Thermal Loading - the evolution of Leptin Rx
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ResilientWoman
Posts: 440 Member
[From Jack Kruse's blog: http://jackkruse.com/the-evolution-of-the-leptin-rx/]
Let us learn the best way to cold adapt for the Leptin Rx reset now……..
0. You first must chose what environment you want to cold adapt too. The physics of heat loss following cold water immersion dictate a more rapid drop in surface and core temperature than from exposure to a cold air environment. So most people will choose to use water because it works a lot faster. Before you start, always eat a high fat (MCT>saturated fats>MUFA’s>PUFA’s) and/or protein meal right before you attempt to cold adapt. Also drink 16-32 oz. of ice cold water immediately prior to the test no matter what stage you are at. Why you ask? Your body temperature is incredibly hot at approximately 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, and ice water is approximately 40 degrees Fahrenheit. In order to maintain this homeostasis, your body has to bring that ice water up by about 60 degrees, and, by definition, it takes 1 calorie to raise the temperature of 1 liter of water by approximately 2 degrees Fahrenheit. That means that to raise the temperature of 1 liter of ice water by 60 degrees Fahrenheit, your body would burn about 30 calories. Two liters, which is about eight glasses of water, would burn 60 calories. Do not drink more than 32 oz of water before this test because cold adaptation also effects our thirst centers. You should always consider drinking cold liquids as part of your dietary plan as it can increase your metabolic rate by 30-40%. If you get a lot of brain freezes when you drink cold things this might signal you suffer with a high tissue omega six level. You need to proceed with caution while trying to apply cold thermogenesis. You will see why your omega 6 level matter soon.
I usually will do my training in the AM at sunrise or at night fall after dinner. I do not recommend trying this on an empty stomach. In the beginning of my adaptation I also used Bitter Melon extract to cold adapt. The reason is that bitter melon appears to be quite effective at causing formation of BAT from WAT especially in T2D or those with metabolic syndrome. No one knows why it really works but I believe it is has to do with the simultaneous loss of adiponectin and leptin from fat cells with the simultaneous induction of Irisin from the cold stimulus on the skin and subcutaneous fat.
1. Cold adaptation occurs fastest when you use a metal to help it along. It is a 100 times faster adaptation than it would be if air alone was the medium. This is far too dangerous to use at home, so never try it. I have used it myself and on some volunteers but it needs to be very controlled in a clinical scenario. When you use water it is 24 times more effective than using just cold air. The easiest way to cold adapt is to place your face alone first in ice cold water as you monitor times. You must not use any makeup or facial products before you attempt this. You need a simple skin thermometer, ice, a bathroom sink and a watch with a timer. How does one cool the skin but not the core you ask?? Simply pay attention to your skin temperature as it goes from where it is at normally in your house and until it gets to 50-55 degrees while in your cold environment on your skin surface and maintain it there. Go no lower. How do i do this? When you get there watch your skin color when it begins to get to pale pink or white its going south of 50-55 degrees. End the session then. In the beginning your sessions will end faster than later because you’re cold adapting.
I began this 18 months ago I did a lot or reading on NASA astronaut, Special Ops and Navy Seal training. I also looked to a lot of natural human experience with cold thermogenesis as well. The safest way to adapt to it is to submerge your face first into water in a sink where you add ice to with a cooking thermometer. Wait until the water is between 50-55 degrees and enter face first and see how long you can tolerate it using a time piece. Record the time. For the next two weeks work your way up until you need to take a breath for O2. The rate of adaptation to this will vary for people. When you finish this proceed to number 2.
