Wim Hof
Bollocks or brilliant?
Bloke,
You keep sending me breathless “you MUST watch this!!” YouTube videos, so I finally did the adult thing and went down the rabbit hole properly. Read the papers, not just the YouTube comments. Spent all night reading and then coming to a conclusion.
Short version: Wim’s neither a miracle ice wizard nor a complete crock of frozen nonsense. He’s a charismatic extreme athlete who has definitely found a real physiological lever, then wrapped it in mysticism, merch and marketing.
Long version below, with receipts.
And with the full knowledge that you won’t read this anyway, so why the fuck did I waste my time? As my mum used to say, “My mind’s made up, don’t confuse me with facts.”
Mate, you might want to ease off on the video dispatches—you’re drifting into ‘family uncle who corners you near the potato salad to talk about essential oils’ territory. I can’t wait for the ‘Vegemite as a suppository cures cancer’ video.
Who he is (and why anyone cares)
Wim Hof is a Dutch extreme athlete, born 1959, who built a career out of doing ridiculous things in the cold: record-length full-body ice immersions, barefoot half-marathons on snow, and high-altitude climbs in shorts. These are documented Guinness-style feats rather than Instagram filters.
He also has a pretty grim personal backstory. His first wife died by suicide; he describes discovering cold exposure and breathwork as a way of coping and “quieting the mind,” which he later systematised into the Wim Hof Method (breathing + cold exposure + “mindset”).
So: not a lab-grown biohacker. More an aging Dutch hippie who turned grief, rivers and self-punishment into a global wellness brand.
What the method actually is
Strip away the drum circles and merch and you get three pillars: breathing, cold exposure, and mindset/commitment.
The breathing
It’s essentially structured hyperventilation plus breath holds:
30–40 deep, rapid breaths (inhale fully, relaxed exhale)
Exhale, then hold your breath for as long as comfortable
Inhale fully, hold ~15 seconds
Repeat for several rounds
Physiology in plain English:
You blow off CO₂, which makes the blood more alkaline (respiratory alkalosis).
Oxygen saturation stays high initially, but the drop in CO₂ suppresses your urge to breathe.
That lets you hold your breath longer, and it spikes sympathetic activity (adrenaline, heart-rate changes, tingling, dizziness).
Subjectively, people feel buzzy, tingly, “out of body,” sometimes euphoric. It’s a DIY altered state of consciousness powered by your chemoreceptors, not the universe downloading secret wisdom into your chakras.
The cold exposure
This is the ice-bath / cold shower piece: short, regular bouts of cold, working up from “this is a bit brisk” to “my ancestors are weeping.”
Cold immersion does things we already know about:
Peripheral vasoconstriction and later vasodilation
Activation of brown adipose tissue (BAT)
Increases in noradrenaline and dopamine, which can affect alertness, mood and pain perception
Used gradually and sensibly, you can increase cold tolerance and people often report better mood and perceived energy. None of that is unique to Wim, but he’s wrapped it in a very compelling story.
The “mindset” stuff
The third pillar is more nebulous: focus, willpower, “belief,” etc. Under the hood it looks like a mix of:
Basic attentional training / meditation
Expectation and placebo effects
Group ritual and charisma at workshops
Not fake, just more psychology than magic.
What the science actually says
There is real research, but it’s not as definitive as the evangelists make it sound.
Immune and inflammation effects
The famous Radboud endotoxin study (Kox et al., PNAS 2014) took volunteers trained in Hof-style breathing and cold and injected them with E. coli endotoxin. Compared to controls, the trained group:
Produced more adrenaline
Showed higher anti-inflammatory IL-10
Had lower pro-inflammatory cytokines and fewer flu-like symptoms
So yes, under lab conditions, people trained in WHM-style techniques could modulate immune and autonomic responses to an inflammatory hit.
A 2024 PLOS ONE systematic review pooled nine WHM trials (eight unique studies). It concluded that the method may reduce inflammation and increase epinephrine in both healthy and non-healthy participants, likely via that adrenaline-IL-10 pathway. Exercise performance effects were mixed, and study quality varied.
