[nirajshr]

There has been increasing evidence of cold stress and fat loss. My understanding is that cold stress increases the BAT (brown fat) cells, which helps burn fat for energy source.

I have been reading the articles in this blog: http://hypothermics.com/. It is an excellent blog that chronicles many of the findings and the author performs a lot of these tests on himself.

[mikeleung]

Ray Cronise goes through a lot of this stuff in a podcast he did with Dr Rhonda Patrick here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNzZod_d18A

[petertodd]

I'm convinced that cold stress adds brown fat and/or regular fat cells to your body from personal experience: when I started caving about a decade ago I had way worse cold tolerance than I do now; as caves are formed by water most caving is a relatively wet and cold activity. My cold tolerance also got rapidly better, maybe in about two or three years worth of caving, without much weight change associated with it, so I'd guess it was mainly putting on brown fat with maybe some redistribution of the existing fat I had.

Of course, that's no magic bullet: I've probably put on something like 20lb in that timeframe. I definitely need to get more exercise and eat better.

[hd4]

I've been taking cold showers since 2015 and have noticed a huge difference in my cold tolerance and also in how my body reacts to the food I've eaten. There is a point (around winter unsurprisingly) where it becomes too stressful because the water gets too cold to shower in. Anecdotal but I noticed I did lose more weight when I was taking regular cold showers, plus it helped me take up more exercise as my body became a bit more resilient and enduring.

[drjasonharrison]

cold tolerance is also influenced by the ability of the muscles to burn fat to create heat. Adaptation to colder environments takes about two weeks. Ray Cronise's blog discusses this also.

[petertodd]

Ah, interesting! Does that "two weeks" of exposure mean two weeks total of cold exposure? Two weeks after cold exposure? Or something in between?

I'm only a moderate caver, so the longest I've been exposed to cold in that context is something like 16hrs straight, or maybe 32hrs total in a 3-4 day period; most of my exposure caving is much less than that, more like a few hours at a time spaced apart by at least a week.

[Raphmedia]

Wouldn't that make people living in the northern hemisphere less likely to become fat?

[rhino369]

People don't spend all that much time outside and when they do, they wrap up well enough that you don't get very cold.

These hypothetical cold fat burning technqiues, that I've seen, suggest inducing very mild hypothermia (shivering). That only happens rarely in the north.

[Raphmedia]

> they wrap up well enough that you don't get very cold.

Are you certain of that? It gets really cold here and everyone wears jeans. Only children wear winter pants casually. Sometime the air itself is cold enough to get you shivering.

The only time I see people correctly dressed against the cold is when they do winter sports or go hiking in the woods.

[OldSchoolJohnny]

I think it's the opposite, the colder it is the more people heat their homes / cars / dress very warmly. They probably get the least cold exposure naturally.

[coldtea]

>They probably get the least cold exposure naturally.

You seem to have never visited warm and cold climates...

[sanswork]

I grew up in Toronto but I was always much colder in winter when living in Sydney. No insulation, plus vents in the walls and single pane windows mean it's warmer outside but much colder in.

[relaytheurgency]

Just curious, what part of the US do you live in?

[thomyorkie]

Perhaps slightly, but there's a huge difference between cold air and cold water when it comes to removing heat from your body.

[coldtea]

>I have been reading the articles in this blog: http://hypothermics.com/. It is an excellent blog that chronicles many of the findings and the author performs a lot of these tests on himself.

The problem with such blogs is that there's one for all kinds of kooky theories. The hypothermics, the epsom-salters, the music-therapies, the low-carbers, the paleos, the whatevers...

Some theories might turn out validated by scientific research with control groups and everything, but it's hardly worth it trusting such sources until that happens.

[thomyorkie]

Eating a low-carb diet is a kooky theory?

[coldtea]

Eating a low carb diet is just a statement of fact (if one does eat few carbs).

But THE low-carb dies tons of people follow (from specific books, websites, etc.) are just fad diets based on kooky theories that selectively pick partial scientific results, add some cargo cult and personal opinion (e.g. from the late Atkins) as opposed to peer reviewed and agreed upon medical consensus, and promote it as the ultimate solution to weight loss.

Many promoters of dietary schemes would have us believe that a special substance or combination of foods will automatically result in weight reduction. That's simply not true. To lose weight, you must eat less, or exercise more, or do both.

http://www.quackwatch.com/06ResearchProjects/lcd.html

(I follow a low carb diet myself, in the sense of avoiding sugar and white flour etc, but not with the proper scientific adjustments and balances -- e.g. fruit are fine--, not because some late 70s doctor said so, or because some health guru promotes a specific version of it).

[sandworm101]

It is a little more complex than calories in and calories out. It isnt kooky to suggest that some foods (liquid sugar) are absorbed more readily while other calories may pass through without absorbtion (plant fibers). What counts is calories in minus calories flushed away, something nobody really likes to measure.

Take orange juice with or without pulp. Same basic caloric values, but the pulp version carries much of the sugars away.

[emcq]

Liquid sugar also has more calories than plant fibers; it's a bit of a strange comparison.

Many of the details people focus on are second order effects, and I have yet evidence to see that calorie in minus calorie out is a bad model for estimating weight gain.

If you have evidence for the calories being missleading by more than 10% I'd love to see it!

[sandworm101]

I was talking abour two foods with the same calories but with different absorbtion rates resulting in greater or fewer calories passing through the gut undigested. 100cal of coke results in more weight than 100cal of grass clippings. One is easy to absorb and the other passes through almost untouched.

[coldtea]

>It is a little more complex than calories in and calories out. It isnt kooky to suggest that some foods (liquid sugar) are absorbed more readily while other calories may pass through without absorbtion (plant fibers)

No, but it is kooky to suggest it as a standalone diet, complete with various invalid assumptions, outside of scientific dietary consensus.

Plus, you'd be surprised how far the "calories in/out" goes: http://www.fitmole.org/twinkie-diet/

[JPKab]

I take cold showers pretty regularly. Living in Colorado, my tap water is very cold, since it mainly comes from reservoirs filled with snow-melt runoff.

The question though is can this impact abdominal fat or not.

[drjasonharrison]

Look into Ray Cronise's blog. There is a duration x temperature effect that is easier to increase a higher temperatures for longer periods of time.

[coldtea]

Or look into actual scientific studies on the issue, as opposed to the latest X fad person of the day?

Even if they used to be "ex scientists" themselves (lots of people that oversell some cure without verification usually are -- Heck, Linus Pauling had 2 Nobels).

[adrr]

Cold stress is interesting and how evolution allows our body to adapt. Another side effect is hair growth on the body.