In 2013, researchers at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands found that 12 people trained by Mr. Hof and then injected with E. coli had milder flulike symptoms than an untrained control group. In 2019, tests indicated a significant decrease in inflammation in 13 people suffering spinal arthritis over eight weeks of training in breathing, meditation and cold exposure....
Mr. Hof’s career was born out of tragedy. He was in the Pyrenees working as a mountain guide when his wife died by suicide in 1995. “That’s the way it actually began—the real trial of my life,” he says. “We were left behind with broken hearts, four kids and no money.”
Swimming in icy cold water had for years been a pastime. Now, he found it stopped the rumination and pain. Cold water causes you to be in the moment, he says. “Going into the cold brought a lot of space, like stillness in my mind. It gave me moments of time to stop the agony, the why, why, why ten thousand times a day.”
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62 comments:
Flagellation for the woke.
Mortification of the flesh.
Yes. If you stub your toe, hitting yourself in the head with a hammer will stop the toe pain.
A friend of mine's husband, when in his forties and in perfect health, dove into cold water, as was his daily custom in Sweden. His heart stopped and he died.
It's getting to the season where the shower water is not too cold to do my hot/cold/hot/cold morning thing, which is too shocking during winter.
This is a legitimate technique for people who are training for endurance. You will recover faster.
I do it when I injure a body part but not as a daily post workout routine because it promotes the building of type 2 muscles and I aim more for type 1.
First old man: I take a cold shower every morning and haven't suffered a day's rheumatism in my life.
Second old man: Oh, you have cold showers INSTEAD!
Shrinkage!
Hey, it's true. The first gym I belonged to had an ice plunge next to the hot tub, and I'd jump in that thing just for a dip and felt wonderful afterward.
A couple years ago when the seasonal pond next door was full of snowmelt I went and just sat in it. Again, I felt wonderful afterward, like it was the greatest thing I ever did. It was great for sore legs too.
Asylums used to use ice baths as therapy. It sounds terrible but based on my experience I think if it's voluntary it just might help.
Surfing in cold water for hours on end definitely centers you. Your metabolism also speeds up and you burn more fat. Pulling "Gs" and burning lbs. I'm calling it a win/win.
My partner is into this YouTube channel called "Chase the Heat" and "The Pepper Apprentice". These guys train themselves to eat hotter and hotter peppers; I guess it causes an endorphin rush. Potentially useful for depression or chronic pain. The ice bath sounds similar.
You body releases a lot of different stress hormones as result of working out. Specifically your muscles and tendons recover their energy and stamina much faster if you do athletic activity on consecutive days.
If you have 2 groups of cyclists and they do about the same on the first day then 1 of those groups takes an ice bath after the race and the other doesn't the group that took the ice bath will smoke the group that didn't on day 2.
Significantly lowering your core body temperature releases hormones that specifically block muscle loss and athletes recovering from injury will always be on this type of regimen.
"Cold water causes you to be in the moment, he says."
So does sticking a needle in your eye, or cutting your arm off with a chain saw.
This reminds me that I need to start taking cold showers again.
Tomorrow at dawn.
The rumination must end.
The lake awaits you.
Journalist Scott Carney wrote a book about Hof and then got kinda into it and wrote another book about more extreme stress cures (ayahuasca etc.). I found the Hof book interesting and Carney definitely spends some time on the science but I wasn't prepared to jump in. https://www.amazon.com/What-Doesnt-Kill-Environmental-Conditioning/dp/1623366909
What Ice Cold water quickly causes is a numbness of the skin. So we can call this guy a numb nuts.
Blogger Rabel said...
Tomorrow at dawn.
The rumination must end.
The lake awaits you.
Pond swimming season is coming to New England.
I feel the same every morning reading the NYT.
- Krumhorn
Post-workout cold therapy and cold tolerance training are two completely different animals.
Cold acclimation causes fiber type-specific responses in glucose and fat metabolism in rat skeletal muscles
Diane M. Sepa-Kishi, Yass Sotoudeh-Nia, Ayesha Iqbal, George Bikopoulos & Rolando B. Ceddia
Scientific Reports volume 7, Article number: 15430 (2017) Cite this article
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Abstract
This study investigated fiber type-specific metabolic responses and the molecular mechanisms that regulate glucose and fat metabolism in oxidative and glycolytic muscles upon cold acclimation. Male Wistar rats were exposed to cold (4 °C) for 7 days, and then glycogen synthesis and content, glucose and palmitate oxidation, and the molecular mechanisms underlying these metabolic pathways were assessed in soleus (Sol), extensor digitorum longus (EDL), and epitrochlearis (Epit) muscles. Cold acclimation increased glycogen synthesis, glycogen content, glucose oxidation, and reduced glycogen synthase (GS) phosphorylation only in Sol muscles. Protein kinase B (AKT), glycogen synthase kinase 3 (GSK3), and AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) phosphorylation increased in all three muscles upon cold acclimation. Cold acclimation increased palmitate oxidation, gene expression of the transcriptional co-activator Pgc-1α, lipoprotein lipase (Lpl), fatty acid transporter (Cd36), and Sarco/endoplasmic reticulum Ca2+-ATPase (Serca) in Sol, EDL, and Epit muscles. Sarcolipin was only detected and had its content increased in Sol muscles. In conclusion, cold-induced thermogenesis activated similar signaling pathways in oxidative and glycolytic muscles, but the metabolic fate of glucose differed in skeletal muscles with distinct fiber type composition. Furthermore, only muscles rich in type I fibers appeared to have the capacity for sarcolipin-mediated SERCA uncoupling.
