I used to get sick a lot,

I used to believe that if I didn't eat the right foods

I would get sick, that if I didn't sleep

the right number of hours I would get sick,

that if anybody around me was sick then I would get sick,

and guess what happened?

I got sick a lot, and then in January of this year

after getting really sick I decided

I am never going to get sick again.

Never sick again, I'm always going to be healthy

and dedicated myself to learning from some of the masters.

People who have figured it out for themselves

on how to never get sick

so that also spawned this new series called Never Sick

and today we're going to learn from Wim Hof, the ice man,

on his techniques, his strategies, his secrets

to never get sick,

and as always guys as Wim is talking

if he says something that really resonates with you

please leave it in the comments below,

put quotes around it so others can enjoy it as well.

(upbeat music)

(mysterious music)

- [Wim] To me God is cold, you could say that.

I think of the cold as a noble force,

it's just helping me, it's training me,

it's bringing me back to the inner nature

the way it was meant to be,

and this way I do not only endure the cold,

I love the cold.

(deep slow breathing)

(electronic music)

- We live in a world where there's all kinds

of false healers and fake alternative medicine programs

you can sign up for.

It's a rare moment in history when someone comes along

who can perform real miracles

with real evidence to back them up.

Wim Hof has defied logic time and time again

and always under scientific scrutiny.

He holds the world record

for being able to be submerged in ice for almost two hours

without his core body temperature changing.

He's climbed Mount Everest in nothing but a pair of shorts

and ran a marathon in the desert without drinking any water.

He's even proven in a laboratory setting

that he can withstand illnesses using the power of his mind,

but he's not a freak of nature.

According to Wim anyone can do what he can do.

They just have to learn his method, the Wim Hof Method,

using a combination of cold immersion,

breathing techniques and mental focus

anyone can accomplish feats

that were previously thought to be impossible.

- I created a method, the components are breathing,

mind set and cold exposure,

gradual non-forced cold exposure,

and that's to optimize the mind body connection.

- Wim has figured out ways, namely through breath work

and through exposure to cold to take conscious control

over aspects of his physiology that for most people

they simply can't tune into and control.

(wind blowing)

(piano music)

- The cold, my warm friend,

it brings about a whole lot of more energy

and that together with breathing

makes you so powerful but then you lose your wife

and it all rumbles down.

Four children I had with my wife

and I was to be with her forever.

She was the love of my life, she died.

She suicided.

It's a black hole within yourself.

It breaks your heart and you don't know why

but the train of daily life is going on

and you got to catch up otherwise you lose it

so I had to be there for my children and yes,

we created a new nest.

My children made me survive in that time,

but nature healed my wounds.

The cold gave me a direct understanding of deeper breathing

and how to heal a broken heart.

Then I went and did all kinds of remarkable challenges.

Apparently they found it very remarkable and great

and spectacular so I came in contact with television.

One after the other they challenged me more, more,

more, more, more.

"Hey go swim 50 meters under the ice.

"Go and swim 100 meters under the ice.

"Climb Mount Everest in shorts."

That led up, that the scientists became curious.

"Hey what this man is doing

"is not possible physiologically."

- The science of what Wim Hof Method does

is one of the primary interests of my lab now

because it is so powerful

and it's been shown to be powerful in the immune system.

We believe it will also hold some real potential

for treatment of neurological diseases.

- [Wim] And this breathing technique brings you right into

the deepest part of physiology, anybody can do it.

So you become the alchemist of your own chemistry.

The first time I went under the ice

the water is as sharp as needles.

I saw this as a big huge sharp diamond.

At 35 meters I lost sight

because the retina, it froze, I couldn't see nothing,

I couldn't breathe of course and then my consciousness

succumbed to a lower consciousness, this is survival.

I do not fear death, I fear not to live fully.

If I live fully I'm not into death, I'm living.

- [Matt] It isn't all about breaking records.

Wim's mission is to use his body as a laboratory,

to revolutionize our understanding of physiology.

In 2011 he was injected with a bacterial endotoxin

in an experiment that challenged

our understanding of the nervous system.

In normal humans the injection

should cause a strong immune response

leading to fever, chills and headaches,

but not in Wim.

