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Comment by Henk0 | Hacker News Reader

Some have mentioned the Wim Hof method here, but I’ll give it a shout out too. Have practiced the breathing daily, 1-3 times per day, 4 rounds per session (1.5, 2, 2.5, 3 minute breath holds) for a couple of months now and it’s had great effect on both my asthma and how winded I get from uphill sprints on my morning walks. Am also doing some cold showers and wearing only shorts and tshirt for my walks. I used to feel the need for pants and sweater if the temperature was around 10 celsius outside. The other day I was quite comfortable walking at 0 degrees. Did take a while for my hands and arms to recover full dexterity afterwards, but the kind of cold-to-the-bones freezing I would experience doing something like that didn’t happen. Walk is about an hour on forest trails

The breathing sessions are also an easy way to get meditation and body scan exercises into the daily routine. Definitely recommend it

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> I used to feel the need for pants and sweater if the temperature was around 10 celsius outside. The other day I was quite comfortable walking at 0 degrees.

Your comment sounded good until that sentence, I sweat profusely in anything approaching normal temperatures and wouldn't want to lower my "starting to sweat" temperature (which now is at about 20 C) by another ten degrees...

I felt the same, but, having tried it, I can say it works in both directions. I can comfortably tolerate both hotter and colder temperatures than before.

Huh, that's promising, thanks. Is there an easy resource on the method? I downloaded the android app but it needed a sign up so I uninstalled it.

Looks like some videos are coming up with a DDG search: https://youtu.be/nzCaZQqAs9I

Thanks!

In my experience after starting breathing exercises (not Wim Hof...more freediving oriented), it has the opposite effect to what you're positing.

Rather than just raising body temperature to become impervious to cold, it's actually giving your body a greater ability to regulate its own temperature. So in cold you're warmer, in hot you're cooler. When I started doing the exercises, I was living in Southeast Asia and sweating profusely whenever I left AC environments. After about a month of the breathing exercises, I stopped sweating almost entirely. I originally attributed it to my body adjusting to the climate, but when I returned home to the US, I also found that the cold no longer bothered me.

Do you have any such exercises I could do?

Some instructors have been mentioned elsewhere in this topic. Its considered inappropriate for an individual who has not been promoted to instructor rating to teach/assign breathing exercises because of the contraindications and complications that a student may not have been exposed to (since the student was being taught to do the exercises, not to teach them).

Chiming in with others who responded, I haven’t experienced decreased heat sensitivity or increased sweating either. On a physiological level, what the cold training (cold showers, winter walks, ice baths which I’ve yet to get into) seems to do is exercise the small muscles which control blood flow in the skin, training them to respond more efficiently to changes in temperature. As for the breathing exercises, the effects seem to come from a combination of co2 tolerance training (co2 levels being the primary trigger of air hunger and the breathing reflex), hypoxia training (cells having to adapt to regularly operating with lower levels of oxygen), diaphragmatic training (in-breaths are strong and forced), and the rapid shifting between sympathetic (forced inbreaths) and parasympathetic (relaxed outbreaths and empty(ish) lung breath holds) activation. Both the breathing and the cold exposure are basically hormetic stressors, like weight training. Another aspect of the cold training is psychological. Regularly committing to doing something that is inherently aversive, sticking to it, and training oneself to breathe calmly while doing it. I’ve definitely noticed a reduction of general and social anxiety levels. This is super apparent if I have a cold shower before a social gathering or a job meeting. Massively improved confidence. The immediate effect of a few minutes cold shower is an adrenaline rush, likely followed by endogenous endorphine release. It’s an ecstatic feeling and a huge energy and mood booster

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