Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Scott Carney on the Surprising Benefits of Cold Exposure

Episode Date: May 13, 2017

In this episode, I interview the investigative journalist Scott Carney about something gaining more and more popularity these days: cold exposure. You know, taking cold showers and ice baths, running around outside in your underwear during the winter, and so forth. This “biohacking” craze started with one man, Wim Hof, who has done some pretty mind-boggling things with his body like climbing Mount Everest in just a pair of shorts, and even better, has taught others to do the same. Scott’s latest book, What Doesn’t Kill Us, which I highly recommend you read, started as a mission to debunk Wim’s claims. After four years of research and personal experimentation, he realized that they’re not only true, but they raise bigger questions about what we’re really capable of physically, mentally, and, spiritually. That, of course, is what this interview is all about. Scott shares with us the details of his almost surreal journey with Wim, and how he learned to use cold exposure and simple breathing techniques to boost his physical health and performance and, like Wim, climb a mountain in just his shorts without dying of hypothermia. Scott also breaks down how you and I can benefit from this new and exciting field of research. And speaking to that, I myself have already taken the plunge, pun intended, by doing 3 to 5 minute cold showers every morning, and I’ve come to really enjoy them because of how I feel after - awake, energized, alert, and ready to get to the gym. So, here’s the interview... 8:55 How has your life changed after climbing Mount Kilimanjaro? 13:32 What benefits have you noticed after achieving the physically impossible? 17:18 What are some of the things you can accomplish when the body, mind, and soul work together? 26:36 In comparison to our ancestors, what are some physical abilities we have lost as we have evolved? 30:33 Is technology ruining our biology? 32:40 What are the benefits from breathing exercises and cold showers? 36:06 What are the most recent scientific findings on the Wim Hof Method? 39:14 What are some breathing exercises our listeners can start doing and what are the benefits? 46:26 How can people connect with you and find your work? Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

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I hope you enjoy it, and let's get to the show. Hey, hey, welcome to another episode of the Muscle for Life podcast. I am your host, Mike Matthews, And in this interview, I interview the investigative journalist, Scott Carney, about something that is gaining more and more popularity these days, and that is cold exposure. You know, taking cold showers and ice baths and running around outside in your underwear during the winter and so forth. This quote unquote biohacking craze started basically with one dude, Wim Hoff, who has done some pretty mind-boggling things with his body, like climbing Mount Everest in just a pair of shorts, and even better, has taught others how to do the same. Now, Scott's latest book, which is

called What Doesn't Kill Us, which I also highly recommend that you read, started as a mission to debunk Wim's claims. Scott is very skeptical by nature, and he was hearing these fantastical things that this guy was doing and figured there's just no way that this is true. And so Scott basically set out to prove that Wim is a fraud. But after four years of research and personal experimentation, I mean, he really immersed himself in the whole experience, which you will see in this interview, Scott realized that these claims that Wim were making were not only true, but they actually raise bigger questions about what we're really capable of physically, mentally, and you might even say spiritually. And all that, of course, is what this interview is all about. In it, Scott shares with us the details of his almost surreal journey with Wim and how he himself learned to use simple cold exposure and breathing techniques to boost his physical health and performance and, like Wim, climb a mountain in just his shorts without dying of hypothermia. Scott also breaks down how you and

I can immediately benefit from this new and exciting field of research. And speaking to that, I myself have already taken the plunge, pun intended, by doing three to five minute cold showers every morning, all the way to the left, as cold as the water can go. And I've actually come to really enjoy it because of how it makes me feel after I feel awake, energized, alert, and ready to get to the gym. So that's it for the preview. Let's get to the interview. Hey, Scott, thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it. Oh, thank you for having me. This is gonna be fun. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no, I'm excited to talk to you about this because I came, you know, kept on hearing about particularly cold showers and just cold exposure as a, as a therapy of sorts or something. I didn't even honestly look

much into it. I was just like, eh, fuck it. I'm just going to start taking cold showers and, you know, see, see what happens. So I started it in last winter. Now we're just coming out of it, right? And so that was also, I guess the, the, the winter water here in Virginia is cold I learned that right away but yeah at first it was kind of it wasn't very enjoyable to because I was just something that I can't I don't know maybe I'd taken cold showers when I I grew up playing ice hockey and yeah after some games just literally to cool off but first first thing in the morning there I've done that before and But I found that I came to start liking it just because it woke me up. I felt kind of energized after. I felt more blood circulation

in my body. And so I just started just doing that really. And then started looking into, okay, so what's the story? Is this just, I mean, even if the only benefit were just it improves blood circulation, it makes me feel good when I wake up, when I'm done with it, then that's enough for me. So I came across your book, read it, and really liked it. So that's why I reached out and have some questions that I wanted to ask you just more personal going through it. But then also some stuff that I think the listeners will find very interesting because chances are they have heard about Wim Hof or just cold exposure in general. And maybe, you know, we're basically in the same boat as me, where you're like, yeah, I don't know. It sounds kind of interesting, but is it,

