Breathwork - Transcript
Dr. Mark Hyman
Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Farmacy.
James Nestor
Doctor. Part of that is to purposely breathe too much. What that does is it purposely stresses your body out. You may be thinking why the heck do I want to do that? I'm stressed out enough, but that allows you to control stress, to turn it on and specifically to turn it off.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I could help everyone via my personal practice, there's simply not enough time for me to do this at this scale. And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand, well, you. If you're looking for data about your biology, check out function health for real time lab insights. If you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, check out my membership community, Hyman Hive. And if you're looking for curated and trusted supplements and health products for your routine, visit my website, supplement store, for a summary of my favorite and tested products.
Hi. I'm doctor Mark Hyman, a practicing physician and proponent of systems medicine, a framework to help you understand the why or the root cause of your symptoms. Welcome to The doctor's Farmacy. Every week, I bring on interesting guests to discuss the latest topics in the field of functional medicine and do a deep dive on how these topics pertain to your health. In today's episode, I have some interesting discussions with other experts in the field.
So let's just jump right in. How is breath so important in our health? Because, you know, we all breathe. We don't think about it. We're just breathing every day.
In fact, I think we breathe 25,000 times a day without really thinking about it. But it turns out that how we breathe is critically important to our overall health. And it's not something I learned in medical school, but I'd love you to sort of break it down for audience. Why is breath important? Why has it been so neglected?
And what do we know scientifically about the importance of breath and health? Doctor.
James Nestor
I think humans are very reactionary species only when we lose something to be, do we become aware of it? And that's exactly what happened during COVID. We lost the ability to breathe and we're like, oh my God, maybe breathing's important because this is just something that's been in it's an unconscious activity. It's in the back of our minds. So once you establish, I think once you lose the ability to breathe, you appreciate it.
And once you appreciate it, you can start focusing your breath to really significantly impact your health, mental health, physical health, bolster immune function, athletic performance, and more. And the reason why breathing is so important is because we get most of our energy from air, from our breath. A lot of people think that we get most of our energy from what we eat and drink. Not true. We get most of our energy from air.
And I can prove this to you by why don't you hold your breath for about 4 minutes and see how much energy you have.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Not so much. Don't do that
James Nestor
at home, everybody.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Well, I think you're right. I think we, you know, we don't connect to our breath. And, you know, I when I was younger, I took yoga teacher training course, you know, I was 23 and became a yoga teacher and learned the science, the ancient science of pranayama, which is a whole series of breathing techniques to activate different aspects of our health and well-being. And, whether you they're calming breasts, activating breasts, it's it's such a powerful thing that we have pretty much ignored as a vehicle toward health in this culture.
And yet in ancient cultures, it's pretty amazing. And you guys got, like, Wim Hof, who is this the kinda crazy dude who the they call me Iceman. But he's, you know, master techniques of breathing that allow him to climb Mount Everest in his underwear, basically, with no shoes on and not freeze to death or to sit in an ice bath for whatever bazillion minutes he sits in an ice bath for. And he's been able to train other people who are just regular humans how to do the same thing. So it is a doorway to accessing all sorts of our physiology that we just sort of ignore.
So can you kind of break down for us what what what is going on with our breath? Why does it affect us so importantly? And how do we start to develop better relationship with our breathing? Doctor.
James Nestor
Well, breathing practices have been around for at least 5000 years. Ancient Hindu studied it, ancient Chinese study it, native Americans studied it and more, and they understood our breathing as a medicine. This wasn't just something we did unconsciously. It was something that you can control. So this knowledge has been around for a long time, but lo and behold, in the 1900 and this century, we have instruments that can actually measure objectively what happens when you breathe in different ways.
So no longer is this subjective, it's objective. It's a science. You can collect data. That's what I think is so exciting that a lot of people can access wearables that can tell them what happens to their heart rate, what happens to their heart rate variability, what happens to their stress levels, what happens to their blood pressure, their blood oxygen, more and more and more by just shifting their breathing. And I think that this is one of the things that has really made this stuff so convincing.
It's one thing to read scientific papers and hear people talk about it. It's another thing to change your breathing for 2 minutes and watch your blood pressure go down 10 to 15 points and watch your heart rate variability
Dr. Mark Hyman
score. Yeah.
James Nestor
And and I think that's why so many people have have personally experienced the benefits of this from not a lot of effort and work and said, wow, it actually does what it's supposed to do. And the science just confirms that.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Amazing. Tell us about the distinct between nose breathing and mouth breathing. You know, why, why is mouth breathing not good for you and why is nose breathing good for you?
James Nestor
Mhmm. So when we breathe through our mouths, we're exposing ourselves to everything in the environment. If you live in a city like me, that means pollen. That means pollutants means smog. It means mold.
And there's nothing filtering that air all day long. If you breathe through the nose, and I so happen to have a a special guest here is a a cross section of a human head. And if you see what happens when you breathe through the nose here, you're forcing this air through all of these very ornate structures. And as that air goes through these structures, it's heated up, it's moistened, it's filtered, and you get this huge profusion of nitric oxide as well, which guess what? Nitric oxide helps kill viruses and bacteria.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yes.
James Nestor
And it's a vasodilator. So when you're, when you're breathing through the mouth, you get none of those advantages. You can survive mouth breathing, but it's gonna wear you down and make you sick. And that's just how things work. And you can very clearly see this by just looking at our physiology and, and looking at our anatomy.
Dr. Mark Hyman
It's quite amazing. What you just brought up is really important. Cause we had Louis Signaro on the podcast who won the Nobel prize for his discovery of nitric oxide. And he's this cute little, like 80 year old Italian guy who think he'd be like your uncle or something. And he's so sweet, and he just he just really explained how important it is to breathe through your nose and how nitric oxide is produced, which is, like you said, antimicrobial and also increases in, your ability to fight inflammation as an antioxidant.
And, you know, it's the main main thing that happens when you take Viagra, which is you increase nitric oxide, which is dilation of blood vessels and so forth. So it's fascinating. And he's he even said, this was fascinating. They're doing some preliminary studies around COVID where they were giving nitric oxide gas to COVID patients and seeing remarkable changes in their biology, and improvement in their lung function and their overall health. So it's kind of interesting that our body knows what to do, but we often have have sort of laughed at these habits around mouth breathing.
And and actually there's this there's this kind of new trend out there. I'd love to hear what you think about it. Are you using mouth tape at night for people to breathe through their nose at night instead of through their mouth? What do you think about that?
James Nestor
Well, what I learned about nitric oxide was from Ignarro. So he won the Nobel in in the nineties.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And I
James Nestor
think last time, last interview I heard with him, he said there were 11 clinical trials looking at patients who had severe COVID and giving them nitric oxide. Oxide. Some of those trials have come out. They're official published studies, and it works incredibly well because, of course, it does. You know?
It's just we're supplementing what our natural body in its natural form would be doing otherwise. It's important to note too, if you you increase that nitric oxide 15 fold. So, I I think that this would be an interesting thing to explore, and there a lot of yoga practices have have you I wish someone would do this study. Yeah. You know, it's never gonna get
Dr. Mark Hyman
funded, but
James Nestor
but, he's he's an amazing guy. I've learned so much from him.
Dr. Mark Hyman
That's so great. And you and you did an interesting study where you were at Stanford, when you were sort of researching the breath for your book and where your nose was completely plugged for 10 days and you had to breathe just through your mouth. So what was that study? And what did you find out? So
James Nestor
I've been working with a chief of rhinology research at Stanford, a guy named doctor Jayak or Nayak, who probably knows more about the nose and nasal breathing than anyone on the planet. So we had had several interviews, and there had been animal studies looking at what happens when you make an animal, a monkey, specifically, a mouth breather, and all the awful things that happen to their health and their facial structure. Don't read those studies. They're they're horrendous. But I asked NIAC.
I said, has there ever been a human study of this? And he said, no. And I said, well, why don't you do it? You're at Stanford. You you study this stuff all the time.
He said doing so would be unethical because he knew of all the damage it it could do. So I said, well, why don't I volunteer for an experiment? I'll try to
Dr. Mark Hyman
make it informed consent. Right.
James Nestor
Yeah. And 2, you know, I wish it were a 100 people. We had to pay for the study ourselves, which at Stanford was was not cheap. And, the longest we were allowed to do this was for 10 days. 10 days just mouth breathing, 10 days nasal breathing.
And as advertised, it completely destroyed us. And, we have all the data to show that there was extreme fatigue. My blood pressure went through the roof. I got home after about 3 hours of mouth breathing. My blood pressure was 158 over a 100, which was about 3 times higher than I had ever seen it.
And I said, oh, you know, I'm I'm stressed out. I need to go to sleep. For the first time that I'm aware of, I started snoring. Then I started getting sleep apnea. It got worse and worse.
The longer we have this, the other subject in the study had the exact same thing at the same time. We had trouble focusing. Our mouths were completely dry. We were miserable. Athletic performance plummeted.
