Benefits of Wim Hof Method & Tummo Breathing | Dr. Elissa Epel & Dr. Andrew Huberman
Summary
TLDRIn this discussion, two researchers explore the impact of breathwork, particularly the Wim Hof Method, on stress resilience and mental health. They compare high-arousal techniques like Wim Hof's extreme breathing with low-arousal methods such as mindfulness and relaxation. Preliminary findings show that both approaches significantly reduce stress, anxiety, and depression, while boosting positive emotions. The study also aims to investigate physiological effects, including gene expression and telomerase activity, to understand how different stress interventions impact the body and brain over time.
Takeaways
- 🧠 The speaker admires the work of the interviewee, especially their research on breathwork and stress resilience.
- ❄️ Wim Hof is known as the 'Iceman' for his cold exposure practices, but his breathwork techniques are also of interest, drawing parallels with ancient breathing practices like Tummo breathing.
- 📊 The speaker's research aims to explore positive stress, focusing on short-term bursts of physical and mental stress to build resilience.
- 😓 While the speaker has studied the negative impacts of toxic stress and trauma, they are now keen on exploring how positive stress can benefit the body and mind.
- 🐕 Physical activities like high-intensity interval training (HIIT) or a brisk walk can significantly alleviate stress and help regulate bodily energy.
- 👨🔬 The speaker collaborated with Wim Hof and designed a study to explore the impact of the Wim Hof Method on stress resilience and emotional well-being.
- 🧘 The study compares the effects of low-arousal relaxation methods (like mindfulness and slow breathing) with high-arousal activities (like the Wim Hof Method and aerobic exercise).
- 📈 Preliminary results show that both low- and high-arousal methods reduce stress, anxiety, and depression over time, with participants feeling significantly better after daily practice.
- 😊 The Wim Hof Method uniquely increased daily positive emotions, suggesting different physiological pathways for emotional improvement.
- 🔬 The study will analyze telomerase, mitochondrial enzymes, and gene expression to understand the biological mechanisms behind stress resilience, although telomere changes are unlikely to show in short-term studies.
Q & A
What is the main focus of the study discussed in the transcript?
-The study focuses on comparing the effects of low-arousal relaxation methods like mindfulness and slow breathing to positive stress exercises, including the Wim Hof method. The goal is to understand how short-term bursts of stress can promote stress resilience and mental health.
What is the Wim Hof method, and why is it relevant to this study?
-The Wim Hof method combines cold exposure with specific breathwork practices, similar to Tummo breathing. It is relevant to the study because it represents a form of 'positive stress' that the researchers are exploring for its potential mental health benefits, particularly in terms of stress resilience.
What motivated the study on the Wim Hof method?
-The motivation came from the researchers' interest in understanding 'positive physiological stress' and its benefits. The study aims to explore ways to induce short-term stress that might promote stress resilience, shifting away from focusing solely on toxic stress and trauma.
What preliminary findings have been observed regarding the Wim Hof method and stress resilience?
-Preliminary findings suggest that both low-arousal relaxation methods and high-arousal positive stress interventions, like the Wim Hof method, lead to significant reductions in stress, anxiety, and depression. Additionally, the Wim Hof method appears to boost daily positive emotions over time.
How does the researcher describe the personal benefits of body-based stress interventions?
-The researcher notes that body-based strategies, like high-intensity exercise or brisk walks, help manage daily stress effectively. These methods seem to have a significant impact, especially for those experiencing strong stress responses.
Why is the study interested in looking at telomeres and telomerase?
-Wim Hof was particularly interested in how his method might affect cell aging, including telomeres. While the researchers don't expect telomeres to change quickly, they plan to examine telomerase, mitochondrial enzymes, and gene expression patterns to explore how these stress interventions might influence cellular aging and stress responses.
What are the researchers hoping to find regarding gene expression and physiological changes?
-The researchers hope to observe changes in gene expression patterns related to acute stress responses. They are looking for differences in how various stress resilience interventions impact mechanisms such as mitochondrial function, telomerase activity, and stress response systems.
Are there any preliminary results about telomere changes?
-No, the researchers don't believe telomeres can change rapidly in a short-term study like this. However, they are looking into telomerase and other biological markers, and the results for those will be available later.
How do different stress resilience interventions impact the nervous system?
