102： What Doesn't Kill Us ｜ Scott Carney
Episode Stats
Summary
New York Times bestselling author Scott Carney shares with us how to introduce environmental stressors into our life, how to build up more resilience, and the strategies he uses for making himself a stronger human being. Join us in our exclusive mastermind, The Iron Council, which can be done at orderofman.net/theironcouncil.
Transcript
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In general, I think it would be safe to assume that we as a people have become weak.
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The average man or woman seems to be more likely to face obesity, autoimmune disease,
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and basically an overall reduction in happiness and fulfillment. And as we continue
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to seek a life of ease and comfort, it is becoming painfully obvious to me that our quest for
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perpetual comfort might be the very thing that will kill us. My guest today, New York Times
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bestselling author Scott Carney, shares with us how to introduce environmental stressors into our
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life, how to build up more resilience, and the strategies he uses for making himself a stronger
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human being. You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart
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your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time. Every time. You are not
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easily deterred or defeated. Rugged. Resilient. Strong. This is your life. This is who you are.
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This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done,
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you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Michler,
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and I am the host and the founder of this podcast, The Order of Man. I hope that you guys had a great
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weekend. I know I certainly did. I was able to connect with a lot of people and rejuvenate.
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Just get back at it, which I'm doing now. I hope you're back at it as well. I hope that you are better
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off this week than you were last, and I hope it's due in some small sliver, some small way.
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Part of that has to do with you listening in to this podcast, The Order of Man podcast,
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and hopefully we're helping you in your life. That's what we're all about. We want you to become
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a better man. We want you to lead your family. We want you to lead in your community. Basically,
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I want you to have the type of life that I believe you and me, each and every one of us as men,
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has been called to lead. We're doing that right now on this podcast. If you've been with us for
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any amount of time, you know that we're bringing in the world's most successful men. We talk with
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them. We extract their lessons, extract the things they know, and then we bring them straight to you.
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If you've been with us for a short period of time, or if this is your first episode that you've ever
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listened to of this podcast, now you know what we're all about. If you are looking for the notes
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and the details, including a link for the book that I'm going to talk with you about today,
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you can check that out at orderofman.com slash 102 as in episode 102. If you are looking to connect
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but 23,000 men to be exact, you can do that in our closed Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups
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slash orderofman. And last but not least, if you really want to take this thing up a notch,
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you're serious about being a better man, you can join us in our exclusive mastermind,
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the Iron Council, which can be done at orderofman.com slash Iron Council. And a quick announcement,
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our live event. I know some of you have heard of this before. I want to make sure I give you
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another reminder. April 27th and 30th this year, 2017. I'm going to give you some more details a
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little bit later during the show, but for now, know that it will change your life and you can get
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the details on that at orderofman.com slash Uprising. Gentlemen, I have got a great one lined up for you
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today. We always do. I've got a New York Times bestselling author, Mr. Scott Carney on the show.
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I came across Scott's work while I was connecting with another podcast alumni, Scott Keneally with
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Rise of the Sufferfest. But Scott Carney just wrote a book titled What Doesn't Kill Us. I read the
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premise of the book, which is how Scott used Wim Hof's methods. And I know a lot of you guys are
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familiar with Wim Hof's work to improve his level of health. And I knew that this is someone I needed
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to have on the show. What I like most about Scott's work is that he is an investigative journalist
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by trade, but he set out to expose Wim Hof as a fraud. He talks about that and how rather than
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exposing him, he ended up reaping the benefits of his work to lose weight, build up mental resiliency
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using what both of them call environmental stressors and environmental training. In the meantime, guys,
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he also climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in shorts and he completed the tough guy, which is one of the
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world's most difficult and also coldest obstacle course races in the world. And he's here to talk
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with us about how he did it. Scott, what's going on, brother? Thanks for joining me on the show
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today. It's going to be a lot of fun. Thank you for having me. It is going to be a lot of fun. I've
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read your book and, uh, you know, I ate this thing up and I actually shared with a lot of the audience,
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my audience and the guys that follow us, uh, your book and told them to go out and purchase this
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because it was actually a really fascinating read and there's a lot of eyeopening, uh, information.
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So tell me the premise really quickly so we can have some context for the discussion today about
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the book. What doesn't kill us? So the, the general premise is that the environment is important and
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the, the, the spaces that you live in give you all sorts of signals through temperature and air
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pressure and, uh, just general stresses that the body can get. Uh, those things are important and they,
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they inform the way your body functions. Uh, and, and even more importantly than that,
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the world that many of us live in this sort of homeostatic constant 72 degrees, no matter if it's
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a blizzard outside or a scorching hot summer day, uh, we live in this perpetual state of comfort and
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homeostasis. And that is not good for us. Uh, we, we, we emerged over the course of 200,000 years
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of human evolution. And in that time, we always had changes going on and those changes had impacts
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on our body. And that when we have factored out environmental stresses, uh, we start getting
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weaker, we start getting sick and we don't express our full human potential. Is this relatively new
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information? Because one of the things you talk about, and I agree with this is that most of the
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health industry focuses primarily on diet and exercise yet here you are. And of course,
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Wim Hof talking about this third component that seems to be overlooked. I'm not sure if it's not
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that, that people aren't aware of it or it's just not an importance to people.