Even the University of Warwick press release on that review, which is pretty cautious, says WHM appears to produce an anti-inflammatory response but emphasises that evidence is still early and heterogeneous.
So: promising signal on the inflammation/stress-response front, interesting enough that proper immunologists are paying attention, but not “throw out your rheumatologist and buy a barrel.”
Stress and mental health
There are a bunch of small trials and pilots:
WHM-style breathing and mindset training has been tested in different groups, including people with spinal cord injuries, with reports of improved mood and some mental-health related measures, but tiny samples and feasibility-study design.
The broader literature on high-ventilation breathwork (which includes WHM-type methods) shows clear effects on the autonomic nervous system and emotional state, and suggests potential for trauma-related and affective disorders, while repeatedly saying “we need larger, controlled studies.”
Self-report from these trials typically shows better perceived stress and mood; it’s just hard to disentangle specific WHM effects from general “I did a structured, meaningful practice with high expectations” effects.
Cardiovascular and performance
One recent RCT looked at 15 days of daily WHM and found:
Changes in cardiovascular responses under cold-pressor testing
Some differences in pain perception and psychological measures
But not dramatic improvements in resting blood pressure or exercise capacity
Another pilot on athletes: WHM breathing caused big swings in pH, CO₂ and oxygen saturation plus strong subjective effects, but did not improve repeated sprint performance versus control conditions.
Translation: it feels intense and interesting; it doesn’t turn you into a superhero.
So far, my take from the literature:
There’s a real, reproducible physiological effect.
The strongest evidence is in stress response and inflammation, not in vague “biohacking everything” claims.
Studies are small and methodologically messy, so anyone telling you “science has proved this cures X” is overselling.
Safety: the bit the YouTube thumbnails don’t emphasise
Even in controlled lab conditions, WHM breathing produces a lot of transient side effects: tingling, numbness, dizziness, light-headedness, sometimes near-syncope.
That’s fine if you’re lying on a mat. It’s a completely different story in a pool, bath or car.
There are now documented fatalities and near-fatalities linked to WH-style hyperventilation and underwater breath-holding:
A 2022 Singapore coroner’s report on a man who drowned after practising the Wim Hof breathing technique before underwater laps explicitly warned about shallow-water blackout: hyperventilation suppresses the urge to breathe without preventing brain hypoxia, so you can simply pass out underwater with no warning.
A 2023 pathology paper from Australia reported three drowning deaths associated with underwater breath-holding and “the well-described ‘Wim Hof’ hyperventilation breathing method.”
There’s also a wrongful-death lawsuit in California involving a teenager who drowned after practising WHM breathing in a pool. Hof is contesting the case, but the pattern is depressingly familiar.
Cardiology folk also point out that sudden cold immersion plus a big sympathetic surge can plausibly provoke arrhythmias in people with vulnerable hearts. Not guaranteed, but enough that most sensible guidelines say people with cardiovascular disease, arrhythmias, severe hypertension, pregnancy, epilepsy, etc., should be cautious or avoid the full-strength version.
To be fair, Hof’s organisation now puts “don’t do this in water/while driving” warnings in their materials. But the viral culture of backyard ice barrels and “hold your breath as long as you can in the pool bro” already exists.
Why he’s so popular
Having now read both the papers and the puff pieces, his popularity makes sense:
Simple, dramatic script: three pillars, a clear routine, and TV-friendly visuals (man in shorts on Everest).
The myth of voluntary control: he offers this seductive idea that you can directly hack your autonomic and immune systems with breath and cold. That’s partially true, within limits, which makes it even stickier.
The story: trauma, grief, rebirth through nature, now dedicated to healing the world. That’s narrative catnip.
The wellness economy: courses, apps, retreats, ice-bath “experiences.” There’s a lot of money in telling stressed people they can reset their nervous systems in ten minutes a day without having to do awkward things like eight hours of sleep and boundaries.
The pro and con takes from “serious people”
Pro-ish:
The PNAS endotoxin work (Kox et al. 2014) is respected, properly run ICU-style physiology, and it did show modulated inflammatory responses.
