Intermittent Hypoxia Training and Breathwork

Table of Contents

1. What Intermittent Hypoxia Is
2. The Dose Decides: Sleep Apnea Is the Warning
3. Blood Pressure and Blood Sugar
4. Getting Ready for High Altitude
5. Spinal-Cord Injury Rehabilitation
6. Wim Hof Breathing and the 2014 Endotoxin Study
7. Athletes: “Live High, Train Low”
8. How People Practice It
9. Myths and Overclaims
10. Safety: Water, Driving and Who Should Avoid It
11. Key Research Papers
12. Connections
13. Featured Videos

What Intermittent Hypoxia Is

Hypoxia simply means your tissues are getting less oxygen than usual. Intermittent hypoxia means the low-oxygen spells are short — seconds to minutes — and separated by breaths of normal air, instead of lasting for days the way a stay in the mountains does. The idea behind “training” with it is the same as the idea behind exercise: a brief, controlled stress that the body answers by adapting.

Ordinary air is about 21% oxygen at sea level and on a mountaintop alike; what falls with altitude is the air pressure, so each breath carries fewer oxygen molecules. People recreate that in several ways:

• Hypoxic generators with a mask. A machine removes part of the oxygen from room air and delivers a mix of typically around 10–15% oxygen for a few minutes at a time, alternating with normal air. This is the usual setup for “IHT” sessions.
• Altitude tents and hypoxic rooms. A tent over the bed, or a sealed room, is fed low-oxygen air so that athletes can “sleep high” for many hours while living at sea level.
• Low-pressure (hypobaric) chambers. These lower the air pressure itself, like a real climb. They are mainly research and military equipment.
• Breath-hold and hyperventilation protocols. Holding your breath is its own form of intermittent hypoxia: oxygen in the blood falls with every second of the hold. Breathing fast and deep first blows off carbon dioxide, which delays the urge to breathe, so the hold lasts longer and oxygen falls further. When researchers studied volunteers practicing the breathing method popularized by Wim Hof, they recorded exactly this: repeated swings into respiratory alkalosis (blood that is briefly less acidic because carbon dioxide has been blown off) and hypoxia, with a surge of adrenaline. That is why guided breathwork and machine-based hypoxia training belong on the same page.

How does the body notice? Small sensors in the neck arteries, the carotid bodies, detect falling oxygen within seconds and drive faster breathing, a quicker pulse and a burst of “fight-or-flight” nerve activity. With repeated exposures, an oxygen-sensing switch inside cells — the hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) system, whose discovery won the 2019 Nobel Prize — turns on genes that help tissues cope, including the kidney hormone EPO, which builds red blood cells. A fingertip pulse oximeter shows the result as oxygen saturation (SpO2), normally about 95–100%.

Where the idea came from

Mountaineers have long known that climbing slowly lets the body adjust. Breath retention is old too: holding the breath is part of yogic pranayama (traditional use only; see Breathwork). Deliberate, repeated hypoxia as a treatment was developed by Soviet physiologists in the 1930s, using weeks in mountain camps, high-altitude flights, altitude chambers and low-oxygen gas mixtures, and it was later applied in clinics and sport to a remarkably long list of conditions, from asthma to diabetes. Widespread use is not proof, though: the claims made in that era reach far beyond anything controlled trials have tested since. Western sports science tested “live high, train low” in the 1990s (below), and from the 2010s rehabilitation researchers began running placebo-controlled trials of brief oxygen dips in people with spinal-cord injuries. The breath-hold side reached a mass audience through Wim Hof, a Dutch athlete known for feats of cold endurance, who popularized a method combining fast breathing and breath-holds with cold exposure and meditation.

