Benefits of Wim Hof Method & Tummo Breathing | Dr. Elissa Epel & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | I've known about your work for a very long time, admired it for a very long time.

00:00:05.560 | And one of the things that excited me about being able to sit down with you today is that

00:00:10.600 | our laboratory studied breathwork, your laboratory studying breathwork, and I know that you've

00:00:15.320 | been doing a study on the so-called Wim Hof method, which I'll let you familiarize our

00:00:22.140 | listeners to.

00:00:23.180 | Some of them are familiar with the Wim Hof method, others are not.

00:00:25.400 | I think a lot of people think of Wim in terms of his role as the ice man because of cold

00:00:30.000 | exposure.

00:00:31.000 | But of course he has breathwork practices that mirror things like two-mode breathing

00:00:36.240 | and other things.

00:00:37.240 | But maybe you could tell us a little bit about what you're doing there and what you're interested

00:00:40.800 | in discovering.

00:00:41.800 | I realize it's too early to give us the results, but hopefully we'll come back and do that

00:00:45.600 | at another time.

00:00:46.600 | But what is the study?

00:00:48.960 | What motivated the study?

00:00:50.900 | And maybe I can convince you to give us a little teaser of what you're discovering.

00:00:54.020 | So for many years, I mean, I think my first paper when I was a graduate student with Bruce

00:01:02.240 | McEwen was about this idea of positive physiological stress.

00:01:07.440 | And so I've always been wanting to really understand what's positive stress, how can

00:01:13.160 | we induce it.

00:01:14.680 | And instead for many, many, too many years, I've been studying the dark side, toxic stress,

00:01:19.840 | trauma, caregiving, and how that can take a toll on the body without the right resilience

00:01:25.680 | and resources.

00:01:27.240 | And now I'm very excited about the opportunity to just focus on different ways that we can

00:01:39.360 | stress out our body and mind in short-term bursts that might promote stress resilience.

00:01:45.720 | And the body-based strategies are concrete, they're quick, they're also my favorite strategies.

00:01:54.440 | I probably have internalized a lot of the mindsets and the things that I've learned

00:01:58.320 | from meditation.

00:01:59.560 | And what I feel the biggest bang for the buck is if I'm waking up super jittery with a big

00:02:06.840 | stress response because of X or Y, it is actually something like a HIIT-type workout, or taking

00:02:18.480 | the dogs for a really brisk walk, or burning up that energy in my body is a very big effect

00:02:26.760 | size for me personally.

00:02:28.040 | Everyone has their different ways that they can see the biggest shifts in daily stress.

00:02:35.180 | So I've been looking for ways to create positive stress besides exercise, we all know about

00:02:39.980 | exercise.

00:02:40.980 | And I met Wim Hof at a meeting where we talked kind of back to back.

00:02:47.880 | And so I had kind of heard something about crazy Iceman climbing up the Himalayas.

00:02:53.560 | I really-

00:02:54.560 | I think he has 27 or more world records for that sort of thing.

00:03:00.240 | So I got to do the breathing with him during this conference.

00:03:05.360 | And I just felt like elation afterward, I was like, "What was that?"

00:03:09.600 | And then he heard about telomeres and he was like, "I need to know if my method is affecting

00:03:14.000 | cell aging."

00:03:15.000 | He loves research.

00:03:16.640 | And so he helped us design a study that we've been working on at UCSF with my colleagues

00:03:24.600 | Wendy Mendez and Eric Prather.

00:03:26.040 | It's been many years and it's funded by the John W. Brick Foundation, which is very focused

00:03:31.440 | on what are non-drug ways that we can help mental health.

00:03:36.440 | So it was a very good fit for all of us to come together and design the study.

00:03:40.160 | And we have been basically comparing low arousal relaxation methods, mindfulness, slow breathing

00:03:48.440 | to positive stress, exercise and Wim Hof method.

00:03:52.880 | And one of the things that we've learned in a big way is that regardless of whether we're

00:03:58.040 | creating deep states of ease or hermetic stress in the body, that short-term burst of either

00:04:04.480 | aerobic activity or the extreme breathing, people feel better, period.

00:04:10.880 | So three weeks later after this experiment of doing their practice every day, they were

00:04:15.120 | either randomly assigned to the high arousal or the low arousal, the level of stress, anxiety

00:04:20.560 | and depression fell dramatically in everyone.

00:04:24.140 | So many paths to changes in stress.

00:04:28.560 | There are probably very different physiological pathways and we can talk about that more when

00:04:34.800 | we get to really look in depth at our physiological data as well as our blood-based data.

00:04:41.840 | But what we do know is that the Wim Hof method did create daily positive emotion that increased

00:04:49.440 | over time, just like your study on sighing.

00:04:53.660 | And so even though there are different mechanisms, they were selectively boosting feelings of

00:04:58.880 | positivity.

00:04:59.880 | I love that.

00:05:01.600 | That's very unusual to get a very selective positive effect.

00:05:06.760 | Super interesting.

00:05:07.760 | I can't wait to hear more about the data.

00:05:09.920 | So I gather, and by the way, no is a perfectly fine answer.

00:05:13.520 | I gather that you're not going to tell us about whether or not there are telomere changes

00:05:17.160 | yet or maybe that's not possible to detect in this kind of short-term study.

00:05:23.120 | So what we're going to look at, we don't really think that telomeres can change very quickly

00:05:31.760 | and telomerase may.

00:05:33.440 | So we're going to look at mitochondrial enzymes, telomerase and gene expression patterns.

00:05:38.700 | And as you know, we can look at many different mechanisms and pathways with gene expression

00:05:43.240 | patterns, especially with these new kind of assays where you can look at, you know, 7,000

00:05:49.680 | different proteins like the somalogic.

00:05:54.040 | And so we'll get to see, well, what's the pattern, you know, did we really change patterns

00:05:57.680 | of acute stress with these different types of stress resilience interventions?

00:06:02.800 | And in terms of the physiological reactivity, there are ways that we can examine both the

00:06:12.640 | stress response system, the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic response system.

00:06:18.360 | And I will tell you that while we're still preparing the results, there were very different

00:06:24.080 | profiles from the different interventions that make us think that there's a lot of specificity.

00:06:30.520 | Even though everyone feels better, the way that they got there is very different, ways

00:06:35.480 | that we're impacting both the nervous system and the brain.

Benefits of Wim Hof Method & Tummo Breathing | Dr. Elissa Epel & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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