063 Wim Hof Method- Simplified

Dr. Joe Kepo'o is a student of the Wim Hof method. You know, the one where you freeze your fanny off in ice baths or other arctic conditions. Well, um, nobody really wants to do that. BUT there is huge advantages to cold therapy, and Dr. Joe has simplified the Wim Hof method to something that anybody can do even morning as part of their morning routine. Dr. Joseph Kepo’o has his undergraduate degree in exercise science. He then went on to receive a degree in chiropractic biophysics. Dr. Joe also has advanced certifications in NAET, EVOX or perception reframing, the emotion code, the body code, energetic medicine and zyto bio-communication. He has great expertise on both sides of the fence in the world of medicine.

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This show is for informational purposes only. 

None of the information in this podcast should be construed as dispensing medical advice. 

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Find episode links, notes and artwork at:

https://blog.dirobi.com

This show is for informational purposes only.

None of the information in this podcast should be construed as dispensing medical advice.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Transcript

Miranda: 0:02

Welcome to the Dirobi Health Show covering the world of fitness, nutrition and supplementation with world class guests, the latest clinical research and plenty of tips you can use right away to boost your health and wellness. Here's your host, Dave Sherwin.

Dave Sherwin: 0:22

Welcome to the Dirobi Health Show with Dr Joe Kepo'o as our guest today, and we're talking about something that many of you may have had come across your radar and if you're like me, may have immediately rejected it and thought this is not something I want to do. It's called the Wim Hof method and I understand there are many benefits and a lot of good to it, but that it basically involves getting really cold for long periods of time. At least. That's been my impression of it and so because I don't like being cold for long periods of time, I have not taken it seriously, but recently in a conversation with Dr Joe Kepo'o, he enlightened me on this and that there are simple ways to apply these methods and get some of the major benefits without going to the Arctic or spending long periods in ice baths or whatever the case might be. Dr Joe, welcome to the show.

Dr. Joe: 1:15

I appreciate the time.

Dave Sherwin: 1:17

It's great to have you back. For those of you who follow the show, he was on episode 51 and gave us a lot of insight into homeopathic remedies and we sarcastically called that show homeopathic versus homeopathetic and Dr. Joe gave us some really great insight into that industry. The good, the bad, the pros, the cons, and I recommend you listen to that and Dr. Joe, let me give a little bit of your more of your bio before we jp into the topic. For those who haven't heard that other episode, Dr Joe has an undergraduate degree in exercise science. He's an expert in the biomechanics of the body. He went on to receive a degree in chiropractic biophysics. He also has advanced certifications and NAET technology EVOX or perception reframing,, the emotion code, the body code, energetic medicine and ZETO communication. He has great expertise on both sides of the fence of the world of medicine, both the medicine and the energetic side, of health. And so he's a great resource. And, and, he is my personal go to guy for my own health. And one thing I want to say about Dr Joe is, long time ago, my father in law and I had a conversation about doctors and he mentioned how there's a difference between someone who wants to go in the medical profession because there's a lot of money there and someone whose heart is called to the medical profession because they are a true healer and Dr Joe is definitely from that camp of being a real healer. And, so I hope you'll really enjoy this time that we have with him today. So Dr Joe, with all that being said, you are a huge fan of the Wim Hof method and taken some of the courses, correct?

Dr. Joe: 3:08

Yes, I absolutely love it.

Dave Sherwin: 3:12

And recently we were talking about some of the health challenges I've gone through this year. I had a serious sprain, an ankle, and I had some other joint pain and injuries as we talked about that, you know, the whole Wim Hof thing came up and I immediately put up my, I don't want to freeze, but you said something very interesting that we didn't have to go to extremes with this method to get benefit from it. And I've also picked up from you that it's not just about getting cold, although cold therapy is part of it. Why don't you give us a quick overview of the Wim Hof method?

Dr. Joe: 3:52

Yeah, the Wim Hof method. So it's actually, it was established mainly by Wim Hof himself. So if you're in the health industry at all or, or personal development, Wim Hof has actually been a pretty big name because he's really dynamic. He's a really exciting person. He's from, he's from the Netherlands and, he's, his main claim for fame has been that he set all these Guinness Book World Records for a whole bunch of different things that he's done with his body mainly has to do with cold exposure. So that's why I can like I see you and when I tell you, hey, you need to start doing the Wim Hof method, you Kinda, you kinda like say no, I don't want to do that because you think of when you think of sitting in these boxes full of ice for like two and a half hours. Right? And that's just something he's done. He's developed his body and his mind was the point where he can actually expose himself to these deep, deep levels of cold swimming in the Arctic water running around and, he's doing marathons in the snow barefoot, all these crazy things. And so when you think about the Wim Hof method, a lot of times that's what you think of and you're like, there's no way I'm going to do that to myself, right? Most of us absolutely love our warm showers. In the morning,, some of us like it really, really hot to the where, we're lobster pink afterwards and so none of us really want to get out of that comfort zone and then go dive into some Arctic water to be able to follow this guy. Right.

