Months after being diagnosed with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), Guy Fincham discovered that many patients are unable to work or become bedridden due to severe fatigue. I tried Wim Hof’s breathing technique, which is a neurological disease often caused by infections. He has found promising signals in several studies that suggest the technology may affect the nervous and immune systems, and since there is no treatment available for his condition, he believes the technology can affect the nervous and immune systems. I was looking for a way to alleviate this.
Over time, he explored different forms of breathing exercises, each playing a role in his healing, along with other lifestyle changes like eliminating processed foods and staying socially connected. Slow practices calmed his mind and body, but fast practices like holotropic breathing sent his body into hyperventilation, giving him a deep psychedelic experience. Immediately, my ME/CFS flare-ups became less frequent and I began to feel better. As a researcher, his instinct was to turn to science to get answers about the cause of his experiences. However, there has been relatively little research on this topic.
“There may have been a lot of belief effects or a placebo there,” Fincham told Salon via video call. But breathwork “gave me a sense of control over how my body felt for the first time.”
Dutch author and motivational speaker Wim Hof, nicknamed “The Iceman,” is a Guinness World Record holder who swims under ice and runs a half marathon barefoot on snow. , has gained a cult following for its extreme athletic performance. The Wim Hof Method, which pushes the body to extremes through regular ice baths, meditation, and breathing exercises, is touted as a way to reduce inflammation and calm the body’s stress response. Wim Hof’s website promotes his method as a way to “become happier, healthier and stronger.”
“Through decades of self-exploration and groundbreaking scientific research, Wim has developed simple and effective ways to stimulate these deep physiological processes and reach our full potential. has been created.”
In general, breathing techniques have been shown to impact physiological and mental health, millions of people use them, and some anecdotes say that breathing techniques have changed lives. I am reporting. But Jack Feldman, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies breathing techniques, said little is known biologically about how breathing affects the brain and, by extension, the body. Ta.
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“There are many different protocols for breathing techniques, and there seems to be good data that many of them work and can be very powerful,” Feldman told Salon in a phone interview. “However, it turns out that they are quite different from each other, and that different breathing practices are likely to have different effects on basic emotional states and clinical issues such as anxiety, depression, and cognitive function. think.”
Breathwork is based on the practice of pranayama, which basically translates to “controlling the breath” in Sanskrit. The practice of pranayama has appeared in various ancient texts for thousands of years and is associated with yoga, which comes from the Sanskrit root “yuj”, which loosely translates to the union of breath and body. According to Dr. Helen Lavretzky, anyone who has ever taken a yoga class will be familiar with breathing exercises such as Kundalini fast breathing techniques such as box breathing, where you inhale, hold, then exhale and hold for four beats. He said he may have done so. She is a psychiatrist at UCLA who studies how breathing affects the body in practices such as yoga.
“There is variation within the groups we study, where techniques that are bad for some people may perform better for others.”
In general, practicing faster breathing techniques activates the sympathetic nervous system and activates its “fight or flight” mode. In comparison, slow breathing exercises activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which can calm and relax the body, says Tanya, CEO and co-founder of the Health and Human Performance Foundation (HHPF).・Goalkeeper Bentley said. Breathing techniques for health and well-being.
Similar to the Wim Hof method, exercises that combine fast and slow breathing techniques have been proven to reduce stress, especially when done regularly for at least five minutes at a time under professional guidance. Masu. Bentley explained that slow breathing habits, such as holding your breath, can help your body learn to tolerate carbon dioxide buildup and increase your stress tolerance.
“These tools help combat feelings of stress and anxiety associated with chronic sympathetic dominance, which are common in today’s world,” Bentley told Salon in an email.
However, Lavretzky explained that both fast and slow breathing techniques can cause anxiety in certain people who have a fast baseline breathing rate and are prone to anxiety. There are hundreds of variations of breathing techniques, she says, and there’s no silver bullet that works for everyone.
“Western medicine is a kind of average medicine, studying large groups of people and averaging these statistics,” Lavretsky told Salon in a phone interview. “However, within the groups we study, there is variation in that some people do better with some techniques that are not as good for others.”