is it, is it bullshit? Is it, uh, is it just some kind of fad? Is it, is it just something to do? That's more just like, well, forcing to do yourself, forcing yourself to do something difficult is just good in that regard because it just builds mental fortitude or whatever. So I think it's going to be an interesting interview. Well, I'm glad you're taking cold showers. That's the first step. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's funny. So I got someone else in the office here to start doing it with me. So now he's like, all right, we've got to start doing it. You shower together? That's pretty – that's cool. Yeah. Well, it's team building. It builds morale. I'm trying to get the whole office. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I dig it. That's very cool.

It's not weird if you don't make eye contact. Right. Yeah, I get that. You got to sort of look at the wall and just breathe deep. Yeah. And go inside. So in the beginning of the book, you know, breathe deep. Yeah. And, and go in, go inside, you know? So, so in the beginning of the book, uh, I thought it was funny. You kind of mentioned that you kind of felt your spirit animal was a jellyfish, right? So you just kind of float around and eat and do nothing. And then fast forward to a few years later, you're summiting Mount Kilimanjaro in your underwear. And that's a And that's a pretty dramatic personal transformation,

not just the physical side of it, but just personally, I guess you probably feel like your identity changed quite a bit or who you are in some way. Can you tell us a bit about that and what has kind of changed most for you and how has that kind of affected your life? Yeah. Well, I've always been a really warm weather guy, right? You know, I was born in Rhode Island, which does have some cold winters, but I spent a lot of time in LA, I spent a lot of time in India as a sort of foreign correspondent doing sort of the war beat and that sort of thing. And so, you know, I had been sort of sitting at my office or looking out at these palm

trees, uh, you know, swaying in the breeze when I came across this picture of this dude named Wim Hof who was sitting on an iceberg and he had this sort of like serene look of happiness on his face. And I had just sort of grown accustomed to the idea that being comfortable is awesome. Like the weather in LA is awesome all the time.

and sort of the message that he was, out was that the environment that you live in reflects in your biology and your biology responds to it. And being comfortable all the time is not necessarily good for you. In fact, it makes these biological processes that you have they're hidden from your conscious mind You know it makes them go inactive and he looked totally comfortable in this iceberg And when I saw that same thing like the idea of like sitting on snow seemed fucking insane to me and It seemed painful and horrible and and you know the more I read about him, and this was like in 2011.

He was not a big deal at all at that point. The more I read about him, the more bullshit it sounded, right? Absolutely. Okay, he can stand in snow. But then he was saying, yeah, I can teach anyone to control their body temperature like a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Yeah. And on top of that, I can control my immune system consciously. Or like those massages.

Have you ever seen those videos where they can heat their hands up for massage and stuff and you're like – Yeah. Yeah. Like what is that, right? And I had just written a book about sort of false gurus and people who pursue meditation to sort of the utmost extreme and how that can end up fatally sometimes. I looked – actually, I had known people over the years who died on meditation

retreats taking their life at the end of it because they believed they had achieved superpowers. All they do is leave their body. And I started, had, for years before I'd even heard of Wim Hof, I was collecting journals of people. And anyway, was it you're saying they willed themselves to death or they just killed, they like took, you know, they killed themselves uh they would like jump off roofs and things like that you know it's not it's more hey it's impressive you could just be like all right watch this and then die that that's at least impressive let's go with that but yeah not

so impressive if you're just jumping off buildings well i'd also you know looked at this guy who meditated until he dehydrated to death in the deserts of Arizona. Not very impressive. No, sorry. So I was skeptical of anyone who was saying that they could give you superpowers through meditative techniques. And when I went out to see him, and I booked a plane ticket. I was on a commission from Playboy magazine. I was like, I'm going to just watch his claims fall apart. I'm going to write another book

about a guru who had, you know, was overheating mumbo jumbo. But it turns out when you start doing the method, shit starts changing. Like within a week, I'm standing in the snow for an hour at a time, sweating, not freezing to death. And this is the middle of the Polish winter. It's the winter that stopped Napoleon. It's the winter that stopped the Nazi blitzkrieg. And here I was hanging out there in my skivvies, sweating. And then we ended the week, me climbing up a mountain. You know, it's probably two degrees Fahrenheit outside. I was on the mountain for eight hours and I was warm. And I was like, this is crazy yeah not only you know there are these stories of Tibetan monks who are able to do this right and they sit in