Dave Sherwin: 5:26

Yeah

Dr. Joe: 5:28

Yeah, you know, and I did the same thing. One of my patients actually introduced me to this method and I was like, that just sounds ridiculous. Like stupid is what I said because I had really bad experiences with cold exposure as a teenager now I had to with the people playing jokes with ice cold water and, and trying to beat each other in different swimming, you know, swimming in cold water and so forth. Anyways,, so, but as he started telling me the science behind the whole Wim Hof method and what people have actually found studying, and his method, but there's been many colleges that have actually studied other groups of people that he trained in his method and they were able to see some really cool physiological changes that occurred inside their bodies. And so that, got me into looking into the technique and thinking, okay, maybe this might be something I should at least look into just in case I have a patient that wants to know more about it. I can at least give them my opinion about it. So then I, I got into the method maybe a year and a half ago, I would say. So I'm relatively new compared to a lot of what they call hoffer's out there. When I got into the method, I started reading the research, I started looking at the testimonials that people were talking about and I thought, this really sounds like something that I need to experiment for myself. And, one of the things that I've learned from you, Dave, is that you shouldn't just go off of research that you read. You shouldn't just go off and testimonials that you read. If you really want to see if something works for you in your life, you have to be the experiment. Right?

Dave Sherwin: 7:15

Right.

Dr. Joe: 7:15

I believe you. Yeah. You said those things. If you, if you want to know something works, whether that'd be a supplement or a process or a method, you need to be the experiment yourself because that's really where the work comes down to it. So finally I did that and went ahead and I bought the course that he had at that time and, went through it was a 10 week course and it absolutely changed my life when it came to all these different things I was dealing with with my health. And, and so when you to, to go through kind of like an outline of what the methods all about, there's actually three pillars that they talk about and the three pillars aren't all about cold exposure. Like why would you want to do that? But I'd like to call it training because you're actually using as a way to train your body and your mind. Then the other pillar with the method is actually a breathing process, a specific breathing process that he's been able to develop and adapt with other breathing processes that he's learned and brought into the, into the program. And then the other pillar of the program is actually commitment and a mindset of actually learning how to control your mind and creating new tracks. And so that's, those are the basic pillars.

Dave Sherwin: 8:37

Okay. And so it's not just about getting cold. I mean, you see pictures of Wim Hof online and, and half the time he's got the whole frozen beard and eyelash look and he's got this intense look in his eye, almost like a, I challenge you to come and swim in this Arctic waters with me. I did the Boise half iron man a few years ago and it was, you know, June in Boise can be like February and other places. And the swim was in the the reservoir up above boise. It was 53 degrees and in a half ironman the swim is one point two miles. And I remember,, getting, you know, my, when my heat was coming up and it was time to get in the water, we jumped in the water, it was just freezing. I had a wetsuit on and all, everybody did, as a matter of fact, wet suits were mandatory for safety in that, that a cold water. But, still we got in our hands are exposed, our feet expose. It was just freezing and they put us in the water before they had to. I was like, Hey, y'all sound the bell and we'll jp in and swim. I mean, why lie you tread water in this freezing water. And then it was time to race. And as soon as I put my head down and started to swim, I started to get this intense pressure on my head from the cold water. And I started swimming and,, I swam really fast. I'm not a great swimmer. It was my weakness in triathlon, but I wanted to get out of that water so badly. Oh, it was motivation. It's so,, these are the types of experiences I have and I bet others listening to the show can tell their own stories of times they've been very cold at the same time. We all know that cold therapy has huge advantages. We know that we should ice an injury. For example, I had Brock Roberts from minus 250 degree Chryo therapy on the show and I've, I did cryotherapy. I signed up and I went for a few months and I really liked it. I, I could tell that there was benefits from that intense cold even though it was, a short period of time. And so again, we, we all probably, I bet many of us are just, just like I'm describing, we don't like long exposure to cold and yet probably we all understand that there are benefits to cold, like I mentioned with ice., I remember,, reading Tim Ferriss's stuff and, and one of his tricks for sleep was an ice bath. Go buy a bag of ice from like a local, a gas station, put cold water in your bath, drop the ice in, and then sit there in the ice bath and you'll sleep better. And I thought that's cool, but I'd rather lay awake all night then do that. It's funny., so when you mentioned that commitment is pillar nber three, that makes sense to me. If these people aren't super committed, I, I'm not, I'm not sure how anyone could,, could do this for very long, but you've also said that it's, that these impressions we get and these,, this fear we have of, of not necessarily a fear, but our lack of desire to be really cold isn't necessarily what it's all about. And, and your, you mentioned that,, it doesn't have to be extreme to get the benefits. And so let's talk about after you took the course, what were some of the things you did to experience those really great results you described? And then we'll jump into epiphanies you've had over time and some simplified methods that people can use. So if you took the course, what type of new habits did you develop and what were you doing?

