I’d wanted to learn about the benefits of cold therapy, to extract the physiological and psychological effects, benefits of getting into cold water, especially as it relates to health benefits, insulin sensitivity etc.
As an intro to this topic – this post covers Professor Andrew Huberman interviewing Dr. Susanna Soberg, an expert in deliberate cold and heat exposure protocols, talking about the science and impact of deliberate cold exposure from this study (Cell reports). The interview also covers the importance of the cold shock response and how to approach a deliberate cold exposure protocol.
FYI – this post has been ‘co-written’ using tools such as:
- Forefront.ai – for transcribing the Youtube video:
- Python / Langchain – for Retrevial and QA from the transcribed content
- Google Bard – for editing the text for clarity
The study
The study was done in Denmark on a male cohort, and carried out by having participants do winter swimming for minimum two days per week, measuring brown fat activation with an infrared camera, and taking fat biopsies. The study was done in a field setting, and participants were encouraged to do the winter swimming whenever they had time. The relevant ‘minimum viable dose’ was 11 minutes of weekly cold exposure.
Why cold therapy?
Cold exposure can improve insulin sensitivity, which can help to prevent type 2 diabetes.
“ We did see that the winter swimmers had an increased insulin sensitivity. They produced less insulin on all the experimental days. We measured insulin when they were fasting, meaning that they hadn’t eaten in eight hours before the study day. We could see that the winter swimmers had lower production of insulin. Also when they had glucose drinks, the winter swimmers had a faster glucose clearance in the bloodstream. So after two hours, we could see that they had a lower level and the curve went down faster than in the control group.”
Cold exposure can increase brown fat, which is a type of fat that helps to burn calories and generate heat.
“ What happens is that you get adapted a little bit every time you go, like exercise, you get a little bit stronger. So every time you go into the cold water you will feel more comfortable in the cold. You are building your adaptation, which happens on a metabolic level, which is happening via activation of your brown fat.
The mitochondria in the brown fat cells are gonna be activated, you’ll have more of those and they will be more efficient at heating you up because the body expects you to do this again. The capillaries in your skin will also become better at constricting. So you will have a better shield of your body to prepare you for the next time.”
Also your stress response will subside a bit, so you will have a less increase of your catecholamines with time. With time also you have, because of this activation of your brown fat or your muscles, you will have an increase in your metabolism, which will then make your insulin sensitivity better.”
Cold exposure can reduce inflammation, which can improve overall health, mood and cognitive function.
- The winter swimmers had lower levels of cortisol at night time – which is beneficial for sleep quality.
And I think it’s very important to think about the cold exposure and the heat exposure as something that lowers the inflammation in the body. And if we can do that, we will have an open door for preventing lifestyle diseases, right? So for type diabetes, but actually also for some mental diseases as well. So as known as depression and anxiety and also Alzheimer’s disease, which are all associated in research, also newer research showing that inflammation increases the risk of depression, anxiety, and Alzheimer’s disease, neurological diseases. So if we can decrease inflammation in the body, we will decrease our modern lifestyle diseases, but also these increasing mental diseases that we see in these modern lifestyle times.
It’s just exposure to temperature, actually just a cold or to heat that is gonna trick our body into a natural state again and reset it where the homeostasis, the balance is lost a bit. So the body is gonna repair itself in that way. And I think it’s beautiful that we can do that just by changing the temperature of our body.
Conclusion
Cold exposure is a safe and effective way to improve health. If you are considering trying cold exposure, be sure to talk to your doctor first and follow any safety tips.
I will incorporate cold baths into my health routines :
- Tuesday, after cardio session – 4 minutes total time (2 x 2 min dip)
- Thursday, after cardio session – 4 minutes total time (2 x 2 min dip)
- Saturday, after cardio session – 4 minutes total time (2 x 2 min dip)
Thanks for reading