-The study suggests that different interventions—like the Wim Hof method or slow-breathing mindfulness—affect the nervous system in distinct ways. While everyone feels better, the physiological pathways to achieving this are varied, involving differences in sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system responses.
What are the next steps in analyzing the results of the study?
-The next steps involve analyzing the physiological data and blood-based biomarkers to determine how different stress interventions impact the body. The study will focus on examining mitochondrial enzymes, telomerase, gene expression patterns, and physiological stress responses.
Outlines
🌬️ Exploring Breath Work and Positive Stress
The speaker has long admired the work of their guest, particularly in breath work studies, and is excited to discuss their current research on the Wim Hof method. The Wim Hof method, often associated with cold exposure, also includes breathwork techniques similar to ancient breathing practices like Tummo. The speaker's interest in positive stress, or 'positive physiological stress,' contrasts their prior research on toxic stress and trauma. They are now exploring how short bursts of stress can improve stress resilience through concrete, quick body-based strategies. The speaker shares their personal experience with such methods, highlighting the immediate benefits of physical activity or brisk walks in managing stress. This leads into their study on how these positive stressors, like exercise and breathwork, might enhance resilience.
🧬 The Study: Comparing Relaxation and Stress Methods
The guest and their team are conducting a study comparing low arousal relaxation techniques, such as mindfulness, with high arousal methods like the Wim Hof method. Funded by the John W. Brick Foundation, which focuses on non-drug approaches to mental health, the research investigates how different techniques affect stress, anxiety, and depression. Initial findings show that all participants, whether assigned to high or low arousal practices, experienced significant reductions in stress and improved mood after three weeks. While various techniques produce these positive effects, the physiological mechanisms behind them differ, and further investigation into the specifics of these stress responses is ongoing. The Wim Hof method, in particular, boosted positive emotions over time, suggesting selective psychological benefits.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Wim Hof Method
💡Breathwork
💡Positive Stress
💡Telomeres
💡Telomerase
💡Stress Resilience
💡Mindfulness
💡Sympathetic Nervous System
💡Parasympathetic Nervous System
💡Gene Expression
Highlights
The speaker's laboratory studies breath work, and they are excited to discuss their current research on the Wim Hof method, which includes breath work practices as well as cold exposure.
The speaker's research focuses on understanding 'positive physiological stress' and ways to induce it, moving away from their earlier work on toxic stress and trauma.
The speaker discusses their interest in body-based strategies for promoting stress resilience, particularly through short-term stressors like aerobic exercise or breath work.
The Wim Hof method's breath work is compared to other practices like Tumor breathing, and it is recognized for its ability to induce positive emotional states.
The speaker's study, funded by the John W. Brick Foundation, compares the Wim Hof method, mindfulness, and other stress-inducing practices to assess their impact on mental health.
The Wim Hof method and other body-based strategies like aerobic exercise have shown to decrease stress, anxiety, and depression, even after just three weeks of practice.
The study reveals that regardless of the method (low or high arousal), participants experienced positive emotional outcomes and significant reductions in mental stress.
The Wim Hof method, in particular, boosted positive emotions daily over time, mirroring findings from previous studies on practices like sighing.
Different physiological Pathways are at play between high-arousal methods (like Wim Hof) and low-arousal methods, though both led to improved mental states.
The speaker emphasizes the unusual selective positive effect of the Wim Hof method in boosting daily positive emotions, which is not commonly seen in other interventions.
Telomere changes are not expected in the short-term, but the study will analyze mitochondrial enzymes, telomerase, and gene expression patterns to identify potential biological effects.
The study uses advanced assays like SomaLogic to examine stress responses at the molecular level, potentially identifying acute stress pattern changes through different stress resilience interventions.
Preliminary results suggest distinct physiological profiles between the different interventions, including effects on both the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.
The speaker suggests that although participants in all interventions felt better, the pathways through which stress resilience was achieved were different depending on the type of intervention.
The research highlights the growing interest in non-drug approaches to improving mental health and stress resilience through methods like breath work and aerobic exercise.
