Breathe Better, Live Better: The Surprising Benefits of Breathwork
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- Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. - Part of that is to purposely breathe too much. What that does is it purposely stresses your body out. You may be thinking, why the heck do I wanna do that? I'm stressed out enough. But that allows you to control stress, to turn it on and specifically to turn it off.

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Hi, I'm Dr. Mark Hyman, a practicing physician and proponent of systems medicine, a framework to help you understand the why or the root cause of your symptoms. Welcome to The Doctor's Pharmacy. Every week, I bring on interesting guests to discuss the latest topics in the field of functional medicine and do a deep dive on how these topics pertain to your health. In today's episode, I have some interesting discussions with other experts in the field. So let's just trump right in.

How is breath so important in our health? Because we all breathe. We don't think about it. We're just breathing every day. In fact, I think we breathe 25,000 times a day without really thinking about it. But it turns out that how we breathe is critically important to our overall health. And it's not something I learned in medical school, but I'd love you to sort of break it down for our audience. Why is breath important? Why has it been so neglected? And what do we know scientifically about the importance of breath and health?

I think humans are very reactionary species only when we lose something to be do we become aware of it and that's exactly what happened during COVID we lost the ability to breathe and we're like oh my god maybe breathing is important because this is just something that's been in it's an unconscious activity it's in the back of our minds

So once you establish, I think once you lose the ability to breathe, you appreciate it. And once you appreciate it, you can start focusing your breath to really significantly impact your health, mental health, physical health, bolster immune function, athletic performance, and more. And the reason why breathing is so important is because we get most of our energy from

from air, from our breath. A lot of people think that we get most of our energy from what we eat and drink. Not true. We get most of our energy from air. And I can prove this to you by, why don't you hold your breath for about four minutes and see how much energy you have. Yeah, not so much. Don't do that at home, everybody. Yeah. Well, I think you're right. I think we...

You know, we don't connect to our breath. And, you know, when I was younger, I took yoga teacher training course. You know, I was 23 and became a yoga teacher and learned the science, the ancient science of pranayama, which is a whole series of breathing techniques to activate different aspects of our health and well-being. And whether you're calming breaths, activating breaths,

It's such a powerful thing that we have pretty much ignored as a vehicle toward health in this culture. And yet, in ancient cultures, it's pretty amazing. And you guys got like Wim Hof, who is this kind of crazy dude. They call him the Iceman. But he's mastered techniques of breathing that allow him to climb Mount Everest in his underwear, basically, and with no shoes on, not freeze to death, or to sit in an ice bath for whatever reason.

Bill zillion minutes he sits in an ice bath for and he's been able to train other people who are just regular humans how to do the same thing. So it is a doorway to accessing all sorts of our physiology that we just sort of ignore. So can you kind of break down for us what is going on with our breath? Why does it affect us so importantly? And how do we start to develop better relationship with our breathing? Well, breathing practices have been around for at least 5000 years.

Ancient Hindus studied it, ancient Chinese study it, Native Americans studied it and more. And they understood our breathing as a medicine. This wasn't just something we did uncomfortably. It was something that you can control. So this knowledge has been around for a long time, but lo and behold, in the 1900s and this century.

We have instruments that can actually measure objectively what happens when you breathe in different ways. So no longer is this subjective, it's objective. It's a science. You can collect data. That's what I think is so exciting that a lot of people can access wearables that can tell them what happens to their heart rate, what happens to their heart rate variability, what happens to their stress levels, what happens to their blood pressure, etc.

their blood oxygen more and more and more by just shifting their breathing. And I think that this is one of the things that has really made this stuff so convincing. It's one thing to read scientific papers and hear people talk about it. It's another thing to change your breathing for two minutes and watch your blood pressure go down 10 to 15 points and watch your heart rate variability score. Yeah.

And I think that's why so many people have personally experienced the benefits of this from not a lot of effort and work and said, wow, it actually does what it's supposed to do. And the science just confirms that. It's amazing. Tell us about the distinction between nose breathing and mouth breathing. You know, why is mouth breathing not good for you? And why is nose breathing good for you?