I mean, this to be clear, 2 people in an experiment means nothing. What I was doing was personally experiencing what science has known for for literally decades decades.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, there are n of 1 studies, so I don't think it's meaningless. You know, there are there is a whole science and the NIH is actually advancing this, which is looking at changes in an individual and that being relevant. And if you measure changes before and after, it's actually not insignificant. So I wouldn't discount what you're saying as being one more widely available to, to, to sort of think about. And I think, I think that, you know, you, you actually have a lot of different things that you talk about as a way of fixing your breathing pattern.
Maybe you can share a little bit of what are the tips, how should we breathing? How do we get enough quality breath? How do we stop mouth breathing? What, what do we have to do?
James Nestor
Luckily in that Stanford study, we did 10 days of mouth breathing followed by 10 days of just nasal breathing. This is where the sleep tape comes in. So it's, it's easy to nasal breathe in the day. You just shut your mouth, but at night, more than 60% of us breathe through our mouth. And so how do you keep your mouth shut at night?
About a 100 years ago, they used some chin straps. So they knew how damaging mouth breathing was a 100 years ago. We've we've seem to have lost lost that knowledge, but nowadays we have tape. So I learned from a breathing therapist at Stanford. She's prescribed tape, for her patients, for every one of her patients to tape their mouths at night.
This is not full on Yeah. Hostage situation stuff. This is the
Dr. Mark Hyman
key It's not duct tape. It's not it's not No. And there's a little hole in it. There's a little hole
Wim Hof
in it.
James Nestor
There's a specific tape. It's a surgical tape. It's called micropore tape, and it's very light adhesive. You wanna take this stuff off with your tongue. Never pull it off of your lips.
That's where people go wrong. But what this tape does is it's just a gentle reminder. At any time in the night, you can go if you're uncomfortable and it pops off. But this has been all of that snoring that I was doing mouth breathing immediately went away by just with one hack closing my mouth. And this is the one thing I've I've literally heard this from thousands of people who've written, and they said this was the most profound health hack that they've experienced.
It's for a lot of people
Dr. Mark Hyman
I've heard the same thing.
James Nestor
And I'm not saying it's gonna work for everyone, especially with advanced severe sleep apnea. You're gonna need more treatments, but it's free. And breathing through your nose is only gonna help you, so you may benefit a little or you may benefit a lot. And it I I cannot sleep. I mean, I technically, I can sleep, but I can't sleep well without sleep tape now.
It's it's a real That's amazing.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Alright, James. So tell us what tape you use and what are the options out there for people? Because it sounds like I, after this conversation, a lot of people are gonna run and wanna buy tape. I don't want them to get like scotch tape or some masking tape or something. It's not the right date.
James Nestor
Well, there's there's so many different types of tape that work, and it really depends on the person and their preference. I went through about 30 different types of tape before I found one that I really liked and that worked for me. It's, I'm not getting paid to say this. It is a micropore tape, a surgical tape by 3 m has a really light adhesive for sensitive skin. That's the best stuff I've found.
Other people like different brands. There's specific brands now that are just sleep tape that you can buy on Amazon or wherever else. They work great. So I would say play around, find something you like. You want something with a very light adhesive.
And most importantly, as I mentioned, you don't need a very fat strip of this stuff. All you need is something about the size of a postage stamp. This is the whole technology here. That's sleep tape. Okay?
It's just keep I can even talk to you when I have this stuff on. When I take it off, you take it off with your tongue. Not don't rip it off. Take it off with your tongue, and you won't get any irritation to your mouth that way.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Love that. That's amazing. Okay. That's a wonderful act. You think everybody should do that?
Or how many people breathe through their mouth at night? Or is it a common thing? Or why why why would we if it's not supposed to? Is it, like, just because we're unhealthy or because we're stressed or what?
James Nestor
I think that about 60%. This is the the percentage I heard. More than 60% of us breathe through our mouth at night. And if you were like me, you would go to sleep with a huge mug of water because you would wake up throughout the night and be hitting on this water because your mouth was so dry. Breathing through the mouth at night, especially for 8 hour I 8 hours at a time will also change the pH in your make in your mouth and make you much more susceptible to having cavities, Imperial Donald disease.
So everyone should be breathing to their noses at night. You need to find a way of doing this.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So that's one technique. What are the other techniques around breathing that you could do when you're not sleeping?
James Nestor
Well, breathe through your nose as often as you can. That includes while working out, but includes while sitting in front of your desk. There are so many different breathing techniques to practice nasal breathing techniques. It doesn't matter if for 15, 20 minutes a day, you're doing Wim Hof method or Tummo or Kundalini, and you're breathing through your mouth during these practices. Perfectly fine ocean breath.
Totally fine. I'm talking about habitual chronic breathing needs to be through the nose. So we got that. When you're breathing through your nose, you will also be breathing more slowly, lightly, and deeply. And that's the other part of this.
Most of us breathe way too much air. We think that by breathing more, we are getting more oxygen, but the opposite is happening. And I can prove this to you by if you took 30 really big breaths right now, you're gonna feel some tingling in your fingers, lightness in your head. That's from a decrease of circulation. And that's what happens when you breathe too much.
So you want to be breathing such simple stuff through the nose, slowly, lightly, and deeply. Just doing that can be really transformative for people.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Doctor. Powerful. And you also talk a lot in the book about these sort of ancient lost arts of breathing. What are those things that you rediscovered and what, what should we be doing with them today? Are they relevant?
James Nestor
Doctor. Well, it's interesting. You start looking at ancient cultures and the different techniques they used, and you find that they were all basically saying the same thing in slightly different ways with different terms, especially if you look at Qigong and yoga and you find that so many of their practices are breathing through the nose. Almost all of them. Many of their practices are include breath holds.
That's huge in pranayama and it's huge in Qigong. And a lot of their practices also have temporary, very, for a very short amount of time. You over breathe. If anyone's done anyone listening has done Kundalini or pranayama or Wim Hof. Part of that is to purposely breathe too much.
What that does is it purposely stresses your body out. You may be thinking, why the heck do I wanna do that? I'm stressed out enough. But that allows you to control stress to turn it on and specifically to turn it off. And if you look at the science and the studies behind Sudarshan Kriya, even Wim Hof method, Pranayama, these are such powerful techniques, and they've been around for 1000 of years.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yes. Pretty interesting. I I did some of the Wim Hof breathing. I know him, and it's amazing. You do the breath breathing practice, then you can hold your breath for 2, 3 minutes without even a bother, which is impossible.
If I told you to hold your breath right now for 3 minutes, you'd you'd pass out. Right? So we really have an access to ancient technologies that actually will allow us to revitalize our health and have what seems like sometimes superpowers. I mean, think about it. I mean, you can regulate your breathing so you can sit in a nice bath for half an hour.
It's a big deal. You can climb up Mount Kolmanjaro in your shorts. It can be fine. Like, that's wild. Right?
And and you mentioned something just briefly called Tummo, which is a Tibetan technique for those listening that is used by monks to master their biology. And essentially, they they they have this practice called drying of the sheets, and they'll take these Buddhist monks up in the high Himalayas and they'll put these sheets in ice water and then they'll wrap them in the sheets and ice water. And they literally have to dry the sheets with the heat of their body and activate their own heat. And then once they master that, they go out in a loincloth into the Himalayas up in the mountains at night and have to literally sit there all night naked, heating their body, using the power of breath. And so we really have not even begun to tap the power of breath for health or for healing.
And, and it's one of those sort of simple doorways that we all have access to that we don't need any equipment for. And it's always available to us if we learn the techniques.
Wim Hof
We have a natural ability to rebalance our biochemistry through breathing. That's what I mean.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So so 10 minutes. So so what happens when we're exposed to cold, like, to really cold conditions? What are the benefits? Why why should we be even thinking about it? Because I'm also like, last thing I wanna do is jump in an ice cold bath or gonna be in ice water.
Wim Hof
I say always gradual cold exposure. Gradual. 1st, take a cold shower. And a cold shower does wonders, miracles. The the, our biggest enemy within our western society, the killer number 1 is cardiovascular related diseases.
And anything that has got to do with the quality of life is a bad blood flow. Too much stress inside because the condition of the millions of little muscles in our 100000 of kilometers, like 70,000 miles of vascular channels and capillaries, they contain all these little muscles. When they are stimulated through cold showers, they help the blood flow go through. Then the heart rate goes down 20 to 30 beats a minute, 24 hours a day. That means stress is out and the blood flow is guaranteed going better to all cells.
So oxygen, nutrients, vitamins get better into the cells, you get more energy. You get more energy and less stress. That's what the body wants. That's the natural state of our body to have sufficient energy for anything because that's the influencing into the, mitochondria, the the energy factories through aerobic desmilation. Oxygen.
Oxygen didn't get get numb because the blood flow is being helped through the stimulation of those millions of little muscles. And then a cold shower a day keeps the doctor away. In this case, the doctor has arrived.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Okay. So how long do you have to stay in the cold shower?
