A goosebump reaction to metabolism-bosting cold/Wikimedia Commons
Shivering toward a healthier you
If you were one of the thousands of overweight Alaskans, and there are many of us, left shivering in the cold and dark due to storm-caused power outages in the Anchorage area on Monday, take heart: scientists say it was good for you.
The shivering part that is, not so much the dark.
“Cold acclimation with shivering improves metabolic health in adults with overweight or obesity,” a bevy of Dutch and German researchers reported earlier this month.
After subjecting “15 men and (postmenopausal) women with overweight or obesity” to shivering away an hour per day for 10 days, they found system-wide improvements in their health markers.
The sample size for the study was small, which makes any study more questionable, but some of the responses to the shivering were rather remarkable nonetheless with researchers reporting 10 mmHg decreases in systolic blood pressure and a seven mmHg decreases in diastolic blood pressure in each participant after their very first exposure to cold, a response that only become more pronounced after 10 days.
The study would also indicate there might be more to a new fad called “cold plunging” than the “transformative effects on (one’s) state of mind and sense of wellbeing” that National Public Radio (NPR) reported last year.
“To the uninitiated, it may not be obvious why the practice of cold plunging has attracted a huge following in recent years,” NPR said, noting the not necessarily pleasant effects of cold shock on initial immersion: gasping, possibly hyperventilation, a jump in heart rate and, well, cold.
Some, maybe many, might not see that as a reward, but there is now some science to suggest it might be beneficial for your body even if your mind fails to wrap itself around the psychological benefits reported by the fans of cold water.
“There’s a point where it’s no longer cold anymore,” Riley Swortz told Stone while bobbing in a frigid Puget Sound last year. “This calm washes over you and I feel like that lasts for at least a few days.”
All well and good that, but psychological benefits are hard to measure. Not so with physiological benefits. They are measurable and the Dutch appear to have found something useful at a time when what is known as “metabolic syndrome” is being described as at “epidemic levels” in Western societies.
Metabolic syndrome
He went on to observe that the latest research showed the “overall prevalence of metabolic syndrome increased slightly between 2011 and 2016 – going from 32.5 percent to 36.9 percent – it increased significantly among:
- Women (from 31.7% to 36.6%)
- Adults ages 20 to 39 (from 16.2% to 21.3%)
- Asian (from 19.9% to 26.2%) and Hispanic (from 32.9% to 40.4%) adults
Where exactly these numbers stand today is unclear. The Covid-19 pandemic killed a lot of people suffering from metabolic syndrome, but the disease has also been rapidly growing thanks to the sedentary lifestyles of Americans.
Metabolic syndrome has long been linked to the country’s two major causes of death – heart disease and cancer. The disease, first described in 1988 and primarily linked to cardiovascular deaths at that time, has since been tied to increased risks “of and mortality from colorectal, pancreatic, postmenopausal breast, and bladder cancers.
That “comprehensive review” warned that metabolic syndrome is only increasing in this country and suggested “lifestyle changes” are needed to slow or stop the increase.
“…Strategies may include exercise, diet, or a combination,” the authors of that study wrote. “Aerobic and resistance exercise training, regardless of weight loss or dietary changes, can help if they reduce belly fat.
“Along with reductions in central obesity, exercise releases cytokines from contracting skeletal muscle that have autocrine and endocrine effects on metabolic health, reducing inflammation and promoting whole body insulin sensitivity,” they noted. “Evidence also supports the ability of exercise training, regardless of type, to reduce resting blood pressure among individuals with normal blood pressure, pre-hypertension, and hypertension.
“Furthermore, aerobic exercise, regardless of intensity, and resistance training primarily focusing on higher volume is associated with favorable changes in blood lipids, notably increases in HDL cholesterol and reductions in triglycerides,. Taken together, engaging in regular exercise prevents adverse metabolic health outcomes, and may serve as a strategy to attenuate metabolic dysfunction. Moreover, a pooled meta-analysis of 1.44 million adults found that leisure-time physical activity was associated with lower risk of 13 cancer types.”
The only problem here is that many Americans don’t like to exercise. They prefer the comforts of motorized vehicles to move them from place to place and when not in motion like to spend their time in front of screens, be those of computers or TVs.
This type of behavior is not good for metabolic health, but the latest study suggests turning down the heat might be one way to alter the dynamic. Shivering for an hour in front of the TV or computer might be one way to help boost metabolic health without exercising.
And Alaska has the perfect climate to enable copious amounts of shivering.
Their might even by an opportunity here for Explore Fairbanks, the Interior Alaska organization that has boosted winter tourism in the Fairbanks area by selling the opportunity to view the northern lights.
Maybe they could start another campaign: Come Shiver with Us – It’s good for you health.
Categories: News
When I lived in remote Villages, I remember hearing of riders stuck in overflows or out of gas who tried to walk back during extreme low temperatures. They’d be found at the end of a trail of discarded clothing. At some point of delirium, they would evidently feel too warm.
Discarding clothing is a well-known telltale of someone going hypothermic. There was even a term for it created long ago: “paradoxical undressing.” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/541627/
The late, Anchorage Dr. William Mills once had a serious go-round with Alaska law enforcement because they were treating women found partially clothed outside in extremely cold weather as potential rape victims and often leaving them cold on the ground for hours while they investigated the scene if they appeared dead when found. Mills, who had revived cold people with non-existent or extremely difficult to detect vitals, was firmly of the view that nobody is dead until “they are warm and dead.”
He long suspected some of the women who died of hypothermia would have lived if law enforcement had taken them to the hospital when found instead of leaving them on the ground. There was quite the little dust up when he made the argument they were killing people with their policy on handling these cases.
Craig, very interesting about the “undead” women. I’ve read of kids who fell through the ice on a pond and survived after being under 20+ minutes, however this is the first I’ve heard about Dr. Mills. Thank You for the info.
I remember reading years ago about a young, very fit pilot and an overweight, out of shape hunter who crashed while hunting polar bears out of Barrow. People were shocked that the obese hunter survived, and the fit pilot died. Turns out fat was his friend. It kept his core temperature at a survivable temperature until rescuers arrived.
I’ve been waiting for an anecdote like this. The excess pounds I carry aren’t merely the result of chicken wings and Cabernet, they are a clever attempt to mitigate the effects of hypothermia should an emergency occur.