So when we breathe through our mouths, we're exposing ourselves to everything in the environment. If you live in a city like me, that means pollen, that means pollutants, means smog, it means mold.

And there's nothing filtering that air all day long. If you breathe through the nose, and I so happen to have a special guest here, is a cross section of a human head. And if you see what happens when you breathe through the nose here, you're forcing this air through all of these very ornate structures. And as that air goes through these structures,

it's heated up, it's moistened, it's filtered, and you get this huge profusion of nitric oxide as well, which guess what? Nitric oxide helps kill viruses and bacteria. And it's a vasodilator. So when you're breathing through the mouth, you get none of those advantages. You can survive mouth breathing, but it's going to wear you down and make you sick. And that's just how things work. And you can very clearly see this by

by just looking at our physiology and looking at our anatomy. It's quite amazing. What you just brought up is really important. We had Louis Ignaro on the podcast who won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of nitric oxide. He's this cute little 80-year-old Italian guy who would think he'd be like your uncle or something. And he's so sweet. And he just really explained how important it is to breathe through your nose and how nitric oxide is produced, which is, like you said, antimicrobial and also increases oxygen.

your ability to fight inflammation as an antioxidant. And it's the main thing that happens when you take Viagra, which is you increase nitric oxide, which is dilation of blood vessels and so forth. So it's fascinating. And he even said, this was fascinating, they were doing some preliminary studies around COVID where they were giving nitric oxide gas to COVID patients and seeing remarkable changes in

in their biology and improvement in their lung function and their overall health. So it's kind of interesting that our body knows what to do, but we often have sort of laughed at these habits around mouth breathing. And actually there's this kind of new trend out there. I'd love to hear what you think about it, using mouth tape at night for people to breathe through their nose at night instead of through their mouth. What do you think about that?

Well, what I learned about nitric oxide was from Ignaro. So he won the Nobel in the 90s. And I think last time, last interview I heard with him, he said there were 11 clinical trials looking at patients who had severe COVID and giving them nitric oxide. Some of those trials have come out. They're official published studies. And it works incredibly well because, of course, it does.

You know, it's just we're supplementing what our natural body in its natural form would be doing otherwise. It's important to note, too, if you hum, you increase that nitric oxide 15-fold.

So I think that this would be an interesting thing to explore. And there are a lot of yoga practices have you home. I wish someone would do this study. You know, it's never going to get funded. But he's he's an amazing guy. I've learned so much from him.

That's so great. And you did an interesting study where you were at Stanford when you were sort of researching the breath for your book where your nose was completely plugged for 10 days and you had to breathe just through your mouth. So what was that study and what did you find out?

So I've been working with a chief of rhinology research at Stanford, a guy named Dr. Jayakar Nayak, who probably knows more about the nose and nasal breathing than anyone on the planet. So we had had several interviews and there had been animal studies looking at what happens when you make an animal, a monkey specifically, a mouth breather and all the awful things that happen to their health and their facial structure. Don't read those studies. They're horrendous.

But I asked Nyack, I said, has there ever been a human study of this? And he said, no. And I said, well, why don't you do it? You're at Stanford. You study this stuff all the time. He said doing so would be unethical because he knew of all the damage it could do. So I said, well, why don't I volunteer for an experiment? I'll try to make it. I get informed consent, right? Yeah. And to, you know, I wish it were 100 people. We had to pay for the study ourselves, which at Stanford was not cheap.

And the longest we were allowed to do this was for 10 days, 10 days just mouth breathing, 10 days nasal breathing.

And as advertised, it completely destroyed us. And we have all the data to show that there was extreme fatigue. My blood pressure went through the roof. I got home after about three hours of mouth breathing. My blood pressure was 158 over 100, which was about higher than I had ever seen it. And I said, oh, you know, I'm stressed out. I need to go to sleep.

For the first time that I'm aware of, I started snoring. Then I started getting sleep apnea. It got worse and worse the longer we have this. The other subject in the study had the exact same thing at the same time. We had trouble focusing. Our mouths were completely dry. We were miserable. Athletic performance plummeted. I mean, this, to be clear...

