August 2016

Benefits of Cold Showers

Most of us have been caught in that skin-cringing, and often dreaded moment of being the last one to shower. If you haven't then chances are that you've had someone walk into the bathroom, and flush the toilet mid-shower, leaving you covered in bone-chilling cold water, but this may actually be advantageous to our health. An icy shower could burn an extra 500 calories a day. Coined as the “James Bond Shower,” or often referred to as a “Scottish Shower,” turning the temperature down to freezing cold at the end can provide surprising benefits for our body and skin.

There are two kinds of fat in your body: white fat and brown fat. White fat is the bad guy (think the Joker) and brown fat is the good guy (think Batman). White fat is the body fat we all know and struggle to get rid of. When we consume more calories than our body needs to function and we don’t burn those calories for energy, they are stored as white fat, which tends to accumulate at your waist, lower back, neck, and thighs. Brown fat is the good guy you might have never even heard of, and its function is to generate heat to keep your body warm. Here’s the good news: when brown fat is activated due to extreme cold, it burns calories to keep you warm, which could provide a helpful assist in your weight loss plan. How much of an assist? Studies in The New England Journal of Medicine found making yourself cold activates ‘brown fat' – a good type of fat which generates heat, increases metabolism and burns off 'bad' white/yellow fat. Scandinavian researchers found that exposure to cold temperatures increased the metabolic rate of brown fat by fifteen fold, which could help a person drop nine pounds in a year if sustained. Scientists have known about brown fat for decades. Small mammals and human infants have deposits of it around their shoulder blades. It generates heat and helps maintain the body's core temperature. But until now, conventional wisdom held that brown fat dwindles with age and becomes physiologically unimportant.

Three studies in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine overturn that dogma. More importantly, they point to the possibility of a whole new way to help people lose weight and keep it off. "Up to now, the vast majority of interventions have been targeted toward energy intake — meaning reduction of food intake," says Francesco Celi of the National Institutes of Health. "This is a new tack, a new development." Scientists are beginning to work on ways to increase people's stores of brown fat and to turn up its metabolism to make it burn calories faster. The idea is to rev up the body's "good" fat to help it burn off the "bad" fat. It wouldn't take much, says Dr. Aaron Cypess of Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, an author of one of the new studies. "We calculate that if you had three ounces' worth [of brown fat], that would be enough, if maximally stimulated, to burn up 400 to 500 calories per day," Cypess says. "A little bit could go a very long way."

By looking at high-tech imaging scans of nearly 1,800 people, Cypess and his colleagues discovered that almost all adults have small deposits of brown fat around their collarbones and in their necks. Women have twice as much on average as men. But even so, most women have only about a half-ounce of brown fat. White fat is accumulated when we consume more calories than our body needs to function, and we don’t burn these calories for energy. This body fat piles up at our waist, lower back, neck, and thighs, and is the one we all struggle to eliminate. Brown fat is the good fat, which generates heat to keep our bodies warm, and is activated when exposed to extreme cold, according to the Joslin Diabetes Center, a Harvard Medical School affiliate. Thus, cold showers can promote brown fat activity.

The new studies, which also come from the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands and centers in Finland and Sweden, provide some other new insights about brown fat:

— People have less of it as they age.

— Obese people have less than lean people.

— It's activated by spending even a little time in a chilly room.


Major Benefits of Cold Showers and a Slightly Cooler Home in the Winter:

1. Increased Alertness & Better Mood
2. Stimulates Fat Loss
3. Improves Immunity & Circulation
4. Refines Skin & Hair
5. Speeds up D.O.M.S. for shorter muscle soreness & recovery after workouts and athletic events
6. Eases Stress & Relieves depression

* Additional benefits from having the temperature turned down for your showers all year long and in your home during winter are it will also save you money on your hydro and natural gas bill and help lower blood pressure to help you sleep better at night and let's face it EVERYONE could use at least a little more sleep each night for better muscle & connective tissue recovery, higher fat burn count nightly, lower stress and illness rates, better mood for better relationships, better sex drive, better motivation to work out and live a healthy life style, and have more energy for your daily life, not to forget studies show those who have less stress and get better sleep not only are more likely to be thinner but also make 17% more money annually, the list goes on. Having a better and happier life is a comprehensive thing to grasp and the best way to achieve it and keep it is to make small choices daily to make it better and take better care of oneself one moment and one choice at a time, that way the big healthy life changes creep up on you and you will win! Try and pass it on.



Sources:
http://www.medicaldaily.com/benefits-cold-showers-7-reasons-why-taking-cool-showers-good-your-health-289524
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/surprising-benefits-cold-showers.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102964807
http://www.menshealth.co.uk/lose-weight/fast-tips/lose-your-gut-a-cold-shower-445680

---