The 2024 PLOS ONE review from Almahayni & Hammond concludes WHM is promising for modulating inflammation/stress, while being very clear about small samples and risk of bias.
Press releases and science news pieces (Warwick, Biotechniques, etc.) all say essentially: “there’s something real here in terms of anti-inflammatory and stress physiology, but we need more and better trials.”
Sceptical/critical:
A 2023–24 wave of commentary points out significant risk of bias and methodological weaknesses in the existing WHM literature, and warns against over-interpreting the data.
Physiologist Wouter van Marken Lichtenbelt has bluntly described Hof’s scientific explanations as “galimatias” (nonsense) and accused him of mixing scientific terms in a way that sounds authoritative but isn’t.
Skeptical Inquirer ran a long piece basically arguing that the health claims are poorly substantiated and the method may be hazardous, especially in the hands of unsupervised enthusiasts; they draw attention to the mismatch between the evidence and the breadth of conditions people claim to treat.
So mainstream science is somewhere between “this is interesting and potentially useful in specific domains” and “please stop inflating the claims and killing people in pools.”
My own contrarian take (since you asked)
Having waded (not plunged) through the evidence, here’s where I land:
The physiology is old; the branding is new.
Controlled hyperventilation plus breath holds and cold exposure already exist in various yogic, Tummo and breathwork traditions. Hof’s key contribution is packaging, not discovering a new system of the body.
The strongest bit of the method is the bit you don’t have to pay for.
The “mindset” pillar is essentially deliberate practice of tolerating discomfort and focusing attention. You can do that with any cold shower and a timer. The €2,000 mountain retreat is optional.
WHM is a legal way to induce a dissociative, euphoric state with a moral halo.
Hyperventilation breathwork gives you a powerful altered state. Many people then interpret that as spiritual awakening, trauma release or “unlocking potential,” when the immediate driver is CO₂ chemistry plus adrenaline. That doesn’t make the experience meaningless, but it does make it less mystical than the marketing suggests.
“Cold cures everything” is a red flag.
Whenever one protocol is suggested for basically every problem, I get hives. The plausible benefits are:
Modulating stress reactivity
Mild anti-inflammatory effects
Some improvements in mood/energy and pain tolerance
Beyond that is mostly anecdote and extrapolation.
The risk is disproportionately carried by the keenest, least informed.
Fit young men doing breath-holds in pools for Instagram likes are the ones turning up in coroners’ reports, not the people quietly doing three minutes of cool water at home. The brand enjoys the publicity; the families deal with the aftermath.
For some people, WHM is emotional avoidance in heroic drag.
Ice baths and breathwork can be fantastic adjuncts to proper psychological work. They can also be a very photogenic way to avoid therapy, sleep, boundaries and boring lifestyle changes.
Where that leaves me
If someone enjoys WHM and is doing it safely, I wouldn’t try to talk them out of it. The science says:
There is a genuine, reproducible physiological effect on stress and inflammation.
There are modest but real improvements in perceived stress and mood in the short term.
There are also clear, documented safety issues if you layer hyperventilation on top of water and bravado.
If I ever decide to dabble, my boring, non-YouTube rules would be:
Do the breathing lying or sitting somewhere safe, not in water, not in a bath, not while driving.
No underwater breath-holds, full stop.
If I have heart disease, arrhythmias, uncontrolled high blood pressure, epilepsy, you’re pregnant, or you’ve ever randomly passed out before, clear it with an actual doctor first.
Think of it as a potential tool for stress modulation and maybe inflammation, not a Swiss-army knife for everything from autoimmune disease to your boss being a dick.
So no, I’m not going to start an ice-bath Instagram, and I’m not subscribing to the Church of Wim. But I will grant him this: he’s found a spicy way to press on some very real buttons in the nervous and immune systems.
If you want to send me more videos, make them ones where people don’t pass out in the pool.
The ADHD-cure claim (and why it’s absolute nonsense)
Neil, mate, this is where I need to plant a firm flag, because the suggestion that Wim Hof breathing can cure ADHD is, frankly, medically unserious.