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I think that in the past, we certainly have thought about the environment, uh, as an important part of,
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of human health. I mean, I don't know if you, you know, if you think back to like the 1800s,
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right. And there was like tuberculosis epidemics and things like that. People would say, Oh, you
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have to go get in the mountains to go, go help because that cool mountain air will, will help
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you. I actually don't know if that's true. I don't know if cool mountain air will help tuberculosis,
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but there was this idea that the environment that you inhabit impacts your health dramatically.
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Now in the last, let's say 40 or 50 years of, of a sort of pharmaceutical development and this idea
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of tweaking the internal mechanisms of your body through drugs, uh, or, you know, vitamins or
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nutrition, uh, this, the, this larger idea of the space you inhabit is less important where we're
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almost entirely focused on our inner space and not the outer space, uh, around our body. And so
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that, that idea had disappeared from our sort of, uh, dominant conversation, uh, uh, has proven great
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for me, right? Because I'm saying, trying to bring it back, right? I'm trying to tell you. And, and the
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fact that these ideas are coming back into human consciousness now is great for me. Like it, it's
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great for anyone who says, look, the, the environment is important. And that when you start engaging with
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the environment and, and realizing that it has a profound impact on your health, it produces biological
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changes very, very rapidly. And, and for the most part, a very beneficial ways.
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What's the, what's the reasoning in your mind, or maybe you've even done some research on this,
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why we as a society have shifted away from this third component of environmental training.
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Is it monetarily driven because diet and exercise, it can produce money for other people. I mean,
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what, what's the reasoning that we've shifted away from that?
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I think it's just this desire for comfort that we have, you know, um, you know, United States
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was the, was the, the country that invented the lazy boy, right? This is sort of ultra comfortable
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thing. And, and I think that we prioritize this idea of, of, of inherent safety around us and inherent
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comfort as that is the ideal. And hell it's, it's alluring, isn't it? Right. That you can go from a
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brutal outside temperature, come inside, flick a switch. All of a sudden you're in 70 degrees.
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That is alluring. And it, and our desire for that is ingrained in our biology, right? We have this
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desire for comfort because in our ancient past and not even that ancient past, but, but comfort was
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never a norm. It was always this idea, Hey, it would be nice to be a little more comfortable, but Hey,
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I still need to go across this desert or I still need to live in this little, you know, damp hovel.
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And, and, and, and it was never sort of perfectly attenuated, but our ability now to produce
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technology, uh, technological solutions, uh, to this idea of comfort is just so easy. And it's so
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available that now we have to seek out what, what we consider suffering in order to have a natural
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oscillations, uh, to our biology, which is the rise of the suffer fest, which I know, I think you're
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friends with, uh, Scott Keneally, who we've had on the show. And of course I've been involved with
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obstacle course racing between Spartan races and things like, and I know you have too, which I'm,
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I'm, I am looking forward to getting into that a little bit as well.
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Yeah. I mean, it's, it's this fundamental human thing, like to be human, to be an animal means to
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overcome the challenges of our environment. Like that is a, a, a basic property of being a biological
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entity. Uh, and the fact that that is not as big of a challenge now because we're so smart, because
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we're so in control, uh, of our environment that, that it's, it's not letting us express or even
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become, uh, robust. I mean, it's, it's almost crazy when, when, when someone hears what I've done
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in the course of this book is I climbed up most of the way up to Kilimanjaro to a place called
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Gilman's point, which is about 18,500 feet in 28 hours, wearing basically a bathing suit the whole
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time as the temperature, you know, swept down to negative 30 degrees. That sounds insane, right?
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But it's something that my body and I'm not an athlete, right? I am not nothing special from a
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physical perspective. I'm a journalist. I'm a, I got a rights words. I have a sense of adventure,
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I guess. That's my, that's my talent. Uh, but getting up to the top of that mountain,
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I was really just using and activating a hidden human biology that we all have the potential to
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access, you know, you know, over the course of human evolution, when we have to go encounter a
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radical change, let's say there's a blizzard coming, right? And it, and it's going to be a
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difficult challenge to get through the animals and the humans that are not able to change their
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physiology rapidly to adapt to that environment are the ones who did not pass on their genes.
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And we are the, you know, if you're alive today, it's because your ancestors were badasses.
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Sure. Yeah. Survival of the fittest essentially.
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Yeah. And, and, you know, and, and, you know, we've been evolving since about 3 billion years ago.
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That's when life sort of emerges on the planet from, you know, you start getting complex life.
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Every iteration of that, every biological being had to deal with the environment.
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Like that was, that was their main role invite, deal with the environment and pass on your genes.
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And we are this, the, the result of that. And we are finally attuned to be able to, to do this.
