What Doesn't Kill Us: How Freezing Water, Extreme Altitude, and Environmental Conditioning Will Renew Our Lost Evolutionary Strength

by Scott Carney

his flesh to set the bone. A few hours later, when he emerged from surgery, a yellowish incision spanned from his wrist halfway to his elbow with broad, inelegant sutures. A nurse told him that he would have to wait for 2 weeks before they could be removed, but asked him to come back the next day so the doctors could have a look at how the surgery took. Van der Meulen spent the next 4 hours breathing and focusing on his arm. When he tells me this story, I have trouble wrapping my mind around the amount of concentration it must have taken. The effort was constant, but he tells me that it seemed to pay off. When he finally grew tired and went to bed that night, all that was left were the stitches; the resultant swelling from the surgery had markedly subsided. He shows me pictures to prove it. The next day the nurse was shocked.