---
type: Tip
title: Use cold exposure and breathwork
description: Harry's own routine on the road — Wim Hof breathing in cold places and a daily cold shower at home — offered to viewers as an immune-system habit, with the health claims recorded as his.
tags: [health, routine, cold, breathing, pakistan]
timestamp: 2026-08-06T12:00:00Z
---

# Use cold exposure and breathwork

A habit Harry brings with him rather than picks up: **breathing exercises in the
cold, and cold water on purpose.** He credits it with keeping him well while
travelling, and he is unusual among his advice in addressing it straight to the
audience — twice in one week in northern
[Pakistan](/countries/pakistan.md) he stops what he is doing to tell viewers to
try it.

*The physiological claims on this page are his, and are recorded as his. Nothing
in the videos sources them, and the bundle does not assert them.*

## How he applies it

- **Breathing, done where it is cold.** On the terrace at
  [Altit Fort](/places/altit-fort.md) at 2,500 m he stops the tour to do Wim Hof
  breathing and invites viewers to do it with him: breathe in, let go. His stated
  reasoning is that it improves the immune system, that it takes the body
  alkaline, and that doing it in the cold amplifies the effect.
- **Cold water, daily, at home.** He says he takes a cold shower every day when
  he isn't travelling — the part of the routine that survives when the mountains
  don't.
- **He does not claim to be consistent.** In the same breath as recommending it
  he says he has eaten badly for the whole Pakistan trip, desserts and fast food,
  and is only really healthy at home. The advice is offered as something that
  works, not as a description of how he lives on the road.

## Where the idea comes from, and what he adds to it

The clearest version arrives in Hunza, and it is worth separating the two
speakers because Harry does not.

**What the guesthouse owner told him**: people in the valley live unusually long
lives, because the food is organic and fresh — the yak eats nothing but grass —
and because working life keeps everyone physically active into old age. His own
grandmother is 97 and fully capable.

**What Harry adds, unprompted and identified as his own**: that cold exposure
also improves the immune system, and that eating well plus staying active plus
cold water is what extends a life. He puts it to the audience — *comment down
below whether you do any of these things* — which is as close as he gets to
prescribing anything.

The two are recorded separately here because the second is not evidence for the
first: one is a family's account of their own valley, the other is a theory Harry
brought with him.

## The full version, two years earlier

Everything above is the travelling remnant of a routine — a few minutes'
breathing on a terrace, a cold shower at home. [Minca](/places/minca.md), in
February 2022, is the whole protocol done properly, and it predates the Pakistan
material by about two years.

At a private forest spa he runs **four rounds of sauna and cold water over
roughly four hours**, building the intervals as he is told to: about 8 minutes at
60°C, 11–12 at 80°C, 10 at 90°C, and a final 15 minutes at close to 100°C, each
one followed by a plunge into a waterfall deep enough that he cannot touch the
bottom. Green tea, water and a banana between rounds, and he stresses the
drinking.

**His explanation of why is offered with an unusually clear disclaimer** — cold
shocks the body, the stress releases something that improves the immune system,
the heat shocks it further, and alternating is the strongest version. He calls
this a very basic scientific explanation and says outright that he is not a
scientist and that this is all viewers are getting from him. *As above, the
claims are his and the bundle does not assert them; but the disclaimer is his
too, and belongs on the record with them.*

## And the limit, which he also states

This is the entry where the habit has a stop in it. After the 15-minute round at
nearly 100°C — with water thrown on the coals for the last minute or two — he
comes out **dizzy**, calls it, and does no more heat that day.

What he says about it is the transferable part: he knew where his limit was
**because he has done this many times at home**, and viewers need to know theirs
before going looking for it. On a page that otherwise recommends deliberate
discomfort, that is the sentence worth keeping.

## Videos

- [$8 Designer Shoes in Northern Pakistan 🇵🇰](/videos/YS6jAHPQLfc.md) — the
  breathing, done on the fort terrace with viewers invited to join in.
- [I Can't believe this is Pakistan 🇵🇰](/videos/2vsIqSZ1xVo.md) — the full
  argument, the daily cold shower, and the Hunza longevity account he attaches
  it to.
- [Naked Spa in The Middle of Nowhere🇨🇴](/videos/rEyuZHcVMdg.md) — the earliest
  and by far the most complete: four hours of sauna-and-waterfall rounds in
  [Minca](/places/minca.md), with the temperatures, the timings, the disclaimer
  and the point at which he stops.