Wim Hof
It begins with 30 seconds. You gotta take the shower anyway to cleanse yourself and, you know, to be clean and, everything.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So at the end, just put the cold on?
Wim Hof
Yes. 30 seconds. And naturally, you will feel a boost. Naturally, you will feel the effect of the stimulation on the millions of little muscles inside the interior of you. This is the greatest vascular fitness exercise ever, a cold shower.
And 30 seconds, then it goes very fast because the condition of the vascular system, it goes very fast to its natural state, which should be much better than the way we are because of our destimulated behavior. Wearing clothes over our biggest organ all the time.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.
Wim Hof
That is it is for the body. It's not logic. So a cold shower a day is the best exercise to train all these little muscles. Then you get a lot more energy. You feel a boost of energy.
Yeah. Because it gets better into the cells. And then it gets and it produces more molecules, more energy, ATP. It's all logic.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yes.
Wim Hof
And then, then naturally, people are very fast able to, prolong in inside the cold shower, go for 45 seconds to 1 minute. So when it arrives at 3 minutes, then you you got so much more outcome in energy in the day than the investment is by far. It's nothing. And you know what? A cold shower is addictive.
Yeah. Oh, well,
Dr. Mark Hyman
I I I like the cold bath. So I do the steam then I jump in just the cold water in the bathtub, and I lay there for a bunch of minutes and it's it's incredible. You literally feel your whole system come back online, your brain come back online, your energy increase. It's it's pretty amazing. You know, so so you created this this Wim Hof method, activate your full human potential.
The book is incredible. I encourage everybody to get a copy. It's it's really not just about a simple technique to jump in cold water. It's really about reclaiming your health, your life, your happiness, your control over everything. I mean, it's not it's not just a little technique to get in cold water instead of the the side effect of of, doing that is is your life.
Right? So you've you've learned how to control your breathing, your heart rate, your circulation to withstand really extreme temperatures, to actually be injected with, like, infectious agents that would kill people and subdue them with your immune system under your conscious control, and you've developed this into a teachable method that everybody can learn. So it's not, oh, here's this cool guy who can do these party tricks. It's like, this is a gift you're giving to the world. It sort of seems like a little bit of a shortcut than living in a cave and meditating for 9 years and sort of cheating, but it really isn't.
And you've you've really developed these three simple pillars, cold exposure, conscious breathing, and the power of your mind. So can you talk about the method and how it works and what we should be doing?
Wim Hof
First of all, in the new book of Scott Carney, he is an investigative journalist, and he wrote that book, What Doesn't Kill You Right. Which has been sold in 34 languages all over the world, very successful, New York Times bestseller, blah blah, the whole thing. And he was to debunk me, 6 years ago.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Good luck with that.
Wim Hof
Yeah. He is an anthropologist and an investigative journalist. He was paid to debunk me. And then 2 days later, he was standing in the snow, barefoot doing. Yeah.
He's standing, you know, like a like a clown.
Dr. Mark Hyman
He
Wim Hof
was standing as a snow. He was making himself ridiculous almost. No. He he saw there that that it is real. It is real.
And in in his new book, he tells and he was investigating a lot of doctors, and one of them is a psychiatrist doctor who's into brain scans and all. And he tell that's professor Musick. And Musick professor Musick states Wim Hof has found the secret of placebo. What we see as mind power and but we don't know where it is, placebo, now it is a 2. It's an entity, and we are able to connect with our will with that, power of the mind and to intensify even the placebo effect and to make it even stronger.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Even for people whose even for people whose minds aren't disciplined or trained, you're saying this is possible?
Wim Hof
Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Because they are born with it. Only if you are schooled all the time saying, Hey, that you are not Mark Hyman, but that you are, Peter Franklin, then at a certain moment, you become Peter Franklin because Mark Hyman is not accepted.
It's not the way. You cannot do this. You are crazy if you're Mark Hyman. And all those things, you know? We have been schooled that we are not able to tap in with at will with our mind, into our bodies, and to deal with stress.
And, that's the way we are taught.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yes. And
Wim Hof
now I I I teach the people within 1 weekend. Within 1 weekend, I teach them to change the paradigm. Man, you can do whatever you want, but you are built to be able at will at will to control yourself so much better inside your own body, and it's only logic. It's only logic that our will, which is already inside of our body, that is able to control systems in our body to push buttons whenever is necessary. That that is a of course, it's a complete different paradigm than up till now we thought is possible.
We are made to be dependent on pills, medicine, pharmacy, on, McDonald's, on television, all all that. That is our system. Yeah. And and that system is is, it it has to change because that system is is is polluting the world, sodomizing the planet, exploiting the planet, and then we become insensitive
Dr. Mark Hyman
to Yeah.
Wim Hof
Ourselves and to others. This is the time for awakening to our inner mechanisms, our potential, the way nature meant it to be, the way nature gave it to us at birth. And and and we have to listen to that.
Dr. Mark Hyman
It seems like these little doorways that you've created. Right? The cold exposure, the breathing techniques, the meditation mindset that you use in the book. These are the sort of doorways that people can access these abilities that help them manage their own minds and manage their own happiness and well-being and their health in ways that are pretty striking. And I I think, you know, I wanna just chat with you for a minute about this experiment that you did, which I still find mind blowing, which is you willingly let doctors inject a known biotoxin from e coli into your bloodstream, knowing that this is something that would kill a normal person, and yet you were able to overcome this using your techniques and manage your immune system.
What I'm curious about is, did you consciously go, okay, I'm gonna direct my immune system to fight these bacteria or these toxins or neutralize them, or were you just dropping into a state of meditation? Like, how did you how does that work? I mean, it just it seemed particularly this time of coronavirus, we're all wanting to strengthen our immune system. We're all wanting to make sure we are able to fight whatever we're exposed to. How how can this play a role for us?
And what what did you do? And tell us about that study because it's so fascinating to me.
Wim Hof
Exactly. The same inflammatory markers that are the damaging factor in COVID in COVID, what is happening now that is The
Dr. Mark Hyman
cytokines. Right.
Wim Hof
Yeah. The cytokines, number 1, number 6, number 8, and number 11, I suppressed them within a quarter of an hour. And this was known not to be possible by humans. I did my, breathing. I did my I changed my biochemistry, and I do it willfully.
And, of course, I know, oh, the doctor is going to inject me with the endotoxemia now, the E. Coli. Okay. Then here the E. Coli is working now, not the effect after 1 hour than it is at, then you begin to notice I began directly to fight the e coli's reaction upon my immune cells with the immune system inside the cytokine storm and all that.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Yeah.
Wim Hof
Yeah. I began to fight it directly by alerting my, body through my mind, that was 1, and through the breathing. Breathing specific breathing exercises. And they are within the method. They are very accessible for everybody, and they are very effective, not only with me.
Then I said, oh, but you are the ice man. You can do this. You can, get these sides of cancer down where 16,000 people could not. You are the first one to show a complete different, yeah, a a complete different picture. You, you have gone into the autonomic nervous system.
You have been influenced into the endocrine system, into the immune system. Thought of all, not possible. And you have done that, but you are the iceman. Then I said, no. No.
No. No. I'm the iceman. No. At the most, maybe you can say I'm a nice man.
Ice man, that is nice for my ego, but I'm just a simple man, nice man. But let me tell you, there is we can do so much more than what you guys are thinking of in the science. We are built to be able to tackle disease, to prevent from disease. For that, we have our will and our ability through our breath, manipulation of our breath to go deeply within and to change the biochemistry to be on the alert to, activate the adrenal access to the utmost and then danger can be emotional danger, emotional stress, mental stress, bacterial stress, viral stress. Any stress in the end is cell biological stress, which is danger.
And then the adrenal axis activation takes care of that.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Wow.
Wim Hof
There it is.
Dr. Mark Hyman
But but when you when you you
Wim Hof
said What I did.
Dr. Mark Hyman
But you also you said you you did also the study with people who weren't you, and I read that they actually were also able to do the same thing you did even though they weren't the Iceman. There were, like, 4 other volunteers who agreed to
Wim Hof
be
Dr. Mark Hyman
injected with these toxins.
Wim Hof
Exactly. 18 other, people.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Others. Wow.
Wim Hof
Yes. And 12 randomly chosen of those 18 after 4 days of training were exposed to the E. Coli bacteria as well, and they all showed 100%, being able to control and suppress the cytokine storm, the inflammation, they all felt good. They made jokes. They said they didn't, injected us with e coli, but with sugar water.
Dr. Mark Hyman
That's unbelievable. And they measured the cytokines, and they measured all of that, and they saw that change in your biology, which we only see often with medication or not at all. I mean, it almost seems like this is such a simple technique to everybody to learn to help fortify them against coronavirus. Right? I mean, even if you have coronavirus, do you think you could actually help to reduce the inflammation as a result?
Absolutely.
Wim Hof
Especially when you feel the symptoms, and I heard many already, but it is not medically researched. I don't know why. Maybe they are not interested like yourself in your position with integrative medicine. You cannot make the money out of that. So but it doesn't matter.
