The cold never bothered me anyway

When most people get up in the morning, it wouldn’t occur to them to put on a vest filled with ice packs and wear it around the house for an hour or so. But that’s exactly what I’m doing right now whilst typing this blog.

A Saturday afternoon pastime usually wouldn’t involve standing in a chamber in minimal clothing for 3 minutes while being chilled to -240°F using liquid nitrogen. And yet Cryotherapy places are popping up all over the place.

The number of people who submerge themselves into ice cold baths, plunge pools and lakes without any kind of insulation are increasing every year.

Why are people doing these torturous things to themselves? Why am I, as someone who hates the cold (ok, so the title was a lie), doing such torturous things to myself?

Well, anyone who knows me, knows I love a self experiment and am intrigued with body science and improving on my bodies systems, even if it means using some bizarre methods. Most of my experiments so far have been centred around nutrition or training, so I guess to focus on another area that ‘could’ improve my health, longevity or athletic performance, appealed to me.

And, as it turns out, there are a whole host of benefits to immersing yourself in freezing temperatures on a regular basis. I do hope these ‘claims’ are true!

‘Known as cold thermogenesis, the practice of exposing your body to very low temperatures can cause significant changes to your biochemistry and body composition, and can lead to overall improvements to the quality of your health and potential for longevity.’

Cold thermogenesis can happen at a number of levels and it’s best to start small. I’m only at the beginner stage at the moment and it’s summer and hot here in Switzerland so maybe things are all a bit too comfortable for me. I’m such a lightweight when it comes to being cold though so it’s a good time to start.

When you’re first getting into experimenting with cold thermogenesis, sleeping in a cold room can be enough to get you started. I will need to get a thermometer for the bedroom as I have no idea what the temperature is during the night but 65°F is what you should be aiming for. I sleep on top of the duvet with the window open and have a fan pointing directly at me. However, at the moment these conditions are just about making it bearable to sleep because of the heat outside. I find to experience a deeper sleep, it helps to have a cold shower just before bed.

What else am I doing to subject myself to colder temperatures and learn to become cold adapted? Here’s an example of my daily routine.

Morning

Wake up and drink 0.5 litres of Ice Cold Water

Have a COLD shower for 3 mins (this was ‘awful’ to start with but now it’s completely bearable and very refreshing)

Day

Wear Ice Vest for at least 1 hour whilst in the house

Evening

Swim in the Lake (this is a big deal for me, even though it’s still warm outside)

Wear Ice Vest for at least 1 hour whilst in the house

Cold Shower before bed

I’m hoping that as Autumn approaches, this initial ‘Honeymoon’ period of cold adaption will help me to carry on and make things a little more bearable!

You’re probably thinking, but why? And that’s a very good question to ask. A question that I’m sure I will be asking myself in a few months time when the outdoor temperature drops a few degrees.

Here’s how cold conditioning works.

Like exercise, short-term, intense cold exposure creates stress on our body. And again like exercise, our bodies adapt to this stress in different ways. These adaptations are linked to a wide range of health benefits and go far beyond just feeling warmer in the cold and increasing our ability to thermoregulate.

Unfortunately, it’s not about taking one cold shower on a Monday morning and hoping that’s it, cold conditioning must be, like exercise, practised regularly to create the adaptive responses and therefore health benefits we are hoping for. But “regularly” can be as little as a few minutes in a cold shower once a day.

Increase Your Brown Fat!

All fat is not created equal. All of us have a ratio of white fat to brown fat, with infants and lean people having a better ratio of brown. White fat is the stuff we immediately think of as fat. The fat which is visibly stored on our bodies usually in the stomach, hip and thigh regions. This is the type of fat that doesn’t metabolise easily.

Brown fat, on the other hand, metabolises very easily and provides us with heat energy at a moment’s notice. While it’s burning calories to produce heat, brown fat does us a couple of other favours too. It uses triglycerides as fuel, removing substances associated with metabolic syndrome and it eats up sugars, an advantage that is being studied by researchers as a possible cure for type 2 diabetes.

Cold also activates a gene that is activated every time we exercise. That gene is UCP1, which works to transform white fat into beige fat, increasing it’s mitochondria and helping it on its way to becoming brown. In other words, both exercise and cold exposure (and even better, both) work to increase the brown fat in our bodies, and that brown fat is what helps to burn the white fat that we don’t want so much of.

Can cold conditioning replace exercise

There seem to be a lot of similarities between the physiological changes exercise is responsible for and also that of cold exposure. However, cold conditioning will never replace the plethora of benefits that exercise provides us with. But taking a cold shower for less than five minutes a day, seems a small price to pay for the impressive differences it could make to your health.

What are those benefits

PHYSICAL BENEFITS

-Strengthens Immune System.

-Improves Circulation and overall Cardiovascular Health.

-Increases blood levels of antioxidants.

-Increases metabolism and calorie burn by activating Brown Fat (BAT) primarily found in your sternum, neck, collar bones and upper back whose function is to generate heat by burning the white fat found on your stomach, bottom, hips and legs.

-Releases a hormone called adiponectin that breaks down white fat and shuttles glucose into muscles which can also lower blood sugar.

-Causes glucose to be burned rapidly as a fuel to assist in heating the body before the blood sugar can potentially be converted to fat via the liver.

-Better Insulin Sensitivity.

-Reduces Inflammation in Joints and Muscles.

-Greater Resistance to Cold and Pain.

-Speeds up Muscle recovery

-Increases Lymphatic Flow which removes metabolic waste products and environmental toxins out of the body faster.

-Improves thyroid and adrenal function.

-Anti Ageing as it induces cellular autophagy which cleans out all the junk within its cells which leads to longer and healthier cell life.

MENTAL BENEFITS

Physical benefits aside, the immediate effects I have experienced with my very limited experience of cold exposure have been that I am actually learning to like being cold. It makes me feel so invigorated and actually rather than stepping out of the shower and shivering, I feel strangely warm. I don’t like hot showers anymore. I am feeling more alert and focused too.

Scientific studies and statistics are all well and good but they do struggle to quantify things like ‘feeling amazing’ or achieving a meditative like calm. But these are all things I have felt after a very short time.

Other mental benefits cold exposure claims to have are:

-It can build strong willpower and mental strength. You can train your nervous system to be more resilient to stress since the cold shock is so intense, most of “real life” stressors pale in comparison.

-It can relieve depression.

-It can improve the quality of sleep.

I’m a long way off experiencing most of the physical changes but mentally, the effects are felt even after about a week.

The next step

Once I’ve adjusted to being in cool temperatures regularly, it will be time to step my game up and take on more advanced cold exposure techniques

The goal is to get cold enough on a regular basis to switch on metabolic activity in your brown fat. This is a critical component in sparking off the benefits associated with cold therapy.

This is where you will see me taking long swims in the near-freezing lake, regular cryotherapy sessions and the direct application of ice to parts of my body in ice baths! This is the stage I am really not looking forward to and may never actually get to but I’m hoping I’m tough enough to do this.

Your metabolism is adaptive, responding best to intermittent exposure to cold exposure. The outcomes you get will be better if you build up thermogenesis over time, so for now, I’ll be sticking to my Ice vest, drinking cold water and 5 minute cold showers.

A Cold Adaptation Challenge for you:

As soon as you wake, turn on your shower as cold as it gets, step in, and remain there for at least a minute.

After a few showers, increase that time to at least two minutes, eventually building up to 5.

Repeat for 7 days.

I’d love to hear about you experiences with cold exposure.

Contact me: lifestyle360@outlook.com