Climb Everest In a T shirt & Shorts Wim Hof Tells You How!

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You're listening to Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey. Today's cool fact of the day is that do you know you have brown and white fat? And that cold showers can actually help you lose weight? White fat is the fat you get when you, well, don't have mitochondria that work very well or you eat a lot of inflammatory foods, a lot of sugar and things like that. Brown fat is good fat that keeps you warm and protects you from cold. And what makes it brown is that it has more mitochondria. A study recently showed that exposure to really cold showers ramps up your brown fat activity by only 15 times. And that could translate to about £9 a year. Now, as you know, I like to foreshadow the guest, so I just talked about colds. You can probably figure out who the guest is, but while we're doing that, we're talking about mitochondrial function. And somewhere around here I have my stuff for today's product mention, which you can expect. Hey, after all, I make good stuff. I just came out with a couple different methylated B vitamins. It turns out that just about everyone can use methylated B vitamins, but a lot of us, about a third of us, don't handle B vitamins that are not activated this way. So methylfolate for your heart and neurons and methyl B12, which is really important for all sorts of neurological function, these are things you can take and things that I take every day that improve the ability of your body to do what it's supposed to do. And if you're going to do the stuff we talk about in today's show, which has a lot to do with cold and with having more control of your breathing, then you're definitely going to want to make sure that you give yourselves the building blocks to have healthy neurons. So methyl B12, methylfolate, these are things I take every single day, have for years. On the Bulletproof Top 10 supplement list. They're now available from Bulletproof.com all right, onto the show. Today's guest, if I didn't already give it away, is none other than Wim Hof, also known as the Iceman. He's one of the world's most famed multicellular extremophiles. Now, an extremophile is a single celled organism that lives near a volcanic vent or at the bottom of a frozen ocean. And they tend to be ugly bacteria. Wim Hof is, well, not an ugly bacteria at all. He's a very attractive man. But one who's climbed, you know, climbed Everest, I think. Was it naked, carrying ice bags? Okay, not quite, but in shorts. And he's developed a breathing and meditation technique that's awesome. It's one of those things he's pretty famous for, if you've ever seen the ads of a guy diving into cold water and swimming with seals and things like that. With Wim has control of his biology in a way that makes the rest of us blush. But on top of that, he works as scientists and doctors and he's on a mission to just unlock our evolutionary potential. I met Wim for the first time in person when our mutual friend Rick Rubin brought him to the Bulletproof conference two years ago. And it was a guest appearance I hadn't planned. And Wim came up on stage and said, dave, all right, you're going to do my breathing technique. And he has me hyperventilating and holding my breath empty and doing push ups right before my keynote presentation to the point that I'm starting to hallucinate a little bit, which happens. So I gave my talk after Wim basically put me through the wringer. But it was awesome. So Wim, welcome to the show. I'm so happy to have you on.

Thank you. Thank you, Dave. So thank you for welcoming me on your show.

You're welcome. So Wim, for people listening and probably a couple hundred thousand people here, the interview, the first few weeks of this, some of them don't know who you are. How did you get to be the Iceman? I mean, you do stuff that's weird even by my standards. And that's a compliment by the way, but how did you get to be this way?

Yes, there is more than meets the eye. Only I felt it, but I did not know what. So if that feeling snagging you from the inside, you become a soul soldier. And it brought me into all kinds of disciplines, esoterism, religions, traditions, cultures, many countries and traveling. Yes. But I couldn't really match up with that feeling until I met the ice cold water just in my backyard in wintertime. And that's in Amsterdam when I was 17, which is 40 years ago. And I went in and then I knew the soul search was really on track there. I felt a connection, deep connection. And from there, because it made me feel so good inside, mind, body. I came back and did it again and again and it became a regular practice. And soon I found out that the ice cold water makes you breathe different. To become effectively against the exposure of the ice cold, you have to Breathe deeper into the tissue, bring oxygen, change the chemistry, become alkaline. And then suddenly the mind is able to to influence into the body and resist the ice cold, which is an impact. And from there, yeah, it made me feel so good and that all on my command. So I began to challenge my body even more. See, where is the limit, but the limit really is far, far ahead. We lost that. We lost the ability to connect within, to change our chemistry in the depth of the tissue. And therefore there is a slight acidity going on in our tissue past the blood in the tissue. And if that stays day in, day out, like for 10 years or two or 20 years, then of course we will get these autoimmune diseases, inflammation, deregulated DNA. That's logical because the garbage has never been cleansed. And this is what breathing does. Deep, right breathing, the way I learned it, has shown its effectivity in the ice cold. And there I did 26 world records only show if you have more control inside over your chemistry through the right way of breathing, then yes, you are suddenly able to survive in situations or to endure extreme impact not only of cold, also of oxygen deprivation like Mount Everest in shorts or the heat, like not drinking a full marathon without a meter of training or a yard of training. I'm not a runner, but if I want it, I can run, I can do anything because I command in my body. That's my little, you know, my little intro story.

