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Early research suggests that maybe he’s onto something.
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Like pretty much everything Hof says, the hard line between what is science and what is sophistry is slippery. For a practice built on vigorous semi-nude feats of endurance, the WHM is also unexpectedly warm and fuzzy. “We are able to get into the DNA.”īeyond the physical benefits of the Method are the emotional ones: the self-love, calm, compassion the sense you are connected to other humans. “We are able to get into any cell and change the chemistry,” Hof has said. They found that he was able to consciously and intentionally induce a stress response that allowed his body to resist the cold. Last year, a different group of scientists put Hof into an MRI machine and then exposed him to cold water so that they could get a concrete view of what happens in his mind. coli-half who’d first trained with Hof, and half who hadn’t-and found that the Hof trainees had markedly more effective immune responses. Researchers injected 24 study participants with E. He’s simply proof of what the human body was meant to do. The stunts may have made him famous, but they also suggested he was special, and the whole point is that he’s not. In the last few years, Hof’s work has transitioned from high-profile stunts to peer-reviewed science. Coincidentally, these are also the exact benefits I would advertise if I were running a scam. In fact, there seems to be no ailment Wim Hof’s method-the Wim Hof Method-does not claim to at least partially address: stress, arthritis, cancer, migraines, canker sores, fibromyalgia, Crohn’s Disease, ALS, MS, and HIV. We can become stronger and happier and healthier thinner and better at sleeping. By getting in synch with the elements we can reclaim our inner power. The comforts of modernity have made us weak and sad and sick, but we can heal ourselves, the Iceman says. If I sit here for 90 seconds, I’ve been told, I will be on the path to reclaiming an earlier, better version of myself: me, but with the vitality of a prehistoric caveperson. I’m sitting in a blow-up birthing pool filled with bags of bodega ice on an industrial street in Brooklyn, trying very hard to regulate my breath, because this is the method of Wim Hof, a.k.a., the Iceman. In I Did The Thing, Rachel Sugar sacrifices her time and her sanity in the name of wellness "research." Up next: a day of ice baths at a Wim Hof Method class.
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