snow and the snow all melts around them but to get to that level it takes them at least ten years of training this took me a week and and it is absolutely crazy and so I knew I had to go explore more about him and over the course of the next six years I'm sort of going in and out of doing the Wim Hof method and working on some other journalist projects. And I sort of commit fully in about 2015, 16, something like that. And, you know, go in and just sort of watch my biology change over the course of sort of a six-month winter protocol of, you know, jumping in the snow when I can, jumping in icy rivers. And, you know, it's been amazing. It's been an amazing ride. Wow. And what have you noticed? I'm just curious. What benefits have you noticed just outside of, you know, being able to do things that people would think are physically

impossible? Because I'm sure, you know, that the other things have changed as well, right? I would think. Dr. Yeah. The coolest thing that has happened is, so there's this autoimmune benefit of being in the cold, which I had not expected. Me being warm in the snow seemed already incredible, but since I was a kid, I suffered from these things called canker sores, which are sort are ulcers on the inside of your mouth. Because they're autoimmune in nature, I used to think they were herpes.

I've talked to lots of doctors, like, no, these are autoimmune. They can get, for me, the size of a dime, so really big, painful, horrible things. I tried everything I could to get rid of them. I put salt on it. I tried iodine. I tried every freaking cure out there, steroids, everything, they always came back. And then once I started doing the Wim Hof Method, they just disappeared. They just stopped coming.

And it turns out that the cold stimulates the fight or flight response. Yeah, you immediately feel that. Immediately. And that's not something you get in your everyday life. And the fight or flight response also is connected to the same control system that controls your immune system. And one of the ideas about why we get autoimmune illnesses in general is that if you think about your body, and sorry, if you think about the immune system as a sort of a predator, like a wolf running around trying to kill the bacteria and viruses that might come in we have so few exposures to that sort of thing in our you know everyday

lives right it needs something to do it's like ah fuck it let's just let's go over here and start eating this let's go eat the inside of your mouth a bit exactly you know and it starts chewing on the sort of my lip or you know people with Crohn's disease choose on their intestines or people with arthritis choose on their joints. These cold exposure and the breathing techniques end up being like giving that wolf a chew toy, and it gives it something to do. I've seen these... Mouth ulcers are not the worst thing in the world, but I've seen them go away.

I've also seen people put Crohn's disease into remission. I've seen rheumatoid arthritis go into remission and even Parkinson's disease which is not autoimmune but sort of must be connected to the same thing, also sort of be managed under these protocols and that's been the really sort of most fascinating thing because you know because you could look at exercise routines and you could be like I do I exercise a lot and I get stronger you know there's sort of a one-to-one thing. And the exercise stimulates the same type of response. It is a fight or flight. I mean, of course, you go do a grueling workout and you feel it. So, it's interesting that this does something else that, I mean, you wouldn't necessarily get from

exercise. Yeah. And it's below the conscious mind. You know, you have all these processes in your body that are autonomic, which means you can't think your heart to a slower rate, at least not very easily. You certainly can't think vasoconstriction, which is the muscles in your fingers and feet, the muscles along the arteries and veins. Sorry, it's along the arteries. They, in cold, will clench. In heat, they will dilate. But if you live in like 72 degrees

your whole life, you never, those muscles never move. So they don't get exercise. So you can look at like cold showers in the same way as you do, you know, it's exercise for your cardiovascular system. That's interesting. Yeah. That totally makes sense. So, so the book is also, it's about more than just kind of your personal transformation. I mean, I, what I got is it's more about pushing kind of the limits of what we're physically, mentally, and in some sense, spiritually capable of. And you say that you believe that, you know, or this is something you've kind of taken away from this whole experience that when the body, mind and soul, so to speak, work together that, you know, we see, we can accomplish amazing things. Can you expound a little bit on that? Well, I mean, that's big, right? I know,

but this is one of the questions I wanted to ask you because I thought it's an interesting, and then, and I, because it resonated with me. So I'm like, I'm going to ask him about this just because it's not something, you know, a lot of, even a lot of, even a lot of listeners, obviously a lot of people listening are into fitness and just, just self-improvement and self-transformation in various ways. But a lot of the focus of course is more just on the body is, you know, improving the body, improving the body, improving the body, whether it be for, for the purposes of vanity or, or health or whatever. But if you venture into mind or soul stuff, you go off into new age stuff that, you know, you can get,

