The Art of Manliness - #275： How Your Climate-Controlled Comfort Is Killing You

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:18.760 modern technology has provided us with an unprecedented amount of comfort for example

00:00:23.060 with just a turn of a dial we can ensure that our homes are always set at a perpetual 71 degrees

00:00:27.940 even if it's blazing hot or frigidly cold outside but what if our quest for technology enabled

00:00:33.020 comfort has actually made us physically and mentally weaker and sicker what if our bodies

00:00:37.480 actually need discomfort to truly thrive and flourish my guest today explores that idea

00:00:42.800 firsthand in his book what doesn't kill us how freezing water extreme altitude and environmental

00:00:47.440 conditioning will renew our lost evolutionary strength his name is scott carney he's an

00:00:51.960 anthropologist and a writer and in his latest book he investigates the sometimes crazy sounding

00:00:56.740 claims of a dutch daredevil and prophet of intentional stress exposure named wim hoff for

00:01:01.960 a year scott followed wim's method of physical vitality that consists of daily hyperventilation

00:01:06.480 breathing exercises and cold exposure to see what it would do to his physiology and the results

00:01:12.040 truly astonished him along the way he interviews scientists researchers and athletes who are at

00:01:16.680 the forefront of exploring why embracing environmental discomfort is the missing key to overall health

00:01:21.500 on today's show scott and i discuss wim hoff and his claims the health benefits of exposing

00:01:26.040 ourselves to the cold and how hyperventilating may help you do more push-ups than you ever thought

00:01:31.060 possible if you enjoyed our content on the health benefits of cold showers you're going to love

00:01:34.920 this podcast after the show's over check out the show notes at aom.is slash cold exposure

00:01:39.920 scott carney welcome to the show hey thank you so much all right so you wrote a book called what

00:01:52.160 doesn't kill us how freezing water extreme altitude and environmental conditioning will renew our lost

00:01:58.360 evolutionary strength and it follows you as you follow the practices and methodologies of a guy named

00:02:04.960 wim hoff we'll get to wim here in a minute because he's an interesting guy but let's start with the

00:02:10.080 premise of this book and you start off arguing in the book that modern life is making us weaker and

00:02:15.480 sicker uh how so well you know if you think about where our species came from you know homo sapien

00:02:23.180 sapien we are about 200 000 years old uh that's when we evolved from our previous ancestor which was

00:02:30.500 you know pretty similar to us and in that time we endured all the variations that nature could throw at us

00:02:38.800 uh you know at even in the equatorial regions of africa you know the temperature swing between night

00:02:45.420 and day could be 50 degrees and then we left africa we went through across the alps it's just a whisper

00:02:51.340 of modern technology um we went through asia made it to australia and the new world and all of this

00:02:58.100 was uh you know was with nothing to really help us you know some fur skin some sailboats some some sort of

00:03:05.700 basic stuff and to do it we had to rely on our amazing innate biology to resist the elements to

00:03:15.700 resist these variations uh and you know if you if you you know you went back in time it would be a

00:03:21.960 terrible idea to challenge one of your ancestors to a arm wrestling match or a foot race they would

00:03:28.820 just crush you and one of the reasons for this is that now we live in this cocoon of technological

00:03:38.000 comfort where where our need for that sort of like that you know we can call homeostasis that this

00:03:45.040 this place where the environment meets every biological need has made our bodies not have to do

00:03:51.740 any work and and because of that we don't experience the natural variations that our biology developed

00:03:59.740 in uh we live in a perpetual summer of 72 degrees and it doesn't matter what the outdoor temperature

00:04:06.460 is like you know we have antiseptic environments where you know we've scrubbed out the bacteria and

00:04:12.900 the the the the the things that that attack us and this you know makes the the the underlying biology

00:04:20.960 that we have that wants to resist that that that that where change was constant it makes that biology

00:04:27.640 underutilized in some cases uh it turns inwards and attacks itself leading to autoimmune illnesses

00:04:34.940 but also we're just not able to to you know we look outside at a snowstorm and we consider that extreme

00:04:40.980 weather and we're like hell no i don't want to go out there but our species can do that and so what

00:04:46.100 this process of the book was doing was exposing myself to some extreme temperatures and some extreme

00:04:51.580 environments and unlocking that hidden biology that every one of us has inside right and besides the

00:04:58.200 auto autoimmune diseases what are some of the other diseases of civilization that have come from

00:05:03.320 constant comfort oh my god there's so many there's osteoporosis is one diabetes obesity

00:05:10.160 um you know poor sleep cycles because of the constant electric lighting that we have

00:05:15.260 uh you know they're everything oh my favorite and one that i come back to in the book all the time is

00:05:22.180 is just since the 1990s uh do you remember that time period i don't know how old you are you

00:05:28.320 you're probably remember the 90s i'm 34 yeah 34 okay fantastic do you remember that when you moved to a

00:05:34.640 new city and you were like hey this is a cool place i want to go explore and find my way across town

00:05:39.680 you had to to to take out this ancient piece of technology which had like a picture of the city

00:05:44.800 on it and the streets and their names on the streets you had to navigate your way across the

00:05:48.500 city by using this this map uh i think that's how you pronounce it i haven't seen one in a while

00:05:53.640 um by using that map you you sort of just learned innately how to navigate the city nowadays when i

00:06:00.260 move to a new place i have a gps and i and i rely on it for every turn as i go through and i've lost

00:06:07.460 this innate ability that humans have to tell direction and that's just happened in our lifetime

00:06:12.740 yeah it's nuts you also talk about some of the other changes thanks to technology i mean a lot of

00:06:16.440 these diseases of civilization have come with technology it's not just you know digital

00:06:21.500 technology but like even like rudimentary technology like cooking with fire um that made

00:06:26.220 our jaws weaker right yeah well fire is a really interesting case because it's an old technology right

00:06:32.920 that that goes possibly all the way back to homo erectus which is an our ancestors ancestors ancestor