It resonates really deeply with me. My new book, Headstrong, is about the mitochondria in our body. And I've come to believe that these little tiny bacteria that became basically the batteries in our cells, that they're calling the shots a lot more than we like to think they are. And they're the ones who say stop, you'll die. Because they have this bacterial level of consciousness that's like if you push too hard, you'll die. And a lot of our inner conversation about controlling our own biology is actually getting them to make more energy or getting them to vibrate the right way or to do what they're supposed to do. And first question for you there is, do you believe that we're communicating with our body down at that level, or is this more of like a mental game that we're playing with ourselves?

Yes, exactly. Very good question, Very deep. We are able to program by the neurology of the brain. As long as the body is alkaline into the DNA, into the genomes, into the mitochondria, influence with in the mitochondrial processes by Aerobic dissimulation, creating much more ATP. You know, the ATP, the molecule, the energy and all. Yeah, that's your work too. I do it through breathing. And food, of course, is also chemistry. Food must be food and breath must be deep. If they go together, then suddenly the mind, the neural activity of the mind is able to reach by neural activity directly into mitochondrial activity, into DNA expression. It's all there. And you know what? I Just three weeks ago, I was in Michigan, the Wayne State University, to do neuroscience. And they had me hooked within a FMRI to see what's happening in the brain while I'm exposed to cold. So. Oh, cool. Yes, it was cool. You gotta listen to this. Day two, Day two, they had me, FMRI and exposed by a wetsuit with all kinds of tubes wherein ice water was being poured and flowing back and forth. And they really had to go many times because I was warming up the water. Really? Yeah, man. The power within us is big. It's great. But something very new, you know, a groundbreaking happened the second day I was there. I was not allowed to do anything, not with my mind, and I was only able to do something with my mind. But I did do nothing. So they had me hooked with a temperature sensor on the skin to see if my skin temperature was going down when exposed two ice water. And yes, it went down drastically, like two times, two times seven and a half minutes. Then it went up because then they stopped with the ice water. But then day three, I went in and I told myself, today I'm going to show the difference of what a thought, what a neural active flow commanded by me is doing within my body related to the skin temperature when exposed to ice water. And it has been shown four times seven and a half minutes that the skin temperature was not going down because I programmed it to do so. And that only by a thought. Now, what I did before, what I did before was breathing to make my body alkaline. And then the neural activity of the mind is suddenly able to go at light speed through the body, into the genomes, into the mitochondrial activity, into the adrenaline axis and do it very strange. So this shows that the descending neural activity flow after the intervention of the mind and receiving a ascending neural activity flow like cold, it comes in. Then I decide you, I don't want you to interfere with my bodily processes. And then suddenly this intervention of my mind is able to command the descending neural activity flow to the body to ignite the right amount of epinephrine adrenaline to influence into the hypothalamus the thermoregulation and thus the skin temperature is not going to go down. This is a huge potential and I'm waiting now for the results. But they already saw these outcomes, the professors over there, and this will show new light on what the mind is capable of. And that means placebo no longer nocebo, no longer just positive thinking, your own, which is very powerful and able to go into any process of the body. And that's the way nature meant it to be. So what you say related to, say, mitochondria, are we able to go inward by neural activity? Absolutely, yes. And a whole lot more will come from there.