Let’s start with what ADHD actually is: a highly heritable neurodevelopmental condition with well-established genetic, neurobiological and lifespan-stable traits. Executive functioning differences, cortical-striatal circuitry, dopamine transporter variants, developmental persistence, the whole shebang. It is not caused by bad breathing habits. It is not reversed by alkaline blood chemistry. And it is definitely not fixed in one or two weeks by doing a controlled hyperventilation routine from YouTube.
Here’s what we actually know:
The Wim Hof Method has no clinical evidence whatsoever for treating ADHD.
Not a single RCT, not a pilot trial, not even a speculative hypothesis paper. The WHM literature looks at inflammatory markers, autonomic function, mood, subjective stress and cold-tolerance. ADHD is nowhere in the research domain. Because it’s not the same system. You can’t breath-hold your way out of a neurodevelopmental phenotype.
Feeling calmer ≠ curing ADHD.
Lots of things can modulate arousal and stress for a few minutes: slow breathing, WHM hyperventilation, a cold shower, meditation, weighted blankets, three espressos and a brisk walk. That does not equate to treating impaired executive function, working memory, time perception, cognitive switching, task initiation, or reward-delay dysfunction. Those are the core features of ADHD, not “I feel stressed sometimes”.
Box breathing and WHM are not comparable to ADHD treatment.
Yes, special forces personnel use box breathing. You know what else they use?
discipline
structure
environmental scaffolding
selection bias
and (tiny detail) not having ADHD as a disqualifying factor for certain roles.
Box breathing can regulate arousal. It cannot remodel dopaminergic pathways or alter developmental neurocognition. WHM is not “next level”—it’s just physiologically louder.
Testimonial ≠ evidence.
“I did this technique and my ADHD vanished!” is the oldest genre in the wellness world. People with ADHD are highly sensitive to novelty and internal state shifts. Anything that produces a dramatic physiological jolt—a breathwork-induced adrenaline rush, CO₂ fluctuations, or cold shock—can feel like clarity or motivation in the short term. That’s perception, not neurodevelopmental change.
The WHO, CDC, NICE, Australian guidelines, and every legitimate ADHD research centre avoid WHM for a reason.
Not because of conspiracy.
Because there is no evidence it changes ADHD outcomes, and significant evidence that ADHD requires multi-modal, long-term strategies:
pharmacological treatment (stimulants or atomoxetine/guanfacine depending on the case)
behavioural/environmental scaffolding
psychological strategies
sleep, routines, coaching, relationship-aware interventions
None of those have anything to do with breath-holding while listening to a Dutch man in a barrel.
Cold showers don’t fix cortical maturation trajectories.
ADHD brains follow a different developmental curve—particularly in the prefrontal cortex—by about 2–3 years. Breathing and ice baths can modulate sympathetic tone, but they do not accelerate cortical development or reconfigure executive circuitry. That’s like claiming a sauna cures dyslexia.
So let me say this cleanly, so there’s no ambiguity later:
Wim Hof breathing may help some people feel temporarily calmer, more energised, or more focused. It does not and cannot “cure” ADHD. Any claim to the contrary is physiologically incoherent and scientifically unsupported.
If you like the technique, great. Use it.
But don’t confuse “I feel good right now” with “my 67-year neurodevelopmental trajectory has been rewritten by a man in swimwear”.
ADHD 101 for people who think WHM will fix everything
Neil, here’s the gentle but necessary reality check.
ADHD isn’t a mood.
It isn’t a vibe.
It isn’t a “state of dysregulation” that you can breathe your way out of like a paper bag at a 1993 yoga retreat.
ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition with:
well-mapped genetic heritability,
differences in dopaminergic signalling,
altered maturation trajectories in the prefrontal cortex,
impaired executive functions (working memory, organisation, time perception, task switching, inhibition),
and persistence across the lifespan.
Picture it like this: if the brain were a city, ADHD isn’t a traffic jam. It’s the road layout. You can regulate the traffic lights a bit—breathing, meditation, exercise—but you don’t suddenly wake up with a new motorway system because you took a heroic inhale and sat in a tub of frozen peas.
A few things that might help the penny drop:
ADHD doesn’t disappear for a week because someone feels “calmer and clearer” after breathwork.