00:06:39.420 and what happened when we invented fire was that that we could instead of you know this sort of chimp

00:06:48.120 like primate or ancestor which would have to chew cellulose and sort of uh you know vegetables and

00:06:54.160 things you'd have to chew a hell of a lot to get out the nutrition and you had a they had really big

00:06:58.560 guts because of that um because you know you just had to have more digestive track your your jaws

00:07:04.200 were like super powerful think of a chimp's jaws like that's some serious tooth action uh as we

00:07:10.600 invented fire what that did is it outsourced the ability of our bodies to um to essentially you digest

00:07:18.400 food outside your body and and and by cooking something you you're able it becomes essentially

00:07:23.320 more nutritious and and you have to chew it less so so our over time fire made our jaws smaller made

00:07:30.820 our guts smaller uh you know and that led us to be able to walk around upright uh in in sort of a

00:07:38.880 convoluted evolutionary path um for the way we we search for food uh it made us um

00:07:44.680 uh it also gave us more time to instead of just chewing all the time right we actually had time to

00:07:52.500 to use our brains to do other things so fire is one of these technologies that evolved slowly with

00:07:59.260 us and actually we had it and it changed our physiology but and and we are we are impossible

00:08:05.420 to separate from fire like our bodies could not exist without fire but what i'm looking at in the book

00:08:10.780 is more these modern technologies like heating and and and all of these conveniences that we have now

00:08:16.940 where our bodies haven't had a chance to adapt slowly like they did to fire it's like it was just

00:08:21.640 dropped on us and if we've been around for 200 000 years that we're talking 150 years that's like

00:08:27.780 a blink of an evolutionary eye and and that stuff our body just hasn't caught up to to the new

00:08:35.640 environment that we inhabit and that is doing crazy things to us right so the mismatch is causing

00:08:41.480 these these these problems exactly okay so let's talk about wim hoff so i've i've heard of wim hoff

00:08:47.780 he seems like possibly a madman um crazy guy charlatan but he's doing some crazy things to

00:08:55.900 counter these diseases of civilization where he's purposely exposing himself to extreme cold extreme 0.89

00:09:03.300 conditions um and he's surviving we'll talk about i mean can you talk about some of the the crazy

00:09:09.040 things that he has done that that baffle people that he's able to do this yeah he holds all sorts of

00:09:15.120 crazy records um for mostly having to do with his body being extreme cold things and i actually first

00:09:21.800 heard about him when i was a forum correspondent for wired magazine in india and there was a look

00:09:27.540 there's like a little small uh snippet in the paper of this guy who was climbing mount everest in just a

00:09:34.560 pair of shorts so bare chest climbing up mount everest and he made it up three quarters of the way and at

00:09:39.320 the time i was like this guy is insane and not only insane he's disrespectful to uh the the the the 0.73

00:09:46.340 power of nature uh and uh he you know he's run barefoot uh marathons in the arctic and across snow he's

00:09:55.980 he's run marathons through the uh i think it's the kalahari desert um you know with no water he he's

00:10:05.540 holds the record for swimming underneath sea ice uh in distance i mean he he has done these things

00:10:11.380 which which really are um superhuman he's in he's stayed in in an ice bath uh for i believe 90 minutes

00:10:21.480 and his body temperature while they were testing him actually rose while he was in the bath uh and

00:10:27.760 usually you know a person who's not trained and just sort of dunked into this ice might dive die

00:10:35.600 from anywhere between 15 and 45 minutes so he does things that are you know superhuman and you're right 0.93

00:10:43.000 to say he sounds like a madman because he's absolutely a madman because only a madman would

00:10:48.060 do this but he's also a prophet because he is you know showing that that what the human body is able

00:10:56.340 to do if conditioned consciously and correctly into these environments so i i when i first heard of

00:11:03.820 him uh you know i'm an investigative journalist i'm an anthropologist and i had written uh several

00:11:10.980 books and articles at that point about the dangers of intensive meditation and in particular the types of

00:11:19.040 spiritual practices that offer you superpowers uh i you know in 2005 i was leading a broad program in

00:11:27.160 northern india uh i had i was an anthropologist getting my phd at the time and one of my students

00:11:33.620 the best the brightest the smartest student in the program uh at the end of the silent meditation

00:11:40.760 retreat as we're contemplating enlightenment contemplating nirvana uh she climbs up to the roof of the 0.99

00:11:46.620 retreat center and jumps to her death committing suicide at the on the last day of the retreat 1.00

00:11:51.800 and you know as the person who was in charge of her you know of the of these students uh she i had to 0.74

00:12:00.200 read her her her journal and you know i was involved with the police investigation and it was a horrible

00:12:05.340 thing but in her journal the last words in it were i am a bodhisattva which which means i am enlightened

00:12:12.540 that i am going to be essentially an angel and all i need to do is leave my body to attain that state and

00:12:18.040 and and this is the cautionary experience that led me down to write another book about intensive uh

00:12:24.400 meditation where people literally get so caught up in this idea of spiritual transcendence and and

00:12:31.540 becoming supernatural almost that they lose touch with reality and a lot of people die and it's a story

00:12:38.940 that's not really talked about very much so with all of this in mind when i hear about wim hoff and this

00:12:44.720 is in 2011 2012 i am certain that he is one of these sort of guru charlatans who wants to uh tell people

00:12:56.900 that he can give them superpowers uh take all their money as he does it and then potentially get people

00:13:03.060 killed and i wanted to get in front of that uh and you know show people that that you know the

00:13:08.960 attainment of superpowers is not a great idea yeah and but he he is claiming that some superpowers like

00:13:14.660 he can he claims that with meditation and breathing and exposure like you can on demand um increase your

00:13:21.160 metabolism so you warm yourself up or on demand you can fight increase your immunity system so you can

00:13:26.820 fight diseases so he is making those claims so i mean damn right and and i think i was