You talk about alkaline and breathing, which is relaxing to me because so many people talk about, oh, if you eat meat, you won't be alkaline, or if you don't drink alkaline water or some other kind of BS. In about 1999, I got a feedback machine that taught you how to control how much CO2 or oxygen you were breathing out. It was a feedback loop for your breath gas. And the biggest driver of alkalinity is breath, because you can hold on to carbon dioxide, which increases acidity, or you can breathe it out, which increases alkalinity. But this isn't talked about in the world of health where we're drinking these fancy water machine things. What's your take on alkalinity from food and water versus air?

Yes, food, water, air shouldn't be polluted, but it is, it is processed. And so we actively and consciously need to intervene if we breathe better the way we do it. Yeah, I do everything through science. So it has been shown in the recent study, it's completed with 48 people, and it showed that the average alkalinity was raising to a peak level of 7.8, which the normal natural standard should be 7.3, 7.4, where most of us are lower because of processed food and the chemistry and the fine dust in the air and all what we are doing as a society, we have to learn to deal with that. So it showed that we in this study, with the right way of breathing, are suddenly very capable to bring back the natural standards for alkalinity. And that's just. Yes.

Just with air, you're saying, without any of the other stuff.

Yes, just with air.

Yes.

And of course, if you drink polluted water or if you drink or eat processed food, then the body is not built to take that arm, so it needs to break it down, bring molecules, supplement it, then it's a whole way. And that takes a lot of energy. It takes a lot of time, takes a lot of stress because it is all sympathetic nervous system activity. And thus stress comes into the body, begins to oxidate and it is no good. So breath is one way and food should be food and water should be water. And the rest is positive thinking. You are able within your body by not only positive thinking, it's your neural activity. You know how to maintain balance. You can feel it. And your mind is a big player therein. We will show this together with neuroscientific new studies together with say Stanford, Michigan, Germany, Hanover universities, they all go into these matters like emotion and things and yeah, yeah man, we are doing it.

So yes Wim, I run 40 years of Zen which is the highest and private applied neuroscience brain training facility for executives in Seattle. So if you're ever in Seattle and I can get you for a day, we can put clinical grade EEG on your head and quantify these states and actually even make them more trainable. So if I can ever lure you there for a day, I'll give you some feedback using custom hardware and software available nowhere else very soon.

There, that's in la, isn't it?

This is in Seattle.

Oh Seattle. Oh Seattle. I don't know, I'm doing an American tour very soon. Thing is they already measured with NASA equipment that these breathing techniques that they are well exercised. They bring about theta, delta and Gamma.

We actually train those exact states. But there's some nuances because of the custom developed hardware we've got where we can quantify them but also then make them more teachable so that we can take someone and say, well this is the type of delta that you are targeting. So when you do something that's closer to what Wim has done, we'll give you a reward for it. So when someone wants to tighten their WIM HOF method, we could actually show them the brain state, give them a beep when they do it right, which can speed training.

I would love it. I think we are able coordinate that. Yes, we are able within 7, 8 minutes to get in a deep state of like meditative state normally.

Okay, yes, we'll measure that. Now here's another question. One of my buddies, Dr. Barry Morgolon, a UCLA surgeon, studied for 20 years with Chinese lineage. That was the root of the Shaolin practice. And, and he actually trained it with, you know, cover yourself in wet sheets and melt a hole in the glacier by meditating and wrote the mitochondrial meditation that's in Head strong. And there's 12 living grandmasters of that tradition right now. And I'm wondering, did you look at ancient Chinese or Tibetan or Hindu or shamanic, these various states when you were learning this or is this entirely sort of just self taught because you were paying attention?