Let's go fast and let's get back to the facts. The fact is that the cytokines, the interleukin number 1, number 6, number 8, and 11 are the damaging factors of the COVID. And we showed in 2014 in a competitive study within groups, we show to suppress it within a quarter of an hour. When you when you feel symptoms of COVID, then get into the breathing, and you will be effectively able to suppress the cytokines. That's it.
Dr. Mark Hyman
That's unbelievable. So share share with us what a technique of breathing that you teach us.
Wim Hof
And you just lie on the on the sofa or in bed and then relax. And a relaxed body is able to store up oxygen in the tissue. So relax. There's nothing going on. Nice.
Then you take a full breath in from the belly just and you let it go. And once again. And once again. We do this 30 times, fully. In.
Let it go. Fully in. Let it go. Keep on going. I explain what is happening.
Yeah. We are blowing up the carbon dioxide, but it becomes very alkaline, more than normal. And that is a sign within the brain, too alkaline too alkaline adrenal axis activation. And then the adrenaline pumps in, it peaks, and anything that should not be in the inside of the body is going to be eliminated, suppressed. And what is it in COVID?
Cytokines. So if you, if you activate the adrenal axis through doing this 30 times, then we go after 30 times because the oxygen trigger trigger to breathe is carbon dioxide, but it's blowing off. Body is very alkaline. Biochemistry is great. It's great.
And you just exhale, you hold After the exhale, so only a residual amount of air is left in the lungs. And you stay in that, in that condition. And then easily, you are able to go 1 minute, 1 and a half minute, maybe 2 minutes if you have done well, the 30 deep breaths. 2 minutes with a with a residual amount of air in your lungs for 2 minutes without breathing. Mhmm.
And that, what happens, of course, the brain stem, the the primitive oxygen parameters, they say, there is no oxygen. No oxygen. And they shoot into the adrenaline. It's all reactive. So the brain stem, the reactive part of our brain is just the the buttons are pushed, and then the adrenaline shoots out.
Epinephrine shoots out over all the body. And this is very good to detoxify. So people with a hangover, if they do this 20 minutes, they detoxify. They can go for a drink again.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So so the idea is you do 30 breaths, then you hold your breath for a minute or 2, and then you do
Wim Hof
it again? Exhalation. After the exhalation, and then at the end, when you feel the urge of breathing again, you take it fully in. You hold for 15 seconds. Fully in, hold, and squeeze a little bit to your head because it's nice.
You bring in cerebrospinal fluid to the head, then it gets into the brain stem and into the limbic system, into the midbrain where we normally don't have so much blood flow because we always think, think, think is where the blood flow goes. Now we push it from the inside inside the deepest part of the brain. And then suddenly, it begins to become a neurally alive. And then we are able to connect at will because that's neurology. So we are and then we get a sense of control over our mood.
That is mood, absolute mood regulation. In case of people with, depression, mostly it's caused by inflammation and stress and, emotional deprivation. All that, creates a biological or a biochemical deficit. And through doing this, you feel you're filling up
Dr. Mark Hyman
the tank.
Wim Hof
And you feel that you are in control. And nobody wants to feel bad, then they feel good again.
Dr. Mark Hyman
That's incredible. So, basically, the technique is 30 breaths, hold for a minute or 2, take a breath, hold for 15 seconds, and then repeat?
Wim Hof
Yes. Repeat. And then And you will see find out that every time it goes and easier and longer.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So do this for 20 minutes a day is what you're saying. That's it?
Wim Hof
That's what we do right now in San Francisco big study on the DNA, the with this method, with this breathing. And it's amazing. The results are amazing on the DNA.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So see, 2 or 3 minute cold shower and 20 minutes of breathing, and you can give up all your winter clothes.
Wim Hof
Yep. You can hit the road at any time without car.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And you You can fight coronavirus.
Wim Hof
You can feel happy, empowered, in control of yourself. You feel the connection. And then when you need it, you know what to do. You just go within. And then you learn about the lost connection within because of our exterior way of gaining information, control over the world, etcetera.
And that the control inside we lost, and now it's back. And we don't need to sit for 9 years in a cave.
Dr. Mark Hyman
That's incredible. That's incredible. It's incredible to me because, you know, I've always thought that you need to practice and practice and practice, meditate meditate meditate for decades in order to There it is. Be able to
Wim Hof
You know what, Mark? They compared they compared 10 minutes of this breathing, specifically breathing. It brings people deeper in the brain than people who are doing, exercising for 4 hours, a mindfulness a day for years.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Wow. Alright. I'm in. I'm in.
Wim Hof
I'm in. I'm in. I'm starting to Anybody can do this.
Dr. Mark Hyman
I'm starting today. I'm starting today. I'm so excited about your book because your book, the Wim Hof Method, Achieving Full Human Potential, is exactly about teaching you how to do this. It's not just the theory. It's not just all the stories of how you had these superhuman feats, but it's really about how you as an individual can overcome some of the challenges we face as human beings that feel us, make us feel powerless over our own minds, over our own happiness, our own life, our own well-being, our own health.
And this is a very, very empowering idea
Wim Hof
to you. Yeah. Especially right now with all the turmoil, the confusion, the anxiety, and the helplessness against the COVID, man, there is so much more within us, and it's time to wake up.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. It's so beautiful. It's like you're the unlikeliest guru. I love Like, you're this crazy guy from the Netherlands, who's just like, found some doorway into something that was obscure to most of us for 1000 of years. And I'm just so grateful for your work and your commitment and, you know, I know you got to Likewise.
Wim Hof
I I I I'm I'm honored I'm honored to be your guest on your podcast. Thank you very much.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Of course. Mark. Of course.
Wim Hof
You are a great bloody great guy.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Thank you. Well, we have fun together when we're together. Yeah. That's for sure. That's for sure.
And I'm coming. I wanna go as soon as COVID lightens up. I wanna go do one of your week long what is it? Week long, workshops in Poland? You go to the ice in the winter?
Wim Hof
It's like 4 or 5 days. And then in the end, you will be exposed to the elements of cold wind, that is wind chill and, and all for 5 hours in your shorts, and you're gonna have a great bloody, great time.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Oh my god. I mean it. You know why? Because I love swimming, and there's lakes here. And I I I went in yesterday.
It it was a little chilly. And I was like, I came out freezing. I was like, oh, no. Wim's gonna be mad at me. I was so cold.
I had to come and take a hot shower.
Wim Hof
Man, I I I I I don't like, yeah, I I love hot showers, but I also love the, you know, the cold. The the cold gives you such a power. And if you do the cold on a regular basis, like daily, you become when you get older and, you know, so many people get older and get so many inflammation and deterioration of their condition and this Mhmm. Will never get sick no more. It's amazing.
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman
I mean, speaking of that, I I think, looking at the studies you've you've done, and combining cold exposure and breathing, meditation, and your mental attitude, it's had huge effects on people's health. And there are many students that you've had who are practicing this method for years and have been able to reverse diseases, things like diabetes and Parkinson's and lose weight and do incredible feats of that fun system. Absorbital. Autoimmune. How does that work?
I mean, can you can you share some of these stories? Because this just seems like a revolutionary approach to to treating illness.
Wim Hof
Yes. Autoimmune diseases is inflammation based on inflammation, cytokines. Cytokin storms, a a overreactive immune system, and we had no control over this. So, when you begin to do this, you learn to tap into the adaptive immune system. You learn to go into the, the innate immune system, both.
And suddenly, your rheumatism, arthritis, psoriasis, disease of Crohn's, Parkinson's. All these things begin, to become, within your control. You sense it. You feel it. You don't need to know what is all happening.
It use it simply sends that you are in control over the inflammatory markers. The inflammation doesn't happen anymore. Mhmm. How is that possible? Now that is what is happening, and that it needs to be researched and into the research right now with the Radboud University here, on rheumatism, on arthritis.
Because we have 100 of people with arthritis, and it's gone. They control it.
Dr. Mark Hyman
It's incredible.
Wim Hof
Without medicine, without pills, they just control it. They got there. And the doctor say, spontaneous remission. Oh, man. Look into the healing power that
Dr. Mark Hyman
you're
Wim Hof
born with.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, I'm very close to the, the rheumatology department at Cleveland Clinic, and the doctors there are very interested and open to these ideas. It'd be amazing to do a study. I love that.
Wim Hof
Do yes, please. Let's go. Let's go.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Because autoimmune disease affects, you know, 80,000,000 people, more than diabetes, more than heart disease, more than cancer together. And then the treatments we have are only somewhat effective and and often have a lot of side effects and costs. So I think it's a really important idea. I I love this idea. So we're gonna we're gonna figure this out.
Now one of one of the other things, you know, is really relevant to Mark,
Wim Hof
this is very important.
Dr. Mark Hyman
I know.
Wim Hof
Studies. Studies, nonspeculative evidence based trials is what we need
Dr. Mark Hyman
to show.
Wim Hof
Because 80,000,000 people relieving of their suffering by autonomy within themselves, that is love.