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And, and all it takes to reinvigorate that hidden biology is to get out there and start introducing
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changes to take it. I take a cold shower every day. I do this, this breathing method that stresses my
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sort of my gasp reflex. You know, I, I sort of hold my breath for an incredibly long period of
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time every morning. And by adding these stressors, it actually has this beneficial effects throughout,
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you know, my whole body. Yeah. And I'm really excited to get into this and I want to have
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you a conversation specifically about the breathing because I actually practice some of the exercises
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that you had talked about in the book. But before I get to that, I want to ask you something that
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has been on my mind. And I think it's easy for, and I've even caught myself saying this,
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that, you know, technology has made us weaker. We're a weak people in general. But then I look,
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you know, we just got, we had the super bowl yesterday and I look at these athletes and there's
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no doubt in my mind that these are elite athletes. They're strong, they're big, they're fast. And I
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don't know how they stack up to our ancestors, but I question, are we really weaker or are we stronger
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because of the technological advances that we have? And are those athletes, the exception rather
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than the rule? Well, it's not one thing or the other, right? I mean, we all have the biology to
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that our ancestors had. It's, it's, it's the question of nature versus nurture, right? While
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one of the, these elite athletes are hardcore training, right? They're doing a lot of stuff.
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They are really delving into their biology. And I have no doubt that those guys, right? The Tom
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Brady's of the world and whatnot would be a pretty darn good match for our, for our ancestors, right?
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I mean, they have all the benefits of both nurturing their bodies along the way because
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they started being athletes probably at a very young age, right? And these are probably the five
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year old kids are out there on the soccer field, right? And, and they're stressing themselves and
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their biologies are able to express themselves. But what I'm talking about is the average American,
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right? Not the, our elite special forces units who, you know, go through their own thing,
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but, you know, we have this exploding obesity epidemic in the United States, right? Exploding.
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We have diabetes. It's through the roof. We have autoimmune illnesses that are crazy. And for every,
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you know, elite athlete, there's 50,000, you know, ordinary people, right? Who, who struggle,
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uh, uh, with their environment because they're so comfortable.
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Yeah. And, and it's fascinating to me that you set out from what I can tell to debunk the myth
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that Wim Hof had claimed that he can actually control his body and, and reduce some of these
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illnesses that we see generally in society today. Yeah. I thought he was a charlatan, honestly. Uh,
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when this started, uh, you know, my investigative career, you know, I never expected to write a sports
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book, right? I, this never occurred to me. I was an investigative journalist. My first book was
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about organ trafficking. My second book was the dark side of the meditative path where I
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explored the stories of people who were on spiritual quests and those quests ended tragically,
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either in their deaths or another person's death or going into an insane asylum. Um, these sort of,
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that pursuit for divinity is very close to madness. And when I learned about Wim, sorry,
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let me go backwards a second. When we talk about that, that, that desire for something greater than
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yourself is you're often looking for superpowers, right? You're looking for stuff to become something
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great, uh, and, and almost magical. And a lot of gurus will take advantage of, of their flocks by
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making these outlandish claims that have no ability, you know, that there's no way to duplicate such as
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like levitating or walking through walls. And, and there's a whole spiritual contingent that looks at
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this stuff. Uh, or to another extent, just even promising heaven, you know, that is one of the
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ways that ISIS shows up, you know? So, so there's this sort of spirituality and madness thing that I
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was examining for many, many years, almost 10 years. When I heard about Wim, his claims were very
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similar. He was claiming to be able to sit in the snow for just epic amounts of time and control his
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immune system. And that not only was he been able to demonstrate those things because he had,
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I knew he had done a lot of these things, but when he started saying he could teach you to do it and
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not only that, but teach you quickly, it sounded like a get rich quick scheme. It sounded like he
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was trying to like milk some money out of his followers. So when I went out to see him, I was
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totally ready to just write another story. I was writing for playboy at the time. Uh, I was going
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to write another story about this more charlatan guru and then go on with my investigative life,
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but it didn't work out that way. I met Wim and within a matter of days, I'm like lying in the
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snow in the middle of the Polish winter. This is the winter that stops the Nazi army. This is the
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winter that stops, uh, that, that, that stopped Napoleon in his tracks. And I'm out here in a
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bathing suit, rolling around in the snow, feeling warm. Uh, it was just so shocking and so quick that I
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knew that, that, that there was something legitimate to it. Yeah. I mean, I really liked,
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I like what you say about the, the, the inability to duplicate some of these results versus your
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experience where you are. He is teaching those results. Cause you talk about in the book, super
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testers and maybe these anomalies of people that for whatever reason, their, uh, biology or physiology
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is made in a way that allows them to accomplish these things, but they are experiencing results over
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and over and over again. Talk to me about maybe some of the tactics, uh, that you have personally
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adapted in your life that have helped you realize that this isn't a fraud, that this is actually
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legitimate thing. So I have a, uh, you know, a 15 minute workout routine that I, that I do every
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day. And I think this is what you're getting at, um, where I do a breathing routine, which is the
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Wim Hof method breathing, which is, looks a lot like hyperventilation. So it's like deep, rapid breaths.