Dr. Joe: 12:56

So when I, when I took the course, the neat thing about the courses, he has organized in a way where it, it, it really does train you to where you could get to the point of swimming in the Arctic and hiking up Mount Kilimanjaro and, and running marathons with. No, I mean I had gotten to the point by the time I was done with the, with the program that I was sitting in ice cold streams and I was sitting in these ice cold bath and I was standing outside for five, 10 minutes in the snow and not even feeling the cold. I mean it was, it was kind of like this empowering feeling, especially because I had this whole fear of cold my whole life because of those bad experiences was so. It was like for me, it was a huge breakthrough of being able to conquer this huge fear I had for so long. And so, so that, that was the cool thing about the programs that I got to the point where I could do those things by one or two, but I found that those things for me personally, we're not sustainable, you know, it, it actually., I was doing a ice bath every single day,, once I got done with the program. But over time I could just find, I found that I a, I didn't feel as good as I did when I was actually just doing the simplified part of the program. And so,, so the, the benefit of the habits that I started to develop where having that daily, I'm cold training process. I'm also the other, the other part of the program is the breathing. Now people don't, I don't think people realize this, but if you're reading and you do breathing a particular way in a particular method that actually increases your body's ability to deal with stress and to deal with pain. And you can imagine ice cold baths are full of stress and pain, right? And so, so the breathing process you in the program actually helps you to build, to get your mind in a place where, and your body into a place where you actually the, the cold, it really doesn't bother you that much and it really is not that pain and that much of a stress once you get to that point. And then a lot of the commitment process that I learned and that I started to implement, we're more stretching, which is, which is an interesting thing. You really good. He really loves yoga. Women really hits hard on the importance of being flexible and stretching and view. If you look at pictures of him or videos with him online, he can do the full splits. I think he's like, I think it was almost 60 years old and he does these full splits that are kind of like John Claude van Damme, if you remember how you see those and we need this. This man is amazing because what he's been able to do with his body now, I am not at that point with the stretching routine, but it has really helped increase my flexibility. So those were the little things that I've, I've put into my daily practice where that, that dailies cold exposure, the breathing process, and then also the stretching and the yoga. But I bet I have wide and so,, that's what you learn with the different programs that he has available. But then you start to realize that okay, there are certain things that he teaches that maybe that's just not exactly what your body needs. You need to simplify. And so that's what I started to do. I started to experiment with, okay, well what if I change the breathing process to this or what if I, instead of doing the deep cold every single day, what if I just had access to, to some way of being able to expose myself to that level of cold maybe once a week. And so personally what I have, and I don't think everyone needs to have this, but I, I bought a big old huge cold freezer and like a deep chest freezer and I filled it up with water and then I let it. I let it run to the point where the water's about maybe 40 degrees and then I get myself in that for about a minute, at least once a week. Wow. And, that, that allows me to do some of that deeper training of my body. And then the rest of the week I just, I just take anywhere from a two, three minute cold shower. And so that's my, that's my process that I use for my cold training. And then,, with the breathing.

Dave Sherwin: 17:21

Oh to stop you there before you get engaged. The breathing. So this,, this freezer that you have a, you just keep it cold all the time, like have you like is the lid like pulled off and this is just now like a cold bath?, or, or, you know, because a freezers designed to freeze things. I can't imagine if it's full of water that it would freeze it all into one ice block. How do you do that?

Dr. Joe: 17:48

Yeah. So I actually filled it full of water just enough. What if I did my whole body in it? The water doesn't run out, but I keep the lid on that way it will stay cool for me, so it only, I only have to run it and I have it on a time to runner so that it actually runs in and cools the water every night for about three or four hours and then it keeps it at that perfect temperature that I want. When I, when I first got really into this and I was like, yeah, I'm gonna I'm going to be like dipping in ice every single day. I actually let the thing cool down to the point where there was probably about a two inch layer of ice on the top and then I would break that ice in the morning and then I would get down inside the tub.

Dave Sherwin: 18:36

Okay. That sounds really worked up to that.

Dr. Joe: 18:43

Yeah, I. It took me, it took me about three months to work up to that.

Dave Sherwin: 18:49

Wow. That is. That is cold. Yeah. To break it up and get in. And how long did you stay in when you were. When you're doing the whole full blown ice thing?

Dr. Joe: 19:02

Only for a couple minutes. The longest I ever did it before was I had a 15 minute session once or I just sat there for 15 minutes and that was, that was the most intense session I've ever done. And when I was done I was like, I'll never do that again.

Dave Sherwin: 19:19

So interesting. Now let's talk about that before we, before we move on, what is the benefit of doing that?