00:13:32.520 absolutely right to go out there and try to debunk this guy um because they they are huge and they

00:13:37.600 are things that should be you should be absolutely skeptical of uh but you know as an anthropologist

00:13:43.660 as an investigative journalist who has a certain set of ethics that i abide by when i went out to see

00:13:49.840 him uh on a commission that that you know eventually ran in playboy magazine my intention was to debunk him

00:13:58.560 but but by doing it through his method by saying look i'm gonna learn your method and i'm gonna watch

00:14:04.860 it fall apart i'm gonna watch these students be mindless followers of your of your method and you 0.58

00:14:10.660 basically taking advantage of them and then i'm gonna see you put us into a dangerous situation

00:14:16.520 that um that you know then i'll be able to tell the the the tragic story of of wim hof

00:14:23.700 uh but it turns out that when i did the method uh that when i actually did his breathing method and

00:14:32.160 his environmental exposure routines that things in my own physiology started changing very rapidly

00:14:40.280 now i was living in los angeles at the time uh so we're talking perpetual summer uh there and and i fly

00:14:47.220 to poland in the middle of the winter that stopped napoleon's army you know it's the it's the winter

00:14:52.980 that ground hitler's blitzkrieg to a halt and within a couple days i'm standing outside in the middle of

00:15:01.560 this just frigid cold in nothing but shorts with my bare feet in the snow and i'm burning up and it's

00:15:09.640 and i can stay out in the snow for an hour like this you know we do these things like i sit on the banks

00:15:15.160 of a river and all the snow melts around me because my body is is running so hot and then i climb up a

00:15:21.660 mountain uh in poland it's actually a ski slope called snezka uh and we spend about eight hours on

00:15:27.640 this mountain it's about two degrees uh fahrenheit outside and uh and i make it to the top and i'm hot

00:15:36.220 the entire way i'm sweating and i'm just in you know shorts and boots so i mean it's an amazing it was

00:15:41.000 eye-opening and it happened so rapidly that i was like i i there was nothing i could do but say that

00:15:46.460 hoff is on to something now he may make some grandiose claims that surpass this shock and awe

00:15:52.540 at that point but it was enough for me to realize that i had to examine this this guy on fair terms and

00:16:00.220 really delve deeply into the ideas that he's putting forward that that that we can unlock hidden human

00:16:06.360 potential and it's these aren't superpowers these are human powers that we all have and you know and

00:16:13.160 i think that's the the the crux of it right we don't have superpowers um we have just normal human

00:16:20.460 abilities that we have suppressed so what does his method look like so part of it is just getting

00:16:26.100 exposed to the cold um what else is involved so the yeah there's there's two basic parts of the method

00:16:33.700 uh and you can learn the wim hoff method in like 15 or 20 minutes like it's not very difficult because

00:16:39.880 it involves putting yourself in uh situations where the environment creates a predictable biological

00:16:48.360 response uh so in the cold it one of the things would be the first thing that happens when you jump

00:16:55.320 into the the snow you know is you tense up or you're taking cold showers you tense up uh and then

00:17:01.620 eventually you'll start shivering and this is just your body trying to fight that stimulus and what

00:17:06.480 wim teaches is that you get into that situation and instead of tensing up you relax you just let that

00:17:13.840 cold sort of in and and and by by suppressing that tensing moment and suppressing the shiver you actually

00:17:22.720 are are having a significant impact on your sympathetic nervous system and these are your fight or flight

00:17:27.520 responses and by modulating that you actually start gaining control over how your sympathetic nervous

00:17:35.320 system works and it's you know and and because our bodies are are are have evolved to adapt quickly

00:17:43.520 you actually get this control um it um super fast it's it doesn't take very long to to accumulate that

00:17:51.780 and and so you know when you're standing in the in you know you're jumping to ice water or something you

00:17:56.320 just don't shiver you just suppress that and your body figures out a different way to heat itself up

00:18:02.920 at first it does it sort of weekly but over time it's able to sort of really ramp up the engine

00:18:08.300 and and keep you warm in those environments the other part of the method is a breathing method where

00:18:13.840 where uh and you don't need to do it at the same time you don't do this in the cold water or

00:18:18.040 something you do this you know it could be separated by hours in the day it's fine um where you

00:18:22.740 you hyperventilate which are not like panicky hyperventilations but deep rapid breaths it

00:18:28.820 would sound something like this

00:18:30.280 and you do about 30 of those right and and then at the end of that you let all of the air out of your

00:18:40.760 lungs uh and then you hold your breath uh and the first long as you can uh usually i'll do about a

00:18:46.900 minute uh at first and then then you do another hyperventilation round and then you hold your breath

00:18:52.740 again and and then all of a sudden instead of just a minute of holding my breath i can hold it for

00:18:56.980 two minutes do another round that i'm holding it for three minutes and it's like it's really a

00:19:01.960 a very fast increase uh and what you're trying to do is suppress this this response and modulate

00:19:09.660 this response this need for gasping uh and once you get that that's another um parasympathetic uh

00:19:17.160 response uh and and so you're gaining control of both sides of this of this uh autonomic nervous

00:19:23.860 system by doing these these two sorts of exercises uh and at the end of that then you uh what you do is

00:19:29.400 you do a third round of of hyperventilation and then you let all the air out of your lungs you just

00:19:35.000 start doing push-ups just immediately just go into doing you know your normal push-up routine of

00:19:39.940 whatever you do and when i first had started this uh doing this practice i could do about 20 push-ups

00:19:46.000 you know i'm not an athlete i'm just a dude a journalist you know i'm a writer i could do 20

00:19:51.200 push-ups but when i did this breathing method uh at wim's house i could do 40 and i wasn't breathing

00:19:57.340 and i had no air in my lungs it was amazing uh and now i do it every morning i do 50 push-ups

00:20:03.100 breathless uh the most i've ever hit was 80 uh and it's you know it it's it's just a really

00:20:09.320 surprising thing and and maybe that's the the aha moment where i decided that wim was really onto