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The Dose Decides: Sleep Apnea Is the Warning

The single most important fact about intermittent hypoxia is that it can help or harm depending on the dose — much like sunlight or exercise. In 2014, two physiologists at the University of Wisconsin reviewed the research on intermittent hypoxia across the lungs, heart, immune system, metabolism, bone and nervous system, and found a consistent pattern:

• The helpful range: modest hypoxia (about 9–16% oxygen) in few bouts (roughly 3–15 a day) most often produced benefits without detectable harm.
• The harmful range: severe hypoxia (2–8% oxygen) repeated many times a day (48 to 2,400 bouts) produced progressively more damage.

The two features that best separated help from harm were how deep each oxygen dip went and how many dips there were per day. Severe, chronic exposure tended to cause disease; modest, brief exposure was where any benefit appeared. They concluded that “low dose” intermittent hypoxia may be a simple, safe treatment worth testing for several disorders — with the emphasis on low. Evidence tier: review of animal and human research.

Obstructive sleep apnea: the harmful dose, every night

Obstructive sleep apnea is intermittent hypoxia in its harmful form. The throat repeatedly collapses during sleep, breathing stops or shrinks, and oxygen dips — in severe cases 30 or more times an hour, all night, every night, for years (see the sleep apnea animation). Two experiments that recreated the oxygen dips in healthy volunteers — without any blocked airway — show that the dips themselves do harm:

• Blood pressure. Researchers in Grenoble, France, exposed 12 healthy people to a sleep-apnea-like pattern of oxygen dips for 14 nights. Daytime mean and diastolic pressure were already 3 mmHg higher after the first night; after two weeks, daytime pressure was up 8 mmHg systolic and 5 mmHg diastolic. Activity in the nerves that tighten blood vessels rose, and the reflex that normally brakes blood pressure weakened. Evidence tier: small controlled human experiment.
• Blood sugar. At Johns Hopkins, 13 healthy volunteers spent five hours awake with about 24 oxygen dips an hour on one day and five hours breathing normal air on another, in random order. After the hypoxia session their insulin sensitivity was about one-sixth lower, their ability to clear glucose independently of insulin also fell, and their heart-rhythm pattern shifted toward “fight-or-flight.” Evidence tier: small randomized crossover experiment.

The practical lessons follow directly. If you snore loudly, stop breathing in your sleep or wake unrefreshed, get tested for sleep apnea — treating it removes a harmful dose you are already receiving, and nobody with untreated sleep apnea needs extra hypoxia from a gadget. And “more” is not better: pushing breath-holds as long as possible, or stacking session after session, moves you toward the harmful end of the curve, not the helpful one.

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Blood Pressure and Blood Sugar

The proposed mechanism. Mild, repeated oxygen dips appear to nudge blood vessels to make more nitric oxide, the gas that relaxes artery walls, and to switch on HIF-driven genes involved in blood-vessel health and glucose handling. Both trials below measured these signals rising in people — but a rising marker in the blood is a clue, not proof of what caused the benefit.

Blood pressure: a real signal from small trials

In a randomized trial from Thailand published in 2020, 47 adults with high blood pressure were assigned to no intervention, to low-oxygen breathing at rest, or to low-oxygen breathing during exercise, for six weeks. Each session alternated eight bouts of 14% oxygen with normal air, adding up to about 24 minutes of hypoxia. Systolic pressure fell by roughly 12–13 mmHg in both hypoxia groups two days after the program ended and was still about 10 mmHg lower four weeks later, and blood markers of nitric oxide rose. That is a clinically meaningful drop, which is why the idea is taken seriously. Evidence tier: small randomized trial. The comparison group received nothing at all — no sham sessions — so extra attention and expectation could explain part of the effect, and it has not been confirmed in large, blinded trials.

Notice the dose: eight gentle bouts at 14% oxygen per session is a world away from the hundreds of deeper dips per night in untreated sleep apnea, which pushes blood pressure up. If your pressure is high, the proven basics come first — see Hypertension.

