I love it when I get lost on the internet, from one click to another from a web to a youtube and from there to the wiki, going through images of google to steemit, when you react you do not even remember what you were looking for initially... 2 hours have passed and you are more wise :)
Human curiosity is infinite, a quality that has made us evolve as a specie!
Yesterday while looking for information for my post HODL YOUR BREATH
Cookies and google took me to the history of Wim Hof aka The Iceman
I want to share the story of The Iceman in case you do not know, obviouly right now i feel like i'm the only one that i had no idea of his existance but i'm sure i'm not the only one.
I did not know the existence of this phenomenon. The headline of the news caught my attention:
The brain, the secret weapon of 'The Iceman' to resist the extreme cold
Wim Hof has run the fastest barefoot marathon on snow, stands six minutes underwater at the North Pole and climbed 6.7 kilometers on Everest in shorts.
Go wild, right?
I kept tracking his steps and as a picture is worth a thousand words youtube showed me this:
Apparently The Iceman has a method that allows him to overcome the anxiety that leads to hypothermia to other humans. He even dares to claim that his method: "can help with symptoms of multiple sclerosis, arthritis, diabetes, clinical depression, anxiety, PTSD, bipolar disorder, cancer, ..."
...Well the words: alleviate symptoms save him from being a charlatan.
His method is not exactly a method based on simple forced hyperventilation but similar.
I also want to share what science says about hyperventilation:
Studies of medical research and the science of physiology have not been able to find any benefit or benefit of deep breathing.
There is not a single study that has proven or proven that, under ordinary conditions, people need to get rid of as much CO2 as possible or that there is some mysterious benefit in relation to deep breathing. In fact, a human being will die in a matter of minutes if their carbon dioxide levels drop to a quarter or a fifth of the physiological norm.
Deep breathing during correctly performed Pranayama only seems profound to the inexperienced. In fact, the goal of Pranayama is to accumulate more CO2 thanks to reduced minute ventilation. The experts in hatha yoga only perform one breath per minute, or even less, when practicing this yoga. Visit the yoga pages for more details.
At the same time, thousands of studies and professional medical and physiological experiments have shown the adverse effects of acute and chronic over-breathing (hyperventilation) and hypocapnia (low levels of CO2) on the cells, tissues, organs and systems of the human bod
However, professors at the Wayne State University School of Medicine (Otto Muzik and Vaibhav Diwadkar) set out to discover what brain mechanisms can provide this surprising resistance.
They invited The Iceman to participate in a study, published in the magazine NeuroImage, in which the thermoregulation capacity of The Iceman was tested during exposure to cold.
The results of the investigation reveal that the "intriguing" mental process that Wim Hof follows generates "peaks of activity" in an unusual area of the brain.
For 3 days, the professors dressed The Iceman in a special suit designed by themselves, able to lower their body temperature to levels of hypothermia by pumping cold water. And they used magnetic resonance and tomography to study their head and body. The data were compared with a group of "normal" people.
Wim Hof's method made the temperature of his skin relatively unchanged from exposure to cold. In fact, in some cases it does not get cold.
Scientists believe that this is because induced hyperventilation allows it to generate heat that dissipates into lung tissue and heats blood circulating in the pulmonary capillaries.
I couldn't stop surfing the internet, the topic was interesting!
The Iceman is the subject of the NY Times bestselling book What Doesn't Kill Us that tells the story of how the investigative journalist Scott Carney took an assignment to debunk the Wim Hof Method, but ended up learning his techniques. << LOL
I love when the clicks after clicks on the internet lead you to surprises like this: a witness from Steemit @lukestokes just 1 year ago sharing his experiences on The Iceman method hahaha ... I love the end of the video where he complains about the price of Steem;)
Draw your own conclusions!
If this method works as apparently and if the science is not able to find contraindications to part of those already known for abuse of hyperventilation, should be incorporated in all those training professionals who expose their body to extreme temperatures asap, don't you think?
Anyone else has experienced this method?
@beiker <3