> "results must be interpreted with caution given the low subject number and the fact that both participants practised the g-Tummo like breathing technique." [0]
Wim Hof not only claims that his method will keep one warm, but also a lot of other health benefits. Very few of these have any scientific backing. Hyperventilation's effects on inflammatory responses are well known.
His claims regarding arthritis, MS or even Parkinson's are not only spurious at best to be kind in wording. I would personally call them bullshit. There is just no scientific evidence at all for these claims.
Ensuring through deep breath that your chest muscles are moving and warming and by that warming your blood is nice - but not more. There are no studies scientifically researching the method with multiple subjects. Only studies that look at him (and his twin).
So we have "studies" with n=2 and massive claims from him. While he sells his books/seminars/method.
People have died attempting the Wim Hof Method (one example [1]).
To me - this person is good at PR. Knows how to sell these days. And how to be a personal brand. I have to give credit for that.
Not having a scientific study backing something by default makes it bullshit? Was mindfulness meditation bullshit until scientists stamped it with their approval?
It seems that a proper scientific mindset would declare something neither true nor false until a study is done.
It seems that a proper scientific mindset would declare something neither true nor false until a study is done.
That's true but it doesn't mean what you're implying it means. You're suggesting that saying "We don't know" means there's an equal probability that the thing will turn out to be true as there is it'll turn out to be false. That's not what skepticism in science means. It's entirely valid to say "The chance of this being real is 0.01." and then use science to prove it it's false. You might turn out to be wrong, and that tiny chance shows that the science was worthwhile, but most of the time you'll just end up showing that your intuition was correct.
You can say "this is probably wrong" before you start experimenting, but it's not scientific at all. There's a reason practitioners are blinded in a double blind trial. Also, there is an art to deciding what to "aim" your science at, and as much as some might hate to admit it, it is simply based on logic and intuition.
In this case, it is entirely logical to me that breathing can modify circulatory patterns pumping more blood to your joints, thereby promoting healing for arthritis. I'd personally be surprised if there was zero benefit, but I respect your right to a different intuition from mine.
I'm less confident about any similar benefits to something like MS although perhaps circulation to the brain could be similarly helpful. I'd recommend withholding judgment until we have more science, but again, that's my intuition. If you don't want to improve your breathing, you certainly don't have to.
(Apologies about reordering your statements slightly.)
> There's a reason practitioners are blinded in a double blind trial.
Well, yes. That's to avoid experimental bias by the experimenters themselves.
> You can say "this is probably wrong" before you start experimenting, but it's not scientific at all.
There's a threshold before you even engage with speculation. Speculation is good, but as a scientist one must decide to what to spend time on.
> [...] as some might hate to admit it, it is simply based on logic and intuition.[...]
What to do experimentation, trials, etc. on is mostly based on pure conjecture. But that's not contrary to anything that's been said ITT. Conjectures generate experiments, but these conjectures usually have *some* grounding in known physics, biology, whatever. (This a very poor explication of David Deutsch's brilliant exposition on this point of epistomology in The Beginning of Infinity.)
> In this case, it is entirely logical to me that breathing can modify circulatory patterns pumping more blood to your joints, thereby promoting healing for arthritis.
By this logic, people with tachycardia would be much faster at healing, right? Since all that you can do with breathing techniques directly (without discussing how this might affect your mind etc.) is to increase your pulse and maybe arterial pressure. Why exactly increased pulse would reduce the inflammatory auto-immune response that is the cause of arthritis is beyond me. If anything, I would expect increased blood flow to increase the auto-immune response and make the arthritis worse.
Not the person you're responding to, but my experience as a runner and someone who practices breathing is that it does engage some specific mechanisms that promote certain kinds of blood flow. I think your intuition here is off, and you're treating the body as a pretty simple machine rather than something that has some pretty sophisticated feedback mechanisms between the mind and the body.
As I said, I am open to explanations that this is a mind/body effect.
I am not open to explanations that breathing fast/deep in itself, through the extra blood flow that it can obviously generate, are directly therapeutic for arthritis. This was, by my understanding, GP's preferred explanation.
No. Pulse rate is not necessarily correlated to volume of blood flow. You can have a high pulse rate, and often do, _because_ your heart is weak and failing to pump sufficient blood.
Deep breathing actually tends to slow your heart rate down. I don't know what it does to overall blood flow rate. But, I wouldn't be surprised if it directed more blood flow to your capillaries and other areas that don't typically get great blood flow, similar to how your body pumps more blood to your extremities when you are warm.
General advice, keep an open mind. When people say things that give you an emotional reaction, ask yourself if it's possible you are getting that reaction because you are afraid they might be right.
Thanks. Spares me to post the teapot. Also in a lot of cases - this being one of it, we already know that many of the effects are not possible under the proscribed methods. Science already knows a lot from other inquiries and studies having shown that claimed effects are not realistically probable.