2. Buy a compression shirt that is quite tight and begin to place 20 or 40 lbs of ice on your torso. Double bag the ice to stop leakage on clothing or furniture. Compression shirts collapses the surface capillaries and allows your skin temps to fall faster than without wearing them. It sensitizes you quickly to cold. Initially this will be tough to to do but you will adapt to it with time quickly. Try to extend your time 5 minutes a time until you get to 60 minutes. You will notice your skin is pink to cherry read and numb in places. When you get to sixty minutes then take the compression shirt off for further testing. Place the direct plastic ice bags on your skin now and repeat the skin cooling. If you develop cold urticaria at this time, this is a sign you have high levels of tissue and serum omega six content. Stop the experiment and adjust your diet until you have a blood omega six to three ratio that is below 10 to 1 using a ketogenic paleolithic diet. You can also test your serum for this as well if you choose. If you do not develop cold urticaria proceed on to see how long you can tolerate the cold. Make sure you have no metal on your torso or ears or nose when you do this. Record your times. Pay attention to your skin color. After ten minutes you will notice numbness and tingling present on these cold areas. As your times increase you may notice numbness in areas adjacent to the ice develop too. This usually occurs with longer exposures and with more surface area covered to your skin. The length of time you expose yourself should be matched to your BMI. The fatter you are the longer your exposure should be. You want your skin to always remain pink to cherry red when you are doing this. If it gets white you need to stop the test and take a warm shower. Do these things indoors initially where you can control the air temperature during adaptation. Do not start this outside until you cold adapt for at least a month. When you can tolerate the skin being covered for one hour with pink to cherry red skin you’re now ready for the Cold Tub step.
3. Once you complete Step 2, you can try cold showers to ready your body for immersion, but I did not use this much when I was training my brain to rewire. I went straight to the bath tub and filled it with cold tap water. With immersion, the major heat exchange in water occurs by means of conduction with the surrounding water. The exceptions to this are the non immersed body parts, in most cases the head. The head can represent a significant site of heat loss to the environment owing to its minimal insulation (small fat layers) and lack of vasoconstriction in the scalp.
I then proceed to add twenty pounds of ice to my chest and abdomen region while my body is in the tub. Initially, I kept my socks and gloves on my extremities and I also wore a knitted cap to my head. This was all to combat the vasoconstriction that normally will occur in extremities. The hat was to to keep in heat from the veins of the scalp to allow for an adaptation to immersion. This step will take you some time to get used too. You lose 20-40% more heat from cerebral blood shunting when you cool adapt. After I was adapted to 20 lbs of ice (about 5-7 days) then I removed socks, gloves and head cap. If you get lightheaded this means your not ready for the tub. Abort the tub and go back to dunking your face in the cold water. If you can handle the 20 pounds of ice you can increase it ten pounds of ice at a time to cover more of your body with icy water. If you have access to skin thermometers (I did) that an anesthesiologist would normally use during a surgery, the key thing you are looking to do is get your skin surface temp to 50-55 degrees. You can buy these on line now too I was told by a patient. I have no idea where he got them. We are trying to use the peripheral nervous system’s cold receptors in the skin to tell the brain something has radically changed in our current environment. After you can get past 45 minutes of this you will notice your tolerance to cold dramatically changes in water, air and in ice. You will be able to wear less clothing and go outside and not be cold. In fact you may notice your temperature rises in anticipation of the cold tub. I do this now all the time. You will be able to drive on the highway with the windows down in the dead of the winter and feel amazing. Your significant other will notice you seem to radiate heat at rest when you lay down to sleep. The longer you tolerate this situation, the better adaptations you will get. The extent of the training depends upon your goal. For this blog we are concerned only about weight loss. So I will limit this discussion to this adaptation alone. There are many other however.
4. At 45 minutes you can choose to stop and then plan on doing this 2-5 times a week depending upon your starting weight, BF %, and what your goals are. You also need to be cognizant of where you want to lose the fat on your body. If you have it in your belly, butt, legs continue using the indoor tub or outdoor lake, or pool. Immersion is the best way to shred body fat and regain LS. Once you can accomplish this in your house for one month you can than move to the outdoors if you like. If you have a pool, lake or hot tub you can set its temp lower to replace the ice use. I tend to use the lake or my hot tub but I use them differently. When I want a quick training to maintain my adaptation I just jump into the lake for a 10-20 minutes from my neck down. I pay attention to my skin color as I do this. The hardest part is emerging from the lake and walking back to the house and not being in the water. It is easier now for me but in the beginning it was tough. Most of the time presently, I use my hot tub to train. I get in it and I cold adapt my upper body with ice bags on my torso while my bottom half is submerged in the water. I alter the water temps to higher than my torso because I have very little fat on this part of lower parts of my body today. So often I will sit in warmer water while my upper half is completely exposed to the elements with ice on my chest and abdomen. It is very effective at lowering your surface temperatures to 50-55 degrees in 2-3 minutes. This augments thermogenesis naturally using convection currents of different temperatures. Here I am using Fournier’s Law. In heat transfer, conduction (or heat conduction) is a mode of transfer of energy within and between bodies of matter, due to a temperature gradient between the hot tub my body, and the cold air and ice on my skin. I can do this for amazing lengths of time now after 18 months of training. Do not try to bit off more than you can chew. Heat spontaneously tends to flows from a body at a higher temperature to a body at a lower temperature. So a warmer lower body and a 50 degree skin temp on the torso create a dynamic that makes using cold thermogenesis really easy daily. Anyone who as soaked in a volcanic geothermal spring can tell you they hardly notice the cold on their exposed bodies unless they see the piloerection of the skin and hairs, their pink skin, or the sub clinical shivering of the underlying muscles. This method is really effective at increasing thermogenesis in the exposed areas for fat loss. If you have a lot of belly fat this is not your best method, but it will still work. If you have torso, back, facial, neck fat (sleep apnea) this works like a charm quickly.
