Can humans unlock superpowers? (Find out here!)

In this brief guide we are going to answer the question “Can humans unlock superpowers?” we will highlight extraordinary situations of people who have exceeded the limits and we’ll find out how they do it.

Can humans unlock superpowers?

We all have abilities, actually, we can ”unlock superpowers” in dangerous situations, like superstrength. Or, through training we could exceed our current limits.

Let’s be clear: in the real world there are no superheroes that can throw fireballs from their hands or fly so fast around the earth until time stops. That’s fiction and the work of very creative writers.

There are also no truly mutant people who, due to science, have become rare specimens with supernatural powers.

What does really exist, and is proven by science, are human beings with mental and physical capacities that escape common logic and that comparing them with an ordinary person -like me- stand out and can be classified as superhumans.

It has taken millions of years for our bodies to develop incredible abilities.

Soon technology will allow us to overcome the limitations of the body. But sometimes some people seem to anticipate the future of human evolution. The “superhuman” is one step away from existing, as the following cases show.

Unbreakable bones, extraordinary strength, a very powerful vision, super speed and other faculties that take human capacity to the limit and although some didn’t know that our race is capable of that, some of us have special powers that many didn’t imagine exist in real life.

Ingo Swann, the man who could see things millions of miles away

Remote Viewing is a highly standardized and structured psychic ability that allows us to perceive and obtain information in a very precise way about objects or people very far from us and in real time.

It’s considered as an extrasensory perception. The visualizer is said to be directly connected to the collective unconscious, called the Matrix. For some people, this method is crazy.

Ingo Swann, Father of Remote Viewing, gained notoriety when he conducted an experiment to visualize Jupiter in 1973, where he said that Jupiter had rings around it. Jupiter was proven to have rings in 1979 after information was obtained from Voyager, the probe that visited Jupiter, lending credibility to Ingo’s words.

Stephen Wiltshire and a more than photographic memory

This London artist was diagnosed with autism when he was just a child. It’s not known if that condition enhanced the great abilities with which he now stands out.

Wiltshire is able to draw a map of a city just by looking at it once. And it’s not that he draws the landscape in a ‘’similar’’ way, he manages to put together a perfect architectural plan of, for example, metropolises as large as Singapore.

Researchers argue that this level of creativity is only possible thanks to a special connection 

between the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

Wim Hof, the Iceman

This 61-year-old Dutchman surprised the world and especially thousands of scientists by breaking the world record when he spent almost two hours under the ice without his body temperature falling half a degree; all thanks to meditation.

Thanks to this method, its creator claims to have the ability to control the autonomic nervous system and the immune response of his body, which has aroused great excitement in the scientific world.

From there, Wim has ventured to climb Everest in shorts, overcome altitude sickness and run a marathon in the Namib desert without taking a drop of water during the 42 kilometers. A true superhero.

What science says about the Wim Hof method?

Logically all this sounds like science fiction to us, and science doubted that a man would be able to control, following this method, his own immune system, so in 2011 the Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen (Netherlands) wanted to test the Wim Hof’s superpowers. 

For this, they administered endotoxin, a bacterium that causes the immune system to react by causing flu symptoms such as fever, headache or chills.

However, by carrying out his breathing and meditation techniques, Hof greatly increased, compared to other healthy patients, the presence of the stress hormone.

This hormone is released in response to an increase in the activity of the autonomic nervous system and suppresses the response of the immune system. As a result, the immune response of Wim Hof’s body was reduced by 50% compared to other patients, and the creator of the method didn’t suffer any symptoms as a result of the endotoxin.

Three years later, to prove if it was a capacity that only Hof had, or something that could be extended to other people who practiced his method, the same University carried out a new study with 12 volunteers trained by Hof.

All of them showed the same ability as the creator of the method to conscientiously control their autonomic nervous system and, with it, the immune response of their body. Would you dare to try it?

Buddhist monks and their supernatural abilities

During a visit to a small monastery in the 1980s, Harvard medical professor Herbert Benson and his team of researchers studied monks who lived in the Himalayan mountains.

These Buddhists were capable of increasing the temperature of the fingers – of the hands and feet – up to 17 degrees. In addition, it was discovered that monks from India could lower their metabolism by 64%.

As if that weren’t enough, it has been proven that monks are able to sleep on a winter night at an altitude of 5,000 mts in the Himalayas. And without any problem. 

How is Benson’s profession related to the monks’ meditation techniques? Well, the doctor firmly believes that the study of advanced forms of meditation can help the mind to control physical processes that we previously thought of as uncontrollable.

In this sense, Tibetan meditation, which is carried out through a state of mental concentration, served the monks to control a physiological process, body temperature.

On the other hand, Benson developed the relaxation response, a physiological state opposed to stress that helps lower levels of metabolism, respiration, blood pressure and cardiovascular activity.

The method works by repeating a word, sound, phrase, or short sentence that frees the mind from intrusive thoughts. Currently, Benson and his colleagues use the relaxation response to treat disorders such as anxiety, depression, hypertension, insomnia, and even infertility.