Yes. In New York they call me a Pretak Buddha, a Pritak Buddha, yes. Somebody who has become enlightened out of the tradition of Buddhism. And I say boo. The Buddha is a human, you know, the Buddha is everybody of us. So it doesn't matter. I never had the money to go to Tibet or to China in those days. When I began to do the cold practice, I just began to do it by myself. And I found out that the cold is my teacher, my guru. And then like five years ago, I met a Rinpoche who is an expert in gtumo. And I told my practices at Hijra and I think it's very nice, you know, and there are like 12 masters. But what I bring to the world is actually the essence of Buddhism and that is compassion. And compassion is love. Love is composed now and scientifically endorsed as being happiness, strength and happiness, strength and health. And those are related to the endocrine system and, and the immune system. And now that I have translated into data and without speculation, everybody is very able and it is very accessible and very effective in just a couple of days to get into the autonomic nervous system level, which makes it where normally those practices take like years. And that's what we needed because we have a different lifestyle, a different way of our mind works different in the west, yet it is very dominant. It takes over all the world, but has no peace within itself. So we have shown now how to effectively, in the rhythm of our western mind, how to control the parasympathetic nervous system, the peace bringer within, and the sympathetic nervous system, which is more related to our daily actions, the neocortex. So the deeper limbic system and brainstem is within our control. Parasympathetic nervous system, the PE's and all it is being controlled, entered well as the sympathetic nervous system. You know, when those two systems are able to be tapped into, then you have more sense of control, absolute more sense of control over your life, over your energy management, over health, happiness and strength. So yeah, I know those people. I've been doing a Kung Fu, karate, Zen, Sufism, dervishim, all those disciplines I went into wholehearted. But the cold, yes, as you say nice, I say ice. Ice is nice. That's where I got it. I have to say respect and chapeau for what you have done. But we have to and linking up together, together we are stronger man. And yeah, I love it.

The definition of enlightenment is something that I've been interested in for a long time. I have been to Tibet, I was fortunate to get three months to travel around and learn meditation from the masters and to freeze my ass off at 18,000ft on Mount Kailash to push my limits, we'll put it that way. And the definition of enlightenment that I ended up with is that it's when you have full awareness of and control over every single cell in your body. Because the cells themselves sense the world around you and they're connected to the world, they're connected to the earth, they're connected to other people. And it's getting rid of the lies you tell yourself and the beliefs you have, the self limiting beliefs that sit between you and this level of awareness and control. And I'm nowhere near where I think I can go and would in no way call myself enlightened. But I can see that there's a possibility of having that and I can see what cold does. And thanks to your work, I mean I have a digitally controlled cold tub downstairs where I can dial in the temperature and it'll hold it there. And I have a cryotherapy machine and I've got oxygen restriction things and atmospheric pressure changing chambers and all this crazy stuff because pushing your cells seems to do something to your brain. But I don't know that I really know all the things it does. But it sounds like you may have more data on that than the average person by long shot. What do you think of that definition of enlightenment? Is that in alignment with what you've seen or do you even have a definition of it?

Yes. The natural tendency of the mind is to gather and to attract matter. So if we learned how to disassociate with matter consciously, then everybody becomes not burdened with the heaviness of matter. It becomes enlightened. Well being, it's just physiology. So now I've shown in Michigan in the FMRI how to disassociate from ice cold on your body and thus have control over the ice cold and everything we come across in our lives. Impact, impact could be heat, cold, oxygen deprivation, it could be grief, it could be bachelor bacteria, virus, could be stress, any it's all translated into matter. Matter and impact on our body by your resonance. Non seen and seen. It is all impact on our body, on our nervous system, on our neurology and there in the neurology we have a capability to disassociate from the impact on our physiology, and I just proved it. And it's going to be a new dimension where people learn the ability, a natural ability to disassociate or to become enlightened as a physiological entity within our power.

This will happen in our lifetime. Just for people listening. Wim, I fully endorse what you're saying. It's doable and just your body will tell you 10,000 times a day you're going to die if you do that. And it's always lying unless you actually die. But you have so much capacity before you get to that point that it's the fear that's holding you back. And you've done something weird where everyone I know who knows you, including me, says the same thing. He's crazy. And we always say that as a problem with you, in that you're fearless. Right. That's what we mean, is that you're fearless, not crazy. But we always say crazy because it makes the things you do appear crazy. But you're not at all crazy. You're smart and you're just unafraid in a way that I don't know anyone else is. But like, how do the rest of us get to that level of unafraidness, if that's a word.

Yes, of being unafraidness. Fearless or crazy about life.

There you go.

If you become crazy, remember the mother lifting up a car because her son underneath the love, real love is stronger than the universe. And real love you will find if you go into yourself, into the real essence, not learned in the schools, but learned within ourselves. It's there. And as it is not in the schools, we are changing the books in the university and we already did on biology and physics. We showed that the autonomic nervous system.