Blood sugar: a pilot signal, and a null result

A Ukrainian pilot study gave 11 adults with prediabetes and 7 healthy adults, aged 44–70, three weeks of hypoxia training: three sessions a week, each four rounds of five minutes breathing 12% oxygen and five minutes of room air. Fasting glucose and the oral glucose-tolerance test improved in the prediabetes group, with the biggest improvement a month after the sessions ended. Evidence tier: small uncontrolled pilot — there was no untreated prediabetes group for comparison, so it shows the approach is feasible, not that it works.

Exercising in thin air has been tested more rigorously, and the result is sobering. A 2026 meta-analysis pooled 9 randomized trials (278 adults with overweight or obesity) that compared training in low-oxygen air with the same training in normal air. Hypoxia did not beat ordinary training: there were no significant differences in fasting glucose, fasting insulin, blood fats or blood pressure. The trials differed widely in design, and shorter, lower-intensity hypoxia programs looked somewhat better for fasting glucose — one more hint that dose matters. Evidence tier: meta-analysis of randomized trials — a null result.

The takeaway for prediabetes and type 2 diabetes: hypoxia training is an experimental add-on, not a treatment. Whole-food eating, daily movement (see Exercise), good sleep and treating any sleep apnea do the heavy lifting.

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Getting Ready for High Altitude

Acute mountain sickness — headache, nausea, exhaustion and poor sleep — commonly strikes above about 2,000–2,500 meters (6,500–8,200 feet) and usually fades after a few days at the same altitude as the body acclimatizes. Getting some of that adjustment done before the trip is one of the oldest uses of intermittent hypoxia.

In a study at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, six young lowlanders spent 30 hours in a low-pressure chamber set to the equivalent of 4,300 meters (about 14,100 feet), once before and once after three weeks of intermittent altitude exposures: four hours a day, five days a week, at that same simulated altitude. Before the program, half of them developed mountain sickness during the test; afterwards, none did, and their resting breathing had increased — the same adjustment the body makes over days on a real mountain. Evidence tier: very small human study with no separate comparison group; each person served as their own control.

What this means in practice: pre-acclimatization can work, but the protocol that worked was demanding — hours a day, most days, for three weeks — and it used a low-pressure chamber. Home altitude tents lower the oxygen share at normal pressure, which is similar but not identical. None of it replaces a slow ascent, knowing the symptoms of mountain sickness, and heading down if they get worse.

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Spinal-Cord Injury Rehabilitation

The strongest controlled evidence that intermittent hypoxia can help comes, perhaps surprisingly, from rehabilitation after spinal-cord injury. The treatment is called acute intermittent hypoxia (AIH): typically fifteen bouts of about 90 seconds breathing low-oxygen air, separated by room air, once a day. In animal studies, brief oxygen dips trigger a serotonin-dependent strengthening of the nerve pathways that survive an incomplete injury, making the spinal cord more responsive to training.

In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial published in Neurology in 2014, 19 people with chronic incomplete spinal-cord injury received five consecutive days of fifteen 90-second bouts of 9% oxygen, or sham sessions of normal air, given alone or followed an hour later by 30 minutes of walking practice. With hypoxia, the 10-meter walk was 3.8 seconds faster than with sham after one day, and still 3.8 seconds faster at two weeks. Hypoxia plus walking practice added about 94 meters to the six-minute walk after five days compared with sham plus walking, and about 97 meters at the one-week follow-up; the combination beat hypoxia alone. Evidence tier: randomized controlled trial (small).

A 2026 meta-analysis of 9 randomized, sham-controlled trials (114 participants) concluded that AIH is safe, well tolerated and has low drop-out, and that it improved walking speed, walking endurance, muscle strength and hand dexterity in incomplete spinal-cord injury. It found no significant effect on balance. The trials are small and used different protocols, so larger standardized studies are still needed. Evidence tier: meta-analysis of small randomized trials.

Two cautions. First, 9% oxygen is a deep dip, used in these trials with medical screening and monitoring; it is not a home protocol. Second, the biggest gains came when AIH was paired with walking practice — it primes the nervous system for training rather than replacing it.