That feeling could come from CO₂ shifts, adrenaline spikes, dopamine surges from cold-shock, or just novelty. None of that rewires executive circuits. If it did, psychiatrists would be out of business and Bunnings would sell ice baths next to the potting soil.
Regulating arousal is not curing ADHD.
Box breathing, WHM, mindfulness, exercise—they can all help modulate the nervous system.
Fantastic! Use them!
But calling that a cure is like saying a good night’s sleep cures diabetes because glucose looks better the next morning.
Executive dysfunction does not respond to breathwork.
You can’t breathe yourself into:
remembering deadlines,
finishing multi-step tasks,
resisting 14 competing impulses,
or suddenly understanding time like a neurotypical.
If that were possible, every ADHD clinic in the world would be replaced with a refrigerated shipping container.
The gold-standard international ADHD guidelines never mention WHM.
WHO, CDC, NICE, Australian ADHD guidelines—not one includes hyperventilation breathwork as a treatment.
Because they deal in evidence, not anecdotes shouted from inside an ice barrel.
Breathwork may help you feel better—and that’s valid—but feeling better is not the same as “no longer having ADHD.”
Plenty of people with ADHD experience “false clarity” after novelty, stimulation or nervous-system jolts.
It’s temporary.
When the neurochemistry settles, the underlying wiring is exactly where you left it.
So yes, WHM might give someone a temporary sensation of heightened clarity or energy. Lovely! Enjoy it! But presenting that as a cure for a neurodevelopmental condition is like declaring yourself fluent in Japanese because Duolingo taught you “Where is the toilet?”
If breathwork genuinely helped you feel more regulated, brilliant—use it!
But don’t confuse a helpful coping strategy with a neurological reset button. Those don’t exist.
And don’t make me start producing YouTube videos that debunk the bollocks you send me. I don’t have the time.
Complete reference list
Almahayni, R. A., & Hammond, D. (2024). The effects of Wim Hof Method on inflammatory and stress responses: A systematic review and meta-analysis. PLOS ONE.
Ars Technica. (2022). Fatal risks of Wim Hof breathing highlighted after pool deaths.
BBC News. (2022). Singapore coroner warns about Wim Hof breathing dangers.
Biotechniques. (2024). Review shows anti-inflammatory effects of Wim Hof method.
Daily Express. (2024). Scientists confirm Wim Hof breathing influences inflammation pathways.
GAIA.com. (2024). Can breathwork rewrite the immune system?
Galaviz, C., et al. (2021). Wim Hof breathing: Physiological effects during repeated-sprint ability testing. Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research.
Healthline. (2023). What is Wim Hof breathing?
Hof, W. (n.d.). The Wim Hof Method. Retrieved from https://www.wimhofmethod.com
Irish Sun. (2024). Conor Benn says Wim Hof breathing saved his mental health.
Kox, M., et al. (2014). Voluntary activation of the sympathetic nervous system and attenuation of the innate immune response in humans. PNAS.
Lichtenbelt, W. V. M. (2020). Critique of Wim Hof explanations. University of Maastricht commentary.
Mayo Clinic. (2023). ADHD overview and neurodevelopmental basis.
Medical News Today. (2023). Risks and benefits of Wim Hof breathing.
MIT Press Reader. (2023). The physiology of breathwork.
NICE. (2019). ADHD diagnosis and management guidelines.
PNAS News. (2014). Dutch adventurer helps science understand autonomic control.
Psychology Today. (2023). The limits of breathwork for mental health conditions.
Skeptical Inquirer. (2023). The Wim Hof Method: Fact, fiction, and fatalities.
Singapore Coroner’s Court. (2022). Findings on death associated with Wim Hof breathing.
U.S. CDC. (2023). ADHD: Data and neurodevelopmental characteristics.
University of Warwick. (2024). Press release on WHM systematic review.
Van Diemen, T., et al. (2023). Drowning associated with hyperventilation and breath-holding (“Wim Hof” style): Case series. Australian Journal of Forensic Sciences.
WebMD. (2023). Wim Hof Method: What science supports.
World Health Organization. (2023). ADHD: Factsheet.