Two people in an experiment means nothing. What I was doing was personally experiencing what science has known for literally decades and decades.

Well, there are end of one studies, so I don't think it's meaningless. You know, there are, there is a whole science and the NIH is actually advancing this, which is looking at changes in an individual and that being relevant. And if you measure changes before and after, it's actually not insignificant. So I wouldn't discount what you're saying as being more widely available to sort of think about. And I think, I think that, you know, um,

You actually have a lot of different things that you talk about as a way of fixing your breathing pattern.

Maybe you can share a little bit of what are the tips? How should we breathing? How do we get enough quality breath? How do we stop mouth breathing? What do we have to do? Luckily in that Stanford study, we did 10 days of mouth breathing followed by 10 days of just nasal breathing. This is where the sleep tape comes in. So it's easy to nasal breathe in the day. You just shut your mouth. But at night, more than 60% of us

breathe through our mouths. And so how do you keep your mouth shut at night? About 100 years ago, they used to have chin straps. So they knew how damaging mouth breathing was 100 years ago. We seem to have lost that knowledge. But nowadays, we have tape. So I learned from a breathing therapist at Stanford. She prescribes tape

for her patients, for every one of her patients to tape their mouths at night. This is not full on hostage situation stuff. This is the teen adhesive tape. - It's not duct tape. - No. - And there's a little hole in it. There's a little hole in it. - There's a specific tape. It's a surgical tape. It's called micropore tape and it's very light adhesive. You wanna take this stuff off with your tongue, never pull it off of your lips. That's where people go wrong.

But what this tape does is it's just a gentle reminder at any time in the night, you can go if you're uncomfortable and it pops off. But this has been all of that snoring that I was doing mouth breathing immediately went away by just with one hack.

Closing my mouth. This is the one thing I've literally heard this from thousands of people have written and they said this was the most profound health hack that they've experienced It's for a lot of people heard the same thing and I'm not saying it's gonna work for everyone Especially with advanced severe sleep apnea, you're gonna need more treatments, but it's free and breathing through your nose is only gonna help you so you may benefit a little or you may benefit a lot and

And I cannot sleep. I mean, technically, I can sleep, but I can't sleep well without sleep tape now. It's a real affliction. All right, James. So tell us what tape you use and what are the options out there for people? Because it sounds like after this conversation, a lot of people are going to run and want to buy tape. I don't want them to get like scotch tape or some masking tape or something. It's not the right tape. Yeah.

Well, there's so many different types of tape that work and it really depends on the person and their preference. I went through about 30 different types of tape before I found one that I

Really liked and that worked for me. It's I'm not getting paid to say this It is a micro poor tape a surgical tape by 3m has a really light adhesive for sensitive skin That's the best stuff. I've found other people like different brands There's specific brands now that are just sleep tape that you can buy on Amazon or wherever else and

They work great. So I would say play around, find something you like. You want something with a very light adhesive. And most importantly, as I mentioned, you don't need a very fat strip of this stuff. All you need is something about the size of a postage stamp.

This is the whole technology here. That's sleep tape. Okay. It's just keep it. I can even talk to you when I have this stuff on. When I take it off, you take it off with your tongue. Not don't rip it off. Take it off with your tongue and you won't get any irritation to your mouth that way.

Love that. That's amazing. Okay, that's a wonderful hack. You think everybody should do that? Or how many people breathe through their mouth at night? Is it a common thing? Or why would we if it's not supposed to? Is it just because we're unhealthy or because we're stressed or what? I think that about 60%, this is the percentage I heard, more than 60% of us breathe through our mouth.

at night and if you were like me you would go to sleep with a huge mug of water because you would wake up throughout the night and be hitting on this water because your mouth was so dry breathing through the mouth at night especially for eight eight hours at a time will also change the ph in your make in your mouth and make you much more susceptible to having cavities imperial donald disease so everyone should be breathing through their noses at night you need to find a way of doing this

So that's one technique. What are the other techniques around breathing that you could do when you're not sleeping? Well, breathe through your nose as often as you can. That includes while working out. That includes while sitting in front of your desk. There are so many different breathing techniques to practice nasal breathing techniques. It doesn't matter if for 15, 20 minutes a day, you're doing Wim Hof method or Tumo or Kundalini and you're breathing through your mouth during these practices. Perfectly fine. Ocean breath. Yeah.

