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Being Colder May Be Good For Your Health
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.
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.
I live in Thailand. Don't really see obese people here. It's hot. Very hot.
For non-Americans (and other Fahrenheit speakers, if any): approximately between 19 and 24 degrees Celsius.
he asks his mom "Am I a penguin, mom?"
"Of course you are, dear."
A few days later, "Is dad a penguin too?"
Yes, son, dad's a penguin. I'm a penguin. And so are you."
A few more days,"Mom, are grandma and grandpa penguins?"
"Of course they are. We're all penguins, and their ancestors are penguins as far back as you can find. Why do you ask?"
"Because I'm fucking freezing!"
In the living room I've got the windows closed, no heater yet, and it's 65. In the bedroom the window is open and it's in the 40s. I love snuggling under my pile of blankets, and sleep much better that way than I do in the summer when it's 80 in the bedroom.
Likewise, I despise warm climates. Give me the ice and cold and snow! Mind you I prefer to be warm in those climates, but having the option is important. In Nordic countries many parents leave their babies outside in sub zero temperatures.
I keep my house at 62F during the winter, and it never ceases to amaze me when my guests demand the heat be turned up. It's as if they don't understand that there are real costs involved when warming a space up. Besides, those who are cold can add any number of layers of clothing, those who are too warm can only strip so far.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
This study is interesting, but I'm way more interested in the affect of conditioning and body temp regulation. I grew up in the US and all of houses/apartments always had good temperature control as well as ceiling fans in rooms. I got use to living in places where if the temperature was above say 70F, there was a fan running, the air in a room was circulating.
When I studied abroad in Japan and then moved there I discovered this wasn't the case and constructed a theory that early life conditions on body temp are 'imprinted' in a way. Japanese tend to let rooms run very hot. In the Summer/Winter rooms and trains are kept at about 28C maybe 30C (possibly higher in the winter), and I always found these miserable and always resulted in me sweating. I always noticed though that most other (Japanese) people never had this problem though, even in a room thats almost as hot as a mid-summer day in the winter, people would have 2-3 layers of clothes on and would be fine. I knew I wasn't alone either because in talking to other westerners living in Japan I learned that many of them had the same issue too. The only reason I've been able to come up with was that it had to do with how they were raised early on and the kind of temp. environment they are use to living in.
So I'd be curious to see if these physical effects in the study aren't something that isn't tuned by early conditioning.
And exercise is the rest.
The human body is so efficiently optimized to run on as few calories as possible that exercise simply is not effective as a counter to overeating. The calories in a piece of cheesecake would take hours of moderate exercise to burn off. Of course exercise has many benefits, especially in keeping the cardiovascular system in shape which mitigates some of the risks of obesity even if not loosing weight.
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.