00:20:15.140 something because you don't just double the amount of of exercises you can do with the breathing

00:20:19.180 method that's just not how i thought the world worked well and so you besides following wim you

00:20:24.440 actually go and talk to scientists who have been researching some of the things that wim's been doing

00:20:28.980 so like with the breathing thing why is i mean why is it that you're able to do more push-ups by

00:20:32.920 doing this hyperventilating exercise and holding your breath what's going on there well so the first

00:20:37.500 thing that that's happening is you're blowing off uh carbon dioxide from your lungs and so the way

00:20:43.660 your body detects the the that it needs to breathe air like it like it's running out of breath um it is

00:20:52.240 it detects the buildup of co2 it can't actually detect oxygen and that's just the way the body's

00:20:58.320 biology works so when you hyperventilate you blow off all of that co2 and and then you're you know 0.84

00:21:06.980 and so you're you're moving that gas point later because as the rest as you're holding your breath

00:21:12.040 that respiration has to you know has to basically fill up your lungs again with co2 or the you know

00:21:17.280 the bloodstream has to accumulate co2 and that's like okay great we got co2 we need to breathe so you're

00:21:22.180 just tricking your body's normal respiratory um method uh by blowing off all that co2 and and pushing 0.77

00:21:30.680 yourself into into a physical place where you can do more push-ups and the reason why this is

00:21:37.520 interesting right but you know rather than it's just a hack that's okay you just tricked your body is

00:21:43.220 that is that you still did the push-ups right your body actually had that ability to do this and

00:21:48.600 its warning signals were actually far too conservative like your body has this sort of

00:21:53.920 you know if we the world we grew up in right which is sort of homeostatic which is comfortable

00:22:00.200 uh we set off our alarm bells for for where we're reaching our limits super duper early and if you start

00:22:07.820 doing these things where you're you're pushing yourself in this uh hypoxic or sort of low oxygen

00:22:14.280 environment uh all of a sudden your body starts to learn that it actually has more ability and and

00:22:20.860 will will sort of seed a little bit more control into your into your uh into your system into sorry

00:22:28.060 into your mind yeah so what's the benefit of that i mean like besides doing more push-ups like how else

00:22:32.820 does that translate into performance other in other areas so one and there's lots of ways that that this

00:22:39.880 happens i mean it increases your ability to rest to um breathe in general and which puts more oxygen

00:22:46.460 in your bloodstream gives you more available energy but i think the most interesting way that i've seen

00:22:52.100 people use it is when i met a guy named brian mckenzie and this legendary surfer of laird hamilton who

00:22:58.120 both get sort of a chapter in the book and what they're doing brian mckenzie is one of the founders of

00:23:04.900 of high intensity interval training or hit workouts and the idea between hit for hit workouts is that

00:23:11.840 if you train at the absolute maximum exertion what what you know uh athletes would call the vo2 max

00:23:19.920 then uh and or if you're like if if you're trying to train for a marathon instead of logging more and

00:23:27.880 more miles every week you just do these sprints but at your absolute highest level then you actually

00:23:36.060 are pushing your body much better and much more efficiently to run marathons elsewhere so so shorter

00:23:43.240 workouts shorter high intensity workouts are more efficient now when that mixes with the wim hof method

00:23:47.960 if you're if you're now prepping yourself to push past what your limits are so like instead of going

00:23:54.260 out 100 if you can trick your body into like 104 or 107 then your high intensity interval workouts

00:24:01.440 are even more power packed and and you get that much more benefit for these longer endurance races

00:24:08.340 and it's it's awesome i mean you see these just top tier athletes doing this method now and this only

00:24:14.920 works for endurance like you wouldn't be able to do this and then pull a deadlift er right no actually i

00:24:20.620 think you know that's a good question like how how does it affect strength uh and i i i can't i'm i'm

00:24:29.140 this is probably a little bit outside of my knowledge because i'm not a big big weightlifter but i would

00:24:34.640 say that if you can suddenly do more reps than you could usually do in training right then wouldn't that

00:24:41.580 make you a stronger person in general right if all of a sudden i could you know i could i could i could

00:24:46.900 do 20 push-ups right i was usually doing 20 push-ups and now i can do 40 in my workouts isn't

00:24:52.420 that you know for 20 more push-ups than i could usually do it doesn't that affect my my ability

00:24:57.360 to get stronger possibly um but yeah we also had you also talk about um deep sea divers so this

00:25:04.300 technique deep sea divers actually don't like doing this even though it allows them to hold their breath

00:25:08.220 longer they don't do this we had james nester on the podcast oh he's awesome by the way yeah i love

00:25:13.400 this is like something yeah this is like something you don't want to do because this could actually

00:25:16.480 kill you if you're trying to deep hold your breath underwater yes uh and and yeah a big caution to

00:25:22.460 anyone listening to this it would seem that free diving and the wim hof method would just you know 0.99

00:25:27.700 goes to go together like peas and carrots uh because you know you're able to blow off co2 you're able 1.00

00:25:34.660 to hold your breath longer and therefore if you were going to dive 300 feet underwater it that's a useful

00:25:40.040 ability the issue is what they call shallow water blackouts is because you're tricking your body

00:25:45.920 to by blowing off co2 uh you don't always know when that gasp reflex is just going to kick in and and 0.88

00:25:56.060 and you can you know and i have passed out doing this push-up method you know when i did 80 push-ups

00:26:02.040 i mentioned earlier i hit 80 and boom i just went out like a light bang my head on the floor and uh and

00:26:08.600 you know that was unfortunate uh but if i was doing that and free diving i would have passed out

00:26:15.180 and and my autonomic reflex would be the gasp and this is why you know 300 free divers have died

00:26:23.380 in the last few years uh is that because if you if you are doing this on dry land the worst thing

00:26:29.140 that's going to happen is you're going to fall down you do it underwater you're going to drown