Totally fine. I'm talking about habitual chronic breathing needs to be through the nose. So we've got that. When you're breathing through your nose, you will also be breathing more slowly, lightly, and deeply. And that's the other part of this. Most of us breathe way too much air. We think that by breathing more, we are getting more oxygen, but the opposite is happening.

And I can prove this to you by if you took 30 really big breaths right now, you're going to feel some tingling in your fingers, lightness in your head. That's from a decrease of circulation. And that's what happens when you breathe too much.

So you want to be breathing such simple stuff through the nose, slowly, lightly, and deeply. Just doing that can be really transformative for people. Powerful. And you also talk a lot in the book about these sort of ancient lost arts of breathing. What are those things that you rediscovered and what should we be doing with them today?

Are they relevant? Well, it's interesting. You start looking at ancient cultures and the different techniques they used, and you find that they were all basically saying the same thing in slightly different ways with different terms, especially if you look at Qigong and yoga. And you find that so many of their practices are breathing through the nose, almost all of them.

Many of their practices are include breath holds that's huge in pranayama and it's huge in Qigong and a lot of their practices also have temporary very for a very short amount of time you over breathe if anyone's done anyone listening is done Kundalini or pranayama or Wim Hof part of that is

to purposely breathe too much. What that does is it purposely stresses your body out. You may be thinking, why the heck do I wanna do that? I'm stressed out enough. But that allows you to control stress, to turn it on and specifically to turn it off. And if you look at the science and the studies behind Sudarshan Kriya, even Wim Hof Method, Pranayama, these are such powerful techniques and they've been around for thousands of years.

Yeah, it's pretty interesting. I did some of the Wim Hof breathing. I know him. And it's amazing. You do the breathing practice, then you can hold your breath for two, three minutes without even a bother, which is impossible. If I told you to hold your breath right now for three minutes, you'd pass out. So we really haven't accessed the ancient technologies that actually will allow us to revitalize our health and

have what seems like sometimes superpowers. I mean, think about it. I mean, to regulate your breathing so you can sit in an ice bath for half an hour, that's a big deal. You can climb up Mount Kilimanjaro in your shorts and be fine. Like, that's wild, right? And you mentioned something just briefly called TUMO.

which is a Tibetan technique for those listening that is used by monks to master their biology. And essentially they have this practice called drying of the sheets and they'll take these Buddhist monks up in the high Himalayas and they'll put these sheets in ice water and then they'll wrap them in the sheets in ice water. They literally have to dry the sheets with the heat of their body and activate their own heat. And then once they master that, they go out in a loincloth into the Himalayas up in the mountains at night and have to literally sit there all night naked,

heating their body using the power of breath. And so we really have not even begun to tap the power of breath for health or for healing. And it's one of those sort of simple doorways that we all have access to that we don't need any equipment for. And it's always available to us if we learn the techniques.

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We have a natural ability to rebalance our biochemistry through breathing within 10 minutes. So what happens when we're exposed to cold, like to really cold conditions? What are the benefits? Why should we be even thinking about it? Because a lot of people are like, last thing I want to do is jump in an ice cold bath or maybe in ice water. I say always gradual cold exposure. Gradual. First, take a cold shower.

And a cold shower does wonders, miracles. Our biggest enemy within our Western society, the killer number one is cardiovascular related diseases. And anything that has got to do with the quality of life is a bad blood flow.

too much stress inside because the condition of the millions of little muscles in our hundred thousand of kilometers like 70,000 miles of vascular channels and capillaries they contain all these little muscles when they are stimulated through cold showers they help the

blood flow goes through. Then the heart rate goes down 20 to 30 beats a minute, 24 hours a day. That means stress is out and the blood flow is guaranteed going better to all cells. So oxygen, nutrients, vitamins get better into the cells, you get more energy.

