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Being Colder May Be Good For Your Health

Posted by Soulskill on from the take-a-chill-pill dept.

An anonymous reader writes: If you live in a developed nation, you're probably pretty warm throughout most of the day. Enclosed spaces, thick clothing, and heating devices do a good job to keep the cold away. But this hasn't been the case for most of human history. Even in warmer climates, humans often had to deal with chilly nights and tough winters. That's where our metabolic system evolved, and now people are doing research to figure out if that's a better natural state for maintaining our health.

One recent study found that "when people cool their bedrooms from 75 degrees to 66 degrees, they gain brown fat, the metabolically active fat that burns calories to generate heat." Another showed that "even after controlling for diet, lifestyle, and other factors, people who live in warmer parts of Spain are more likely to be obese than people who live in the cooler parts." The article talks about people letting their house temperatures drop into the 50s and wearing ice vests during the day, all in the name of further research.

5 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. International translation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    For non-Americans (and other Fahrenheit speakers, if any): approximately between 19 and 24 degrees Celsius.

    1. Re:International translation by Rhywden · · Score: 1, Informative

      Not to mention that it's actually the melting point. Even when you have a well-defined pressure of 1 atm, water doesn't have to freeze at 0 C (and it also doesn't have to boil at 100 C). It is likely that it will freeze at that point, but far from being guaranteed. If you're doing things right water can go as far as -50 C before freezing.

  2. 55-65 deg F by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1, Informative

    That's 12.8 - 18.3 deg Celsius for the rest of us.

    (My indoor thermometer says 22 deg C at the moment)

  3. Its not just making the room colder by laoseth · · Score: 5, Informative

    My younger brother was actually one of the test subjects in this study. One thing that isn't mentioned in the source article, but is mentioned in here http://www.nih.gov/researchmat... is that all the subjects got to sleep in at night was a thin bedsheet, and a hospital gown to sleep in. He said the cold month was pretty miserable, especially towards the beginning. Its not like turing your heat down to 62 and then sleeping under a down comforter, it is basically being miserably cold, forcing your body to produce fat to allow you to keep enough heat to actually sleep.

  4. Re:I sleep better in the cold by xaxa · · Score: 3, Informative

    That probably affects the British recommendation -- it's permanently damp here. (amateur data in London, but the official data is only available as a download).

    It's 3C outside now (17:09), with 86% humidity, changing to 0C and fog overnight.