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Wim Hof Breathing and the 2014 Endotoxin Study

The breathing method popularized by Wim Hof runs in rounds: a series of deep, fast breaths, then a breath-hold after breathing out, then a deep recovery breath. Guided audio and video sessions talk people through it, and it is often paired with cold showers or ice baths. Physiologically it is a do-it-yourself intermittent-hypoxia protocol with an adrenaline surge attached. For the method in more depth and its cold-exposure side, see our deep dive on Wim Hof breathing and Cold Exposure.

What the 2014 PNAS study did

Researchers at Radboud University Medical Centre in the Netherlands randomly assigned 24 healthy volunteers to two groups of 12. One group trained for 10 days in meditation, breathing techniques (cyclic hyperventilation followed by breath retention) and cold exposure, including immersion in ice-cold water; the other group received no training. Everyone was then injected with a small, standardized dose of bacterial endotoxin (2 ng/kg of E. coli endotoxin) — a well-established laboratory model of inflammation that briefly causes flu-like symptoms.

• While practicing the breathing, the trained volunteers went through repeated bouts of respiratory alkalosis and hypoxia, and the adrenaline (epinephrine) in their blood rose sharply.
• After the endotoxin, their anti-inflammatory messenger IL-10 rose faster and higher — and the more adrenaline beforehand, the more IL-10.
• Their pro-inflammatory messengers TNF-alpha, IL-6 and IL-8 were lower, and they reported fewer flu-like symptoms.

This was genuinely important science. The autonomic nervous system and the innate immune system had been regarded as beyond voluntary control, and here healthy people learned, in 10 days, to influence both. Evidence tier: small randomized trial in healthy volunteers.

What the follow-up showed

Because the 2014 program bundled three things together, the same research group ran two follow-up experiments, published in 2022, in healthy young men. In the first, 40 volunteers learned two breathing exercises with short or extensive training, taught either by the method’s creator or by an independent trainer; adrenaline rose just as much whichever way they were taught. In the second, 48 volunteers were randomized to cold training, breathing training, both, or neither, and then received the endotoxin. Cold training alone did not meaningfully change the inflammatory response; the breathing exercise did, and adding cold training strengthened it. Evidence tier: small randomized pilot trials. The breathing, in other words, is the active ingredient — and it does not depend on a particular teacher.

What these studies did not show

• No disease was treated. Everyone was healthy, and the “illness” was a brief, controlled laboratory reaction to a bacterial toxin — not an infection, an autoimmune disease or a chronic inflammatory condition. The 2014 authors wrote that their findings could have implications for autoimmune disease; that is a hypothesis for future trials, not a result.
• Nothing about catching fewer infections. Damping the early immune response is not automatically good: in a real infection that response is part of how the body fights back. Whether the effect helps, harms or does nothing in real illness was not tested.
• Small, unblinded and narrow. The 2014 groups were 12 people each and the 2022 endotoxin study split 48 people four ways; volunteers obviously knew whether they had been trained; and the follow-up enrolled only healthy young men, so the results may not carry over to women, older adults or people who are ill.
• Hours, not months. The measurements covered the hours around a single laboratory challenge; whether regular practice changes immune function over months was not studied.

A fair summary: practicing this breathing reliably produces an adrenaline surge that measurably turns down the body’s inflammatory response to a laboratory toxin in healthy people. That is a real finding. The leap from there to “boosts immunity” or “cures autoimmune disease” is not supported yet.

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Athletes: “Live High, Train Low”

Living at altitude prompts the kidneys to release more EPO, which builds more red blood cells to carry oxygen. But training hard at altitude is difficult, because the thin air forces slower workouts. “Live high, train low” tries to get both: sleep and rest at altitude, train near sea level.