You get more energy and less stress. That's what the body wants. That's the natural state of our body, to have sufficient energy for anything.

Because that's the influencing into the mitochondria, the energy factories through aerobic dissimulation. Oxygen. Oxygen didn't get them because the blood flow is being helped through the stimulation of those millions of little muscles. And a cold shower a day keeps the doctor away. In this case, the doctor has arrived.

Okay, so how long do you have to stay in the cold shower? It begins with 30 seconds. You got to take the shower anyway to cleanse yourself and you know to be clean and... So at the end just put the cold on? Yes, 30 seconds and naturally you will feel a boost.

Naturally, you will feel the effect of the stimulation on the millions of little muscles inside the interior of you. This is the greatest vascular fitness exercise ever, a cold shower. And 30 seconds, then it goes very fast.

because the condition of the vascular system goes very fast to its natural state, which should be much better than the way we are because of our de-stimulated behavior, wearing clothes over our biggest organ all the time. That is the

For the body, it's not logic. So a cold shower a day is the best exercise to train all these little muscles. Then you get a lot more energy.

you feel a boost of energy. Yeah. Because it gets better into the cells and it produces more molecules, more energy, ATP. It's all logic. And then naturally people are very fast able to prolong in inside the cold shower, go for 45 seconds to one minute. So when it arrives at three minutes,

You got so much more outcome in energy in the day than the investment is by far. It's nothing. And you know what? A cold shower is addictive. Yeah. I like the cold bath. So I do the steam, then I jump in just the cold water in the bathtub, and I lay there for a bunch of minutes. And it's incredible. You literally feel your whole system come back online, your brain come back online, your energy increase increase.

It's pretty amazing. So you created this Wim Hof method, Activate Your Full Human Potential. The book is incredible. I encourage everybody to get a copy. It's really not just about a simple technique to jump in cold water. It's really about reclaiming your health, your life, your happiness.

Your control over everything. I mean, it's not, it's not just a little technique to get in cold water. That's sort of the side effect of, of, um, doing that is, is your life, right? So you've learned how to control your breathing, your heart rate, your circulation to withstand really extreme temperatures to actually be injected with like infectious agents that would kill people and subdue them with your immune system under your conscious control.

And you've developed this into a teachable method that everybody can learn. So it's not, oh, here's this cool guy who can do these party tricks. It's like, this is a gift you're giving to the world. It sort of seems like a little bit of a shortcut than living in a cave and meditating for nine years and sort of cheating, but it really isn't. And you really developed these three simple pillars, cold exposure, conscious breathing, and the power of your mind. So can you talk about the method and how it works and what we should be doing?

First of all, in the new book of Scott Carney, he is an investigative journalist and he wrote that book, What Doesn't Kill You.

Which has been sold in 34 languages all over the world. Very successful New York Times bestseller, blah blah, the whole thing. And he was to debunk me six years ago. Good luck with that. Yeah, he is an anthropologist and an investigative journalist. He was paid to debunk me. And then two days later, he was standing in the snow

barefoot doing ooh, ah, ooh, ah. And standing, you know, like a clown. He was standing in the snow. He was making himself ridiculous almost. No, he saw there that it is real.

It is real. And in his new book he tells, and he was investigating a lot of doctors, and one of them is a psychiatrist doctor who's into brain scans and all, and he tells, that's Professor Muzik, and Professor Muzik states, "Wim Hof has found the secret of placebo." What we see as mind power, but we don't know where it is, placebo,

Now it is a tool, it's an entity and we are able to connect with our will with that power of the mind and to intensify even the placebo effect and to make it even stronger. That is the power of the mind. Even for people whose minds aren't disciplined or trained, you're saying this is possible?

Yes, yes, absolutely, because they are born with it. Only if you are schooled all the time saying that you are not Mark Hyman, but that you are Peter Franklin.

then at a certain moment you become Peter, frankly. Because Mark Hyman is not accepted, it's not the way, you cannot do this, you are crazy if you are Mark Hyman. And all those things, you know. We have been schooled that we are not able to tap in at will with our minds into our bodies and to deal with stress. And that's the way we are taught. And now I teach the people within one weekend.