5. You burn a lot more calories when it’s cold outside so you MUST get outside in cold and try not to wear a ton of clothing as you adapt. In the beginning most wear a ton of clothing when they go outside in cold weather. That slows adaptation to cold. According to Andrew J. Young, Ph.D., of the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Natick, Mass., “There are two factors that could cause energy expenditure to increase with falling outdoor temperature. First, if shivering is elicited by cold, then energy expenditure increases. However, different people have differing shivering-response sensitivity, and intensity of shivering will be influenced by magnitude of decrease in body (deep core and skin) temperature, which in turn is influenced by body size and fat content that vary widely among people, as well as clothing worn. So some folks don’t shiver at all (too warmly dressed, excessive body fat, LR), and a man in the cold is not always a cold man. The more LR one is the more you should consider a steeper slope of adaptation to lose fat.
The other reason energy expenditure might increase in cold weather is if you perform heavy physical labor like weight lifting (walking in deep snow). Additionally, there is a likelihood that you could have a slight increase in calorie burn (about 3 to 7 percent) from your body re-warming itself from cold air touching your skin and warming the cold air that goes into your lungs. This is also why when I emerge from my cold tub, lake or ice baths I will remain outside in the buff for several minutes to really heighten the cold stimulus. I immediately go inside to a warm terrycloth robe which captures my thermal loss and actually increases by caloric burn for about an hour after the cooling. This is a great time to work out as well. You will also notice your ability to lift and workout increases by 5-10%. Recovery is simply stunning. You wont believe what a cold tub does after a serious high intensity work out. Your recovery will amaze you and you sleep will be shockingly solid. Nothing is better to induce sleep in my view than cold thermogenesis induction.
The beauty of this adaptation is that is does not require any change to your core temps. When you begin to mess with your core temps you can get into trouble with frostbite and freezing injury. The higher your omega six content the worse cold adapted you will be. The higher your omega three content is the better you will adapt to cold. The higher protein/fat intake you have the slower you will adapt to cold. The more carbs your have in diet (LR) the easier you will find it to adapt to cold. If you have a history of smoking, dipping, cigar use you will not cold adapt well. If you are dehydrated (booze/wine) you will not cold adapt fast either.
6. If you use just air to adapt to cold thermogenesis it will take a lot longer but there is one thing I should mention to you. Try to slowly remove clothing as you proceed over time. As you remove clothing there is a specific way you should pick the clothes to remove. You want to expose your face and head to cold as soon as possible. Remember when in number 1 we begin cold water adaptation with our face. This is because all mammals have a reflex called a dive reflex that is built in because we all were formed in a fluid filled placenta. When we expose ourselves to cold on our face first we stimulate slowing of our heart rate. This is soon followed by vasoconstriction of blood flow in our extremities. When we continue to dive deep (think about dive in the movie the Abyss) we force blood and water to pass through our organs and endothelium to fill our air filled cavities like our chest. This has been experimentally shown even in humans with deep water cold dives in adults. We actually drown in pulmonary fluids but we can still survive! As a physician, I see this problem clinically daily in our ICU’s in patients with ARDS. Sadly, we do not treat them as I think we should given what we know about the mammalian dive reflex but that is another blog. Do not worry I do not plan to use this adaptation in my reset in the near future! I’d love to try it but I hear it takes years to perfect from my research on it.