In a 1997 randomized study, 39 competitive runners (27 men and 12 women) spent four weeks either living at 2,500 meters and training at 1,250 meters, living and training at 2,500 meters, or living and training near sea level. Both altitude groups raised their maximal oxygen uptake by about 5%, in step with a 9% rise in red-cell mass, but only the live-high, train-low group ran a faster 5,000 meters — by an average of 13.4 seconds. Evidence tier: randomized trial (not blinded, real altitude).

The obvious question is placebo: athletes who expect altitude to help may simply try harder. A 2012 study tested this head-on. Sixteen endurance cyclists spent 16 hours a day for four weeks in rooms filled with either low-oxygen air equivalent to 3,000 meters (10 athletes) or ordinary air (6 athletes), and questionnaires showed they did not know which they had. Hemoglobin mass, maximal oxygen uptake and time-trial performance did not change in either group. Evidence tier: double-blind, placebo-controlled trial (small) — a null result.

Where that leaves athletes: weeks of genuine live-high, train-low at real altitude may help some well-trained endurance athletes, but sleeping in low-oxygen rooms did not beat placebo in the most carefully blinded test so far, and a few minutes of hypoxia at rest is a far smaller dose than either. Cheap “training masks” that only restrict airflow make breathing harder work, but they do not deliver thin air the way altitude does, so they are not altitude training.

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How People Practice It

Whatever the method, the same ground rules apply: sit or lie down, stay out of water, never drive, start gently, and stop if you feel chest pain, confusion or anything alarming (see Safety).

• Guided breathwork in the Wim Hof style. Seated, or lying on a bed or the floor: about 30–40 deep, quick breaths; breathe out and hold, without forcing it, until the urge to breathe arrives; then one deep recovery breath held briefly. Guided sessions typically run three or more rounds. Tingling in the hands and face and light-headedness are common and come from blowing off carbon dioxide. Beginners should keep holds comfortable rather than chasing longer times.
• Machine-based hypoxia training at rest. Research programs have used, for example, four rounds of 5 minutes at 12% oxygen alternating with 5 minutes of room air, three times a week for three weeks (the prediabetes pilot), or eight bouts at 14% oxygen per session for six weeks (the blood pressure trial). Many devices display the fingertip oxygen reading throughout.
• Sleeping in an altitude tent or hypoxic room. Used mostly by endurance athletes, for many hours a night over several weeks.
• Pre-acclimatization before a trek. The protocol with evidence behind it used four-hour sessions, five days a week, for three weeks.
• Clinical AIH after spinal-cord injury. Only within supervised rehabilitation programs and research trials.

Two practical notes. Stay in the modest range that the dose research links to benefit — a handful of mild bouts, not an all-out attempt to drive your oxygen as low as it will go. And treat the oximeter as a rough guide: home fingertip oximeters are least reliable at low readings and can overestimate oxygen levels in people with darker skin.

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Myths and Overclaims

• “It alkalizes your body.” Fast breathing blows off carbon dioxide, which briefly makes the blood less acidic (respiratory alkalosis). That shift lowers the free calcium in the blood, which is where the tingling and the stiff, cramping fingers some people feel come from (compare numbness and tingling from low calcium). Within minutes of normal breathing, carbon dioxide and blood pH return to normal. In a healthy person the body holds blood pH in a narrow range, about 7.35–7.45, and a lasting “alkaline body” is neither achievable this way nor a health goal.
• “Deep breathing floods your cells with oxygen.” At rest, healthy blood is already about 95–100% saturated with oxygen, so extra breathing adds almost none (see how hemoglobin carries oxygen). What over-breathing mostly does is lower carbon dioxide, which narrows the brain’s blood vessels — hence the light-headedness. The breath-hold that follows then drives oxygen down. That dip, not an oxygen surplus, is the stimulus.
• “The 2014 study proved it cures autoimmune disease” or “it stops you catching colds.” It did neither. It measured a few hours of response to a laboratory toxin in healthy volunteers (see above).
• “Hypoxia training cures high blood pressure, diabetes or other diseases.” No trial has shown a cure. There are small, encouraging trials for blood pressure, a pilot for prediabetes and a null result for exercising in thin air; the most consistent controlled evidence is in the specialized setting of spinal-cord-injury rehabilitation, where it helps walking but not balance.
• “More is better.” The opposite: the deeper and more frequent the oxygen dips, the more the balance tips toward harm.
• “Sleep apnea is free hypoxia training.” No. It is the harmful dose — too deep, too often, every night — and it should be diagnosed and treated.
• “An altitude mask or tent is a guaranteed performance boost.” Restriction masks do not thin the air, and low-oxygen rooms did no better than placebo in the one double-blind test.