00:26:32.020 right and so this i'm imagining this breathing technique also is what allows

00:26:36.920 whim and all which allowed yourself we'll talk about more detail um later on but to uh climb

00:26:42.580 mount kilimanjaro with like at a record pace right you're able to like instead of doing the usual

00:26:47.320 acclimation you're doing slowly you're able to get up in two days yes uh i mean faster than two days

00:26:52.780 uh we did we actually summited kilimanjaro in 28 hours i will say that that is not the record

00:26:58.740 uh the record is just shy of seven hours by this just crazy endurance athlete um kilian jornette

00:27:05.300 and uh but what he did is he actually acclimated his body at high altitude first ran down to the

00:27:14.140 bottom of the mountain so when you're at high altitude you're generating more red blood cells

00:27:17.020 right so you can you can move more oxygen through your system he went down to the bottom and then then

00:27:21.420 you know sprinted up to the top and i got nothing on on kilian right i would never assume

00:27:27.520 that however what we did is we did it without acclimation so we went up from the base of

00:27:33.840 kilimanjaro to the top and we did it in 28 hours and it usually takes five days to acclimate your body

00:27:41.140 to that altitude and we had spoken to the um the u.s militaries and sort of environmental scientists

00:27:49.960 they predicted that 70 percent of our group of i think we had about 28 people uh would come down

00:27:57.000 with acute mountain sickness or ams which uh is a debilitating and possibly fatal condition

00:28:03.700 uh of of being at high altitude and you know when we did it uh we only had two people come down with

00:28:11.260 ams which is uh you know was unheard of you know we talked to some mountaineers in holland uh the

00:28:17.840 mountaineering club of holland said that all of us would die on a mountain uh but you know we we you know

00:28:24.460 hiked up right to the top and we did it at at just this mind-boggling pace and i did it i did

00:28:32.180 it was mostly shirtless too was it i guess it was thanks to the breathing technique right so so what we

00:28:38.160 were doing is the entire way up we were we were doing that wim hof breathing so 28 hours of just

00:28:44.960 which took a like more mental focus than i knew i had uh to do but we were breathing rapidly because

00:28:55.160 we were trying to consciously account for for the decreased oxygen by increasing our respiration and

00:29:02.540 it worked and this is a technique that that people can use as they go up mountains now like

00:29:08.480 you can you could if you're getting down to acute mountain sickness this this is one way that i think

00:29:14.200 that we can we can combat that which is fantastic you don't need diamox you don't need to to um i

00:29:20.400 mean if you're getting ams you know by all means descend quickly because that's the medically right

00:29:24.920 thing to do but you can prevent it and this from even coming on with this breathing method and that

00:29:29.620 is really cool so let's circle back to the uh the cold exposure because we've i'm a big fan of cold

00:29:34.840 showers we've written about it um on the site before a lot of our listeners are probably

00:29:39.340 practitioners of cold cold showers so what's the science behind cold exposure i mean what happens

00:29:45.140 to our bodies when we expose ourselves uh to cold so the cold does a whole bunch of things to our

00:29:52.900 autonomic nervous system uh that that we just don't usually have and the most obvious and the and the

00:29:58.960 the the most interesting i feel uh is something called vasoconstriction so our body is full of all

00:30:07.220 these arteries and veins and we've got enough of this to go if you lined all those arteries and

00:30:12.460 veins end to end we'd be going across the states two times it's a huge circulatory network and along

00:30:19.620 all of the veins veins are what return blood to the heart are muscles uh and these muscles just sit

00:30:27.680 there and but they're potentially so strong that if i were to you know if someone were to cut my leg off

00:30:33.400 below the knee uh those veins would constrict to stop the flow of blood out of my body uh and this

00:30:40.700 is why soldiers are able to survive these debilitating wounds we have this autonomic system that will stem

00:30:45.800 blood loss but the other use for it and the more common use for vasoconstriction is uh to shunt blood

00:30:53.780 to the core if you get cold to sacrifice the extremities uh to to keep your your your core warm

00:31:00.920 now for the vast majority of us uh who live at this sort of constant 72 degrees we never ever

00:31:08.920 activate those muscles so those muscles are get get weak and that weakness leads to all sorts of

00:31:15.080 circulatory diseases uh so just getting into the snow getting into cold water is like lifting weights for

00:31:21.280 your your circulatory system and it's it's the easiest thing to do to to do that to to get to turn

00:31:30.540 a cold shower and then they flex and you go warm and they relax and you go cold and they flex again

00:31:35.940 and you know even somebody with like chiseled abs is a total gym rat could have this like totally weak

00:31:41.940 uh a circulatory system so that's the the first thing that the cold does another thing that does is it

00:31:48.920 modulates insulin um production which is you know helps with uh with with an insulin uh insulin

00:31:55.760 resistance is is the condition that leads to diabetes uh it can the cold will also make you lose weight

00:32:05.040 so fast and if you if you think about you know you're at the gym and you're you have a little bit

00:32:10.380 of a punch and you want to lose weight it's pretty hard to do that through running and exercise right

00:32:15.900 i mean you can but it takes a lot of focus effort your body would generally prefer to burn muscle

00:32:21.700 and other tissues before it goes after your fat content and the reason for that is that that fat

00:32:28.460 is has an evolutionary purpose to actually heat your body and we have a tissue that we're born with

00:32:34.640 called brown adipose tissue or brown fat that every infant human infant who's not premature has and

00:32:41.520 and that's because when you're that small you're just born you don't have the musculature or digestive

00:32:49.500 system to heat your body the normal way you know that that adults do when you know every time you

00:32:55.560 move you generate heat uh every time your digestive system sort of moves it generates heat and this is

00:33:00.500 how we maintain it sort of a 98.6 body temperature that's how we thermoregulate but infants who are also

00:33:08.080 very small which means they have a high surface area to mass ratio lose heat very quickly so the

00:33:13.500 strategy that infants use to survive is is this brown adipose tissue which they have a lot of and