Within one weekend I teach them to change the paradigm. Man, you can do whatever you want, but you are built to be able at will, at will, to control yourself so much better inside your own body. And it's only logic. It's only logic that our will, which is already inside of our body,

that is able to control systems in our body to push buttons whenever is necessary. That is, of course, is a complete different paradigm than up till now we thought is possible. We are made to be dependent on pills, medicine, pharmacy, on McDonald's, on television, on all that. That is our system. - Yeah.

And that system, it has to change. Because that system is polluting the world, sodomizing the planet, exploiting the planet, and we become insensitive to ourselves and to others. This is the time for awakening to our inner mechanisms, our potential, the way nature meant it to be, the way nature gave it to us.

at birth. We have to listen to that. It seems like there's little doorways that you've created, right? The cold exposure, the breathing techniques, the meditation mindset.

that you use in the book. These are the sort of doorways that people can access these abilities that help them manage their own minds and manage their own happiness and well-being and their health in ways that are pretty striking. And I think, you know, I want to just chat with you for a minute about this experiment that you did, which I still find mind-blowing, which is you willingly let doctors inject a known biotoxin from E. coli into your bloodstream.

knowing that this is something that would kill a normal person. And yet you were able to overcome this using your techniques and manage your immune system. What I'm curious about is, did you...

consciously go, okay, I'm going to direct my immune system to fight these bacteria or these toxins or neutralize them? Or were you just dropping into a state of meditation? Like, how did you, how does that work? I mean, it just, particularly in this time of coronavirus, we're all wanting to strengthen our immune system. We're all wanting to make sure we are able to fight whatever we're exposed to. How can this play a role for us? And what did you do? And tell us about that study because it's so fascinating to me.

Exactly. The same inflammatory markers that are the damaging factor in COVID, what is happening now. The cytokines, right. Yeah, the cytokines, number one, number six, number eight, and number 11. I suppressed them within a quarter of an hour. And this was known not to be possible by humans.

I did my breathing. I changed my biochemistry and I do it willfully and of course I know, oh the doctor is going to inject me with the endotoxemia now, the E. coli. Okay, then the E. coli is working now. Not the effect after one hour, then you begin to notice I began directly to fight

the E. coli's reaction upon my immune cells, the immune system inside, the cytokine storm and all that. I began to fight it directly by alerting my body through my mind, that was one, and through the breathing, breathing, specific breathing exercises. And they are within the method. They are very accessible for everybody.

they are very effective not only with me then I said oh but you are the Iceman you can do this you can get these sites against down where or 16,000 people could not you are the first one to show a complete different yeah a complete different picture you

Oh, you have gone into the autonomic nervous system. You have been influenced into the endocrine system, into the immune system, thought of all not possible. And you have done that. But you are the Iceman. Then I said, no, no, no, no. I'm the Iceman. No. At the most, maybe you can say I'm a nice man.

Iceman, that is nice for my ego, but I'm just a simple man, nice man. But let me tell you, we can do so much more than what you guys are thinking of in the science. We are built to be able to tackle disease, to prevent from disease. For that, we have our will and our ability through our breath

manipulation of our breath to go deeply within and to change the biochemistry to be on the alert to activate the adrenal access to the utmost and then danger can be emotional danger emotional stress mental stress

bacterial stress, viral stress, any stress in the end is cell biological stress, which is danger. And then the adrenal axis activation takes care of that.

Wow. There it is. So that's what I did. But you also, you said you did also the study with people who weren't you. And I read that they actually were also able to do the same thing you did, even though they weren't the Iceman. They were like four other volunteers who agreed to be injected with these toxins. Exactly. 18 other. Oh, 18 others. Wow. Yes. And 12 randomly chosen of those 18,

After four days of training, we were exposed to the E. coli bacteria as well, and they all showed 100% being able to control and suppress the cytokine storm, the inflammation, they all felt good. They made jokes. They said they didn't inject us with E. coli, but with sugar water.