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Safety: Water, Driving and Who Should Avoid It

Never in or near water

This is the rule that saves lives. Hyperventilating before a breath-hold lowers carbon dioxide — and rising carbon dioxide, not falling oxygen, is what normally creates the desperate urge to breathe. With that alarm delayed, oxygen can fall so low that the brain shuts down without warning. On land you slump over and start breathing again. Underwater you drown. This is called hypoxic or shallow-water blackout, and it has killed healthy young swimmers.

After two healthy young men died at a New York City swimming facility in 2011, having deliberately hyperventilated before going underwater, city and state health officials reviewed New York State drowning reports from 1988 to 2011. Their review, published by the CDC in 2015, found 16 fatal and nonfatal drownings linked to a consistent set of voluntary behaviors it named “dangerous underwater breath-holding behaviors,” and practicing more than one of them raised the risk of death. New York City has since adopted rules and public education to discourage them.

• Never practice fast breathing or breath-holds in a pool, bath, hot tub, lake or sea, and never “prepare” for an underwater swim by hyperventilating.
• If you combine breathwork with cold exposure, do the breathing first on dry land and let your breathing return to normal before any cold shower or plunge.
• Children and teenagers who play breath-holding games in pools need to be told plainly why it is dangerous.

Never while driving, standing or at a height

Blackouts and near-faints happen on dry land too. Practice only sitting, or lying on a bed or the floor — never while driving, cycling, standing in a shower, operating machinery or anywhere a sudden loss of consciousness could cause a fall or a crash.

Who should avoid it, or use it only with their doctor’s approval

• Pregnancy. It has not been shown to be safe in pregnancy, and oxygen dips in the mother mean less oxygen for the baby. Avoid breath-hold and hypoxia training.
• Epilepsy. Deliberate over-breathing triggers seizures in most people with absence epilepsy — neurologists use it on purpose during EEG tests to provoke them. Avoid hyperventilation protocols (see Epilepsy).
• Heart disease. Coronary artery disease, heart-rhythm problems, heart failure, a past heart attack or stroke, or uncontrolled high blood pressure: falling oxygen plus an adrenaline surge raises heart rate and blood pressure and can provoke chest pain or rhythm problems. Over-breathing can also trigger spasm of the heart’s arteries in susceptible people.
• Sickle-cell disease and sickle-cell trait. Low oxygen makes sickle hemoglobin stiffen and distort red blood cells, which can then block small blood vessels. People with sickle-cell disease should not do hypoxia training. Even sickle-cell trait, usually harmless, has been linked to splenic infarction (loss of blood supply to the spleen) at altitude — ask a doctor before any altitude tent, chamber or intense breath-hold practice.
• Lung disease, severe anemia or low baseline oxygen. If your oxygen is already low, you have less margin to spare; only under specialist supervision.
• Panic disorder. Rapid breathing can set off panic symptoms; slow, gentle styles are the better starting point (see Breathwork).
• Untreated sleep apnea. You are already receiving a harmful nightly dose; treat that first.

Stop and get help if…

Stop immediately and seek urgent care for chest pain, fainting, a seizure, confusion that does not clear within a minute or two, a severe headache, weakness or numbness on one side, or blue lips that do not pink up as you breathe normally. Mild tingling and light-headedness that fade as soon as you breathe normally are expected; anything beyond that is not.

