All This Cold Weather Might Help You Lose Weight
Oh hey, the Polar Vortex is back again, which means you're probably cursing the skies. There simply isn't anything fun about waking up to temperatures in the single digits, or having to walk to work facing a wind chill of negative 10. The Polar Vortex is not so gently reminding all of us that cold weather is the worst. Or is it? Some scientists in the Netherlands think of cold quite differently than you do. In fact, they see it as beneficial. For your waistline.
According to the team of researchers, led by Dr. Wouter van Marken Lichtenbelt, if we all were exposed to more cold it could help us lose some extra pounds. In a paper published in the medical journal Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism, Lichtenbelt explained that regular exposure to cold air can help people slim down because it makes the body use more energy to keep warm.
"Since most of us are exposed to indoor conditions 90 percent of the time, it is worth exploring health aspects of ambient temperatures," Lichtenbelt is quoted explaining by LiveScience.com. "What would it mean if we let our bodies work again to control body temperature?" To answer this question, Lichtenbelt and his colleagues exposed 51 men to mildly cold temperatures (about 62 degrees) in a room, for a period of 10 days. The men ended up shivering a good deal, and because shivering expends so much energy, they lost a bit of weight.
The key, apparently, is brown fat. Brown fat, otherwise known as brown adipose tissue, burns the body's energy, thus creating heat. If temperatures can activate the fat, it could can burn up to 30 percent of the body’s energy, and you'd lose weight.
It doesn't sound so appealing, but Lichtenbelt is convinced making temperatures colder at odd times can help us all. Not only that, it would maybe toughen us up a bit. “Indoor temperature in most buildings is regulated to minimize the percentage of people dissatisfied,” Lichtenbelt writes in his report. "This results in relatively high indoor temperatures in wintertime. By lack of exposure to a varied ambient temperature, whole populations may be prone to develop diseases like obesity. In addition, people become vulnerable to sudden changes in ambient temperature."
This is all good stuff to know, because even though recent numbers indicate that America's obesity rate may be leveling off — there actually seems to be a class disparity between the people who aren't packing on the pounds and those that are. According to a report published in the Proceeds of National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, "the prevalence of obesity among high-socioeconomic status adolescents has decreased in recent years, whereas the prevalence of obesity among their low-socioeconomic status peers has continued to increase."
Those findings seems to indicate what we've been hearing all along: That by increasing the nutritional awareness of the general public, creating an early appreciation for physical activity in every level of schooling, and working to lower the price of healthy foods could help in the fight against obesity in all levels of society.
And sure, some more Polar Vortices couldn't hurt either.
[Image via Flickr - FBellon]