I'd say a lot of it is, it can be, some of it can be interesting, but it moves away from practical. So what's, I thought also interesting is that this is again, a very practical method that kind of produces experience in you and you're a skeptic by nature. Right. So I just, it's interesting because so you can do these breathing methods and they will put you in. So the, the breathing method, let me explain that first. It's, it's you hyper ventilate, meaning sort of long, deep, quick breaths. So in about a minute time, you should do 30 or 40 breaths. And then at the end of that, you exhale and then hold your breath for as long as you can. And then you sort of repeat this process back and forth until you're holding your breath for... I

do it three minutes in the morning every day. I can hold my breath for three minutes after doing three repetitions. When you do this, it induces a meditative state. It induces a thing... If you were going to sit on your, you know, meditation cushion, and I don't know how many of your listeners are sort of meditators regularly, but if you sit there and you sort of focus your mind, eventually you'll get to this sort of state of calmness. And, you know, you might see shapes move around, time might speed up or slow down, and you sort of get this sort of through this

introspection and watching your thoughts. Now, the Wim Hof Method puts you into that state incredibly quickly through a physical process. And, you know, you might end up, if you really push yourself, you sort of end up, you can end up hallucinating or seeing things. And, you know, I don't really push this in the book too much because I didn't want to make the book about sort of spirituality. That was not my goal because there's a very physical side of this, and the physical techniques are awesome. you can get into these sort of almost existential states you can see things like you know i i i've seen human faces uh when i'm sort of on the edge of sort of have to gasp and i sort of get into this thing where it's you feel really connected to the world and it's weird and i don't really it reminds me of there's research it was i saw i ran into it just recently actually it was like

experiments done where people stared at themselves in the mirror for hours and hours and hours and reported the same type of thing They started seeing dead relatives and like demons and all kinds of shit And I was just staring that's just I don't know looking at themselves in a mirror for and there was no breathing Exercise that it was just sitting in here and look at yourself for six hours, and now you're seeing like Yeah, now you're like Nikola Tesla or something. I don't know. I mean, there are lots of interesting brain states to be examined. And the thing is there's a whole bunch of techniques to sort of access stuff. I don't know about staring

into the mirror. I've never heard of this. Google. There are experiments that are done. I think it was like in the 60s or something. But there's other things that happen. Like if you look at G-Lock, which is if you're a pilot and you go under high G-force, you get these depersonalized experiences. And one of my friends who's a fighter pilot says that on like an eight-hour

trip, moving at really high speeds, you sort of lose perspective on where the horizon and the ground is. And he says it's very common for pilots to depersonalize, which means that they sort of see themselves in the cockpit from outside the cockpit. And they're actually looking at their bodies. And that, you know, it's... What does that mean?

What the hell does that mean? Is it hallucination? Is it just a physical thing that's just a brain state that's just like weird but can be explained by electrical magnetic phenomenon in your brain? Possibly. Or is it something else altogether? Who knows? Right, right. It's one of these eternal human questions. Totally. And the cool thing about the Wim Hof Method is it can be, if you want it to be, a way to explore those questions and explore those brain states that are sort of mystical.

And so there's this other thing. So he has this thing called DMT breathing. And I don't know if you've ever heard of DMT, but it's this molecule that you release when you are about to die. And it sits in the pituitary gland and it goes. And you've probably heard of ayahuasca. Yes. Yeah. It was a dimethyltry gland, and it goes. And, you know, you've probably heard of ayahuasca. Yes. Yeah, it was a dimethyltryptophen or something.

Yeah. There's documentaries that call it the spirit molecule. Anyway, the really interesting thing about DMT trips is that people often report similar experiences. So, you know, if you're hallucinating an acid, you look at the sky or whatever, and the sun might look weird. But with DMT, it's a 15-minute trip, and a lot of people talk about seeing particular types of creatures. There's something called machine elves, and sometimes they see something called lady ayahuasca. That's funny, right? You're machine elves. But when 50 people see machine elves, you kind of think that's weird.

But when like 50 people see machine elves, you kind of think that that's weird. And so the breathing, if you do it for like an hour, you know, I usually do it for 15 minutes in the morning. But if you actually maintain that breathing method for an hour, you'll get to a point where you will actually start seeing those shapes. The machine elves come marching. The machine elves will come marching. And that's nuts. That's crazy. Some people will say that the Wim Hof method will release DMT. Now I'm agnostic on that. I've never stuck a probe into my pituitary gland.

And I've never even done DMT. I've only read about it. But you know, fascinating stuff that you can explore. Yeah. I mean, it just makes me think of, and I had this written down in my outline in connection with you in the next thing, that there a spiritual side to our existence? I mean, these are on a lot of people, maybe they don't consider them because maybe a lot of people also don't want to, I mean, you know, take a more Eastern concept of reincarnation, for example, you've probably, you probably know all about the Indigo children and all that research. And,

uh, have you ever heard of that? I've heard of it. I don't really follow that, but yeah, I've heard of it. It's just interesting. It's a psychiatrist. I think he teaches at University of Virginia and spent decades documenting a lot of case studies of children that have past life memories and things that are just unexplainable basically. This kind of stuff where you're like, if we're going to take the simplest explanation, it's that somehow these people lived before. If there's another explanation, we don't know what it is kind of thing. And this guy is a respected scientist, though. He was rigorous.