What do you think about the ability of these monks to control their temperature? What scientific explanation do you think it could have?

Daniel Tammet and his head full of numbers

The case of the mathematician Daniel Tammet is the best example that man still knows just a little about the brain, since the incredible mental capacity of this British man who was diagnosed with epilepsy, synesthesia, Asperger’s syndrome and Savant syndrome surpasses the understanding of science.

Daniel Tammet is a British mathematical prodigy. He gained the world’s attention when he was able to recite, from memory and without stopping, the number Pi (3.1415 ..) to decimal 22.514 in five hours and nine minutes… without a single mistake!

Do you know any similar cases?

Hysterical strength: the power of the mind that makes you a superhero

In 2006, in Tucson, Arizona, an ordinary man named Tim Boyle saw a Chevrolet Camaro run over a cyclist, who was trapped under the wheels. He ran to the scene and lifted the car long enough for his driver to pull the victim out from underneath.

The same year, Lydia Angyiou in Quebec saw a polar bear sizing up her son who was playing hockey. This woman jumped on the bear and fought it long enough for a neighbor to shoot the bear down. There are dozens of cases like these where seemingly normal people make incredible shows of strength in an extreme situation.

It’s a controversial phenomenon, since the evidence is not conclusive, there are many urban legends, and very few studies about it, for the obvious reason that to verify it, people must be put in danger of death.

One of the theories is that in our daily life we don’t use more than 65% of the capacity of our muscles to produce force, since the risk of injury would be too high if we could consciously reach the maximum.

Dr. Zatsiorsky from the University of Pennsylvania is one of the researchers of this phenomenon and estimates that weightlifters achieve 80% with their training.

In an experiment in which male and female participants were put to weight training, they managed to double or even triple the amount of weight they lifted in just four weeks. However, their muscles had not grown twice as large. Neither the section of their muscles had increased, nor had the type of muscle fiber changed significantly.

Adrenaline

The increase in the intensity of the nerve signal is combined with the adrenaline rush in a dangerous situation, which causes the muscles to have more energy from glucose. But this process takes a few minutes to act.

It seems that it is norepinephrine that acts in a matter of seconds on the nerves that reach the muscles, amplifying their signal. 

Another experiment was even more revealing. Without doing training of any kind, the participants were made to imagine making an effort by hand squeezing. The muscles were not activated when doing this mental exercise, and yet their strength increased by 22%.

But it’s not about superpowers, and of course there’s a limit. The legends of mothers lifting cars to save babies are surely exaggerations. Lifting cars is something that Strongman competitors do on a routine basis.

These athletes can lift a barbell from the ground with 800 lbs (dead weight) and according to calculations, to lift a medium-size car, relying on the lever force, it would be necessary to exert a force equivalent to 400 lbs.

What can be concluded is that this force that comes from inside is due, in large part, to adrenaline and norepinephrine, hormones that are released under stress (in extreme situations).

So if you are in extreme danger, your brain will send the signal, increasing your heart rate, dilating your pupils, increasing your breathing, slowing down your digestion, and ultimately causing your muscles to contract more than they should. normal.

But the work is not only done by these hormones, since the general stress that our body feels is the final ingredient that allows us to have that unreal force. In this process, amounts of enzymes and proteins are released to help us with that, such as endorphins, for example, which also suppress pain.

According to the professor of neuroscience and kinesiology at the University of Victoria (Canada), Paul Zehr, muscles are activated normally in a really efficient way, but our brain seeks to make sure that we don’t exceed our strength too much, since we could hurt ourselves, “Why use all your muscle mass to lift a cup of coffee? ” He wonders.

So, can humans unlock superpowers?

There is no exact definition of what a superpower is supposed to look like. The term is popularly used to describe an exceptional ability that surpasses any human ability or an ability that no human possesses.

However, it seems that human beings are capable of exceeding the limits. Methods such as meditations, or even overcoming force in dangerous situations. Will it be possible to develop superpowers?

Some have gone ahead, with a lot of training and perseverance. Just as many of them seem to be just charlatanism. 

And, do you want to develop superpowers?

FAQS: Can humans unlock superpowers?

In this brief guide answered the question “Can humans unlock superpowers?” We highlighted extraordinary situations of people who have exceeded the limits and found out how they do it.

If you have any questions or comments please let us know.

References

D’Souza, P. (2006). In habitat-Supermom versus the polar bear-By Lydia Angyiou, as told to Patricia D’Souza. Canadian Geographic, 126(3), 114.

Hof, W., & Rosales, J. (2011). Becoming the Iceman. Hillcrest Publishing Group.

Swann, I. (2018). Everybody’s Guide to Natural ESP. Swann-Ryder Productions, LLC.

Tammet, D. (2007). Born on a blue day: Inside the extraordinary mind of an autistic savant. Simon and Schuster.

Zatsiorsky, V. (2004). Muscle modes during shifts of the center of pressure by standing persons: effect of instability and additional support. Experimental brain research, 157(1), 18-31.