When you first begin cold training with clothing on, when you re enter a warm environment the way you disrobe also matters for the adaptation to become more comfortable and less agonizing. So first expose your face, then your head to the warm environment. Then expose your extremities to re establish the blood flow and lastly your torso and abdomen. If I am wearing clothing in liquid when I am in cold water I do the same thing. This progression of re exposure to the warm environment from the cold will make it more bearable as time progresses. If you remove clothing in a different layered fashion you can abruptly increase cortisol release to cause a vascular instability. This instability is felt to be behind a thermal dump that underpins vascular reperfusion injuries seen in frostbite and hypothermia injuries. If you are not overheated by heavy clothing or your warming environment, the cold (when other symptoms are warm) will trigger non-shivering thermogenesis to be induced and you will continue to burn calories as free heat for many hours after the cold exposure. This is why people who are in cold environments tend to be quite thin when they are eating a non Western diet. You will also notice a change in your hunger and appetite, because they will decline. This addition is also quite beneficial to those with binge eating disorders too.
The metabolic programs that underpin all these adaptations will blow your mind when I lay them all out this year. I believe that cold thermogenesis is an evolutionary forerunner for all mammalian physiology before exercise was evolved or naturally selected for in mammals. This is a controversial point but I think based upon what we know to be true today its not a fringe theory. The available food sources also helped simultaneously sculpt evolutionary pressures that were naturally selected for in a cold environment. I believe natural exercise was selected for by movements to warmer environments, longer light cycles, and more abundant carbohydrates in the environment. Mammals did not first evolve predominately in warm environments. Humans certainly might have evolved this way…….but we are descended from these eutherian mammals and their epigenetic programs remain buried within us but are just not selected for these days. When we do induce the programs, what this may mean for us today is among the most exciting things in biology I have come across in 30 years. It appears cold thermogenesis not only opens a novel metabolic pathway in modern mammals and humans but it also activates our longevity genes epigenetically. Many of the the things aging researchers and scientist currently hold to as core beliefs………may in fact not be true. The ability to test these theories is now here because of how we are unfolding the story of our own biology using a piece by piece approach that the QUILT provides.
I think evolution sculpted all mammalian life using cold to naturally select for a specific diet that combined for longevity and certain behaviors for optimal living in our world. Today those factors have been buried in modern mammals by the the newer environmental changes that have preferentially selected for new epigenetic traits. But when the environment calls for this program…….we can use it to our full advantage to do many special things.
Consider this…….a 26.2 mile marathon burns 2600 calories. My three hour training session I did this AM burned 3800 calories. The cold effect on weight loss is great…….but what has me more excited is which form of exercise do you think might harm me more long term? One thought might just alter your DNA!
Awesome pictures here for you to see how evolution might have wanted us to have this epigentic program handy in case we needed it again!
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/01/europe/gallery/europe-winter-weather/index.html
CITES:
Selective cryolysis: A novel method of non-invasive fat removal (pages 595–604) Dieter Manstein, Hans Laubach, Kanna Watanabe, William Farinelli, David Zurakowski and R. Rox Anderson Article first published online: 24 OCT 2008 | DOI: 10.1002/lsm.20719
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4393377&page=1#.TzX9JJjMpN1
Hassi, J.; Mäkinen, T.M.; Rintamäki, H. (2005) Prediction and Prevention of Frostbite. In Prevention of Cold Injuries (pp. KN1-1 – KN1-10). Meeting Proceedings RTO-MP-HFM-126, Keynote 1. Neuilly-sur-Seine, France: RTO. Available from: http://www.rto.nato.int/abstracts.asp.
Boström PA, et al., ”PGC1-α-dependent myokine that drives brown-fat-like development of white fat and thermogenesis,” Nature. 2012 Jan 11. doi: 10.1038/nature10777.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0808718
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=5197&page=127
Liu et al.: “Fasting Activation of AgRP Neurons Requires NMDA Receptors and Involves Spinogenesis and Increased Excitatory Tone.” Neuron, DOI:10.1016/j.neuron.2011.11.027
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/nasa-scientist-chills-body-shed-pounds/story?id=12000983#.TzXxpJjMq8V
Tong Shi, et al. “SIRT3, a Mitochondrial Sirtuin Deacetylase, Regulates Mitochondrial Function and Thermogenesis in Brown Adipocytes,” J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 280, No. 14, Issue of April 8, pp. 13560–13567, 2005
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/freezing-fat-fda-green-lights-weight-loss-treatment/story?id=11641994#.TzXx2ZjMq8U
Let us learn the best way to cold adapt for the Leptin Rx reset now……..
