Could Exercising In Frigid Temperatures Make Us Healthier?
When Scott Carney first saw the photo of a nearly naked man sitting comfortably on a glacier in the frigid cold, he was skeptical.
The man — Wim Hof — is a Dutch athlete who claims to control his body temperature in extreme cold through sheer force of will. Exercising in the cold, Hof argues, makes people healthier.
"I actually flew out there with the intention of debunking him as a fraud," says Carney, a Colorado-based journalist, author and senior fellow at Brandeis University's Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism.
But after learning Hof's methodology — a combination of meditation, breathing exercises and immersion in icy cold water — Carney became a believer.
"In a matter of a few days, I was meditating on the bank of a snowy river in