Dr. Joe: 19:27

The, the huge. There's tons of benefits with cold exposure, but one of the biggest benefits, and I've seen it for me is, is, working your cardiovascular system. Now most people don't realize this, but we have, we have, I think it's approximately 80,000 miles of veins, arteries, capillaries inside of our body. I mean, that's, that's a lot of a lot of network when it comes to that part of your body. And, and a lot of us think that when you work out, just like a regular workout, go running, whatever it might be, that you're actually working out that part of your system, but you really don't work it out to the park. That to the level that you really need to, because all of the little arteries inside of our body, they have muscles inside of them that that helped that contract and dilate to help control the blood flow inside of our bodies. Well, when you work out and majority of the time those those vessels just remain dilated. They remain open so that the blood flow can get to where they need to, but the only way you can work out a muscle as it as you know, is if you. If you actually contract the muscle, right, you have to contract the muscle to be able to make it stronger and it healthier. Correct. And so with this, this deeper cold exposure, what it actually does, it actually causes all the different arteries inside your body to contract their muscles. So you're getting approximately 80 million or$880 million, sorry, 80,000 miles of a muscle in your body that you hardly ever workout it. You get to work it out. So as you expose your body to the coal that works out this, these muscles, which then ultimately can actually help you stab off cardiovascular disease. Now this morning I looked up on the CDC website that the nber one cause of death in the United States is heart disease and there's approximately 600,000 people a year I think is what this, this a status saying that died just from cardiovascular disease and one of the studies that they have done in relation to cold exposure, particularly with Wim Hof and his people that he's trained, is that it really works out that cardiovascular system to a really deep level which allows your body to just be stronger when it comes to that part of your body. So believe it or not, cold exposure actually helps you stab off heart disease in your life. Well, that's one of the huge. That's one of the huge benefits with the, with the cold exposure.

Dave Sherwin: 22:18

Excellent. Now you also mentioned that when you start doing this, you personally started to notice benefits. What were the some, some of the things that you. Because obviously, you know, heart disease is kind of a slow building, you know, the plaque is growing., it kind of happens over time. A lot of people don't even notice it coming because it takes a long time to develop. And so when you started doing this, a cold therapy, you actually noticed improvements in your life. What kind of things did you personally see improved in your, in your health?

Dr. Joe: 22:54

So the first one was just the level of inflammation in my body. You know, all of us deal with inflammation because we're exposed to bad food or were exposed to some sort of infection or to an injury, whatever it might be. An inflammation really is, it's a, it's a big problem now. Most of the people that I worked with in my office are dealing with inflammation. If we can help them with those inflammatory processes and their body, they get healthier. And so that was one thing that the cold exposure and the cold training did for me and also breathing that it really helped reduce the inflammation inside my body. And so the, some of the things that showed me that I was reducing inflammation was that my body was less sore. You know, I, I try to work out every single day. I play ice hockey and so I'm really sore a lot of the times because of that. But when, when I was doing this method that soreness was less frequent. And so I, I didn't have stiff joints and stiff muscles. I can actually go throughout my day and so pretty good even though I had a really good workout., another thing that showed me that my inflammation levels were down was that I had left,, issues with like a pollins and,, you know, fever type type issues. I noticed that a lot of people around me who are dealing with hay fever, that,, if they would just control the inflammation in their body, it would be less. And so actually this cold exposure made it so that I personally wouldn't have as much hay fever type symptoms during hayfever seasons., a couple of other things too is that I've, I've had some knee injuries within the last few years that really were bothering me and they, it kinda would get in the way with a certain exercises and so forth. But when I started doing the Wim Hof method everyday, my knees didn't ever bugged me. And, and then, you know, I could've been a coincidence, right? But there have been times where I wasn't as diligent with the methodist I want it to be because of times code or whatever it was, and some of those aches and pains would start creeping back. And so I'd get right back into the method. Aches and pains would go, would go away. So that was a huge thing for me. I'm a, I don't know if this applies to our particular audience either, but I know that a lot of men these days have problems with erectile dysfunction. And, I, I didn't, I didn't have any problems with that in, in my life, but I've had some people that have reported to me personally that sense of bringing this method into their life. It's actually helped them with their erectile dysfunction dysfunction issues because of the working of the veins and so forth.

Dave Sherwin: 25:41

Interesting. I guess part of the whole cardiovascular issue, blood flow and whatnot, and so that once their cardiovascular system was amped up, then then that diminished. Right. Right. Okay. Okay. Well interesting. Okay, so let's move on now to the. When I cut you off earlier to talk more about just the cold part of it. You're about to go into the breathing. Let's go into that now. What's the breathing method?

