Losing weight: How feeling the cold can help, according to biomedical scientists
Created: 01/02/2023, 15:00
By: Judith Brown
Anyone who activates their brown adipose tissue causes the white adipose tissue around their hips to melt.
Feeling cold can probably help.
It is supposed to stimulate the metabolism.
Unfortunately, losing weight doesn't work without doing something about it.
On the one hand, it is important to have a negative energy balance, which can be controlled primarily through diet and food.
In addition, exercise can at least help you achieve a tighter figure, even if sport itself does not necessarily make you lose pounds, according to a scientist from the USA.
However, there are other aids that increase fat burning and facilitate weight loss, such as coffee or ginger tea.
But the cold should also play a role and can probably help with a diet.
Losing weight: Feeling cold throughout the day can help, according to biomedical scientists
Freezing is unhealthy: However, anyone who occasionally exposes themselves to cold stimuli is doing something good for their health and weight.
© Cavan Images/IMAGO
Constantly freezing and shivering is unhealthy, but if you feel cold every now and then throughout the day, you can stimulate your metabolism and promote weight loss, explains biochemist and molecular biologist Univ.-Prof.
dr
Alexander Bartelt from the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich to the
German Press Agency (dpa)
.
The so-called brown adipose tissue plays an important role in this.
According to Bartelt, an adult has relatively little brown fat at 100 to 150 grams.
In addition, activity decreases with age.
However, when it is active, it melts the white fatty tissue that accumulates around the hips, for example as a cushion.
Instead, the brown adipose tissue is located around larger blood vessels, for example, and can thus quickly warm the blood.
With the help of the thermogenic lifestyle, one can now increase the activity of brown adipose tissue.
The biomedical specialist recommends incorporating cold stimuli into your everyday life.
Instead of wearing a thick down jacket, you could swap it for a down vest, for example.
Parts of the body, such as the arms, are more exposed to the cold and feel it, which means that the body has to activate its metabolism.
At the same time, it also activates the brown adipose tissue.
This is a mechanism by which calories are converted to heat in the absence of muscle activity or exercise.
"If you keep your brown fat happy, the average person can lose about a pound a year," he said.
Other methods with a similar effect would be, for example, cold showers and Kneipp cures with cold water.
However, one should not overdo it with the cold stimuli.
He therefore recommends the trend of ice bathing only for very healthy people.
"As long as you don't freeze, but feel the cold, that's ok."
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Losing weight: Feeling cold, but not freezing - how brown fat cells are activated
Because freezing means that the body is lagging behind with heat production, as the biomedical scientist explains in an interview with the
Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ)
.
“You shiver when you do it – your muscles contract to generate heat.
That's going too far.” In order to activate the brown fat cells, you don't have to freeze straight away, you just have to feel cold.
In addition, there are substances in coffee or green tea, for example, that also contribute to the activation of brown fat.
Drinking tea regularly can also prolong your life.
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