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It sounds a little like this. And I do like 30 of those breaths. And then I let all the air out of
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my lungs and I hold my breath until I get to that point where I absolutely have to gasp. And then I'll,
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and then I'll repeat that and do three or four rounds of it. And every time I do a round, I can,
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I can hold my breath an extra minute. Uh, so by the end of this routine, I'm doing three minutes of
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holding my breath, uh, which is, you know, there's a sort of a body hack that goes to this,
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which is blowing off CO2 from your system, uh, has tricks your body for where it's gas point is.
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But the effects are that you're able to do longer bouts of exertion, uh, or longer bouts of holding
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your breath. And then at the end of that, I'll do pushups without breathing. And when I started this,
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I could do about 20 pushups, you know, nothing special at all. Um, and after just 15 minutes of
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learning the breathing, I could do 40, uh, and, and my, and with 40 without breathing with my lungs,
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totally empty of air. It was, it's shocking. It's really cool. Well, I can tell you just to
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interrupt you before you move on to the next one here is I actually practiced this. I was gone this
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weekend and I decided to practice as best I could some of your breathing techniques that you talk about
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in the book. And I did this on the plane, but I obviously I couldn't do it to the degree you just
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shared with me because people would look at me weird, but I did it as best I could. And the first time I
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did it, I was able to hold my breath for a minute. And, and by then I was just, I was exhausted.
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I had to, I had to grasp for air. The second time after the controlled hyperventilating that you talk
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about, I was able to hold my breath for an additional 30 seconds just after doing it for
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one time. And I'm sure I didn't do it even as good as I could have had I been alone.
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Sure. Well, I mean, I mean, you can always do this in the middle of the plane. They'll look at
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you weird, but you know, hell you'll hold your breath for three minutes.
00:19:24.340
That's right. Exactly. Exactly. So you've got the, so you talk about the breathing,
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you talk about the pushups, uh, and I haven't done the pushup exercise yet, but I will do that.
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Tell me, tell me what else you have in this 15 minute exercise.
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Uh, I mean, that's really it. It's 50, it's 15 minutes of breathing and then pushups at the end.
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And then, and then whenever I take my shower in the day, depending on what my workout routine is,
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uh, you start off with a hot shower and at the last minute or so minute or two, you turn it all the
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way cold and, and the colder it is, the better. And in that moment where that, that cold water is
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going down on you, you have to relax into it. So the natural human response is fight or flight. You
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get, you get very tense, you get, you know, and you're trying to warm yourself with that, that,
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that muscle activity, right? What you're actually trying to do with this method is like you get
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into that stressful situation and then you just relax and let it wash over you. And you're,
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and you tell your body to essentially find a different way to heat itself and also not worry
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so much about what is ultimately not a very dangerous, stressful situation, right? Cold
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water ain't going to kill anybody. Right. Not in your shower. Not immediately. Right. Of course.
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Yeah. I mean, really not. I mean, you, you should try to kill yourself with a cold shower. It's
00:20:42.500
Gentlemen, we are getting close on giving you the last reminder for the uprising. It looks like
00:20:49.180
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time to get off of that fence and go register. This is our three and a half day experience in
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the mountains of Southern Utah. This is an experience designed to test you mentally, physically,
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it again. And we're going to add some new features to this as well. There's a lot of men running around
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relationship or your health, your business, any area of life, guys, it is time to shake things up.
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Again, do it quickly. We are going to sell out soon. Again, that's order a man.com slash uprising.
00:21:53.140
And now let me get back to my interview and conversation with Scott.
00:21:58.340
Yeah, no, I've liked what you're talking about. I mean, what you're talking about from my perspective
00:22:02.000
is just intentionality, because I think there's a lot of things that the body does. You talk about
00:22:05.860
sneezing, for example, and there's a lot of things that the body does just automatically. And you're
00:22:09.680
using your mind to turn some of these things off in order for the mind to focus on maybe a more
00:22:16.680
effective and efficient way of doing things. Exactly. Is that, is that our body runs on this
00:22:22.940
sort of this autonomic programming that we don't have much access into, you know, you know, you can't
00:22:28.480
really control your heartbeat. Right. For instance, I mean, there are ways to get there, but it's,
00:22:33.640
but it's, but it's pretty hard to go do that. But then there's systems like your breathing
00:22:38.100
where I can hold my breath right now. But if I stop thinking about it, it'll just go on autopilot.