Dr. Mark Hyman
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Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Farmacy.
James Nestor
Doctor. Part of that is to purposely breathe too much. What that does is it purposely stresses your body out. You may be thinking why the heck do I want to do that? I'm stressed out enough, but that allows you to control stress, to turn it on and specifically to turn it off.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I could help everyone via my personal practice, there's simply not enough time for me to do this at this scale. And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand, well, you. If you're looking for data about your biology, check out function health for real time lab insights. If you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, check out my membership community, Hyman Hive. And if you're looking for curated and trusted supplements and health products for your routine, visit my website, supplement store, for a summary of my favorite and tested products.
Hi. I'm doctor Mark Hyman, a practicing physician and proponent of systems medicine, a framework to help you understand the why or the root cause of your symptoms. Welcome to The doctor's Farmacy. Every week, I bring on interesting guests to discuss the latest topics in the field of functional medicine and do a deep dive on how these topics pertain to your health. In today's episode, I have some interesting discussions with other experts in the field.
So let's just jump right in. How is breath so important in our health? Because, you know, we all breathe. We don't think about it. We're just breathing every day.
In fact, I think we breathe 25,000 times a day without really thinking about it. But it turns out that how we breathe is critically important to our overall health. And it's not something I learned in medical school, but I'd love you to sort of break it down for audience. Why is breath important? Why has it been so neglected?
And what do we know scientifically about the importance of breath and health? Doctor.
James Nestor
I think humans are very reactionary species only when we lose something to be, do we become aware of it? And that's exactly what happened during COVID. We lost the ability to breathe and we're like, oh my God, maybe breathing's important because this is just something that's been in it's an unconscious activity. It's in the back of our minds. So once you establish, I think once you lose the ability to breathe, you appreciate it.
And once you appreciate it, you can start focusing your breath to really significantly impact your health, mental health, physical health, bolster immune function, athletic performance, and more. And the reason why breathing is so important is because we get most of our energy from air, from our breath. A lot of people think that we get most of our energy from what we eat and drink. Not true. We get most of our energy from air.
And I can prove this to you by why don't you hold your breath for about 4 minutes and see how much energy you have.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Not so much. Don't do that
James Nestor
at home, everybody.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Well, I think you're right. I think we, you know, we don't connect to our breath. And, you know, I when I was younger, I took yoga teacher training course, you know, I was 23 and became a yoga teacher and learned the science, the ancient science of pranayama, which is a whole series of breathing techniques to activate different aspects of our health and well-being. And, whether you they're calming breasts, activating breasts, it's it's such a powerful thing that we have pretty much ignored as a vehicle toward health in this culture.
And yet in ancient cultures, it's pretty amazing. And you guys got, like, Wim Hof, who is this the kinda crazy dude who the they call me Iceman. But he's, you know, master techniques of breathing that allow him to climb Mount Everest in his underwear, basically, with no shoes on and not freeze to death or to sit in an ice bath for whatever bazillion minutes he sits in an ice bath for. And he's been able to train other people who are just regular humans how to do the same thing. So it is a doorway to accessing all sorts of our physiology that we just sort of ignore.
So can you kind of break down for us what what what is going on with our breath? Why does it affect us so importantly? And how do we start to develop better relationship with our breathing? Doctor.
James Nestor
Well, breathing practices have been around for at least 5000 years. Ancient Hindu studied it, ancient Chinese study it, native Americans studied it and more, and they understood our breathing as a medicine. This wasn't just something we did unconsciously. It was something that you can control. So this knowledge has been around for a long time, but lo and behold, in the 1900 and this century, we have instruments that can actually measure objectively what happens when you breathe in different ways.
So no longer is this subjective, it's objective. It's a science. You can collect data. That's what I think is so exciting that a lot of people can access wearables that can tell them what happens to their heart rate, what happens to their heart rate variability, what happens to their stress levels, what happens to their blood pressure, their blood oxygen, more and more and more by just shifting their breathing. And I think that this is one of the things that has really made this stuff so convincing.
It's one thing to read scientific papers and hear people talk about it. It's another thing to change your breathing for 2 minutes and watch your blood pressure go down 10 to 15 points and watch your heart rate variability
Dr. Mark Hyman
score. Yeah.
James Nestor
And and I think that's why so many people have have personally experienced the benefits of this from not a lot of effort and work and said, wow, it actually does what it's supposed to do. And the science just confirms that.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Amazing. Tell us about the distinct between nose breathing and mouth breathing. You know, why, why is mouth breathing not good for you and why is nose breathing good for you?
James Nestor
Mhmm. So when we breathe through our mouths, we're exposing ourselves to everything in the environment. If you live in a city like me, that means pollen. That means pollutants means smog. It means mold.
And there's nothing filtering that air all day long. If you breathe through the nose, and I so happen to have a a special guest here is a a cross section of a human head. And if you see what happens when you breathe through the nose here, you're forcing this air through all of these very ornate structures. And as that air goes through these structures, it's heated up, it's moistened, it's filtered, and you get this huge profusion of nitric oxide as well, which guess what? Nitric oxide helps kill viruses and bacteria.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yes.
James Nestor
And it's a vasodilator. So when you're, when you're breathing through the mouth, you get none of those advantages. You can survive mouth breathing, but it's gonna wear you down and make you sick. And that's just how things work. And you can very clearly see this by just looking at our physiology and, and looking at our anatomy.
Dr. Mark Hyman
It's quite amazing. What you just brought up is really important. Cause we had Louis Signaro on the podcast who won the Nobel prize for his discovery of nitric oxide. And he's this cute little, like 80 year old Italian guy who think he'd be like your uncle or something. And he's so sweet, and he just he just really explained how important it is to breathe through your nose and how nitric oxide is produced, which is, like you said, antimicrobial and also increases in, your ability to fight inflammation as an antioxidant.
And, you know, it's the main main thing that happens when you take Viagra, which is you increase nitric oxide, which is dilation of blood vessels and so forth. So it's fascinating. And he's he even said, this was fascinating. They're doing some preliminary studies around COVID where they were giving nitric oxide gas to COVID patients and seeing remarkable changes in their biology, and improvement in their lung function and their overall health. So it's kind of interesting that our body knows what to do, but we often have have sort of laughed at these habits around mouth breathing.
And and actually there's this there's this kind of new trend out there. I'd love to hear what you think about it. Are you using mouth tape at night for people to breathe through their nose at night instead of through their mouth? What do you think about that?
James Nestor
Well, what I learned about nitric oxide was from Ignarro. So he won the Nobel in in the nineties.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And I
James Nestor
think last time, last interview I heard with him, he said there were 11 clinical trials looking at patients who had severe COVID and giving them nitric oxide. Oxide. Some of those trials have come out. They're official published studies, and it works incredibly well because, of course, it does. You know?
It's just we're supplementing what our natural body in its natural form would be doing otherwise. It's important to note too, if you you increase that nitric oxide 15 fold. So, I I think that this would be an interesting thing to explore, and there a lot of yoga practices have have you I wish someone would do this study. Yeah. You know, it's never gonna get
Dr. Mark Hyman
funded, but
James Nestor
but, he's he's an amazing guy. I've learned so much from him.
Dr. Mark Hyman
That's so great. And you and you did an interesting study where you were at Stanford, when you were sort of researching the breath for your book and where your nose was completely plugged for 10 days and you had to breathe just through your mouth. So what was that study? And what did you find out? So
James Nestor
I've been working with a chief of rhinology research at Stanford, a guy named doctor Jayak or Nayak, who probably knows more about the nose and nasal breathing than anyone on the planet. So we had had several interviews, and there had been animal studies looking at what happens when you make an animal, a monkey, specifically, a mouth breather, and all the awful things that happen to their health and their facial structure. Don't read those studies. They're they're horrendous. But I asked NIAC.
I said, has there ever been a human study of this? And he said, no. And I said, well, why don't you do it? You're at Stanford. You you study this stuff all the time.
He said doing so would be unethical because he knew of all the damage it it could do. So I said, well, why don't I volunteer for an experiment? I'll try to
Dr. Mark Hyman
make it informed consent. Right.
James Nestor
Yeah. And 2, you know, I wish it were a 100 people. We had to pay for the study ourselves, which at Stanford was was not cheap. And, the longest we were allowed to do this was for 10 days. 10 days just mouth breathing, 10 days nasal breathing.
And as advertised, it completely destroyed us. And, we have all the data to show that there was extreme fatigue. My blood pressure went through the roof. I got home after about 3 hours of mouth breathing. My blood pressure was 158 over a 100, which was about 3 times higher than I had ever seen it.
And I said, oh, you know, I'm I'm stressed out. I need to go to sleep. For the first time that I'm aware of, I started snoring. Then I started getting sleep apnea. It got worse and worse.
The longer we have this, the other subject in the study had the exact same thing at the same time. We had trouble focusing. Our mouths were completely dry. We were miserable. Athletic performance plummeted.