It is like if I create a study showing that black cars with a combustion engine need gasoline to run.
Someone later stating that red cars with a combination engine can run on pure water from the tap doesn't warrant a new study.
Regarding the teapot, what’s unfalsifiable about the claims of the Wim Hof method? It seems to me that they should be easily able to be disproven if they are in fact false.
If I claim that if you burn $1M it'll rain for a year, it's falsifiable, but we don't really need to test it. The burden would be on me to demonstrate scientifically how this hypothesis has any merit before it's reasonable to test it.
"mindfulness" is a corporate re-packaged and whitewashed variant of buddhist meditation tradition. It misses the point spectacularly and actively seeks to cultivate a harmful mindset. This is not something to refer to positively, or to use as a benchmark.
I literally quoted two thirds of your comment. Here’s the last piece:
> ”mindfulness" is a corporate re-packaged and whitewashed variant of buddhist meditation tradition.
This still says nothing meaningful.
“Whitewashed” is nonsense when discussing a meditation practice that’s not based on race. (Maybe you mean “westernized”, but that doesn’t create the same visceral response that bypasses critical thinking.) “Corporate” is not an actual criticism, either. It’s again an emotional appeal. The fact that some companies make money from a thing does not make a thing bad. You can check out a book from the library for free if you want to avoid giving a corporation your money.
Given that you took the time to respond and still couldn’t be bothered to say anything substantive, I am left to assume you actually don’t have a real criticism, but an axe to grind.
Mindfulness meditation still does nothing. Read "Altered Traits" - the author practiced for 10 years and then ended up taking medication to control blood pressure.
I've met Wim Hof [1], his mind is not precise when it comes to scientific things. In that sense I'd recommend a huge caution to what he claims about the health benefits of his method. But hey, at least he's utilizing the placebo effect, and trust me, when you use his actual method for things it actually works for, you still want that placebo effect added to it as well ;-)
Luckily though, he does recognize that to some extent. Because of that, he sometimes does research with actual scientists, and I have talked to a few of them. IMO those claims you can trust, or at least trust as much as any scientific claim.
[1] Fun fact: one of the first comments I made on HN was about the WHM :)
People died doing the one thing what Wim constantly says NOT to do: practicing near a water that you can drown in.
This isn't fault of Wim Hof method. He warns about the risk of fainting (which isn't a problem on its own) near a body of water (where fainting becomes a problem) all the time.
Your claim that he is just a hack is false, I suggest you (re)read Win Hof's wiki article and review references. He is not a first nor the last human being who is able to endure extreme conditions that are/where perceive impossible in some cases.
To the Everest? When? He took them to the Kilimanjaro, that one I know, I almost was part of it but chickened out (since altitude sickness might be a thing and some people did actually drop out from what I remember, in the first run no one dropped out though). He attempted the Everest himself and he had to go back. He said that mt. Everest was a different beast, the cold is way harsher there and he didn't even reach the death zone (8.5km). He almost got there though, in his shorts.
I don't think this is remotely fair. Or true. It sounds like you have an axe to grind.
Your own link speaks of multiple health benefits to hyperventilation and cold exposure, and of studies with multiple Non-Wim participants, even while coming across biased itself.
As well, Wim constantly advises people clearly and consistently not to practice in water more than an inch deep by themselves. Constantly.
> The Wim Hof Method is also linked to reducing symptoms of diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, asthma, sarcoidosis, vasculitis, and several autoimmune diseases.
Just a guess as a fan of Wim, he could be relying on testimonial by workshop participants. Needs peer review, could be placebo, etc but that’s where science starts, noticing that some variable has an effect. Wim is not a scientist but he is excited to make claims that should be tested.
To me it makes sense, my (non-expert) understanding is those diseases are cases where the body is attacking itself. The immune system is a balancing act, it is blind to what is really happening, it has to rely on a threshold of when to respond to what it senses as danger. When I breath hold and/or expose myself to cold, I feel like I am giving my body a small taste of death, recalibrating my body to what danger feels like.
Wim Hof not only claims that his method will keep one warm, but also a lot of other health benefits. Very few of these have any scientific backing. Hyperventilation's effects on inflammatory responses are well known.
His claims regarding arthritis, MS or even Parkinson's are not only spurious at best to be kind in wording. I would personally call them bullshit. There is just no scientific evidence at all for these claims.
Ensuring through deep breath that your chest muscles are moving and warming and by that warming your blood is nice - but not more. There are no studies scientifically researching the method with multiple subjects. Only studies that look at him (and his twin).
So we have "studies" with n=2 and massive claims from him. While he sells his books/seminars/method.
People have died attempting the Wim Hof Method (one example [1]).
To me - this person is good at PR. Knows how to sell these days. And how to be a personal brand. I have to give credit for that.
[0]: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23328940.2017.1... [1]: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/wim-hof-breathing-...