00:22:43.660
And what a lot of the training is, is trying to modulate what you do have conscious control
00:22:50.340
over in order to activate unconscious responses in the body. And one great one to, for an example is,
00:22:57.260
is vasoconstriction. So you have about 60,000 miles of tubing in your body that carries blood
00:23:03.720
here and there in the arteries, which are the, the, the tubes that leave your heart, you know,
00:23:09.280
and travel away from your heart. Those are lined with smooth muscle and whose role is to constrict
00:23:17.720
in, in a case of in two cases. One, if, if someone cuts off your leg with a sword, right,
00:23:23.120
you don't bleed out. You know, this is why, this is why soldiers lose their legs and live is that
00:23:29.820
because when, when that leg gets cut off, the vein, the arteries will clench and, and stop the flow of
00:23:37.040
blood to the, to the extremity. And that's how people have survived. So that's a very useful skill
00:23:42.200
to have. Um, but a more useful one, one that we use, uh, usually regularly, evolutionarily we use
00:23:50.440
regularly is when it gets cold, the arteries in your hands and your extremities, uh, will constrict
00:23:55.620
and keep the blood in your core to preserve your core temperature and keep you alive, uh, sacrificing
00:24:02.180
dexterity and possibly in case of very extreme cases, the, the extremities themselves.
00:24:10.640
So now think about this. You have like 30,000 miles of muscles along these, in this arterial pathways.
00:24:16.500
And the only way we ever can exercise them is to get cold. Cause I can't just think my hand
00:24:22.800
to constrict, right? I can't just consciously constrict it. The only way I can actually restrict
00:24:26.860
it is by getting into a cold environment and having that environment trigger vasoconstriction.
00:24:33.220
And for evolutionarily, when we're, we, where we emerged from this 200,000 years of human evolution,
00:24:39.100
vasoconstriction was a normal thing to do. We would just never had to be under conscious control
00:24:43.440
because you get into a cold environment and it would just go and would just happen. And, and there
00:24:49.040
would be enough variations during the, you know, the week or the month that you're hanging out doing
00:24:53.480
your prehistoric thing, uh, that, that those, that system would get exercise. But now here again,
00:24:59.660
we're living in comfort all the time and those muscles are weak. They are there. You have a weak
00:25:05.880
circulatory system. You can even have a six pack and, you know, totally gym bodied up. But if you never
00:25:12.220
get uncomfortable, you never put yourself in a cold shower, never walk around in the snow or do
00:25:15.960
like the things that a human might do that, that whole system is weak. And, and, and it leads to,
00:25:21.680
to, you know, cardiac illnesses, circulatory illnesses, uh, you know, all sorts of problems.
00:25:27.700
Yeah. This is fascinating because I've often caught myself asking, you know, our, our ancestors
00:25:31.940
trekking across the plains that are the tundra in sub freezing temperatures and asking myself,
00:25:38.120
how is that even possible? And it sounds like based on what you're saying in the work that
00:25:42.180
Wim Hof is doing, that it's possible through controlled, uh, the ability to control and
00:25:47.860
maybe not control, but the ability to exercise and strengthen the muscles that you're talking
00:25:51.940
about here. Yeah. I mean, it's that it was also metabolic tissues that will get, um, stronger the
00:25:57.660
more, um, the more you exercise them. So, you know, uh, we have this thing called Brown adipose
00:26:03.420
tissue or Brown fat that every baby is born with. And in order to survive babies, their
00:26:10.240
first challenge in life is keeping a body temperature up and they have a very high surface
00:26:15.600
area to mass ratio, which means they lose heat very quickly. But at the same time, they
00:26:21.140
don't have developed muscles or digestive systems or even a great circulatory system. So they
00:26:26.000
don't have an obvious way to heat themselves. So, you know, you and I heat ourselves through
00:26:31.500
our digestion, through our circulation, through these, the movement of our muscles. And that's
00:26:35.760
how we maintain 98.6 babies don't have that option. So what they're born instead with are
00:26:41.600
rolls of fat, which, you know, you can obviously see, and, uh, this other tissue called Brown
00:26:47.320
adipose tissue or Brown fat. And what this, the role of that tissue is, is to suck white fat from
00:26:53.920
the baby, those baby rolls and burn it directly for heat energy. And that's how you and I survived
00:26:59.660
the first years of our life until we started moving and exercising ourselves. Now, what's
00:27:04.960
really interesting is that until 2007, you know, the American scientists had no clue that
00:27:11.880
Brown fat even existed in adults. They just thought it wasn't around. Uh, and, and I'm
00:27:17.440
not going to tell the whole story because it's a little bit long, but they did an MRI or something
00:27:21.760
like that. If I remember correctly. Yeah. Through P E T C T scan. That's right. Uh, but, but
00:27:26.540
they found that, that, uh, Brown fat actually does exist in, in adult humans, just not in
00:27:33.040
great quantities for adult humans who are never exposed to environmental variation. So
00:27:38.700
if you find like an indigenous person who has minimal technology available to them, or even
00:27:44.600
just a very poor person who has to deal with like a homeless person would have, would have
00:27:48.840
a lot of, of, of sort of existing metabolic tissues in their body, um, because they need
00:27:54.940
it to survive. And here's my, one of my favorite stories and I like recounting it, uh, when the
00:28:01.180
pilgrims, so these Puritans from England landed in Cape Cod or Plymouth, uh, you know, what
00:28:08.500
16, whatever they, uh, didn't see anybody at first and they were living in their little cold
00:28:14.500
stone cottages and, and, you know, trying to, to make a go of it. And the first person
00:28:20.280
they meet is this character named Samoset and he, he's an Algonquin Indian and he walks
00:28:26.960
up to them in the middle of like March. So pretty darn cold, right? Sure. And he's wearing
00:28:33.000
a loincloth and that's it. He just shows up and this is the original account. You can
00:28:36.920
look this up. This is on Google or whatever. He shows up in a loincloth, walks up to them
00:28:40.700
and says, welcome, welcome Englishman. Do you have any beer? That's funny, which, which
00:28:47.540
is hilarious. A, that he knows English to that. He totally misread the Puritans because
00:28:51.760
they didn't have any beer. Right. And then the Puritans response was, oh my God, you need
00:28:56.760
a coat. And then they gave him a coat and he's like, gee, thanks for the coat. But the, the
00:29:01.340
natives in that, in that area, the, the indigenous people in Northeast America would condition
00:29:06.760
their children by putting their children in snow banks, um, you know, in their infancy
00:29:11.560
to generate their heat building properties throughout their whole life. So that come
00:29:17.160
March in the 1600s and this, these frigid days, they were totally comfortable in almost
00:29:22.240
no clothing. And it's, it's a, just a human ability that comes through nurture.