It wasn't just whatever. But anyways, so it just opens these big questions of maybe in our lifetimes we'll have more answers to help understand what is actually going on with all of this. Well, I hope not. I hope we don't ever get answers. I hope that it remains a mystery. Because let's say you knew God, right? And God was this dude with a beard who lives in clouds. And you knew what he was up to and what he wanted. That would make life no fun.

A lot of it is the search and the wondering of what you're supposed to do in your life. And if we had the actual answers, like, I think it would take some of the fun out of living, actually. And also, it would put the focus on the spiritual realm, when we live in a physical world, and maybe we should do the best we can with the physical world instead of getting all focused on these esoteric things. You know, reincarnation, you know, there's lots of stories about kids who, you know, I lived in India for years, and there's always new stories about this kid who remembers a past life. It's in the newspaper like every, you know, three weeks. Whether or not it's true, who knows, you know? I think that if we knew definitively, then we would start living for an indeterminate

future instead of trying to do the best we can with the life right here. Yeah, no, I totally understand where you're coming from. I think it's just so unknown. What is the answer? It would depend a lot on that, I think, right? Because I think there are answers that could lead us off in a direction that would be an evolution of the species, and then there could be answers that would maybe not, not do that. But anyways, yeah, I just found that interesting as one of the things going through it, where it's like,

it's just trippy stuff that you don't really consider. Like, you know, this is the next thing I wanted to kind of bring up is in the book, you mentioned evidence of abilities that, you know, we humans, we once had abilities that that seemed to have been lost, supernatural kind of abilities. For example, it was tribal peoples that had a perfect sense of direction and location regardless of where they were. If it's not supernatural, let's say I talk about this. I know we've just been talking about this psychedelic and spiritual realm. It seems to be. At first glance, you're like, how is that possible?

But they're biological things. They're things that we have because of the process of evolution that now we have outsourced those abilities to technology. So humans have an innate sense of direction that we have. If you look at indigenous populations who've never had access to compasses and sort of the way we think about directions now, they can sense possibly north all the time. And some people assume that it's magnetic cells in the eyeballs or nose. It could be some other sort of system of things. But they are in tune with general direction. with general direction. And there's this indigenous group,

the Gugu Yimithir in Australia, who didn't have a word for left, right, front, or back. They only had words for the cardinal directions. So right now, you would be to the north of me. Actually, I don't know how they would deal with Skype. That's the real test. But, you know, they... And when, you know, the Western researcher, you know, and when the you know the western researcher you know so when like darwin and these sort of other sort of explorers meet them like it's insane because they're like you

know think of their dinner party conversation you know you have to sit to the left of me you know you're to the north and it's crazy and they could even put them in a dark room and these people would always be able to tell these directions. Yeah, that's very interesting. So, it's pretty interesting. What are some other, just for the listeners, what are some other examples of these seemingly kind of lost abilities? I know you go over them in the book, but... Well, I mean, for instance, temperature regulation is obviously one of the main topics

in the book, right? Yeah. When the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, it was the middle of the winter, and they didn't meet anyone for three months. And then this dude walks up to their camp in a loincloth, and he says, welcome, welcome, Englishman. He knows English, too, which is weird. He was kidnapped as a child by English fishermen in Maine. But this is the true story. He comes up, and it's in the middle of March in Cape Cod, which is really cold, and he was wearing just a loincloth. And that's insane, right? Because this was just his winter outfit. And so that's one, you know, direction sense is another. Some people will argue about remote communication is something that people may have had.

Among reindeer, it was reindeer herding, right? Yeah, it was in the Sami. They talked about them being able to communicate over immense distances in inexplicable ways. Of course, we have that ability now. I'm talking to you over Skype. But whatever they were doing, it was spooky. Yeah, something else, yeah. were doing, it was spooky. Yeah, something else, yeah.

Has that mystical kind of quality to it. Yeah, and, you know, maybe they were wrong. Maybe this was just misreported stuff. But by the time that we started really looking at, like, hey, maybe there are indigenous groups that have really cool things. By the time we really started systematically looking at it, we're talking like the 30s, 40s, 50s, and by then we'd already basically eliminated most of the indigenous groups in the world. So we had this sort of knowledge gap that in some ways we may never know what humans might be capable of. And now that sort of this western paradigm is around us all the time that we don't have the the you know we're always

being limited by technology there is no wild humans anymore so what could they do i mean certainly you think we're like they had great because i think technology is ruining a bit that a bit of us in terms of our biology or whatever is going on that we're in some ways you know obviously we're advancing very quickly technologically mainly but then what about us though you know what i mean yeah i mean we're weaker than we than our than your ancestors you know if you if you think about i mean we have better lives than our ancestors absolutely at least we're more comfortable than our ancestors and we're smarter many things going on for us yeah of course but you, if you were going to go back 20,000 years into the past, don't challenge anyone to a wrestling match or a foot race because they're going to fuck your shit up. Yeah.

