have now I think more than 90, 000 people in there and just reporting what they were they felt doing the method and the consequences they got and yeah next next slide please yeah and I decided last last year to do a podcast with interviews and information regarding HOF method together with my wife Deena and wim HOF of course is supporting this and we started last year and we have like 13
started last year and we have like 13 episodes with interviews and I was very curious when I saw the movie of Kiki Bosch and I I mailed to her and asked her if you was she was willing to give an interview to us and I think one of the my best ideas was to let my my wife do the interview because this is one of the best episodes you ever hear do you have to if you just listen to one episode you have to listen to the Kiki Bosch interview with with the podcast signs on the rocks this is the name you get this on the signs on the rocks dark page or on itunes or whatever stitcher and yeah it was very nice interview and so we get to know each other afterwards so we plan to do workshops she became a limb half instructor as well and we coping good and we're giving tomorrow workshop on the Italy back if you like to participate we have as some spots left there and we will get a we will offer a very intense deep wim HOF method workshop where we not just have some breathing sessions and ice baths and you will see most like 95% of all people say okay breathing sessions yeah it sounds interesting but I pass and I'm out I don't like adverse but it's not a must you can just see how it goes and all of the participants usually going into an ice bath and it's a huge experience amazing you feel so much awake many people say this is kind of forced mindfulness meditation so you in the moment this is what we all need in the moment in the here and now you don't think about your past you don't think about your future you're in the ice bath and this is wonderful and you will hear more about going into the ice
will hear more about going into the ice cold water when you hear a couple of moments keiki Bosch and yeah I will just additionally and and once again invite you to our workshop tomorrow and you can sign up here somewhere just ask us and I now introduce you and give over to Kiki Bosch [Applause]
Transcript auto-generated by YouTube. Verbatim — duplicates intentionally preserved.
The phrase “stress hacking” can sound technical, but the experience is direct. You use breath, focus, and cold exposure to notice the stress response while it is happening, then teach the nervous system a steadier path through it.
The nervous system adapts through experience. When cold exposure is practiced safely, it creates a brief surge of intensity that the body can learn to regulate. The mind stops treating every spike of sensation as danger.
Over time, that can translate beyond the plunge. Everyday pressure may still arrive, but the body has rehearsed staying present.
Breathing practice gives attention somewhere precise to rest. It also changes physiology: rhythm, carbon dioxide tolerance, arousal, and recovery all shift as the breath becomes deliberate.
That is why breathwork pairs so naturally with cold. It gives the system a tool before the stressor arrives.
A method becomes valuable when it changes ordinary life. Better stress recovery, clearer emotional awareness, and a more honest relationship with personal needs are deeper outcomes than enduring a colder bath.
The point is not to win against the cold. It is to learn from it.
"The cold is useful because it lets the nervous system practice pressure in a controlled way."
"Stress can become training when the dose is right."
"Breath gives attention a precise place to return."
"The method matters most when it changes ordinary life."
Use cold exposure as a controlled practice, not a test of toughness.
Start each session by regulating the breath before increasing intensity.
Notice whether the practice improves daily stress recovery; that is the real signal.