00:33:20.760 what it does is it sucks white fat from their body and directly metabolizes it for heat energy

00:33:28.060 and it produces a lot of heat and this is how all of us got through our earliest years now as we get

00:33:34.860 older we're able to heat ourselves in in various other ways and scientists thought that most adults

00:33:42.160 just didn't have any bat until they until 2007 when uh and i won't get into the whole story and how they

00:33:50.640 found it but a researcher named aaron sipus over at harvard um discovered that adults actually do have

00:33:57.480 it and the reason that we don't they didn't realize it before is because you only keep it around

00:34:03.520 after childhood and you only develop more if you're constantly exposed to cold and and the the

00:34:10.220 response and the reason why you you get bat is that is that you're cold and your body's like okay i

00:34:14.660 don't want to shiver myself warm all the time i'm going to use my metabolism and that sucks out and 0.61

00:34:19.440 then suck out your white fat so this white fat is is energy that we have but it's it's it's not for 0.98

00:34:25.700 caloric energy to move our muscles it's caloric energy to heat our bodies and that's one of the things

00:34:30.120 that's sort of an evolutionary mismatch with the way we live today and uh you actually lost seven

00:34:35.300 pounds of fat after your first uh trip to poland with whim correct yeah isn't that nuts right me

00:34:40.760 hanging out in the snow eating polish food which i will remind you is mostly sausage and you know

00:34:46.220 uh sausage and pierogi so oily fatty carby food uh i lost seven pounds of fat uh while while hanging

00:34:53.120 out with that so like so let's say someone's listening to this like that sounds awesome like i want to give

00:34:57.100 my my circulatory system a workout but i also want to get this brown fat so i can start losing white

00:35:02.920 fat so like what do you need to do like do you have like how long do you need to expose yourself

00:35:07.960 to cold for you to start developing this ability well everyone's physiology is a little bit different

00:35:13.760 so i can't give a exact response and actually still research is ongoing but i can say that i was able

00:35:21.080 to keep my body warm through this this metabolic process very well after three days of of going out

00:35:29.660 in the snow for as long as i could could could manage it you know and and and i need to be clear

00:35:35.200 that you need to be in control in the snow if you start shivering uncontrollably or start getting

00:35:39.400 frostbite you're doing this wrong you're pushing past your limits humans are designed we evolved to adapt

00:35:44.820 rapidly our ancestors who passed on their genes didn't see an oncoming snowstorm and say i'll get ready

00:35:50.680 for it next month they were like our bodies have to be ready now and so you build it up extremely

00:35:56.320 rapidly uh one test uh in a lab in uh holland showed that they put like 12 diabetic men so overweight

00:36:04.420 diabetic men i think they were mostly in their 50s and they put them in a cold room uh about 51 degrees

00:36:10.760 for three hours a day for three weeks at the end of that time and they were just wearing shorts and a

00:36:18.440 shirt i believe at the end of that time just being cold decreased their insulin sensitivity

00:36:24.260 by 54 which is a dramatic improvement for their diabetes so you do this you do this quick and all

00:36:31.480 you need to do is get cold you know start with cold showers that's the easiest you know way to do it

00:36:37.700 you start with your hot shower you can take your scottish shower that that starts hot and goes cold

00:36:41.900 and and then when you're in that environment the most important thing is to relax like you don't

00:36:50.280 want to to warm yourself by that muscle action which will may help you lose weight but it's not going

00:36:56.260 to help you get this metabolic activity so you consciously just you know you take a deep breath and

00:37:03.640 you just say okay i'm cold and and and it'll be all right and this is the signal to your nervous system

00:37:11.000 to start building up um metabolic changes in your body another very easy way to do things is something

00:37:17.660 that i do a lot is to if it's winter which it is now uh go for a run outside in just a pair of shorts

00:37:27.060 maybe wear a hat and gloves if it's super cold out and you're worried about your extremities

00:37:30.460 but go shirtless or if you're a woman you know wear a sports bra but to go with as as much of your skin

00:37:36.480 as possible um out to the cold and then go for you know a three mile run or a five mile run or

00:37:41.440 something like that come back and and what what's going to happen is that because you're moving your

00:37:46.360 muscles a lot you're actually generating a tremendous amount of heat you know if you if you run in the

00:37:51.040 winter now and you're wearing fleece you're probably sweating under all that stuff so this this is a

00:37:57.240 great way to do this method because your skin is actually getting that signal for the cold it'll be

00:38:01.760 your skin will be cold to the touch but your core will be warm but those neural signals for saying

00:38:07.360 get ready for winter are coming into your body and that's going to be one great way to start building

00:38:11.560 up this metabolic change so for the cold showers is there like a time length you should shoot for

00:38:16.640 like five minutes under the cold or does it matter uh i mean longer equals better in this case but you

00:38:23.440 get them you know with any sort of new practice you you have the benefit of the law of diminishing

00:38:29.480 returns right where you know and this happens really for any exercise routine any meditation

00:38:34.620 routine anything new that you do is you learn the most in the first the introduction to this and if

00:38:42.320 you can get into the shower and relax and stay there for like 30 seconds of just being uh after you're

00:38:48.800 relaxed you will have gotten a huge benefit into your system now if you stay there longer you'll still get

00:38:54.220 benefits but the the curve sort of bends a little bit after that uh so i would say you know minimum

00:39:00.440 shoot for a minute right because that's not really it's not going to kill you it's going to be fine

00:39:05.340 if you can do five that's great you know um you know you you know some people work this up for a long

00:39:12.080 long time but the goal is to subdue your panic response and relax and and that is a signal to

00:39:21.580 your body that you're getting that you're you have to have mental control instead of this autonomic

00:39:26.340 control and that's the the first step and then you do more stuff and you'll find that it gets easier

00:39:31.380 and and the really cool thing is that so when you're in the cold you release all these awesome feel good