0. You first must chose what environment you want to cold adapt too. The physics of heat loss following cold water immersion dictate a more rapid drop in surface and core temperature than from exposure to a cold air environment. So most people will choose to use water because it works a lot faster. Before you start, always eat a high fat (MCT>saturated fats>MUFA’s>PUFA’s) and/or protein meal right before you attempt to cold adapt. Also drink 16-32 oz. of ice cold water immediately prior to the test no matter what stage you are at. Why you ask? Your body temperature is incredibly hot at approximately 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, and ice water is approximately 40 degrees Fahrenheit. In order to maintain this homeostasis, your body has to bring that ice water up by about 60 degrees, and, by definition, it takes 1 calorie to raise the temperature of 1 liter of water by approximately 2 degrees Fahrenheit. That means that to raise the temperature of 1 liter of ice water by 60 degrees Fahrenheit, your body would burn about 30 calories. Two liters, which is about eight glasses of water, would burn 60 calories. Do not drink more than 32 oz of water before this test because cold adaptation also effects our thirst centers. You should always consider drinking cold liquids as part of your dietary plan as it can increase your metabolic rate by 30-40%. If you get a lot of brain freezes when you drink cold things this might signal you suffer with a high tissue omega six level. You need to proceed with caution while trying to apply cold thermogenesis. You will see why your omega 6 level matter soon.
I usually will do my training in the AM at sunrise or at night fall after dinner. I do not recommend trying this on an empty stomach. In the beginning of my adaptation I also used Bitter Melon extract to cold adapt. The reason is that bitter melon appears to be quite effective at causing formation of BAT from WAT especially in T2D or those with metabolic syndrome. No one knows why it really works but I believe it is has to do with the simultaneous loss of adiponectin and leptin from fat cells with the simultaneous induction of Irisin from the cold stimulus on the skin and subcutaneous fat.
1. Cold adaptation occurs fastest when you use a metal to help it along. It is a 100 times faster adaptation than it would be if air alone was the medium. This is far too dangerous to use at home, so never try it. I have used it myself and on some volunteers but it needs to be very controlled in a clinical scenario. When you use water it is 24 times more effective than using just cold air. The easiest way to cold adapt is to place your face alone first in ice cold water as you monitor times. You must not use any makeup or facial products before you attempt this. You need a simple skin thermometer, ice, a bathroom sink and a watch with a timer. How does one cool the skin but not the core you ask?? Simply pay attention to your skin temperature as it goes from where it is at normally in your house and until it gets to 50-55 degrees while in your cold environment on your skin surface and maintain it there. Go no lower. How do i do this? When you get there watch your skin color when it begins to get to pale pink or white its going south of 50-55 degrees. End the session then. In the beginning your sessions will end faster than later because you’re cold adapting.
I began this 18 months ago I did a lot or reading on NASA astronaut, Special Ops and Navy Seal training. I also looked to a lot of natural human experience with cold thermogenesis as well. The safest way to adapt to it is to submerge your face first into water in a sink where you add ice to with a cooking thermometer. Wait until the water is between 50-55 degrees and enter face first and see how long you can tolerate it using a time piece. Record the time. For the next two weeks work your way up until you need to take a breath for O2. The rate of adaptation to this will vary for people. When you finish this proceed to number 2.