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Key Research Papers

1. Navarrete-Opazo A, Mitchell GS (2014). Therapeutic potential of intermittent hypoxia: a matter of dose. American Journal of Physiology. Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology. — PubMed PMID: 25231353
2. Tamisier R, Pépin JL, Rémy J, et al. (2011). 14 nights of intermittent hypoxia elevate daytime blood pressure and sympathetic activity in healthy humans. European Respiratory Journal. — PubMed PMID: 20525723
3. Louis M, Punjabi NM (2009). Effects of acute intermittent hypoxia on glucose metabolism in awake healthy volunteers. Journal of Applied Physiology. — PubMed PMID: 19265062
4. Muangritdech N, Hamlin MJ, Sawanyawisuth K, et al. (2020). Hypoxic training improves blood pressure, nitric oxide and hypoxia-inducible factor-1 alpha in hypertensive patients. European Journal of Applied Physiology. — PubMed PMID: 32524226
5. Serebrovska TV, Portnychenko AG, Drevytska TI, et al. (2017). Intermittent hypoxia training in prediabetes patients: Beneficial effects on glucose homeostasis, hypoxia tolerance and gene expression. Experimental Biology and Medicine. — PubMed PMID: 28758418
6. Gatti A, Cavallo C, Giuriato M, et al. (2026). Effects of hypoxic training interventions on cardiometabolic health of adults with overweight and obesity: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Diabetes, Obesity & Metabolism. — PubMed PMID: 41250924
7. Beidleman BA, Muza SR, Fulco CS, et al. (2004). Intermittent altitude exposures reduce acute mountain sickness at 4300 m. Clinical Science. — PubMed PMID: 14561214
8. Hayes HB, Jayaraman A, Herrmann M, Mitchell GS, Rymer WZ, Trumbower RD (2014). Daily intermittent hypoxia enhances walking after chronic spinal cord injury: a randomized trial. Neurology. — PubMed PMID: 24285617
9. Sogbossi ES, Bouffanet B, Pincede J, Ribon-Demars A, Everard G (2026). The effect of acute intermittent hypoxia on enhancing motor functions in adults with incomplete spinal cord injury: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Clinical Rehabilitation. — PubMed PMID: 41117316
10. Kox M, van Eijk LT, Zwaag J, et al. (2014). Voluntary activation of the sympathetic nervous system and attenuation of the innate immune response in humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. — PubMed PMID: 24799686
11. Zwaag J, Naaktgeboren R, van Herwaarden AE, Pickkers P, Kox M (2022). The Effects of Cold Exposure Training and a Breathing Exercise on the Inflammatory Response in Humans: A Pilot Study. Psychosomatic Medicine. — PubMed PMID: 35213875
12. Levine BD, Stray-Gundersen J (1997). "Living high-training low": effect of moderate-altitude acclimatization with low-altitude training on performance. Journal of Applied Physiology. — PubMed PMID: 9216951
13. Siebenmann C, Robach P, Jacobs RA, et al. (2012). "Live high-train low" using normobaric hypoxia: a double-blinded, placebo-controlled study. Journal of Applied Physiology. — PubMed PMID: 22033534
14. Boyd C, Levy A, McProud T, Huang L, Raneses E, Olson C (2015). Fatal and nonfatal drowning outcomes related to dangerous underwater breath-holding behaviors - New York State, 1988-2011. MMWR. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. — PubMed PMID: 25996093

PubMed Topic Searches

1. PubMed: Intermittent hypoxia training in humans
2. PubMed: Acute intermittent hypoxia & spinal-cord injury
3. PubMed: Wim Hof breathing

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Connections

• All Remedies
• Mind, Body and Lifestyle
• Breathwork
• Wim Hof Breathing (Deep Dive)
• Cold Exposure
• Obstructive Sleep Apnea
• Hypertension
• Prediabetes
• Epilepsy
• Sickle Cell Disease
• How Cells Sense Oxygen (Nobel 2019)
• Exercise

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