00:39:36.360 hormones you know norepinephrine epinephrine adrenaline cortisol they're all start releasing in

00:39:42.360 your system and you get out of that cold shower and you feel awesome and that becomes sort of this

00:39:47.160 addictive and really fun thing and besides the uh the cold exposure i mean that's what your book's

00:39:52.200 primarily primarily about but are there any other ways we can inject stress in our lives to become

00:39:56.820 stronger sure i mean you know i do i i find the cold uh to be this a safe way to do it right because

00:40:04.860 you know it's you obviously can get you know kill yourself doing with extreme cold right but it's easier

00:40:10.920 to warm up your body if you get a little too cold than it is to cool down your body if you get a little

00:40:16.220 too hot but that doesn't mean you can't do the same basic training with the other extreme right you

00:40:21.060 just have to be a lot more careful uh in in in pushing your limits but yeah i mean the breathing

00:40:26.940 method the cold you can use heat uh you can use altitude i mean a lot of this stuff is is things

00:40:32.380 that people have known for a while right the reason why the olympic training center in america is up in

00:40:37.820 colorado is because we're at 5 000 feet and that's an environmental stimulus you don't even realize

00:40:42.120 about but you just get the passive uh benefit of being at high altitude so you know that any you

00:40:49.060 know and i write in the book there's this concept that i have called the wedge which is where any

00:40:54.460 environmental stimulus that comes into your body that has a predictable biological response you know

00:41:04.040 that that that if that that stimulus and that response if you have any control over that response

00:41:10.640 that is a moment of where you can train and i you know i i talk about this in in the book is that you

00:41:16.240 can say a sneeze is a great is a great example of this you know you know if you if you start to have

00:41:22.060 to sneeze and and you say well i don't want to sneeze right now you can actually delay that you can

00:41:27.340 say okay i'm just going to resist this sneezing reflex that i have uh that is growing this this ability

00:41:36.000 you have to to sort of master your autonomic nervous system now i don't know if you should

00:41:40.140 never sneeze in your life i mean this is not necessarily useful sneezing is is a great thing

00:41:44.060 to do but but you know it's one of the fundamental ways that humans learn and and you know you could

00:41:50.680 maybe learn to hold your pee for a long time or you know delay an orgasm and and there's just lots 0.71

00:41:55.980 of like predictable biological responses that you can start to master and you know the the the body is

00:42:02.520 the limit there whatever you can think of so uh part of your experiment with uh wim hoff's method

00:42:07.560 was um you did the besides the hike up mount kilimanjaro you also did the tough guy we've had

00:42:12.780 scott connealy on the podcast talk about the suffer fest and the tough guy um you know he's running that

00:42:18.560 right now i am so jealous he's doing that right now it's cold i mean it's cold here in oklahoma i can't

00:42:23.060 imagine what it is over there but it's this brutal obstacle it's like the original obstacle course race

00:42:27.860 just it's in the dead of winter in england um you the the guy make this guy named mouse makes his

00:42:34.980 guys go through just ice cold water just brutal stuff um and you did this tough guy and not only

00:42:42.460 did you do it you did it without you just did in a pair of shorts and a pair of shoes that's it

00:42:45.940 um so can you tell us about your experience doing the tough guy while following wim hoff's method

00:42:51.880 yeah you know i am not an endurance athlete like i didn't expect to want to win this or anything

00:42:57.100 and you know people win tough guy at in like an hour and a half but it's a what is it like a 12

00:43:03.220 or 15 mile race um but mostly obstacles where you're jumping over walls and and and and then

00:43:10.980 into like icy water and then you're all muddy and you're climbing under barbed wire and there's

00:43:15.000 electrical shocks and all of these sort of like you know typical what we now think of as typical

00:43:19.140 obstacle course things but the main uh obstacle in tough guy is the cold and people will go

00:43:27.040 run this basically wearing wetsuits you know covered in neoprene uh because you know the year

00:43:32.440 before i did it we had there were 300 people who ended up in the emergency room with hypothermia

00:43:37.800 now i wanted to run this in just shorts you know i had shorts shoes i may have had gloves because i

00:43:44.660 wanted to be able to climb up those obstacles efficiently and uh and i completed the the course in

00:43:51.720 about three and a half hours uh which is you know definitely nothing special but in this frigid frigid

00:44:00.080 weather and i was just warm i was actually elated the whole time uh i was doing it it was just it's just

00:44:06.020 this total high because whereas everyone else was shivering and sort of you know really fighting this

00:44:12.160 one challenge uh i my body responded to it with just releasing adrenaline and epinephrine and just

00:44:18.820 making me feel great and and and everyone who i met on the course was like why are you smiling my

00:44:25.300 friend and i was like it was just an awesome um sort of just whole body pleasurable experience to me

00:44:31.020 and i think because i've been doing this wim hof training for at that point uh regularly for about

00:44:36.500 six months uh the the the challenge that other people's bodies were sort of failing at i had just no

00:44:41.760 issue with i thought it was great yeah i think it's interesting like the this whole obstacle course

00:44:45.980 racing phenomenon like this um interest in wim hof and what he's doing it seems like there there

00:44:50.380 is a underground revolt going against sort of the diseases of civilization i mean are there any other

00:44:56.300 you know little subcultures you came across during the research of your book where you you found people

00:45:00.900 you know purposely injecting environmental stress in their life to become healthier and stronger

00:45:05.360 sure i mean you know i i like the obstacle course race industry because it's so

00:45:09.140 contained and obvious right it's like like you know you you you're a weekend warrior and you go

00:45:16.400 out there and you get a little suffering because hey not only does it look good on facebook it actually

00:45:20.940 feels really cool to take on a challenge to to do something out of your ordinary routine and you know

00:45:27.720 in some sense every exercise routine that anyone takes on you know crossfit or um you know or surfing

00:45:35.420 where you hang out in the water for a hell of a long period of time all of that is is sort of

00:45:40.500 bucking your nose at this sort of comfortable life that you really you know you could just live in your