2. Buy a compression shirt that is quite tight and begin to place 20 or 40 lbs of ice on your torso. Double bag the ice to stop leakage on clothing or furniture. Compression shirts collapses the surface capillaries and allows your skin temps to fall faster than without wearing them. It sensitizes you quickly to cold. Initially this will be tough to to do but you will adapt to it with time quickly. Try to extend your time 5 minutes a time until you get to 60 minutes. You will notice your skin is pink to cherry read and numb in places. When you get to sixty minutes then take the compression shirt off for further testing. Place the direct plastic ice bags on your skin now and repeat the skin cooling. If you develop cold urticaria at this time, this is a sign you have high levels of tissue and serum omega six content. Stop the experiment and adjust your diet until you have a blood omega six to three ratio that is below 10 to 1 using a ketogenic paleolithic diet. You can also test your serum for this as well if you choose. If you do not develop cold urticaria proceed on to see how long you can tolerate the cold. Make sure you have no metal on your torso or ears or nose when you do this. Record your times. Pay attention to your skin color. After ten minutes you will notice numbness and tingling present on these cold areas. As your times increase you may notice numbness in areas adjacent to the ice develop too. This usually occurs with longer exposures and with more surface area covered to your skin. The length of time you expose yourself should be matched to your BMI. The fatter you are the longer your exposure should be. You want your skin to always remain pink to cherry red when you are doing this. If it gets white you need to stop the test and take a warm shower. Do these things indoors initially where you can control the air temperature during adaptation. Do not start this outside until you cold adapt for at least a month. When you can tolerate the skin being covered for one hour with pink to cherry red skin you’re now ready for the Cold Tub step.
3. Once you complete Step 2, you can try cold showers to ready your body for immersion, but I did not use this much when I was training my brain to rewire. I went straight to the bath tub and filled it with cold tap water. With immersion, the major heat exchange in water occurs by means of conduction with the surrounding water. The exceptions to this are the non immersed body parts, in most cases the head. The head can represent a significant site of heat loss to the environment owing to its minimal insulation (small fat layers) and lack of vasoconstriction in the scalp.
I then proceed to add twenty pounds of ice to my chest and abdomen region while my body is in the tub. Initially, I kept my socks and gloves on my extremities and I also wore a knitted cap to my head. This was all to combat the vasoconstriction that normally will occur in extremities. The hat was to to keep in heat from the veins of the scalp to allow for an adaptation to immersion. This step will take you some time to get used too. You lose 20-40% more heat from cerebral blood shunting when you cool adapt. After I was adapted to 20 lbs of ice (about 5-7 days) then I removed socks, gloves and head cap. If you get lightheaded this means your not ready for the tub. Abort the tub and go back to dunking your face in the cold water. If you can handle the 20 pounds of ice you can increase it ten pounds of ice at a time to cover more of your body with icy water. If you have access to skin thermometers (I did) that an anesthesiologist would normally use during a surgery, the key thing you are looking to do is get your skin surface temp to 50-55 degrees. You can buy these on line now too I was told by a patient. I have no idea where he got them. We are trying to use the peripheral nervous system’s cold receptors in the skin to tell the brain something has radically changed in our current environment. After you can get past 45 minutes of this you will notice your tolerance to cold dramatically changes in water, air and in ice. You will be able to wear less clothing and go outside and not be cold. In fact you may notice your temperature rises in anticipation of the cold tub. I do this now all the time. You will be able to drive on the highway with the windows down in the dead of the winter and feel amazing. Your significant other will notice you seem to radiate heat at rest when you lay down to sleep. The longer you tolerate this situation, the better adaptations you will get. The extent of the training depends upon your goal. For this blog we are concerned only about weight loss. So I will limit this discussion to this adaptation alone. There are many other however.
4. At 45 minutes you can choose to stop and then plan on doing this 2-5 times a week depending upon your starting weight, BF %, and what your goals are. You also need to be cognizant of where you want to lose the fat on your body. If you have it in your belly, butt, legs continue using the indoor tub or outdoor lake, or pool. Immersion is the best way to shred body fat and regain LS. Once you can accomplish this in your house for one month you can than move to the outdoors if you like. If you have a pool, lake or hot tub you can set its temp lower to replace the ice use. I tend to use the lake or my hot tub but I use them differently. When I want a quick training to maintain my adaptation I just jump into the lake for a 10-20 minutes from my neck down. I pay attention to my skin color as I do this. The hardest part is emerging from the lake and walking back to the house and not being in the water. It is easier now for me but in the beginning it was tough. Most of the time presently, I use my hot tub to train. I get in it and I cold adapt my upper body with ice bags on my torso while my bottom half is submerged in the water. I alter the water temps to higher than my torso because I have very little fat on this part of lower parts of my body today. So often I will sit in warmer water while my upper half is completely exposed to the elements with ice on my chest and abdomen. It is very effective at lowering your surface temperatures to 50-55 degrees in 2-3 minutes. This augments thermogenesis naturally using convection currents of different temperatures. Here I am using Fournier’s Law. In heat transfer, conduction (or heat conduction) is a mode of transfer of energy within and between bodies of matter, due to a temperature gradient between the hot tub my body, and the cold air and ice on my skin. I can do this for amazing lengths of time now after 18 months of training. Do not try to bit off more than you can chew. Heat spontaneously tends to flows from a body at a higher temperature to a body at a lower temperature. So a warmer lower body and a 50 degree skin temp on the torso create a dynamic that makes using cold thermogenesis really easy daily. Anyone who as soaked in a volcanic geothermal spring can tell you they hardly notice the cold on their exposed bodies unless they see the piloerection of the skin and hairs, their pink skin, or the sub clinical shivering of the underlying muscles. This method is really effective at increasing thermogenesis in the exposed areas for fat loss. If you have a lot of belly fat this is not your best method, but it will still work. If you have torso, back, facial, neck fat (sleep apnea) this works like a charm quickly.