And they could also probably eat more things than we could, right? Their gut bacteria was probably amazing, you know, and just their ability to munch through things. Of course, a lot of them died at 30. So, you know, take what you can. But you will see that even in old skeletons, 80-year-olds from the remote past, so 15-, 20-, 30,000-year-old skeletons, they don't get arthritis, which is really interesting. I mean, there are a few instances of it, but for the most part, the people who lived into their old age didn't get some of these autoimmune illnesses that we get all the time now. Yeah, that's interesting. I just saw recently something just on that point

of strength and speed. I just saw it was an article just talking about some new research on that and how much, how weak and basically how frail we are physically compared to our ancient ancestors and things that they could do things that now we would think would be physically impossible, basically. Sure. And like grip strength now is much worse than it was even in the 50s. So, you know, your ability to grasp things, you know, they've been measuring grip strength since the 1910s or so. We suck at it now. A lot of it's because we don't do the physical exercise.

We do a lot of this, unfortunately. We have the best carpal tunnel though. Our carpal tunnel is amazing. Off the charts carpal tunnel game. Do you still practice? So you practice, you do the breathing, do you still do the cold? Any other benefits that you've noticed since finishing the book? I mean, obviously, you talked about it there.

Anything else that... Yeah, I mean, so I still do the breathing every morning. I take cold showers every morning. I mean, for the book, I was much more dedicated to finding cold all the time, but, you know, that was sort of an experiment I was running. And in those six months, one of the cool things I did was test my VO2 max, which is sort of your maximum exertion level and testing what sort of energy you're using, whether it's carbohydrates or fats. When I started, I was mostly a carbohydrate burner. I could do, I think, six stages on a VO2 max test, which is you're running

faster and it goes sort of more of an incline. So I made seven stages in that. At the end of six months, where I didn't change my exercise routine at all, so I was still just doing about three workouts a week, and it was usually like a hike or a swim or like a three-mile jog, so nothing too intense. At the end of that six-month period, I had become mostly a fat burner. The doctor had said, who was researching me, it was as if I had added seven hours of cardio exercise to my routine every week. Wow.

That's attributed to the brown fat? Well, it's to the breathing method and the cold exposure that I was doing. So I didn't control— Oh, so you're saying it wasn't—it's just that, not necessarily a physiological adaptation in terms of brown fat. I mean, I kind of left that off the list because that's one of the— Dr. Sure. Just for the sake of time, I was like, I want to ask him some other questions,

but that's another interesting— Dr. Yeah. I mean, I probably had more brown fat, but I didn't do a PET-CT scan, which would have tested it both ways, mostly because there was no reason to inundate me with ionizing radiation. Like, you should only do a PET-CT scan if you have cancer. Yeah. Because, you know, because it can cause cancer in you. So that's a problem. But I was certainly much more comfortable in the cold over time than I was before.

So we end the book with me climbing up Mount Kilimanjaro in just a bathing suit with Wim. And I do it in 28 hours, which is very fast. It's not a world record, but it's very fast. Because it usually takes people about five days to get to the top of Kili. Because you have to acclimate as you go up. Right. It's not that it's technical or difficult. It's that if you don't go in slow stages, you'll get altitude sickness,

which means you can't get the oxygen into your limbs and you'll die. And so Kili has about a 60% failure rate because of altitude sickness, even though the hike itself is relatively easy. And that's at five days. We went with 30 people and we had a 80% success rate. And we did it in 28 to 30 hours, depending on which section we were in. And that's amazing. The Army predicted that- Were you cold at all? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Or were you sweating on the way up? No, I mean, I actually put a sweater on like twice because it got down to negative

30. Cheater. I know. I know. I felt a little bit like that. I was like, oh, man. But then you have to sort of remind yourself like this is crazy what's going on around you.

And I didn't like it polar north face up. It was just a sweater. Dr. That's great. Well, any new scientific findings on the – because, you know, there's the literature starting to pick up on this, obviously, over the last few years. Any other scientific findings on just what I guess is generally being referred to as the Wim Hof Method that you think are worth sharing? Dr. Yeah.

There are a lot of studies ongoing. The biggest one is still the endotoxin experiment that came out about four years ago, which is they injected Wim Hof with endotoxin, which is basically a heat-killed E. coli bacteria. And usually what happens when you're injected with this, you'll get a fever response. And your nose will run, you'll get aches and pains, all the things you might get with the flu. But it's not dangerous. It's just your immune system saying this is an emergency.