That's unbelievable. And they measured the cytokines and they measured all of that and they saw that change in your biology, which we only see often with medication or not at all. I mean, it almost seems like this is such a simple technique to everybody to learn, to help fortify them against coronavirus, right? I mean, even if you have coronavirus, do you think you could actually help to reduce the inflammation as a result? Absolutely. Especially when you feel the symptoms and I heard many already,

but it is not medically researched. I don't know why, maybe they are not interested. Like yourself in your position with integrative medicine, you cannot make the money out of that. But it doesn't matter. Let's go past and let's get back to the facts.

The fact is that the cytokines, the interleukin number one, number six, number eight and 11 are the damaging factors of the COVID. And we showed in 2014 in a comparative study within groups,

We show to suppress it within a quarter of an hour. When you feel symptoms of COVID, then get into the breathing and you will be effectively able to suppress the cytokines. That's it. That's unbelievable. So share with us what a technique of breathing that you teach us. You just lie on the sofa or in bed and then relax.

relaxed body is able to store up oxygen in the tissue so relax there's nothing going on nice then you take a full breath in from the belly just and you let it go and once again and once again we do it 30 times fully in let it go fully in let it go

Keep on going. I explain what is happening. We are blowing off the carbon dioxide, but it becomes very alkaline, more than normal. And that is a sign within the brain, too alkaline, too alkaline, adrenal axis activation.

And the adrenaline pumps in, it peaks, and anything that should not be inside of the body is going to be eliminated, suppressed. And what is it in COVID? Cytokines. So if you activate the adrenal axis through doing this,

30 times then we go after 30 times because the oxygen trigger the trigger to breathe is carbon dioxide but it's blowing off body is very alkaline biochemistry is great it's great and you just exhale you hold after the exhale so only a residual amount of air is left in the lungs

And you stay in that condition. And then easily you are able to go one minute, one and a half minute, maybe two minutes if you have done well the 30 deep breaths. Two minutes with a residual amount of air in your lungs for two minutes without breathing. And what happens, of course,

The brainstem, the primitive oxygen parameters, they say, there is no oxygen, no oxygen. And they shoot into the adrenaline. It's all reactive. So the brainstem, the reactive part of our brain, it's just the buttons are pushed. And then the adrenaline shoots out epinephrine, shoots out over all the body.

And this is very good to detoxify. So people with a hangover, if they do this 20 minutes, they detoxify. They can go for a drink again. So the idea is you do 30 breaths, then you hold your breath for a minute or two, and then you do it again. After the exhalation. After the exhalation. And then at the end, when you feel the urge of breathing again, you take them fully in. You hold for 15 seconds.

Pull it in, hold, and squeeze a little bit to your head, 'cause it's nice. You bring in cerebrospinal fluid,

to the head, then it gets into the brain stem and into the limbic system, into the midbrain where we normally don't have so much blood flow because we always think, think, think is where the blood flow goes. Now we push it from the inside, inside the deepest part of the brain. And then suddenly it begins to become a literally alive. And then we are able to connect.

at will because that's neurology so we are and then we get a sense of control over our mood

That is mood, absolute mood regulation. In case of people with depression, mostly it's caused by inflammation and stress and emotional deprivation. All that creates a biological or a biochemical deficit. And through doing this, you feel you are filling up the tank and you feel that you are in control.

And nobody wants to feel bad, then they feel good again. That's incredible. So basically the technique is 30 breaths, hold for a minute or two, take a breath, hold for 15 seconds and then repeat? Yes, repeat. And you will see, find out that every time it goes and easier and longer.

- So do this for 20 minutes a day is what you're saying, that's it? - That's what we do right now in San Francisco, big study on the DNA with this method, with this breathing. And it's amazing, the results are amazing on the DNA. - So let's see, two or three minute cold shower and 20 minutes of breathing and you can give up all your winter clothes. - Yep, you can hit the road anytime without cough. - You can fight coronavirus, you can...

feel happy and empowered and controlling yourself you feel the connection and then when you need it you know what to do mmm you just go within

then you learn about the lost connection within because of our exterior way of gaining information control over the world at C truck and that the control inside we lost and now it's back and we don't need to sit for nine years in a cave

That's incredible. It's incredible to me because I've always thought that you need to practice and practice and practice and meditate, meditate, meditate for decades in order to deal with that. You know what, Mark? They compared 10 minutes of this breathing

specifically breathing, it brings people deeper in the brain than people who are doing exercising for four hours, mindfulness a day for years.