Dr. Joe: 26:13

Yeah. The breathing method is really neat because he's actually created a process where a, when you do the breathing, you're doing deep breathing, which we all know how important getting oxygen to her body is for our brain, for muscle of all those types of things, and it's just not about taking these deep breaths. Now he talks about how you want to get 30 to 40 deep breaths in during, during one round of your breathing session, but then the end of the breathing session or the end of the 40 breaths that you take in, you actually gently lead out about, I know maybe two thirds of your air and then you hold your breath for as long as you comfortably can and what that actually does, it actually influences your nervous system to start creating more energy. It also actually helps you,, create this in this voluntary stress response in your body which actually increases your body's ability to deal with stress. It helps your body produce certain hormones and elevate certain hormones that allow you to deal with stress and a really good way. And so you may hold your breath anywhere between a minute and a half, two minutes, and then you take a deep breath in, hold that breath in for a count of 15. And then you do another round of 30 to 40 breaths. And you try to do that about three separate times. And that's the breathing exercises.

Dave Sherwin: 27:47

How long does that take to do 30 to 40 deep breaths and then hold your breath and do that for three rounds.

Dr. Joe: 27:54

For me it takes approximately 15 minutes.

Speaker 4: 27:58

Yeah,

Dave Sherwin: 27:58

yeah, that's what I was thinking. I was thinking that, you know, it probably is longer than it in it sounds like 30 to 40 breaths doesn't sound like much, but when you're breathing deeply it's really slowed down and then you start holding your breath. That's interesting. So do you do that every everyday one time? Is that your routine or how do you do it?

Dr. Joe: 28:19

Yep. I definitely try to make sure I do at least three breathing, three rounds of breathing every single day., I found that there were some days where I'm just in a rush, you know where that is, that I have an early meeting that I need to get to whatever it is. I have found that even just getting one round in really, really is beneficial, really ramped up my energy, gets my brain going. And so I try to get at least some sort of breathing process in every single day with this main focus with the 30 to 40 deep breaths. And then that retention, that retention at the end is really where a lot of the power comes from this particular breathing method.

Dave Sherwin: 28:59

And how many of those two third out breaths do you do that? You breathe out two thirds and then hold it. You would you do that at the end of every single round? Just around with.

Dr. Joe: 29:14

Yeah. So. So you would breathe, you do 30 to 40 breaths and then you do the retention with the breath out and then after you're done you do another 30 to 40 breaths and then you have the breath out and then you have the retention and then you do another 30 to 40 breaths with as you breathe out and you have a retention.

Dave Sherwin: 29:33

So you're a total of three times. Yes, yes. Yeah.

Speaker 5: 29:42

Okay. So

Dave Sherwin: 29:44

the simplified method then this is, this is what really got me intrigued and why I wanted to interview you because, you know, we, we've talked about, you know, how this can be kind of extreme. You've already talked about how you really went all in with this, but over time found it wasn't sustainable and yet the, the core tenants of this, you're still implementing into your life and, and even your, you're, you're saying now that the, even just turning your shower cold at the end of a shower has a lot of these benefits, anti-inflammation, et cetera. Is that right?

Dr. Joe: 30:24

Yeah. The general research that people have done with Wim Hof has shown that, that the cold water needs to be anywhere between 45 to 55 degrees somewhere within that 10 degree range to really receive the benefits of it. And, that's pretty cold, right? But some of us don't have showers or we don't have cold lakes and we don't have cold,, you know, chest freezers in our basement to be able to do that. And so I have found that even, even if your water gets in around 60 degrees, that's still pretty cold for most people., and if you can, if you can be under the shower anywhere between 30 seconds to a minute and you do that every single day, that, that consistent exposure actually can, can give you some benefits. And that that's something that I've found that most people can sustain. That was just just the cold shower at the end, at the end of their shower every single day, 30 seconds to a minute. And you're good to go,

Dave Sherwin: 31:31

just 30 seconds to a minute. You don't need to stand there for it kind of thing. That longer is better. So if you do have the time and you stand in your cold shower for five minutes, is that any better or is there like diminishing returns? Like after that one minute, it's not going to do much for you.

Dr. Joe: 31:46

About five minutes. Five between five and 10 minutes is where you're gonna hit your diminishing returns. So you usually don't want to go beyond five or 10 minutes. But,, for most people one minute is you're going to get the minim benefit. I know that,, there's a separate group from Wim Hof that is really, they're huge advocates with cold training and they did a big study, I can't remember how many people were in the study, several hundred people, but they found that there really wasn't a change between a minute, a minute and a half and two minutes when they, when they were heather groups divided up in those areas. So they, so they, they suggested that even if you just do one minute, according to their research was enough to get you the benefits of the cold exposure.

Speaker 5: 32:35

Okay. So, so do

Dave Sherwin: 32:38

you do, do breathing in the shower? I mean, we're picturing kind of here,, the, the simplified method being that as you're having a shower, which is something that the vast majority of Americans do every morning anyway, that you could then implement the breathing while you're cold or it is the breathing. Is a breathing exercise something you should do while you're cold? Or is it just a separate activity that you can just sit in a chair, like a meditative type of experience and do separately?