00:45:46.200 office the whole time every day uh and you know i have just mad respect for anyone who can go out there

00:45:53.100 and just go grab a little bit of suffering and say actually that suffering isn't is actually making me

00:46:00.000 stronger and and then i start to enjoy it uh but you know maybe you've seen this viral video going

00:46:05.340 around of like kids in siberia dumping ice water on themselves uh this is where uh there's this school

00:46:12.740 where they have um it's like a it's like an elementary or maybe even a preschool and they have these this

00:46:19.300 this video of like these kids running outside into the siberian winter pouring ice water on themselves

00:46:24.740 rolling in the snow for five minutes and then going back inside and the teachers at the school

00:46:30.040 say that it has prevented all of their kids from getting sick which is crazy you know no one would

00:46:35.300 do that in america we we are so coddled in this in this country you know you know this is the country

00:46:41.440 where a free-range child uh ends up having the parents of that kid end up having child protective

00:46:47.380 services called on them uh it's it's just so funny but i think there's a lot of people out there who

00:46:52.200 who want to get back to nature and you know there's a whole ancestral health movement uh barefoot

00:46:58.700 running uh you know paleo diet people i mean all of these people are are pushing on on this idea that

00:47:06.240 that technology isn't all that it cracked up to be and that maybe comfort hides its own type of

00:47:12.200 suffering so when you before you started wim hof's method for a year you got your physiology test you

00:47:18.160 went through some medical tests how did your physiology change after a year following his

00:47:24.020 methodology well so i went to the boulder uh sports and recreation center over at the university of

00:47:31.160 colorado boulder where this physiologist first measured me when i before i had done that was doing

00:47:38.360 the method regularly so i had actually consciously stopped doing it for about a month in the middle of

00:47:43.720 the summer and he measured me on a stress test which is basically getting me up to my vo2 max and

00:47:49.460 seeing how my body uh processed energy and i was a pretty ordinary dude like you know definitely nothing

00:47:57.220 special uh he actually sort of laughed at how not special i was uh and which meant that i i burned

00:48:03.580 mostly carbohydrates uh during my exercise and then eventually started burning fat at the very end

00:48:09.500 which is the exact opposite of what you want to be if you're an endurance athlete and at the end of

00:48:15.640 this um of the the training course after i climbed kili after i'd done all these things where i had

00:48:21.900 changed my workout daily workout routine any more than doing the breathing exercises and cold exposure

00:48:27.920 uh at the end of all that and that's like 15 minutes a day it's really not that that much much time he

00:48:34.860 examined my physiology again and i had suddenly switched to a primarily fat burning person uh and

00:48:42.240 and i was able to do additional stages on on his vo2 max test uh and he was actually really surprised by

00:48:51.540 these results because i hadn't actually changed my my cardio routine at much i was doing like three

00:48:58.900 you know three you know runs a week or something like that and he was like it was as if i had added

00:49:04.220 seven hours of exercise uh to my routine uh every every week and he thought it was really really cool

00:49:11.400 and i was pretty happy with those results so you went into this uh investigation as a skeptic i mean

00:49:18.720 are you a believer now or are there some aspects of wim's claims you're like i don't know about that but

00:49:22.940 there are there some aspects you're like yeah that that's i'm i'm down with that oh i mean certainly

00:49:28.760 i'm i'm always going to be a skeptic of claims that are that are too big uh and and i think wim is

00:49:34.860 the doorway into something really beautiful and really wonderful about our physiology but sometimes

00:49:40.980 he'll say things that are impossible to prove or dangerous to prove and he'll he'll sometimes say it

00:49:46.420 can cure cancer or cure aids and i don't know about that like i'm i'm gonna i'll wait for the evidence

00:49:51.960 to roll in um for that but what i will say is that he has certainly opened my my eyes to a different

00:50:00.620 way of looking at our body in the environment like we used to think that health like general health

00:50:07.920 relied on two things diet and exercise you know the the energy you put into your body and what you

00:50:13.380 expended through physical exertion but what this has taught me is that there's actually a third pillar

00:50:18.100 and that the environment you inhabit is just as important as those two other things and that alone

00:50:24.540 seems to have just a whole cascade of other effects on on health in general and i would you know it's

00:50:32.320 it's you know it's changed my life and it's changed my perspective on things um you know forever i would

00:50:37.460 think well scott this has been a great conversation where can people learn more about your your book and

00:50:41.760 your work uh so i have the book uh which is called what doesn't kill us how freezing water extreme

00:50:46.400 altitude and environmental conditioning will renew our lost evolutionary strength uh it is on all the

00:50:52.040 places that you might find a book you know bookstores and amazon and all those places uh there's an

00:50:57.440 audiobook out so if you really like listening to my voice now you can do 10 hours of it uh you know

00:51:02.320 on audible and ibooks and also i have facebook i got the twitter i've got email i've got my own

00:51:08.400 website which is scott carney.com you know all the things that you you know google is your friend for

00:51:13.380 finding me well scott carney thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure this has been a lot

00:51:17.460 of fun thanks my guest today was scott carney he's the author of the book what doesn't kill us it's

00:51:21.580 available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can also find out more information about scott's

00:51:25.720 work at scott carney.com also check out our show notes at aom.is slash cold exposure where you can

00:51:32.300 find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the art

00:51:46.800 of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website

00:51:50.820 at artofmanliness.com this show is recorded on clearcast.io if you're a podcaster who are looking

00:51:56.380 for a solution for better sounding remote podcast interviews check it out clearcast.io something i've

00:52:01.400 developed as always we appreciate your continued support and until next time this is brett mckay

00:52:05.420 telling you to stay manly

00:52:31.400 it's brett mckay

00:52:51.060 you

00:53:01.400 Thank you.

00:53:31.400 Thank you.

00:54:01.400 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - February 02, 2017

#275： How Your Climate-Controlled Comfort Is Killing You

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