I mean, this to be clear, 2 people in an experiment means nothing. What I was doing was personally experiencing what science has known for for literally decades decades.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, there are n of 1 studies, so I don't think it's meaningless. You know, there are there is a whole science and the NIH is actually advancing this, which is looking at changes in an individual and that being relevant. And if you measure changes before and after, it's actually not insignificant. So I wouldn't discount what you're saying as being one more widely available to, to, to sort of think about. And I think, I think that, you know, you, you actually have a lot of different things that you talk about as a way of fixing your breathing pattern.
Maybe you can share a little bit of what are the tips, how should we breathing? How do we get enough quality breath? How do we stop mouth breathing? What, what do we have to do?
James Nestor
Luckily in that Stanford study, we did 10 days of mouth breathing followed by 10 days of just nasal breathing. This is where the sleep tape comes in. So it's, it's easy to nasal breathe in the day. You just shut your mouth, but at night, more than 60% of us breathe through our mouth. And so how do you keep your mouth shut at night?
About a 100 years ago, they used some chin straps. So they knew how damaging mouth breathing was a 100 years ago. We've we've seem to have lost lost that knowledge, but nowadays we have tape. So I learned from a breathing therapist at Stanford. She's prescribed tape, for her patients, for every one of her patients to tape their mouths at night.
This is not full on Yeah. Hostage situation stuff. This is the
Dr. Mark Hyman
key It's not duct tape. It's not it's not No. And there's a little hole in it. There's a little hole
Wim Hof
in it.
James Nestor
There's a specific tape. It's a surgical tape. It's called micropore tape, and it's very light adhesive. You wanna take this stuff off with your tongue. Never pull it off of your lips.
That's where people go wrong. But what this tape does is it's just a gentle reminder. At any time in the night, you can go if you're uncomfortable and it pops off. But this has been all of that snoring that I was doing mouth breathing immediately went away by just with one hack closing my mouth. And this is the one thing I've I've literally heard this from thousands of people who've written, and they said this was the most profound health hack that they've experienced.
It's for a lot of people
Dr. Mark Hyman
I've heard the same thing.
James Nestor
And I'm not saying it's gonna work for everyone, especially with advanced severe sleep apnea. You're gonna need more treatments, but it's free. And breathing through your nose is only gonna help you, so you may benefit a little or you may benefit a lot. And it I I cannot sleep. I mean, I technically, I can sleep, but I can't sleep well without sleep tape now.
It's it's a real That's amazing.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Alright, James. So tell us what tape you use and what are the options out there for people? Because it sounds like I, after this conversation, a lot of people are gonna run and wanna buy tape. I don't want them to get like scotch tape or some masking tape or something. It's not the right date.
James Nestor
Well, there's there's so many different types of tape that work, and it really depends on the person and their preference. I went through about 30 different types of tape before I found one that I really liked and that worked for me. It's, I'm not getting paid to say this. It is a micropore tape, a surgical tape by 3 m has a really light adhesive for sensitive skin. That's the best stuff I've found.
Other people like different brands. There's specific brands now that are just sleep tape that you can buy on Amazon or wherever else. They work great. So I would say play around, find something you like. You want something with a very light adhesive.
And most importantly, as I mentioned, you don't need a very fat strip of this stuff. All you need is something about the size of a postage stamp. This is the whole technology here. That's sleep tape. Okay?
It's just keep I can even talk to you when I have this stuff on. When I take it off, you take it off with your tongue. Not don't rip it off. Take it off with your tongue, and you won't get any irritation to your mouth that way.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Love that. That's amazing. Okay. That's a wonderful act. You think everybody should do that?
Or how many people breathe through their mouth at night? Or is it a common thing? Or why why why would we if it's not supposed to? Is it, like, just because we're unhealthy or because we're stressed or what?
James Nestor
I think that about 60%. This is the the percentage I heard. More than 60% of us breathe through our mouth at night. And if you were like me, you would go to sleep with a huge mug of water because you would wake up throughout the night and be hitting on this water because your mouth was so dry. Breathing through the mouth at night, especially for 8 hour I 8 hours at a time will also change the pH in your make in your mouth and make you much more susceptible to having cavities, Imperial Donald disease.
So everyone should be breathing to their noses at night. You need to find a way of doing this.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So that's one technique. What are the other techniques around breathing that you could do when you're not sleeping?
James Nestor
Well, breathe through your nose as often as you can. That includes while working out, but includes while sitting in front of your desk. There are so many different breathing techniques to practice nasal breathing techniques. It doesn't matter if for 15, 20 minutes a day, you're doing Wim Hof method or Tummo or Kundalini, and you're breathing through your mouth during these practices. Perfectly fine ocean breath.
Totally fine. I'm talking about habitual chronic breathing needs to be through the nose. So we got that. When you're breathing through your nose, you will also be breathing more slowly, lightly, and deeply. And that's the other part of this.
Most of us breathe way too much air. We think that by breathing more, we are getting more oxygen, but the opposite is happening. And I can prove this to you by if you took 30 really big breaths right now, you're gonna feel some tingling in your fingers, lightness in your head. That's from a decrease of circulation. And that's what happens when you breathe too much.
So you want to be breathing such simple stuff through the nose, slowly, lightly, and deeply. Just doing that can be really transformative for people.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Doctor. Powerful. And you also talk a lot in the book about these sort of ancient lost arts of breathing. What are those things that you rediscovered and what, what should we be doing with them today? Are they relevant?
James Nestor
Doctor. Well, it's interesting. You start looking at ancient cultures and the different techniques they used, and you find that they were all basically saying the same thing in slightly different ways with different terms, especially if you look at Qigong and yoga and you find that so many of their practices are breathing through the nose. Almost all of them. Many of their practices are include breath holds.
That's huge in pranayama and it's huge in Qigong. And a lot of their practices also have temporary, very, for a very short amount of time. You over breathe. If anyone's done anyone listening has done Kundalini or pranayama or Wim Hof. Part of that is to purposely breathe too much.
What that does is it purposely stresses your body out. You may be thinking, why the heck do I wanna do that? I'm stressed out enough. But that allows you to control stress to turn it on and specifically to turn it off. And if you look at the science and the studies behind Sudarshan Kriya, even Wim Hof method, Pranayama, these are such powerful techniques, and they've been around for 1000 of years.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yes. Pretty interesting. I I did some of the Wim Hof breathing. I know him, and it's amazing. You do the breath breathing practice, then you can hold your breath for 2, 3 minutes without even a bother, which is impossible.
If I told you to hold your breath right now for 3 minutes, you'd you'd pass out. Right? So we really have an access to ancient technologies that actually will allow us to revitalize our health and have what seems like sometimes superpowers. I mean, think about it. I mean, you can regulate your breathing so you can sit in a nice bath for half an hour.
It's a big deal. You can climb up Mount Kolmanjaro in your shorts. It can be fine. Like, that's wild. Right?
And and you mentioned something just briefly called Tummo, which is a Tibetan technique for those listening that is used by monks to master their biology. And essentially, they they they have this practice called drying of the sheets, and they'll take these Buddhist monks up in the high Himalayas and they'll put these sheets in ice water and then they'll wrap them in the sheets and ice water. And they literally have to dry the sheets with the heat of their body and activate their own heat. And then once they master that, they go out in a loincloth into the Himalayas up in the mountains at night and have to literally sit there all night naked, heating their body, using the power of breath. And so we really have not even begun to tap the power of breath for health or for healing.
And, and it's one of those sort of simple doorways that we all have access to that we don't need any equipment for. And it's always available to us if we learn the techniques.
Wim Hof
We have a natural ability to rebalance our biochemistry through breathing. That's what I mean.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So so 10 minutes. So so what happens when we're exposed to cold, like, to really cold conditions? What are the benefits? Why why should we be even thinking about it? Because I'm also like, last thing I wanna do is jump in an ice cold bath or gonna be in ice water.
Wim Hof
I say always gradual cold exposure. Gradual. 1st, take a cold shower. And a cold shower does wonders, miracles. The the, our biggest enemy within our western society, the killer number 1 is cardiovascular related diseases.
And anything that has got to do with the quality of life is a bad blood flow. Too much stress inside because the condition of the millions of little muscles in our 100000 of kilometers, like 70,000 miles of vascular channels and capillaries, they contain all these little muscles. When they are stimulated through cold showers, they help the blood flow go through. Then the heart rate goes down 20 to 30 beats a minute, 24 hours a day. That means stress is out and the blood flow is guaranteed going better to all cells.
So oxygen, nutrients, vitamins get better into the cells, you get more energy. You get more energy and less stress. That's what the body wants. That's the natural state of our body to have sufficient energy for anything because that's the influencing into the, mitochondria, the the energy factories through aerobic desmilation. Oxygen.
Oxygen didn't get get numb because the blood flow is being helped through the stimulation of those millions of little muscles. And then a cold shower a day keeps the doctor away. In this case, the doctor has arrived.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Okay. So how long do you have to stay in the cold shower?
Wim Hof
It begins with 30 seconds. You gotta take the shower anyway to cleanse yourself and, you know, to be clean and, everything.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So at the end, just put the cold on?