00:29:26.600
You know, it's funny as I watched a video, oh, it must've been two or three weeks. It was
00:29:31.020
before I, I was introduced to your research and I think it's in Russia where they would
00:29:37.060
literally, these, these school children, elementary school children were out rolling around in
00:29:41.560
the snow and they would do that every day and then come in and do their studies. And, and
00:29:44.700
I think it was to ward off illness and disease and they're having success with this.
00:29:50.260
Yeah, they totally are. It's a, it's a viral video on Facebook. Anyone can just Google that
00:29:55.040
up. But, uh, you know, there's a ice bath tradition in Russia that goes back two or 300
00:29:59.320
years, uh, where, you know, in these cold Russian winters, people realize that, that by getting
00:30:06.260
cold and giving them short term exposure to sort of extreme cold invigorates their body
00:30:12.620
to be able to resist the elements in general. Um, you know, and there's sort of a difference
00:30:16.880
between slow cold and fast cold. I'm realizing, you know, the, the immediate response to, you
00:30:23.460
know, jumping into like ice water is this fight or flight response and that invigorates
00:30:27.540
your nervous system. But if you were to live in ice water for a long period of time, like, you know,
00:30:33.300
three hours or something, you're going to die of hypothermia. But so, so there's this, there's
00:30:37.860
this modulating point where at first your body kicks in extra energy and does extra stuff. And
00:30:43.100
then the cold can still certainly grind you down, but you start building up resistance. And, you know,
00:30:48.760
wind can stay in ice water for about 90 minutes, which would kill most people, which would kill
00:30:53.600
the most unconditioned people. Yeah. So outside of being a endurance athlete or an elite, excuse me,
00:31:00.500
an elite athlete, like we have talked about, uh, is the practical application of this type of
00:31:05.020
environmental training to ward off illness and to live maybe a more healthy lifestyle? Is there,
00:31:11.180
is there other things beyond that? Or am I understanding that correctly?
00:31:14.080
Well, it's one to ward off illness in particular, uh, autoimmune illnesses. Uh, you know,
00:31:21.500
these things where your body attacks itself and it's, it's not immediately logical for why that
00:31:27.720
works like that, but you know, we have to go back to evolution to understand it, but we always had
00:31:32.980
variation in our temperatures and that, and those variations are powered by the sympathetic nervous
00:31:40.540
system. Like that's how we, we adapted through the sympathetic nervous system, which is also linked
00:31:45.560
to our immune system. And, and as we, you know, and this immune system is, is this sort of predator
00:31:53.440
in our body, right? It's searching around for bacteria to eat, viruses to defeat and that sort of
00:31:59.080
thing. And it's got macrophages and killer T cells and neutrophils and all these like different types of,
00:32:04.620
of, uh, cellular bodies. But in the world that we live in with so few stimuli for the immune system,
00:32:12.760
uh, and, and, and the sympathetic nervous system, one of the reasons why we, why the immune system
00:32:18.860
will occasionally attack itself either through Crohn's disease or arthritis or lupus or various
00:32:24.600
conditions is that that predator is, has nothing to do. It's essentially bored, right? And, and yet it's
00:32:32.640
still a predator. So it starts attacking your joints or attacking your digestive tract or whatever else.
00:32:37.180
And by reintroducing variations, you're essentially giving that predator a chew toy.