Dr. Joe: 33:09

It's definitely more of a separate experience, especially if you, like you just said there, you can use it as a meditative experience. So it's a, we already know that there's benefits out there for trying to get at least 15 to 20 minutes worth of meditation in every single day and this is actually the. Especially the way that teaches you how to do the breathing. It's very meditative, you know, there are some days where I actually will turn on meditation music and I'll, I will go through a guided meditation process for 15, 20 minutes as I'm going through the breathing and it's really, really beneficial in that way. So sometimes I'm not just doing the breathing and I'm also doing my meditation process, but you definitely want to make sure you do the breathing outside of the cold exposure. The cold exposure and a cold training is more, it's a, it's, it's safer if you just do that on its own. I know that there's a lot of disclaimers that Wim Hof gives the same. Don't do your breathing when you're in cold water because people have fainted before and you know, that's not a good thing to do while you're in water.

Dave Sherwin: 34:14

Right? Right., okay. So this is making sense. So as we advertised the title of the show, the Wim Hof method simplified. What I'm hearing you say is that the very simple way to get a lot of the benefits of this program would be to implement the breathing activity into your day and could even combine that with meditation, which is something many people are adopting a, a habit of into their life. And then at the end of your shower, simply turn it all the way cold and stand under your shower. Now we talked offline as we were chatting about this a little bit and I asked you a question that I'll just ask you again so you can answer it for everyone listening. Are you supposed to have your head right under the cold water and then the water dripping all the way down your body or have the shower more just right on your body?

Dr. Joe: 35:16

I'll ask the deep question. No, you actually want the water more exposing your body, holding your head under the water member. You were talking about how you got that pain and that headache when you're swimming through the water. Yeah. Because you've got a lot of, you know, rich,, nerves and stuff inside your head that you really don't want to expose for too long in water., I, I'll do that. Like at, I'll, I'll sit there and the water for about a minute and a half to two minutes and at the very end of the two minutes I'll put my head under the water and hold it there for a little bit. And, and then I'm done. So I rarely exposed my head for very long when I do any of this. And I know that a lot of the trainers, the just that if you're going to expose yourself, do, don't expose your, your head for very long to the water. So just focus on maybe your chest or your upper back area. Those are the most important areas.

Dave Sherwin: 36:11

This reminds me of something I heard on Arnold Schwarzenegger say years ago, that one of the worst things you can do after a hard workout is have a hot shower. And he said that he weakens and he mentioned way back when, I can't even remember when I heard this, just a short little snippet that I got from the Arnold, but he just said one of the best things you can do after a hard workout is take a cold shower and how that had a lot of benefits. And he was specifically referring to it as being a strengthening type of a thing. And maintaining your strength from that you're going to gain from,, the workout. Or at least you're going to feel weak if you took a hot shower. I found that to be true. I find that when I do keep the water temperature low or even try to, you know, make it as cold as I can stand there when I get out, I feel like I have a lot more energy and I feel a lot better. Whereas sometimes if the water's hot I get on and just kind of lethargic, you know, and then I just don't have that energy afterwards. So this makes sense, like not only to get all these benefits that you've talked about, but just to get your day started better. Right. To just turn that shower down cold and get yourself invigorated. The other thing is sometimes after I do a really hard workout, I found that if the shower is a little too hot, I get out, I'm getting ready and I find I'm still sweating, especially in the smer. And I hate that. Like I haven't really had cooled down from my workout, you know what I'm talking about.

Dr. Joe: 37:47

Yes.

Dave Sherwin: 37:48

Yeah. Whereas, yeah, yeah. It's just kind of frustrating. So for all of these reasons it just makes sense to just turn that down. So you joke about acclimating and how in the program they have you work up to a lot of these more challenging things. I asse it's the same with the shower. We all have our own kind of internal thermometer of what's cold and what we can stand in, what we can't. So I imagine what you're talking about here is just kinda going as cold as you can stand and just kind of pushing your comfort zone for awhile until you can stand a colder and colder shower until I guess what we want to get to, because you're talking about the 45 to 55 degree range. Well that's going to be all way cold in a shower. Right? That's not going to have any warm water in there at all. It's got to be 100 percent cold.

Dr. Joe: 38:42

You're right. One hundred percent. That when I first started the process, I remember thinking, okay, I'm going to do my cold shower today and I was going to be my first one and I did exactly what they said to do, you know, take your hot shower and then make it as cold as you can handle and then do that for 15 to 30 seconds. So that was how you acclimated. You didn't do it for very long. So I remember turning down the water and being like, oh my gosh, I'm going to die. This is so cold. And I did it for my 15 seconds. I got out and I was like, I don't think I can do this. I, there's no way that I can do this for a long period of time. And, I actually had bought a little digital thermometer, you know, those ones that had like the little laser on it and you can point it into the water. So, and I'm like, okay, I got to see how cool that water was. And so I, I turned it back on the exact same setting where I had it and I, and I pointed that laser in on the water and the water was 70 degrees,