Wim Hof
Yes. 30 seconds. And naturally, you will feel a boost. Naturally, you will feel the effect of the stimulation on the millions of little muscles inside the interior of you. This is the greatest vascular fitness exercise ever, a cold shower.
And 30 seconds, then it goes very fast because the condition of the vascular system, it goes very fast to its natural state, which should be much better than the way we are because of our destimulated behavior. Wearing clothes over our biggest organ all the time.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.
Wim Hof
That is it is for the body. It's not logic. So a cold shower a day is the best exercise to train all these little muscles. Then you get a lot more energy. You feel a boost of energy.
Yeah. Because it gets better into the cells. And then it gets and it produces more molecules, more energy, ATP. It's all logic.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yes.
Wim Hof
And then, then naturally, people are very fast able to, prolong in inside the cold shower, go for 45 seconds to 1 minute. So when it arrives at 3 minutes, then you you got so much more outcome in energy in the day than the investment is by far. It's nothing. And you know what? A cold shower is addictive.
Yeah. Oh, well,
Dr. Mark Hyman
I I I like the cold bath. So I do the steam then I jump in just the cold water in the bathtub, and I lay there for a bunch of minutes and it's it's incredible. You literally feel your whole system come back online, your brain come back online, your energy increase. It's it's pretty amazing. You know, so so you created this this Wim Hof method, activate your full human potential.
The book is incredible. I encourage everybody to get a copy. It's it's really not just about a simple technique to jump in cold water. It's really about reclaiming your health, your life, your happiness, your control over everything. I mean, it's not it's not just a little technique to get in cold water instead of the the side effect of of, doing that is is your life.
Right? So you've you've learned how to control your breathing, your heart rate, your circulation to withstand really extreme temperatures, to actually be injected with, like, infectious agents that would kill people and subdue them with your immune system under your conscious control, and you've developed this into a teachable method that everybody can learn. So it's not, oh, here's this cool guy who can do these party tricks. It's like, this is a gift you're giving to the world. It sort of seems like a little bit of a shortcut than living in a cave and meditating for 9 years and sort of cheating, but it really isn't.
And you've you've really developed these three simple pillars, cold exposure, conscious breathing, and the power of your mind. So can you talk about the method and how it works and what we should be doing?
Wim Hof
First of all, in the new book of Scott Carney, he is an investigative journalist, and he wrote that book, What Doesn't Kill You Right. Which has been sold in 34 languages all over the world, very successful, New York Times bestseller, blah blah, the whole thing. And he was to debunk me, 6 years ago.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Good luck with that.
Wim Hof
Yeah. He is an anthropologist and an investigative journalist. He was paid to debunk me. And then 2 days later, he was standing in the snow, barefoot doing. Yeah.
He's standing, you know, like a like a clown.
Dr. Mark Hyman
He
Wim Hof
was standing as a snow. He was making himself ridiculous almost. No. He he saw there that that it is real. It is real.
And in in his new book, he tells and he was investigating a lot of doctors, and one of them is a psychiatrist doctor who's into brain scans and all. And he tell that's professor Musick. And Musick professor Musick states Wim Hof has found the secret of placebo. What we see as mind power and but we don't know where it is, placebo, now it is a 2. It's an entity, and we are able to connect with our will with that, power of the mind and to intensify even the placebo effect and to make it even stronger.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Even for people whose even for people whose minds aren't disciplined or trained, you're saying this is possible?
Wim Hof
Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Because they are born with it. Only if you are schooled all the time saying, Hey, that you are not Mark Hyman, but that you are, Peter Franklin, then at a certain moment, you become Peter Franklin because Mark Hyman is not accepted.
It's not the way. You cannot do this. You are crazy if you're Mark Hyman. And all those things, you know? We have been schooled that we are not able to tap in with at will with our mind, into our bodies, and to deal with stress.
And, that's the way we are taught.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yes. And
Wim Hof
now I I I teach the people within 1 weekend. Within 1 weekend, I teach them to change the paradigm. Man, you can do whatever you want, but you are built to be able at will at will to control yourself so much better inside your own body, and it's only logic. It's only logic that our will, which is already inside of our body, that is able to control systems in our body to push buttons whenever is necessary. That that is a of course, it's a complete different paradigm than up till now we thought is possible.
We are made to be dependent on pills, medicine, pharmacy, on, McDonald's, on television, all all that. That is our system. Yeah. And and that system is is, it it has to change because that system is is is polluting the world, sodomizing the planet, exploiting the planet, and then we become insensitive
Dr. Mark Hyman
to Yeah.
Wim Hof
Ourselves and to others. This is the time for awakening to our inner mechanisms, our potential, the way nature meant it to be, the way nature gave it to us at birth. And and and we have to listen to that.
Dr. Mark Hyman
It seems like these little doorways that you've created. Right? The cold exposure, the breathing techniques, the meditation mindset that you use in the book. These are the sort of doorways that people can access these abilities that help them manage their own minds and manage their own happiness and well-being and their health in ways that are pretty striking. And I I think, you know, I wanna just chat with you for a minute about this experiment that you did, which I still find mind blowing, which is you willingly let doctors inject a known biotoxin from e coli into your bloodstream, knowing that this is something that would kill a normal person, and yet you were able to overcome this using your techniques and manage your immune system.
What I'm curious about is, did you consciously go, okay, I'm gonna direct my immune system to fight these bacteria or these toxins or neutralize them, or were you just dropping into a state of meditation? Like, how did you how does that work? I mean, it just it seemed particularly this time of coronavirus, we're all wanting to strengthen our immune system. We're all wanting to make sure we are able to fight whatever we're exposed to. How how can this play a role for us?
And what what did you do? And tell us about that study because it's so fascinating to me.
Wim Hof
Exactly. The same inflammatory markers that are the damaging factor in COVID in COVID, what is happening now that is The
Dr. Mark Hyman
cytokines. Right.
Wim Hof
Yeah. The cytokines, number 1, number 6, number 8, and number 11, I suppressed them within a quarter of an hour. And this was known not to be possible by humans. I did my, breathing. I did my I changed my biochemistry, and I do it willfully.
And, of course, I know, oh, the doctor is going to inject me with the endotoxemia now, the E. Coli. Okay. Then here the E. Coli is working now, not the effect after 1 hour than it is at, then you begin to notice I began directly to fight the e coli's reaction upon my immune cells with the immune system inside the cytokine storm and all that.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Yeah.
Wim Hof
Yeah. I began to fight it directly by alerting my, body through my mind, that was 1, and through the breathing. Breathing specific breathing exercises. And they are within the method. They are very accessible for everybody, and they are very effective, not only with me.
Then I said, oh, but you are the ice man. You can do this. You can, get these sides of cancer down where 16,000 people could not. You are the first one to show a complete different, yeah, a a complete different picture. You, you have gone into the autonomic nervous system.
You have been influenced into the endocrine system, into the immune system. Thought of all, not possible. And you have done that, but you are the iceman. Then I said, no. No.
No. No. I'm the iceman. No. At the most, maybe you can say I'm a nice man.
Ice man, that is nice for my ego, but I'm just a simple man, nice man. But let me tell you, there is we can do so much more than what you guys are thinking of in the science. We are built to be able to tackle disease, to prevent from disease. For that, we have our will and our ability through our breath, manipulation of our breath to go deeply within and to change the biochemistry to be on the alert to, activate the adrenal access to the utmost and then danger can be emotional danger, emotional stress, mental stress, bacterial stress, viral stress. Any stress in the end is cell biological stress, which is danger.
And then the adrenal axis activation takes care of that.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Wow.
Wim Hof
There it is.
Dr. Mark Hyman
But but when you when you you
Wim Hof
said What I did.
Dr. Mark Hyman
But you also you said you you did also the study with people who weren't you, and I read that they actually were also able to do the same thing you did even though they weren't the Iceman. There were, like, 4 other volunteers who agreed to
Wim Hof
be
Dr. Mark Hyman
injected with these toxins.
Wim Hof
Exactly. 18 other, people.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Others. Wow.
Wim Hof
Yes. And 12 randomly chosen of those 18 after 4 days of training were exposed to the E. Coli bacteria as well, and they all showed 100%, being able to control and suppress the cytokine storm, the inflammation, they all felt good. They made jokes. They said they didn't, injected us with e coli, but with sugar water.
Dr. Mark Hyman
That's unbelievable. And they measured the cytokines, and they measured all of that, and they saw that change in your biology, which we only see often with medication or not at all. I mean, it almost seems like this is such a simple technique to everybody to learn to help fortify them against coronavirus. Right? I mean, even if you have coronavirus, do you think you could actually help to reduce the inflammation as a result?
Absolutely.
Wim Hof
Especially when you feel the symptoms, and I heard many already, but it is not medically researched. I don't know why. Maybe they are not interested like yourself in your position with integrative medicine. You cannot make the money out of that. So but it doesn't matter.