Wow. All right. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm starting tomorrow. Anybody can do this. I'm starting today. I'm starting today. I'm so excited about your book because your book, The Wim Hof Method, Achieving Full Human Potential, is exactly about teaching you how to do this. It's not just the theory. It's not just all the stories of how you had these superhuman feats, but it's really about how you as an individual can overcome some of the challenges we face as human beings that feel us

make us feel powerless over our own minds, over our own happiness, our own life, our own well-being, our own health. And this is a very, very empowering idea. Right now, especially right now, with all the turmoil, the confusion, the anxiety, and the helplessness against the COVID. Man, there is so much more within us, and it's time to wake up. Yeah, it's so beautiful. It's like you're the unlikeliest guru. I love it.

This crazy guy from the Netherlands has just like found some doorway into something that was obscure to most of us for thousands of years. And I'm just so grateful for your work and your commitment. And, you know, I know you've got to this. I'm honored. I'm honored to be your guest.

your podcast thank you very much of course you are a great bloody great guy

Thank you. We have fun together when we're together. That's for sure. I'm coming. I want to go as soon as COVID lightens up, I want to go do one of your week-long workshops in Poland. You go to the ice in the winter. It's like four or five days. In the end, you will be exposed to the elements of cold wind

that is wind chill and all for five hours in your shorts and you're going to have a great time. Oh my God, I need it. You know why? Because I love swimming and there's lakes here and I went in yesterday, it was a little chilly. I was like, I came out freezing. I was like, oh no, women's going to be mad at me. I was so cold. I had to come and take a hot shower. I don't like, yeah, I love hot showers.

But I also love the cold. The cold gives you such a power. If you do the cold on a regular basis, like daily, you become, when you get older, and so many people get older and get so many inflammation and deterioration of their condition and this, you will never get sick no more. It's amazing. Yeah, I know. Speaking of that, I think...

Looking at the studies you've done and combining cold exposure and breathing, meditation, and your mental attitude, it's had huge effects on people's health. And there are many students that you've had who are practicing this method.

for years and they've been able to reverse diseases things like diabetes and parkinson's and lose weight and do incredible feats about autism i don't mean how does that work i mean can you can you share some of these stories because this seems like a revolutionary approach to to treating illness

Yes, autoimmune diseases is inflammation based on inflammation cytokines, cytokine storms, an overreactive immune system and we had no control over it. So when you begin to do this you learn to tap into the adaptive

immune system. You learn to go into the innate immune system, both. And suddenly your rheumatism, arthritis, psoriasis, disease of Crohn's, Parkinson's, all these things begin to become within your control. You sense it.

You feel it. You don't need to know what is all happening. You simply sense that you are in control over the inflammatory markers. The inflammation doesn't happen anymore. How is that possible? Now, that is what is happening. And that needs to be researched. I'm into the research right now with the Radboud University here.

on rheumatism, on arthritis, because we have hundreds of people with arthritis and it's gone. They control it. It's incredible. Without medicine, without pills, they just control it. And the doctors say, spontaneous remission. No, man. Look into the healing power we are born with.

I'm very close to the rheumatology department at Cleveland Clinic, and the doctors there are very interested in opening these ideas. It would be amazing to do a study. I love that. Yes, please.

Dr. Because autoimmune disease affects 80 million people more than diabetes, more than heart disease, more than cancer together. Dr. There we are. Dr. The treatments we have are only somewhat effective and often have a lot of side effects and costs. I think it's a really important idea. I love this idea. We're going to figure this out. Now, one of the other things is really relevant- Dr. Mark, this is very important.

Studies, non-speculative evidence-based trials is what we need to show. Because 80 million people relieving of their suffering by autonomy within themselves, that is love.

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