Dave Sherwin: 39:44

like, no, you know, it felt so, so

Dr. Joe: 39:50

horrible. And I was just like, oh my gosh, I'm the biggest plus. I can't believe that I. and I'm, and I was shivering and it, and it was just, it was a crazy response and my body was going through and. But I was determined. I bought the course and when I buy courses, I finished them and I am a finisher. I do not go halfway. So I thought, okay, I'm going to do this. I gotta start doing this. And, and I, I started to realize that a lot of what it was had to do with my willpower to do with my mindset, you know, where was my mind was I was going to allow this, this little thing called cold control me and control the way that I was gonna behave, control the way that I was going to feel. And, and so it actually became a mind game for me, which that that's actually one of probably the biggest benefit I got from doing this process was that it really strengthened my mindset and my resolve to the point where I was like, I don't let things control me anymore. I'm the one that says the master of my emotions. I'm not letting my outside environment influence how I'm going to respond. I'm going to react all those things. And so gradually I was able to finally, you know, overtime get that, that coal to the point where I could get into the ice tub for a minute and be completely fine with it. So that's the, there is that gradual. You know, you, you take that time that you need. If you, if you're only gonna, explode yourself to 70 degrees, that's fine. You do that 70 degrees, 15 seconds, do that every single day for a week and you'll, you'll actually see some really neat benefits come from that. And you'll, you'll find that generally, you'll actually look forward to that next little step of, okay, maybe I can turn it down to 65 degrees. Now maybe I can go to 50 this week,, maybe I can actually do 65 degrees for a minute rather than 30 seconds. You'll find that it becomes kind of a fun game to see. What can you do to challenge yourself with just this cold shower? Right.

Dave Sherwin: 41:51

And just out of curiosity, when you turn your shower water all the way cold, how cold does it get

Dr. Joe: 41:59

right now? Since it's the smertime, it gets about 55, maybe 60, so it's not as cold as I would like it personally. That's why I still have my deep freezer that I tried to get into at least once a week. But during the winter, during the wintertime, which I get excited about this site, I think it's hilarious when I say this now, but during the winter I get really excited because we've got the, the, our water gets colder, it gets down to about 42 degrees in the shower. And then,, another fun thing for me is that about, I don't know, it's about a five minute drive away from the, just from my house. There's a canyon where I get to go to and, my family, there's a little stream in this canyon and, my family and I went up there one one time and we actually dug a little kind of like a tub area and one section of the stream and so during the winter that gets filled up with this, this freezing cold water from the mountain. And so I'll go up there and my wife and I and my kids will go up there. They'll stand in there with their feet because there is a benefit with the even getting your feet exposed and, and then I'll get in my swimsuit and then I sit in that little tub that we made for 30 seconds to a minute. And it's just so invigorating, you know, connecting with the mountains, connecting with that, that the water from the mountains, that pure water. And it's just something that's fun that we get to do during the winter.

Dave Sherwin: 43:26

There's another benefit that occurs to me. One of my pet peeves in a swimming pool is the people that come over to a pool and they tip, they put the toe in it and then they put their foot in it and then they sit on this side and they dangle their legs and they take 20 minutes to get into a pool. So everyone listening, if you're that person, next time you go to a swimming pool, just jp into this stupid thing to get it over with. And, and now you get to play and have fun in the pool instead of spending 20 minutes acclimating yourself. Right?, just,, another, another little benefit that might come to those of you listening who are toe dippers at the swimming pool? Well, Dr Joe, the,, the main things from this as far as the simplified method. I mean, you've given us a lot of good information and I think there's some people that will really dig on this and want, want more and maybe buy a Wim Hof course and, and really go out like you like you did. And then there's probably a lot of people like myself, we like that we get the idea of cold therapy, it makes sense to us and we like to keep things simple and I like the idea of the breathing exercise. That sounds really interesting. And I already, as part of my, when I meditate, one of my meditations, I have a lot of guided meditations, but one meditation I have is simply counting breaths up to 10. I count 10 breaths and I start again and count 10 breaths and I'm simply sitting there counting my breath and trying to bring my thoughts back whenever I'm distracted. It's a very simple meditation. I set a timer for however much time I have a 15, 20 minutes usually, and I'm just counting my breaths. And so this, this one that you've mentioned where you take 30 to 40 breaths and then you breathe out two thirds and hold it and start again. That does work perfectly with meditation, which as you mentioned many people are getting hip about, you know, on meditation right now. And it's really sweeping the country from what I can tell. We're seeing more and more articles about it. We're seeing a lot online about a lot of people are intrigued by it and yet we're still busy. We still, all of us are trying to also, you know, put food on the table and take care of ourselves and, and do all these great habits that we're learning about. So combining a meditation session with 30 to 40 a deep breaths mixed in with the holding the breath and taking 15 minutes. That makes a lot of sense.