It appeared that he was somehow able

to suppress his immune response

by making his body secrete adrenaline,

suggesting that his method can allow us to influence

our immune system at will.

Scientists thought he might just be a freak of nature

so to further prove this theory

they performed the same experiment

on 12 subjects Wim had trained in Poland

and the same thing happened.

- Normally it's very difficult

to increase your adrenaline levels by your own will.

Adrenaline is released by the autonomic nervous system

and autonomic means that you cannot voluntarily influence it

so if you walk outside and you are robbed on the street

you will have a heart rate of 160 and your blood pressure

will be sky high within seconds,

but if I ask you now to increase your heart rate

you cannot do that, you cannot voluntarily modulate that,

and with techniques of Wim Hof

we show that he was able to increase his adrenaline levels

to very high concentrations

even higher than people who go bungee jumping

for the first time.

That was something that we didn't think possible

before then.

(electronic music)

- Right now we are right over here, 750 meters,

we go up to 1,400 meters, that's the Karpacz,

from the Karpacz we go to the Sniezka

and it's cold so all you have studied Matt

you are going to need it

and now just don't think, but focus,

trust your body to be able to cope

with the elements up there and you will be able

and with that you are going to show for yourself,

"hey man I can do this, wow."

(electronic music)

- If you ever wanted a real test

of the Wim Hof Method this is it.

If you concentrate hard enough the snow looks like sand

and you just feel like you're at the beach.

- Exactly that's the mind,

if your mind is on it,

then you're quite capable of dealing with the elements.

- Yeah 'cause it is a bit nippy really.

- Yeah.

Hey.

(speaking in a foreign language)

(deep slow breathing)

- There's a method to this,

what I'm doing is breathing in more oxygen than I need

and then breathing out without fully letting go.

Doing that five times and then on the final breath

squeezing the oxygen into your chest, neck and head

and that creates either real or illusionary heat

and then you let go,

and that's how we get to the top of the mountain.

Oh shit. (laughing)

My crampons.

Minor crampon emergency, I'm fine.

(deep slow breathing)

There are a few theories

as to why Wim Hof can do what he can do.

One is, that he has a higher level of brown adipose tissue

or brown fat in his body,

which is a heat generating tissue in the body.

Studies have shown that people who work outside in the cold

have higher levels of brown fat

so it's possible that he's able to manipulate

the level of brown fat in his body

by exposure to the cold like we're doing right now.

Another theory is that he's able

to secrete the hormone noradrenaline at will

through breathing and by jumping into cold water

and that adrenaline allows you

to overcome coldness and illnesses.

Another theory is that he uses a form of mediation

similar to the Tibetan Tummo meditation

which by shutting off the activity of the mind

your metabolism gets redirected into generating heat.

It's probably a combination of all those three

and some as of yet unexplained physiological phenomenon

as well, but Wim takes it a step further, he says,

that using his method you can go deep into the body

and actually control your own autonomic nervous system

and immune system.

- [Wim] I went to the scientific scrutiny of research

and put me to the test and they saw amazing things,

but then they thought,

"you are the ice man, you are just one test subject,"

and I said, "no what I can do anybody can do."

- You can just start doing this technique

and you can modulate your adrenaline levels by will.

The stress hormones are able

to modulate your immune response.

There are many diseases that are influenced

by your immune system

and you can imagine that it would be of interest

if you could modulate that immune response and suppress it

that it might be of benefit

for patients with diseases like that.

- How did it feel when you finally got recognition

from the science world that your methods worked?

- I cried, really.

You know what happens when your wife

whom you love so dearly, she suicides,

you don't understand it.

You just don't understand, you have no power any more

and finally because you have been everywhere looking

for how to silence the grief,

to finally get scientific recognition,

that's the time when you break,

that's the time when you get relief,

that's the time when you can let go,

that's when you cry.

(upbeat music)

Look at, look at the clouds.

- [Matt] Oh whoa.

Wow. - Wow.

Mother holy mama.

This is nice huh?

(laughing)

- It's amazing what the body can do

when you actually force it to go to its limits.

- [Wim] Yes to it's natural ability.

- We crossed the border from Poland into the Czech Republic

and now we're just about to summit the tallest mountain