up:: [[Wim Hof Method]] people:: [[About Me]] tags:: #my/whm # My WHM Story This is how I found my WHM practice. I've always had poor dental health, combination of genetics and poor care. By the time I gradated highschool, I had no good teeth left. And when I graduated university, I had multiple exposed nerve endings. My only respite came from *prescription painkillers*, from T3 (codeines) to Percocet (oxycodone), and I would be on them for many years, with increasing dosage. Before the painkillers hit, *I'd run freeze cold waters to chill/numb my teeth* - this always hit me with a much more intense pain briefly, but then about 5-10 minutes of peace, where the narcotics would take effect. At the time, I didn't know why it worked, but it made me *associate the cold with a numbness of the body, but clarity of the mind*. And the whole time (15+ years), *my gums were chronically inflamed*, it will take me years to recover healthy blood biomarker levels later in life. I can't think straight when the pain came on. It was this nerve pain that always felt way sharper and than loud than physical injuries. The disruption to sleep started a deathspiral; *most nights I'd wake up every 30 mins from the pain*, to rinse with freezing water, for years. My mindset was in shambles from the lack of sleep, those were dark times. I'm a tech entrepreneur at the time, the sector is hyper competitive and wildly stressful, which did not help. I abused my prescriptions (4-6x dosage) to survive the constant pain, however you see, the big issue with overdose, is that you run out quick. > Which in retrospect was a turning point, hitting rock bottom can be transformative. [[Brene Brown]]'s book [[Atlas of the Heart]] had a quote I liked, it was along the lines that *depression is characterized not by the difficulty* of the situation in itself, but by the *absolute certainty that things will never get better*. I did the math, 20 days until my refill, and I had 3-4 days of pills left. And then I remembered in university, I read about this [[Wim Hof Method]] thing, back then it was a party trick for my to do more push-ups and compete on breath holds (by the way, certainly not the point of WHM). And *I remember being light-headed and numb during my practice*, I was at the end of my ropes, might as well try whatever. I read up more about the method, and my experiences of self-medicating with cold exposure started making sense, I begin to understand the physical processes that relieved my pain. Through [[Breathing Exercises]] and [[Cold Exposure]], I found ways of managing pain through endogenous means, which freed my mind to re-evaluate my life and focus on regaining my health. As I turned 30, I finally bit the bullet and *spend all my savings* to have an Teeth-in-a-Day *surgery*, which *removed all my teeth, and installed 11 implants to house permanent dentures*. My body's finally allowed to heal instead of fighting to survive. And I started looking much more in depth into [[Health, Fitness, and Longevity]] in general. I got certified at WHM Academy 2023 along with some amazing classmates, we trained under incredible level 3 instructors: * [[Daniel Kluken]] * [[Dominique Stulens]] * [[Emma Estrela]] I believe that we now have the know-how to *live extraordinarily rich and long lives* with *great healthspan*, and who knows what another century of technical and medical advancements will bring us. Let’s all get there, in great health towards our twelfth decade and beyond. [Francis Wang official Wim Hof Method Instructor](https://www.wimhofmethod.com/instructors/francis-wang) [[About Me|Francis Wang]] - About Me