Even the trending Wim Hof method is not suitable for everyone, including people with conditions such as coronary heart disease, kidney failure and epilepsy, according to his website. It is also dangerous to perform the Wim Hof Method near water, as you may feel dizzy or faint. Because of these risks, Wim Hof’s website provides clear written and video warnings against practicing near water. Yet in 2022, a man sued Wim Hof, claiming he was responsible for his daughter’s death because she passed out in a pool after following his method. The lawsuit is still pending.
(Salon requested an interview with Wim Hof, but his media team said they could stop publishing this article if it “could damage the image of the talent,” subject to conditions.) I refused because it was a breach of contract (I only agreed to the terms of the contract that if I didn’t, I would be fined 50,000 euros). )
Studies evaluating the effectiveness of the Wim Hof method have had mixed results. In 2011, researchers at Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center in the Netherlands published a study in PNAS showing that Wim Hof may have influenced the autonomic nervous system and immune response through his meditation practice. These findings were replicated in a 2014 PNAS study of 12 healthy volunteers who practiced the Wim Hof method.
However, a 2023 study published in Scientific Reports found that the 15-day Wim Hof method had no effect on cardiovascular measurements such as blood pressure or heart rate. In theory, hyperventilating breathing would stimulate the sympathetic nervous system, depriving the body of oxygen, pumping adrenaline and constricting blood vessels, said study author Sascha Ketelhat, a researcher at the University of Bern.
“The question is, what are the long-term effects?” Ketelhut told Salon via video call. “In my eyes, at least, that research is still under way. [cardiovascular] These are the parameters we evaluated. ”
The technique seems to increase epinephrine and cause an increase in a substance in the body called interleukin-10, which can reduce inflammation, said Omar Al-Mahini of the University of Warwick in the UK in a review paper published in PLOS One last month. I mentioned it in. , research has shown that the Wim Hof method is effective against inflammation.
“However, given that all the studies included in our systematic review showed ‘high concern’ for risk bias, the Wim Hof method is still in its early stages of research and so far It is important to recognize that the trials that have been conducted are limited,” Al-Mahini said. Email the salon. “As a non-drug treatment, the Wim Hof method could possibly be used within lifestyle medicine to reduce inflammation in people suffering from inflammatory diseases. [but] Further research is needed to validate its efficacy and safety for broader recommendations. ”
However, there are some important limitations to studying human breathing. In 1991, Feldman published research in mice that discovered that the source of rodent breathing rhythms is a part of the brain called the anterior Betzinger complex in the brainstem. However, this area of the human body is difficult to image due to its location, and for obvious reasons it cannot be picked out and put under a microscope. His research on mice showed that certain slow breathing techniques can calm the nervous system, and since mice are not exposed to the placebo effect like humans, this may be a real effect. suggests.
Although much of the research in this area in humans has not been conducted with enough statistical power and scientific control to be considered strong evidence, some promising results have been obtained, Feldman said. he said.
A review of 15 studies published last year in the journal Frontiers of Human Neuroscience found that breathing techniques that reduce breathing to less than 10 breaths per minute are linked to thought processing, memory, and emotion, along with heart rate. Shown to slow down areas of the brain. Participants reported feeling more relaxed and present, while also feeling less anxious, angry, and depressed.
Over the years, the prevalence of these symptoms has increased. And with health care costs higher in the United States than anywhere else in the world, people are looking for ways to take their healing into their own hands. Evolutionarily, triggering the sympathetic nervous system, or “fight-or-flight” response, helped humans survive when they were threatened by or needed to escape from a wild animal. However, for many people, the sympathetic nervous system is out of balance with the parasympathetic nervous system, which works with the vagus nerve to calm the body.
“We as a human race are exhausted and constantly exposed to negative events such as climate change, wars and regional disasters,” Lavretsky said. “We don’t give ourselves the ability or space to recover. All of these breathing techniques are very helpful in bringing the system back into balance.”
Breathing allows you to distance yourself from negative events that cause toxic stress and unhealthy reactions in your body. Although breathing research is still in its infancy, Fincham says it seems to suggest that something about breathing can, at least in part, create enough space for the body to enter a state of rest and recovery. said.
“The more we move away from nature and move away from it, the more we need to be drawn back to these practices to cure industrial diseases,” Fincham said.
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