00:32:43.780
Now I'm using metaphors. I mean, I think a scientist can break this out in another way, but
00:32:48.440
it's pretty fascinating because when I was researching the book, I meet a bunch of people
00:32:53.220
with Crohn's disease and arthritis who are able to literally reverse their conditions because they're
00:32:59.560
using, uh, environmental stimulus to treat themselves. And it's, it's amazing. It certainly
00:33:04.580
needs more scientific research to sort of bolster and back it up, but it's fascinating to get into
00:33:10.240
that. So, so, you know, you're saying who benefits from this, right? It's people who have illnesses who
00:33:16.220
want to get better. It's people who just want to live a sort of a well-rounded life, sort of general
00:33:21.700
health. Um, also in athletes are really, really keen on it because it mixes very, very well with
00:33:29.020
something called high intensity interval training where, you know, you, you, you prep your breathing
00:33:35.200
and then do a really high level of exertion. And you can actually do a lot more of that exertion.
00:33:41.500
You know, it's like with the pushups where I could do, do 20 normally. Then I did this breathing. I did
00:33:45.500
40. Well, if you mix that with high intensity training, you sort of really supercharge your
00:33:50.220
workout, um, with the potential of passing out. Well, and I imagine too, that, um, anybody listening
00:33:59.240
who might be a quote unquote survivalist might also be interested in this type of training because
00:34:05.080
this just brings it to a whole nother level. Sure. Well, I mean, I would think that the survivalists,
00:34:10.040
if they're, if they're really keen on it, are already doing a lot of this. That's true. Right.
00:34:13.300
I mean, if you're out there in the weather, you don't need to read the book to, to get out there and,
00:34:19.500
you know, start having your body do its things. Right. Uh, although you have to read the book
00:34:23.560
because it's a great book. You do. And both of us recommend that you do. And your times recommends
00:34:27.640
that you do as well. Exactly. But, but, you know, essentially like, like what I'm shedding a light
00:34:33.620
on is, is these are what things that humans used to do. And you should still be doing some of these
00:34:38.260
things because it's, it's not bad to experience the full range of, of human physiology and, and getting
00:34:45.960
outside. Like one, one of the people that, one of the groups that I sort of highlighted
00:34:49.460
in the book is this group called the November project, which I think is a fantastic, um,
00:34:54.420
athletic group. And what they, what they do is they have these like what they call tribes and
00:34:58.640
basically every American city. And they do workouts at like pretty early in the morning,
00:35:04.500
like seven 30 in the morning. And they make a pact to come every day, rain or shine, and they're
00:35:10.020
going to work out outside. And even though they're not thinking about this in terms of the evolutionary
00:35:16.620
potential that I'm highlighting in the book, just being out there every day puts their body
00:35:21.080
in touch with the seasonal variations of their area. And, and those seasonal variations trigger
00:35:27.400
biological processes to get the body ready for that seasonal change. Uh, and it's so it's just
00:35:34.160
an awesome that this thing was out there and, and, you know, anyone can get out there and they can,
00:35:37.760
they can start looking at their environment as an opportunity to train their physiology.
00:35:42.280
So I guess this leads to the question because we talk about breathing, 15 minute breathing,
00:35:46.360
pushup exercise, those types of things, cold showers, maybe a little bit of exercise here.
00:35:49.640
Is that enough to reap the type of benefits that you're talking about? Because the things that you
00:35:53.560
did were intensive and the majority of people aren't going to do those types of things. Is it enough
00:35:59.040
for some of these others that you've talked about?
00:36:01.420
It is. And that's the, that's the super cool thing is that, so I ran a study while I was doing this
00:36:06.600
project where I tested my metabolism before I did the training. So I was like, I did nothing for
00:36:13.120
like, I think 30 days or 40 days beforehand. I tested my physiology then. And then I tested after
00:36:18.460
six months of doing this every day. And in the meantime, I didn't do any additional workouts that
00:36:24.820
I wasn't doing already. Uh, so I, I think I would do about three workouts, um, a week and these are not
00:36:31.380
super intense. I would like run three miles around a lake around my, uh, near my house or I'd go
00:36:36.180
swimming for like an hour, like nothing at all, uh, extreme. And I didn't change anything else other
00:36:41.400
than adding the breathing routine and the cold showers. And, you know, occasionally if there was
00:36:45.540
like a cold lake to jump in, I'll just do it. Cause I think it's fun. Just doing that. Uh, I was able
00:36:51.280
to accomplish pretty crazy feats. Like I did, you know, a couple obstacle course races and in my shorts,
00:36:57.660
even though, despite like snow and like cripplingly cold weather. And I climbed to Mount Kilimanjaro.
00:37:02.300
Yeah. Including the, uh, the tough guy is one of the ones that you did, right? Which is Scott
00:37:06.040
talked about that quite a bit. I think he just, did he just race that? I think he just raced,
00:37:10.120
uh, he did. He did. And he didn't finish this time. He said it was too cold. Oh, wow. Yeah. So he
00:37:15.140
needs some of this training. It sounds like. Yeah. I talked to, I talked to him about that a lot.