Dr. Joe: 46:04

It's been a huge change to me. I keep telling my patients, but this has been one of the nber one thing that I've been able to implement my wife that has really made huge changes with my physical health, emotional health, my mental health. And the cool thing too is that,, just recently Wim Hof made his app that you can get either on the itunes store or the Google play store. It's free and you can download the APP and he gives you basically everything you need to know to do the breathing. He gives you everything you need to know to start acclimating yourself to the cold exposure and it gives you a lesson in commitment in mindset and it's, and it's cool. I mean he's given you his basis of his program for free and if you want deeper training then you can buy any of his other workshops and so I tell my patients all the time, this is a free process. No, the only thing that you really need to do is you need to be able to give yourself anywhere between 20, maybe 30 minutes a day to implement this practice. So you might have to change your sleep schedule a little bit. You might have to change. No. Instead of watching Netflix, you might have to go and do that instead and it's just, it's a huge change. And I have found that the patients who have implemented it have seen a pretty huge, drastic change and and their health.

Dave Sherwin: 47:25

Excellent

Dr. Joe: 47:26

free. You know,

Dave Sherwin: 47:28

I will, I will. I didn't even know about that, about his APP. I will put a link to that in the show notes. This episode will be on our website at[inaudible] dot com. D I R O B I.com. The title is Wim Hof, method simplified. That's w I, m h o f method simplified with Dr Joe Kepo'o, whose last name is Polynesian because he is from the island of Hawaii. And so,, he's got that cool island vibe about him and as I mentioned at the beginning is a true healer and he works with patients all over the country. And, as a matter of fact, it's so interesting. I heard about him through my sister who lives in north bend near Seattle and, I was shocked I hadn't heard of him because he's local. He's like, you don't know who Dr Joe is, he's famous all over the country. And I was like, well, I need to go see him. And I've been seeing him ever since for probably five years now. So anyone listening could take advantage of Dr. Joe's a sort of Dr Joe's treatments. I'm even remotely. So Dr. Joe, how do people get Ahold of you?

Dr. Joe: 48:38

One of the, one of the easiest ways that you can always email me my email is Dr Joe, so that's d, o c t o rj o e dot and the nber three, nber four. So Dr Joe Thirty four at Gmail Dot com and I'm, I'm usually pretty good at answering emails within a couple of days. And then you can also look us up online. Our website is ww dot Ohana chiropractic door at the end. Dot Com. That's the Ohana chiropractor.com.

Dave Sherwin: 49:12

Oh, h a n a Ohana. Chiropractor. And what does Ohana means?

Dr. Joe: 49:17

Ohana means family, family, family, chiropractor. When I, when I got into practice, the first thing someone asked us like what are you going to call your practice? And you just call it Keto chiropractic. And my first thought was, well first of all, people aren't gonna know how to say that very well. And so I'd rather not give them that, that strain., but I, I really, I, I really felt like my family was a big part of my life and a big part of why I even got into chiropractic in the first place. And so, you know, we've got that, we've got that advantage of having the Hawaiian in our, in our blood. So I thought, hey, we'll call it Ohana chiropractic and, and that's words then and it's been, it's been a good, it's a really good precedent for our, for our company in business.

Dave Sherwin: 50:08

I'll say if you ever have a chance to go to Dr Joe's practice, it is swamped all the time. It is busy, busy, busy, just tons of happy customers. Everyone, everyone we have sent over there. I guess I should say patients, not customers, but everyone we sent over the incident. Happy. And you've done a great job for our and, and we just appreciate it and this has been a excellent episode. And,, again for those of you listening, you can go to[inaudible] dot com to see the show notes, I think will create a small infographic with the simplified method of the cold shower and the breathing method for you there. But regardless, we'll have all the show notes, links to anything, anything that we've mentioned and at any parting thoughts or anything we haven't covered before we sign off. Dr Joe.

Dr. Joe: 50:57

No, I think. I think the biggest thing is that if there's any part of you right now, any of you that are listening, if you're just like feeling like, oh, there's no way I can do that, then then that tells me that you need to. That tells me there's something deep inside you that really needs to be released. It needs to be changed. It needs to be cleared. Whatever it is you want to call it, so if you feel any, any little bit of nervousness and even going in the direction of looking at doing this with your life, you need to do it and you're going to get some huge benefits from from doing this process in your life.

Dave Sherwin: 51:33

Excellent. Well, thanks again so much for being on the show and to those of you listening, thank you for listening and supporting the show. We appreciate your feedback, your suggestions and your kind comments on those episodes you really enjoy. If you would go to itunes and leave a review, we have a heck of a time getting reviews on itunes because not many of our listeners listen to it on itunes. They mostly listen to it on the blog or on Google or on Stitcher, but we really appreciate those itunes reviews. If you wouldn't mind going there and I'm leaving that review about the show, that would be much appreciated. Until next time, this is Dave Sherwin wishing you health and success.

Miranda: 52:14

Thanks for listening to the Dirobi Health Show. Make sure you check dirobi.com for a free copy of Dave's excellent health book formula seven and enter to win our free bottle Friday contest. If you're enjoying the show, leave your review on itunes. See you next time.