We're going to activate this. Wim claimed that he could not have this response. And they injected with him. And lo and behold, he didn't have any responses to endotoxin, which was a big deal at the time because it was saying that you could consciously turn off your immune system, and that had never been done before. And so that was amazing. And then a year after that, he trained 12 people and put all of them through the same experiment, and they were also able to have the same no response to endotoxin, which is statistically amazing. It shows that the Wim Hof Method is teachable.

So that is still the study that everyone looks at. I know that there's currently ongoing stuff to sort of understand whether it's his breathing method or the cold. They're trying to sort of figure that out. There have been some epidemiological studies on cold showers, and there is some upcoming research about whether the Wim Hof Method can be used to treat anxiety and PTSD. And I don't think that's published yet.

And I would think it probably is because the method is actually very similar to a technique called cognitive behavioral therapy where you can... Essentially, one of the techniques is you'll induce a panic attack in somebody so that they can see that the panic attack in somebody so that they can see that the panic attack is not so bad and then their anxiety will get reduced. That's a really simple way of explaining that technique. The Wim Hof method, the hyperventilation and the retention actually can seem like a panic attack to your body as well. So it gets you also used to those states. So I will not be surprised when that study comes out that it says this is good for anxiety too.

That'd be great. It'd be better than a cocktail of psychotropic drugs, I think. Sure. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. Okay, so what are a few things the listeners can start doing right away at home to benefit from?

So you spoke about the breathing, you explained quickly how to do it, cold showers. If you just give people listening, all right, here's a little summary. If you want to kind of start experimenting with this for yourself, here, just start with this. Right. So, let me explain the breathing method another time because I think that you really do have to do both. Like cold showers are great but it's not... See, I'm just a poser. I'm just doing the cold showers. I didn't... Cold showers are great but they'll only do one half of this thing, and the breathing is also very powerful.

So what it is is basically deep hyperventilation. So it's not panicked hyperventilation, but it looks like 30 breaths, maybe 40 breaths. So like super oxygenation type of deal. Super oxygenation, carbon dioxide. And so at the end of that, you exhale. So empty your lungs and hold your breath for as long as you can. The first time, it will not be as impressive as the second time and the third time, right? And so I usually do a one-minute breath retention. Then I do a two-minute breath retention, a three-minute breath retention.

And you just go back and forth. And between— And just to be clear, it's exhale, hold, not exhale, inhale, hold. Yes, exactly. If you do the inhale, that is a different type of technique, and we could get into the finer details. But for the basic technique, you just exhale. Good. technique, you just exhale. After you hold for about three minutes or your maximum length,

then you do another repetition of the breathing and then go into an anaerobic physical exercise like push-ups while holding your breath with empty lungs. You'll find that you can do more push-ups on one row than you could usually without holding your breath. When I first did this, I could usually do about 20 push-ups. I did the breathing method. I could do 40. This morning, I think I did 60 push-ups without breathing. That's impressive. I can hit up to 80 without breathing if I'm really in the zone.

Yeah. Wow. And if you do the push-ups with full lungs, you'll do more, but there's a slight risk of passing out if you do it with full lungs. Okay. For a metabolic reason, we could go into if you wanted to. One quick question on the breaths. Are you looking to inhale more than you exhale?

Is that kind of it or is it just full breath, full exhale? Full breath, you know, when you're getting... Full breath, full exhale. Okay. Yeah. You're not trying to... Because when I was kind of looking around also for what else is out there for the interview, I had seen people, they were talking about that, that like you kind of want to breathe in more than you breathe out kind of deal.

Yeah, that doesn't make any sense because if you keep on breathing in more than you breathe out, your nose explodes, right? So I was like, so what? Then you do that until and then you fully exhale and do it again? Like, what does that mean? Yeah. No, no, you just breathe deep. Okay, good do it again? Like what does that mean? Yeah. No, no, you just breathe deep.

Okay, good. Okay, good. I'm glad it's... That's all my notes. I was like, I need to ask him because that doesn't really, I don't know how to get, how, what does that mean? There's a reset in there somewhere. So either that or you pass out or something.

I don't know. There's a lot of like misinformation and misunderstanding in the Wim Hof method. And part of this is because honestly, it's not a method. It's more like a set of principles. And he changes the way he explains it over and over again. But this is what I do. And this is the Scott Carney version of the Wim Hof Method. And then after I do the push-ups, then I'll do a headstand sometimes.

And boom, then I'll go and eat breakfast. So this all happens before you have any food in your stomach. And then when I get around to it, I shower. And you start off with a hot shower. Like every few days or something, right? Whenever I get around to it, you know. Yeah, so then you shower. You start with hot.