5. You burn a lot more calories when it’s cold outside so you MUST get outside in cold and try not to wear a ton of clothing as you adapt. In the beginning most wear a ton of clothing when they go outside in cold weather. That slows adaptation to cold. According to Andrew J. Young, Ph.D., of the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Natick, Mass., “There are two factors that could cause energy expenditure to increase with falling outdoor temperature. First, if shivering is elicited by cold, then energy expenditure increases. However, different people have differing shivering-response sensitivity, and intensity of shivering will be influenced by magnitude of decrease in body (deep core and skin) temperature, which in turn is influenced by body size and fat content that vary widely among people, as well as clothing worn. So some folks don’t shiver at all (too warmly dressed, excessive body fat, LR), and a man in the cold is not always a cold man. The more LR one is the more you should consider a steeper slope of adaptation to lose fat.
The other reason energy expenditure might increase in cold weather is if you perform heavy physical labor like weight lifting (walking in deep snow). Additionally, there is a likelihood that you could have a slight increase in calorie burn (about 3 to 7 percent) from your body re-warming itself from cold air touching your skin and warming the cold air that goes into your lungs. This is also why when I emerge from my cold tub, lake or ice baths I will remain outside in the buff for several minutes to really heighten the cold stimulus. I immediately go inside to a warm terrycloth robe which captures my thermal loss and actually increases by caloric burn for about an hour after the cooling. This is a great time to work out as well. You will also notice your ability to lift and workout increases by 5-10%. Recovery is simply stunning. You wont believe what a cold tub does after a serious high intensity work out. Your recovery will amaze you and you sleep will be shockingly solid. Nothing is better to induce sleep in my view than cold thermogenesis induction.
The beauty of this adaptation is that is does not require any change to your core temps. When you begin to mess with your core temps you can get into trouble with frostbite and freezing injury. The higher your omega six content the worse cold adapted you will be. The higher your omega three content is the better you will adapt to cold. The higher protein/fat intake you have the slower you will adapt to cold. The more carbs your have in diet (LR) the easier you will find it to adapt to cold. If you have a history of smoking, dipping, cigar use you will not cold adapt well. If you are dehydrated (booze/wine) you will not cold adapt fast either.
6. If you use just air to adapt to cold thermogenesis it will take a lot longer but there is one thing I should mention to you. Try to slowly remove clothing as you proceed over time. As you remove clothing there is a specific way you should pick the clothes to remove. You want to expose your face and head to cold as soon as possible. Remember when in number 1 we begin cold water adaptation with our face. This is because all mammals have a reflex called a dive reflex that is built in because we all were formed in a fluid filled placenta. When we expose ourselves to cold on our face first we stimulate slowing of our heart rate. This is soon followed by vasoconstriction of blood flow in our extremities. When we continue to dive deep (think about dive in the movie the Abyss) we force blood and water to pass through our organs and endothelium to fill our air filled cavities like our chest. This has been experimentally shown even in humans with deep water cold dives in adults. We actually drown in pulmonary fluids but we can still survive! As a physician, I see this problem clinically daily in our ICU’s in patients with ARDS. Sadly, we do not treat them as I think we should given what we know about the mammalian dive reflex but that is another blog. Do not worry I do not plan to use this adaptation in my reset in the near future! I’d love to try it but I hear it takes years to perfect from my research on it.