Transcripts
I've known about your work for a very
long time admired it for a very long
time and one of the things that um
excited me about being able to sit down
with you today is that uh our
Laboratories studied breath work your
laboratory studying breath work and um
and I know that you've been
doing a study on the so-called Wim Hof
method
um which of I'll let you familiarize our
listeners to some of them are familiar
with the Wim Hof method others are not I
think a lot of people think of a whim in
terms of his role as the Iceman because
of cold exposure but of course he has um
breath work practices that mirror
um things like tumor breathing and other
things but maybe you could tell us a
little bit about what you're doing there
and what you're interested in
discovering I realize it's too early to
give us the results but hopefully
they'll come back and do that at another
time but
what is the study what motivated the
study and maybe I can convince you to
give us a little teaser of what you're
discovering so for um I I for many years
I mean I think my
um first paper when I was a graduate
student with Boost McEwen was about this
idea of positive physiological stress
and so I've always been wanting to
really understand what's positive stress
how can we induce it and instead for
many many too many years I've been
studying the dark side toxic stress
trauma caregiving and how that is can
take a toll on the body without the
right resilience and resources and now
I'm very excited about the uh
the opportunity to just focus on
different ways that we can stress out
our body and mind in short-term bursts
that might promote stress resilience and
the body-based strategies are concrete
they're quick they're um they're
also my favorite strategies I I probably
have internalized a lot of the mindsets
and the you know the things that I've
learned from meditation and what I feel
the biggest bang for the buck is you
know if I'm waking up like super jittery
with a big stress response because of X
or Y it is actually something like
um
a you know
uh a hit type workout or taking the dogs
for like a really brisk walk or like
burning up that energy and my body is
um
a very big effect size for me personally
everyone has their you know different
ways that they can see the biggest
shifts in Daily stress
so I've been looking for ways to create
positive stress besides exercise we all
know about exercise and I met Wim Hof at
a uh a meeting where we talked kind of
back to back and so we hadn't I had kind
of heard something about you know crazy
Iceman climbing up the Himalayas I
really had yes 27 or more World Records
yeah for that sort of thing yeah so he
so I got to hear I got to do the
breathing with him during this
conference and I just felt like Elation
afterwards I was like what was that and
then he heard about telomeres and he was
like I need to know if my method is
affecting cell aging he loves research
and so we he helped us design a study
that we've been working on at UCS staff
um with my colleagues Wendy Mendez and
Eric pray there it's been many years and
it's funded by the
John W brick Foundation which is very
focused on what are non-dragway ways
that we can help mental health
so it was a very good fit for all of us
to come together and design the study
and we have been basically comparing
low arousal relaxation methods
mindfulness slow breathing to positive
stress exercise and Wim Hof method and
one of the things that we've learned in
a big way is that regardless of whether
we're creating deep states of ease or
hermetic stress in the body that
short-term burst of either aerobic
activity or the extreme breathing
people feel better period so three weeks
later after this experiment of doing
their practice every day they were
either randomly assigned to the high
arousal or the low arousal the level of
stress anxiety and depression fell
dramatically in everyone so many paths
to changes in stress there are probably
very different physiological Pathways
and and we can talk about that more when
we get to really look in depth at our
physiological data as well as our
blood-based data but what we do know is
that the Wim Hof method did create daily
positive emotion that increased over
time just like your study on sighing and
so even though there are different
mechanisms they were selectively
boosting feelings of positivity I love
that you know that's very unusual to get
a very selective positive effect
super interesting I can't wait to hear
more about the data so I gather and by
the way no is a perfectly fine answer I
gather that you're not going to tell us
about the whether or not there are
telomere changes yet or maybe that's not
possible
um to detect in this kind of short-term
study so what we're going to look at we
don't really think that telomeres can
change very quickly and telomerase May
so we're going to look at mitochondrial
enzymes telomerase and gene expression
patterns and as you know we can look at
many different mechanisms and Pathways
with gene expression patterns especially
with these new kind of
essays where you can look at you know
seven thousand different
proteins like the Soma logic and so
we'll get to see well what's the pat you
know did we really change patterns of
acute stress with these different types
of stress resilience interventions and
in terms of the physiological reactivity
there are ways that we can
examine both the
stress response system
sympathetic nervous system and the
parasympathetic response system and I
will tell you that um while we're still
preparing the results there were very
different profiles from the different
interventions that make us think that
there's a lot of specificity even though
everyone feels better the the way that
they got there is very different in ways
that we're impacting both the nervous
system and the Brain
foreign
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