Iceman's Hypothalamus

Wim Hof goes by the nickname of Iceman. Somehow, his body temperature is not lowered in the face of extremely cold temperatures. He practices mediation and credits a Tantric Buddhist method called Tummo Yoga, with endowing him the ability to regulate what for most of us is an involuntary act. According to his website:

Not only can you learn to control your autonomic nervous system, Wim´s method can provide you with the following benefits:

• Influence on the immune system
• influence on your mind
• improvement of blood circulation
• improvement of concentration and targeting
• A greater confidence and a conscious development

In addition to selling online courses through his website, Hof also published a book that describes how he taught someone else his techniques. Among the feats reported by ABC News in 2008 Hof swam 80 meters under the ice at the North Pole without developing hypothermia, he set a Guinness record by sitting submerged in ice for 72 minutes, and he went climbing on Mount Everest wearing only shorts. To clarify, he did not make the summit at Everest due to a foot injury, but made it to "only 24,278 feet", according to the India Times. Making 84% of the way up the world's tallest mountain wearing a pair of shorts for protection is evidence enough that something is different with this particular human being. A Dutch researcher published a paper that validated Hof's ability with an interesting caveat (courtesy of Google translator):

These results are certainly remarkable, but scientifically speaking, a finding in a person does not prove that meditation is the autonomic nervous system and the immune response can influence. Therefore we have to investigate whether differences in immune response between a group of people that the concentration method Wim Hof ​​has taught and a group that the method is not controlled.

Harvard studied Tibetan practitioners of Tummo and published in a 2002 gazette:

During visits to remote monasteries in the 1980s, Benson and his team studied monks living in the Himalayan Mountains who could, by g Tum-mo meditation, raise the temperatures of their fingers and toes by as much as 17 degrees. It has yet to be determined how the monks are able to generate such heat. The researchers also made measurements on practitioners of other forms of advanced meditation in Sikkim, India. They were astonished to find that these monks could lower their metabolism by 64 percent. "It was an astounding, breathtaking [no pun intended] result," Benson exclaims. To put that decrease in perspective, metabolism, or oxygen consumption, drops only 10-15 percent in sleep and about 17 percent during simple meditation.

Body temperature is regulated by the hypothalamus. It also secretes hormones that control hunger, thirst, and sleep urges. Operating somewhere between the automatic function regulated by the medulla oblongata and the conscious thoughts of the cerebral cortex, the hypothalamus acts as a control center and regulator between the body and the mind. For example, fear drives up blood pressure by registering the conscious thought in the higher order parts of the brain, passing a hormone from the hypothalamus activates the "fight or flight" response, and the lower order parts of the brain regulate the increased heart rate and sweat. Unlocking use of the hypothalamus is an intriguing ability, which opens the possibility for a wide range of other applications. The functions performed by the hypothalamus is targeted by many self-help books, medicines, etc.