That's fine. Wash yourself off. And at the end, do the hardest thing any human has ever done, which is turn off the hot water, keep only the cold on, and sit there for at least a minute. When you're doing this, you have to suppress that shiver response. What your body's going to want to do is tense up. What you're trying to tell it to do is relax in that environment. When you do that, you transfer the thermogenesis.

So the way you heat your body goes from muscle movement, which is shivering, to metabolic activity, which is burning white fat and transforming it directly into heat energy. And that is what you're doing when you suppress shivering. Now, one minute is the minimum. If you want to go longer, go longer. And if you can, you know, you were in, you said Virginia, are you in the ocean? An hour, hour or so away. All right. So not perfect. But, you know, if you have access to cold water, swim in it and get to that point where you're comfortable in that environment. And at first, you're always going

to want to tense up and you just will yourself to relax. And when you do that, that's what sparks this metabolic change. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what I've been doing. I don't even do the hot. I just go straight cold. And then sometimes I'll end with a hot like maybe 15 seconds, spin around. But I do about three minutes on cold and kind of like let it get my front of my body, turn around, get my back,

my body, turn around a few times and just, uh, just do that. Just try to relax. And I've only, I've done, I've been doing it for a couple of months and I only can remember really starting shivering maybe twice. Uh, otherwise, even in the winter when that was, that was ice cold water, that was cold. Um, and that, but that's what I was doing is I was just relaxing and just kind of focusing. And I was surprised actually, cause the guy in the office here, that's what I was doing is I was just relaxing and just kind of focusing. And I was surprised actually, because the guy in the office here that's also, you know, he wanted to just do it just for the sake of doing it as well. He's still having trouble with the shivering. Like he's having to do it like in stages, you know what I mean? Right. Have him do the breathing method.

Because what the breathing method, when you get to that point where you feel like you need to gasp you're really extending that gasp point that is the same mental activity that you'd use to suppress a shiver like that's why those two things are connected so i think that if he did the breathing method he'll get better at the not shivering but you know it's not bad to shiver like shivering is not like a bad activity it's just that what you're doing in this exercise is trying not to. Yeah. And everyone's physiology is different. Some people don't have the brown fat and they have to build it up over time. Some people have it because they were lucky as kids. There's all sorts of stuff that goes into it. And the Wim Hof Method is not a competition. Some

people in the community are like, I can stay in the ice bath longer than you. And it's like, no, fuck all of you people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that shit's gets dangerous like oh yeah well fuck you watch this and then oh that and now that's the end of him right uh don't go you know swimming on an iceberg don't do this underwater because if you do you know you can learn to hold your breath for a hell of a long time uh some people are like oh let's go free diving with this and they all die so there's a there's there's been like four deaths from people mixing the Wim Hof death method. That's the Wim Hof death method. That's not recommended.

Right, right. No, terrible. Awesome. Okay, great. Well, that's everything I had. That's everything I want to cover. I think it's great. I think people are really going to find it very fascinating. Again, I highly recommend you go check out Scott's book. So then let's just get to that. So where can people find you, find your work? If there's anything next that you're working on that you want also listeners to know about? There's three projects in the works, but who knows which one's going to happen. Okay.

But yeah, so find me on Instagram, find me on Facebook, Twitter, all that stuff. Scott Carney, I'll show right up. Don't friend me on Facebook. I'm findable but I will not accept your friend request. Look me on the author page. That's the way to do it because... I don't even use the personal one honestly. It just got so inundated.

I was just like, and now I'm done with Facebook but I'll use it for work and I have my page. You know what I mean? Yeah. And then there's like, there's an audiobook so if for work and I have my page, you know what I mean? Yeah. And then there's like you can find, there's an audiobook so if you really like listening to my voice, you can listen to me for like nine hours and Amazon and independent booksellers like read the book but also start taking cold showers right now. Yeah. Go do that.

Yeah, yeah. Totally agree. And again, I thought the book was great. I really, I enjoyed your writing style. I appreciate it as a writer. And again, I thought the book was great. I really, I enjoyed your writing style. I appreciate it as a writer. And just so everybody knows, the name is What Doesn't Kill Us is the name of the book. I'm going to say it in the intro, but just in case anyone skipped the intro, that's the name of the book. I highly recommend it. It's a fun read, moves quickly, but also, I mean, as you can hear, I like that you went and did it. You went all in, full immersion.

And anyways, I just, yeah, I agree. And I thought it was fascinating. So again, thank you for taking your time and coming on the show. Thanks for having me on. This has been a blast. And, you know, keep in touch. Absolutely. All right.

Take care. Hey, it's Mike again. Hope you like the podcast. If you did, go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www.muscleforlife.com where you'll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you'll also find a bunch of different articles that I've written. I release a new one almost every day, actually. I

release kind of like four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I'm involved in over at muscleforlife.com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.