J Appl Physiol (1985)
. 2019 Nov 1;127(5):1403-1418.
doi: 10.1152/japplphysiol.00127.2019. Epub 2019 Sep 12.
Cold water immersion attenuates anabolic signaling and skeletal muscle fiber hypertrophy, but not strength gain, following whole-body resistance training
Blogger Heartless Aztec said...
Surfing in cold water for hours on end definitely centers you. Your metabolism also speeds up and you burn more fat. Pulling "Gs" and burning lbs. I'm calling it a win/win.
Cold water surfing and swimming also causes bony growth in the inner ear. That's why I always wear Docs Pro Plugs
https://www.proplugs.com/
Proven ancient therapeutics will now be debated by the woke intellectual class.
You first
I’m nowhere close to Mr. Hof’s level but I do take a cold shower every morning. From the mindfulness standpoint it’s crazy to observe how in the first second your body reacts like you’re going to die and then 15 seconds later, while not exactly comfortable, it’s completely bearable.
If you want to feel warm after a shower, take a cold one.
Old Tom Morris, the 19th century golf champion from St. Andrews, bathed every morning in the icy waters of the Firth of Forth. Never missed a day, they say.
I showered once in an Austrian hostel that used snow melt water...no heat.
It was.........bracing.
Post workout ice bath seems to help with recovery. I do it occasionally when my joints feel stressed. It is not enjoyable but I like the results
It's the endorphin rush.
There’s a YouTube video of this guy promoting the cold 🥶 to Jordan Peterson and his daughter. A day or two later, YouTube recommended a video of a presumed doctor claiming to debunk the therapeutic claims of the cold upon the human body. I started doing this for about a week... I didn’t give it enough of a chance to say that it works one way or the other.
Francisco D said...
It's the endorphin rush.
Yea, those aren't endorphins screaming 'get out! pain! this sucks!'
Which is why it a mind/body discipline.
Your health isn't confined to a comfort zone.
The way I did it was I approached the cold water by bending down so that my back would get wet first for a very short period of time and then kept repeating that until I felt my body acclimating and I could straighten up and start showering.
I bend down the Obama used to bend down to world leaders 😂
So the multi-millions of atheletes taking ice whirlpools for over a hundred years in the training room were on to something.
I'm have no doubt that it I jumped into ice cold water, all of my cares that aren't ice cold water would be set aside for a time.
Andrew said...
So the multi-millions of atheletes taking ice whirlpools for over a hundred years in the training room were on to something.
It's been done since the beginning of time.
When I was about 12 years old, I went to the community swimming pool on the first day it opened. This was in suburban Pittsburgh: cold winters. I was determined not to test the water first, I just got on the diving board and jumped in. I hit the water and every muscle in my body cramped. I went under once, and managed to flail around a bit and get to the side of the pool before I drowned.
I will not do that again voluntarily.
John Harvey Kellogg was doing this a long time ago :) If you've never seen Road To Wellville, I highly suggest it. Sure, it's a comedic take on it based on a sarcastic novel, but there was a lot of "movements" going on that were either absolutely sure they were on to something or taking the rich rubes for all they could get.
Do a search on your favorite search engine for: rice therapy is useless, without quote marks. Alternatively, rice therapy is a myth.
That’s basically been my personal experience. Alternating hot whirlpool with a few slow laps in a cool or lukewarm pool works for me. And a hot tub soak without a handy pool also works for overworked muscles.
About every other day, I do a sauna routine of 15 minutes in about 172F, then some way of rapidly cooling off. If it's very cold out, just being outside and rubbing snow on yourself does the trick. When it's warmer, it's pouring cold water over your head. Do this three times and you feel great the rest of the day. I do think I have gotten sick less often as well.
Hypothermia is real and dangerous. Be very careful with this type of mortification of the flesh.
I've done this cold water immersion several times.
It's bracing. To the point of taking your breath away.
This guy is all over social media and you tube spots and I have watched many of his videos and tried his breathing techniques. He breathes too fast for me and it just makes me anxious. Ice cold water is not my idea of a good time though I understand the theory.
I refer to myself as a graduate of Radbod University.
And just FYI, President Zachary Taylor died after drinking ice-cold milk on a hot day.
"Beneath the Wheel"
In college, I had a bad case of tendonitis. I was in tears walking up a short flight of stairs. I also played college baseball so running was painful. The trainer put me on ice therapy up to my, well just below that. After three treatments the tendonitis was completely gone. I use ice for everything. It's what kept me going so long before I had my hip replacement.