Let's go fast and let's get back to the facts. The fact is that the cytokines, the interleukin number 1, number 6, number 8, and 11 are the damaging factors of the COVID. And we showed in 2014 in a competitive study within groups, we show to suppress it within a quarter of an hour. When you when you feel symptoms of COVID, then get into the breathing, and you will be effectively able to suppress the cytokines. That's it.
Dr. Mark Hyman
That's unbelievable. So share share with us what a technique of breathing that you teach us.
Wim Hof
And you just lie on the on the sofa or in bed and then relax. And a relaxed body is able to store up oxygen in the tissue. So relax. There's nothing going on. Nice.
Then you take a full breath in from the belly just and you let it go. And once again. And once again. We do this 30 times, fully. In.
Let it go. Fully in. Let it go. Keep on going. I explain what is happening.
Yeah. We are blowing up the carbon dioxide, but it becomes very alkaline, more than normal. And that is a sign within the brain, too alkaline too alkaline adrenal axis activation. And then the adrenaline pumps in, it peaks, and anything that should not be in the inside of the body is going to be eliminated, suppressed. And what is it in COVID?
Cytokines. So if you, if you activate the adrenal axis through doing this 30 times, then we go after 30 times because the oxygen trigger trigger to breathe is carbon dioxide, but it's blowing off. Body is very alkaline. Biochemistry is great. It's great.
And you just exhale, you hold After the exhale, so only a residual amount of air is left in the lungs. And you stay in that, in that condition. And then easily, you are able to go 1 minute, 1 and a half minute, maybe 2 minutes if you have done well, the 30 deep breaths. 2 minutes with a with a residual amount of air in your lungs for 2 minutes without breathing. Mhmm.
And that, what happens, of course, the brain stem, the the primitive oxygen parameters, they say, there is no oxygen. No oxygen. And they shoot into the adrenaline. It's all reactive. So the brain stem, the reactive part of our brain is just the the buttons are pushed, and then the adrenaline shoots out.
Epinephrine shoots out over all the body. And this is very good to detoxify. So people with a hangover, if they do this 20 minutes, they detoxify. They can go for a drink again.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So so the idea is you do 30 breaths, then you hold your breath for a minute or 2, and then you do
Wim Hof
it again? Exhalation. After the exhalation, and then at the end, when you feel the urge of breathing again, you take it fully in. You hold for 15 seconds. Fully in, hold, and squeeze a little bit to your head because it's nice.
You bring in cerebrospinal fluid to the head, then it gets into the brain stem and into the limbic system, into the midbrain where we normally don't have so much blood flow because we always think, think, think is where the blood flow goes. Now we push it from the inside inside the deepest part of the brain. And then suddenly, it begins to become a neurally alive. And then we are able to connect at will because that's neurology. So we are and then we get a sense of control over our mood.
That is mood, absolute mood regulation. In case of people with, depression, mostly it's caused by inflammation and stress and, emotional deprivation. All that, creates a biological or a biochemical deficit. And through doing this, you feel you're filling up
Dr. Mark Hyman
the tank.
Wim Hof
And you feel that you are in control. And nobody wants to feel bad, then they feel good again.
Dr. Mark Hyman
That's incredible. So, basically, the technique is 30 breaths, hold for a minute or 2, take a breath, hold for 15 seconds, and then repeat?
Wim Hof
Yes. Repeat. And then And you will see find out that every time it goes and easier and longer.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So do this for 20 minutes a day is what you're saying. That's it?
Wim Hof
That's what we do right now in San Francisco big study on the DNA, the with this method, with this breathing. And it's amazing. The results are amazing on the DNA.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So see, 2 or 3 minute cold shower and 20 minutes of breathing, and you can give up all your winter clothes.
Wim Hof
Yep. You can hit the road at any time without car.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And you You can fight coronavirus.
Wim Hof
You can feel happy, empowered, in control of yourself. You feel the connection. And then when you need it, you know what to do. You just go within. And then you learn about the lost connection within because of our exterior way of gaining information, control over the world, etcetera.
And that the control inside we lost, and now it's back. And we don't need to sit for 9 years in a cave.
Dr. Mark Hyman
That's incredible. That's incredible. It's incredible to me because, you know, I've always thought that you need to practice and practice and practice, meditate meditate meditate for decades in order to There it is. Be able to
Wim Hof
You know what, Mark? They compared they compared 10 minutes of this breathing, specifically breathing. It brings people deeper in the brain than people who are doing, exercising for 4 hours, a mindfulness a day for years.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Wow. Alright. I'm in. I'm in.
Wim Hof
I'm in. I'm in. I'm starting to Anybody can do this.
Dr. Mark Hyman
I'm starting today. I'm starting today. I'm so excited about your book because your book, the Wim Hof Method, Achieving Full Human Potential, is exactly about teaching you how to do this. It's not just the theory. It's not just all the stories of how you had these superhuman feats, but it's really about how you as an individual can overcome some of the challenges we face as human beings that feel us, make us feel powerless over our own minds, over our own happiness, our own life, our own well-being, our own health.
And this is a very, very empowering idea
Wim Hof
to you. Yeah. Especially right now with all the turmoil, the confusion, the anxiety, and the helplessness against the COVID, man, there is so much more within us, and it's time to wake up.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. It's so beautiful. It's like you're the unlikeliest guru. I love Like, you're this crazy guy from the Netherlands, who's just like, found some doorway into something that was obscure to most of us for 1000 of years. And I'm just so grateful for your work and your commitment and, you know, I know you got to Likewise.
Wim Hof
I I I I'm I'm honored I'm honored to be your guest on your podcast. Thank you very much.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Of course. Mark. Of course.
Wim Hof
You are a great bloody great guy.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Thank you. Well, we have fun together when we're together. Yeah. That's for sure. That's for sure.
And I'm coming. I wanna go as soon as COVID lightens up. I wanna go do one of your week long what is it? Week long, workshops in Poland? You go to the ice in the winter?
Wim Hof
It's like 4 or 5 days. And then in the end, you will be exposed to the elements of cold wind, that is wind chill and, and all for 5 hours in your shorts, and you're gonna have a great bloody, great time.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Oh my god. I mean it. You know why? Because I love swimming, and there's lakes here. And I I I went in yesterday.
It it was a little chilly. And I was like, I came out freezing. I was like, oh, no. Wim's gonna be mad at me. I was so cold.
I had to come and take a hot shower.
Wim Hof
Man, I I I I I don't like, yeah, I I love hot showers, but I also love the, you know, the cold. The the cold gives you such a power. And if you do the cold on a regular basis, like daily, you become when you get older and, you know, so many people get older and get so many inflammation and deterioration of their condition and this Mhmm. Will never get sick no more. It's amazing.
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman
I mean, speaking of that, I I think, looking at the studies you've you've done, and combining cold exposure and breathing, meditation, and your mental attitude, it's had huge effects on people's health. And there are many students that you've had who are practicing this method for years and have been able to reverse diseases, things like diabetes and Parkinson's and lose weight and do incredible feats of that fun system. Absorbital. Autoimmune. How does that work?
I mean, can you can you share some of these stories? Because this just seems like a revolutionary approach to to treating illness.
Wim Hof
Yes. Autoimmune diseases is inflammation based on inflammation, cytokines. Cytokin storms, a a overreactive immune system, and we had no control over this. So, when you begin to do this, you learn to tap into the adaptive immune system. You learn to go into the, the innate immune system, both.
And suddenly, your rheumatism, arthritis, psoriasis, disease of Crohn's, Parkinson's. All these things begin, to become, within your control. You sense it. You feel it. You don't need to know what is all happening.
It use it simply sends that you are in control over the inflammatory markers. The inflammation doesn't happen anymore. Mhmm. How is that possible? Now that is what is happening, and that it needs to be researched and into the research right now with the Radboud University here, on rheumatism, on arthritis.
Because we have 100 of people with arthritis, and it's gone. They control it.
Dr. Mark Hyman
It's incredible.
Wim Hof
Without medicine, without pills, they just control it. They got there. And the doctor say, spontaneous remission. Oh, man. Look into the healing power that
Dr. Mark Hyman
you're
Wim Hof
born with.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, I'm very close to the, the rheumatology department at Cleveland Clinic, and the doctors there are very interested and open to these ideas. It'd be amazing to do a study. I love that.
Wim Hof
Do yes, please. Let's go. Let's go.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Because autoimmune disease affects, you know, 80,000,000 people, more than diabetes, more than heart disease, more than cancer together. And then the treatments we have are only somewhat effective and and often have a lot of side effects and costs. So I think it's a really important idea. I I love this idea. So we're gonna we're gonna figure this out.
Now one of one of the other things, you know, is really relevant to Mark,
Wim Hof
this is very important.
Dr. Mark Hyman
I know.
Wim Hof
Studies. Studies, nonspeculative evidence based trials is what we need
Dr. Mark Hyman
to show.
Wim Hof
Because 80,000,000 people relieving of their suffering by autonomy within themselves, that is love.
Dr. Mark Hyman
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