00:37:19.540
Are there any surprises? Let me, uh, let me, uh, the end of this is that, so I tested my metabolism
00:37:26.900
before and after and just adding this cold stuff, just adding the breathing stuff. I went from
00:37:31.520
somebody who primarily burned carbohydrates, uh, during workouts to someone who burned primarily
00:37:37.780
fat during workouts, which is a huge benefit. And it's something that endurance athletes prize
00:37:44.500
because it fat is more reliable, uh, fuel source for sort of longer exertions, but I'd only done it
00:37:50.060
done like a 15 minute change a day. And when I talked to the physiologist in debt in Boulder,
00:37:55.240
who was studying me, he said that it was as if I had added seven hours of working out
00:37:59.920
to my routine, uh, every day, uh, sorry, every week, every weekend, uh, which is huge. Cause
00:38:06.720
I only added about, you know, what, like an hour and 30 minutes or whatever. Right. So that,
00:38:11.320
that was like a, like a really efficient thing. And I think that it's the perspective of the
00:38:15.640
environment, which, which really, uh, supercharged that and made it possible. So yeah, if you want
00:38:21.180
to, you know, get fit and sort of lose weight, cold is a great way to do that. Um, to, to become
00:38:26.820
a better endurance runner, cold is a great way to do that. This breathing is a great way to do that.
00:38:30.860
I love it. I love it. And it's very practical and it sounds like it's very easy for people to
00:38:34.620
implement. Obviously they can take it above and beyond, but that's a good starting point. It
00:38:37.920
sounds like. So as we, as we wind up, and I know we could talk about this a lot more because I was
00:38:42.480
spellbound and fascinated by the book and the research that you did. I do want to ask you a couple
00:38:46.440
additional questions. The first one, which I prepared you for a little bit
00:38:49.380
was what does it mean to be a man? For me, what I believe being a man is, is being responsible for
00:38:56.560
yourself and the people around you and to be able to step up to the challenges in life. And
00:39:06.660
I know for myself where, where I feel like I made the transition between being a boy and being a man
00:39:13.520
probably happened when I was in college and I went abroad on like an abroad program. And I lived in
00:39:20.780
India for a year where everything was a challenge. And I was, I was forcing myself to learn new things
00:39:27.000
all the time. And then in doing that, I realized I was capable of, of enduring a lot of suffering and
00:39:33.420
of, of, of, of figuring out challenges for myself. And I think that's what separates sort of the child
00:39:39.880
from the adult. Yeah. And obviously something that your work is going to help a lot of guys
00:39:44.980
become more of, and obviously fulfill that, that role and that responsibility that you talk about.
00:39:50.040
So with that said, what is the best way to connect with you, learn about what you're doing? And of
00:39:53.920
course, by the book as well. Well, uh, you know, the books on Amazon and bookstores everywhere,
00:39:58.360
we've got a great audio book that I recorded myself and it's, uh, you know, everyone says it's,
00:40:02.960
it's pretty cool. You can actually do your workouts while listening to me. Maybe that's inspiring.
00:40:06.860
Yeah, sure. Uh, there are also, you know, I've got the Facebook thing. I got the Twitter thing,
00:40:13.080
the Instagram thing, you know, a little bit of Googling and you'll find me. Uh, and I've got a
00:40:17.760
website, scottcarney.com. So, oh, and the book has a website. What doesn't kill us is the book's
00:40:22.920
name. So wherever that shows up on Facebook, uh, you will find it. Excellent. We'll make sure.
00:40:28.540
That's right. Well, we'll make sure we link everything up so the guys can find that pretty easy.
00:40:32.460
Like I said, uh, really fascinated by your work and, uh, the, the fact that you actually went out
00:40:36.860
and did it. And that's what I've got to tell you. I admire about you is that I think there's a lot
00:40:40.420
of people who could sit the sidelines and, and research this stuff and, and try to prove either
00:40:44.580
the hypothesis, correct or incorrect, whatever it may be. But I admire the fact that you went out and
00:40:49.400
you pushed your body, you learned something new and you actually got out and did it. So I got to tell
00:40:53.240
you, I appreciate you. And I thank you for being on the show today. Thanks for having me on. This
00:40:56.580
is going to be a lot of fun. There it is guys. Such a great conversation with Scott Carney. If
00:41:01.680
you haven't already go out, I know some of you have already, but if you haven't go out
00:41:05.520
by this book, I devoured it. I've started implementing some of its teachings in my life.
00:41:09.880
You will not be disappointed. Again, just a quick reminder about our second live event,
00:41:14.100
the uprising. We are going to sell out of these spots. I told you last week, we only had one or two
00:41:18.660
spots left. Those have been filled, but I did open it up for a few additional spots. I want to see you
00:41:23.780
there. I want to see you succeed. At the end of the day, we're going to be completing some challenges,
00:41:28.240
some tactics, some activities that are going to help you get exactly what you need to get that
00:41:33.900
clarity and that purpose in your life. You can learn more and claim that spot at orderofman.com
00:41:39.140
slash uprising. I'm going to look forward to talk with you on Friday for our Friday field notes. But
00:41:43.660
until then, remember, take action and become the man you were meant to be. Thank you for listening
00:41:48.280
to the Order of Man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man
00:41:53.140
you were meant to be. We invite you to join the Order at orderofman.com.