Nicholas Nassim Taleb wrote about Hormesis, progressive exposure to aversive stimuli. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis.
Ice to reduce swelling only delays the pain, it does not prevent it.
Finns and Yoopers have been doing this for many many years. Combine a sauna session with copious amount of beer followed by immersion in nearby frozen lake or deep snow. Nothing new under the sun.
https://www.axios.com/sidney-powell-dismiss-dominion-lawsuit-cf25a9bd-5aed-4908-959e-c5f9ea9aa425.html
Powell argues in her motion that "no reasonable person" would conclude that her accusations of Dominion's election-rigging scheme "were truly statements of fact."
In the annals of strange but likely meaningless coincidences... I was reading a trivia book last evening that had a little tidbit about that guy being able to withstand cold temps that could kill most folks and here he is on this blog. Never heard of him before. Very odd.
I don't think of this as new agey or anything like that. I believe that his "training" starts before you get in the water with breathing and relaxation/meditation/body control techniques. He doesn't start you off by jumping in ice water. He seems to have developed a mind over body type process, he is not the first or only one with this type of thing.
These concentration techniques work, if you have ever been in extreme cold your breathing wants to accelerate and you want to shiver uncontrollably, but with concentration and effort you can control your breathing and shivering. I don't think this is much different than what the Shaolin monks do. You can train yourself to control your body and I don't think that is a bad or strange thing. I believe the goal is once you can control yourself in the cold water environment you can use these techniques in less stressful situations without the same level of direct concentration, making your live less stressful overall.
As has been mentioned above this is a separate goal from the post workout ice bath. There are certainly some crossover benefits but this is much more of a mind meditation type issue as opposed to a physical recovery approach.
Biden's Infrastructure Tax Hikes gonna provide plenty discomfort. $3T. Plenty.
Gee, maybe president asterisk's administration, with him leading the way, could try this out on a daily basis, starting tomorrow live on camera, and if they don't suffer any issues, then all of congress and their staffs could do it, and after that all state governments and then all of the bureaucrats could do it too.
The rest of us could just watch on youtube and enjoy.
I watched his video's. His thing is for you to get used to being uncomfortable. It's a pysch thing that is opposite of the average person's thinking. Like should I get out of bed to a cold house and start the coal stove or flip on the gas furnace? Should I type on althouse tonight, or go kayak fishing, at night, in the wind and 40deg water? Mr. Hof want's me to choose the high, hard road that is much more difficult than being in the valley. It's a completely different way of living life. When I take friends fishing it may or may not be fruitful because after awhile people just give up. When I go by myself I do death trolling, and keep going back day after day. The question is always the same: do you want to succeed, or just have fun? Rarely do the two coincide. Don't be weak minded.
I have finished morning showers with cold for two or three minutes. Have done it for years. You can definitely tell when it’s winter. I have read Hof’s stuff and signed up for his newsletter, free version. Interesting stuff.
I have a friend in Dublin whose wife and her friends swim every Monday morning, year round, in the Irish Sea. I wild swim in a loch in Scotland when the authorities allow me to travel there.
Public Service Announcement: Don't try this if you are allergic to the cold -- it's called cold urticaria. You can go into anaphylactic shock. How do you know if you're allergic to the cold? Put ice on your skin and hold it there for a few minutes. If you get a raised itchy welt, like a hive, you should not try ice baths. It might kill you.
Arturo Ui said...
https://www.axios.com/sidney-powell-dismiss-dominion-lawsuit-cf25a9bd-5aed-4908-959e-c5f9ea9aa425.html
Powell argues in her motion that "no reasonable person" would conclude that her accusations of Dominion's election-rigging scheme "were truly statements of fact."
**************
And she is, of course, correct. Commenting on matters of public interest, and regarding a public figure partipant(which Dominion is) is considered protected speech under the First Aendment, and is not treated as a defamatory statement of fact, unless the comment falls under the Times v. Sullivan rule.
Go ahead, Arturo: find "malice" in Powell's statements.
And go ahead, Arturo: try to tell us that filing a lawsuit alleging certain facts as a basis for a "cause of action" is itself defamatory.
Face it: you've prematurely ejaculated again.
I experience this mind-clearing when I run. I can be almost non-functional with worry or fear, but when I get about 3 miles into a hard run, I can think of nothing but the immediate physical sensations I am experiencing. Let me go for a 25-30 mile run, and all of my ruminations and obsessions cease to exist. The effect lasts for several days.
My middle son was way into Wim Hof videos for a while a couple of years ago, and his takeaway was that we have far more control — almost total control — over our hormonal responses to danger, stress, anxiety, etc, using breathing techniques.
Just imagine if there was a way to help all the people on anti-anxiety meds today, using something that’s free, easy, and completely within your control?
If it’s not available in a pill, Americans think it’s quackery.
Might want to rethink that posture.
Whole body cryotherapy trends with the hipster-doofus bros.
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