When you first begin cold training with clothing on, when you re enter a warm environment the way you disrobe also matters for the adaptation to become more comfortable and less agonizing. So first expose your face, then your head to the warm environment. Then expose your extremities to re establish the blood flow and lastly your torso and abdomen. If I am wearing clothing in liquid when I am in cold water I do the same thing. This progression of re exposure to the warm environment from the cold will make it more bearable as time progresses. If you remove clothing in a different layered fashion you can abruptly increase cortisol release to cause a vascular instability. This instability is felt to be behind a thermal dump that underpins vascular reperfusion injuries seen in frostbite and hypothermia injuries. If you are not overheated by heavy clothing or your warming environment, the cold (when other symptoms are warm) will trigger non-shivering thermogenesis to be induced and you will continue to burn calories as free heat for many hours after the cold exposure. This is why people who are in cold environments tend to be quite thin when they are eating a non Western diet. You will also notice a change in your hunger and appetite, because they will decline. This addition is also quite beneficial to those with binge eating disorders too.
The metabolic programs that underpin all these adaptations will blow your mind when I lay them all out this year. I believe that cold thermogenesis is an evolutionary forerunner for all mammalian physiology before exercise was evolved or naturally selected for in mammals. This is a controversial point but I think based upon what we know to be true today its not a fringe theory. The available food sources also helped simultaneously sculpt evolutionary pressures that were naturally selected for in a cold environment. I believe natural exercise was selected for by movements to warmer environments, longer light cycles, and more abundant carbohydrates in the environment. Mammals did not first evolve predominately in warm environments. Humans certainly might have evolved this way…….but we are descended from these eutherian mammals and their epigenetic programs remain buried within us but are just not selected for these days. When we do induce the programs, what this may mean for us today is among the most exciting things in biology I have come across in 30 years. It appears cold thermogenesis not only opens a novel metabolic pathway in modern mammals and humans but it also activates our longevity genes epigenetically. Many of the the things aging researchers and scientist currently hold to as core beliefs………may in fact not be true. The ability to test these theories is now here because of how we are unfolding the story of our own biology using a piece by piece approach that the QUILT provides.
I think evolution sculpted all mammalian life using cold to naturally select for a specific diet that combined for longevity and certain behaviors for optimal living in our world. Today those factors have been buried in modern mammals by the the newer environmental changes that have preferentially selected for new epigenetic traits. But when the environment calls for this program…….we can use it to our full advantage to do many special things.
Consider this…….a 26.2 mile marathon burns 2600 calories. My three hour training session I did this AM burned 3800 calories. The cold effect on weight loss is great…….but what has me more excited is which form of exercise do you think might harm me more long term? One thought might just alter your DNA!
Awesome pictures here for you to see how evolution might have wanted us to have this epigentic program handy in case we needed it again!
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/01/europe/gallery/europe-winter-weather/index.html
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Hassi, J.; Mäkinen, T.M.; Rintamäki, H. (2005) Prediction and Prevention of Frostbite. In Prevention of Cold Injuries (pp. KN1-1 – KN1-10). Meeting Proceedings RTO-MP-HFM-126, Keynote 1. Neuilly-sur-Seine, France: RTO. Available from: http://www.rto.nato.int/abstracts.asp.
Boström PA, et al., ”PGC1-α-dependent myokine that drives brown-fat-like development of white fat and thermogenesis,” Nature. 2012 Jan 11. doi: 10.1038/nature10777.
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Liu et al.: “Fasting Activation of AgRP Neurons Requires NMDA Receptors and Involves Spinogenesis and Increased Excitatory Tone.” Neuron, DOI:10.1016/j.neuron.2011.11.027
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/nasa-scientist-chills-body-shed-pounds/story?id=12000983#.TzXxpJjMq8V
Tong Shi, et al. “SIRT3, a Mitochondrial Sirtuin Deacetylase, Regulates Mitochondrial Function and Thermogenesis in Brown Adipocytes,” J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 280, No. 14, Issue of April 8, pp. 13560–13567, 2005
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/freezing-fat-fda-green-lights-weight-loss-treatment/story?id=11641994#.TzXx2ZjMq8U
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Fascinating!!! Thanks RW!0
