Deliberate Cold Exposure — How to Do it RIGHT with Dr. Andrew Huberman | The Proof Podcast EP 205

I started my career studying thermal regulation, that's what I did when I was a student and that's why I have a deep love for that literature. We have a healthy fat storage in our body called brown fat, which is literally brown under the microscope because it is rich. with mitochondria, think of it as the oil in a candle, it allows you to feel warm in

cold

temperatures and acts as an oven for your metabolism, it is usually enriched around the collarbones, upper back and around the heart, a little around from the liver, no. the thick fat that people generally want to have less of is endogenous, it's a deep tissue fat, uh, it's really healthy, kids have a lot of it, you tend to lose it over time, unless you expose yourself to the

cold

,

deliberate

exposure

to cold is a way to enrich the amount of brown fat you get a stronger oven, and there is wonderful science on this, recently published in Cell, Cell Reports Medicine, by the first author, Susannah Soberg, from Denmark, and it is a really good work. surprising what they showed. that 11 minutes a week divided into a couple of two- to three-minute sessions of

deliberate

cold

exposure

increases the density of brown fat in adults and allows them to feel more comfortable in cold temperatures when simply walking well, but also when they put in this deliberate cold and I'll talk about how cold in a moment that they then achieve much greater increases in resting central metabolism, improvements in blood lipids, uh, blood lipids and insulin control profiles and there are a few others positive effects such as better mental resilience.

So there are a lot of positive effects, a really wonderful study done in humans, because we want to distinguish between the mouse work when you say increased brown fat density, so it should not be confused with increased body fat, no, no, increased density, so the mitochondrial density of the Forehead, think of brown fat as if it were an oil in a candle that allows it or that allows it to burn hotter and longer, yes, so that it's one aspect of the other, so 11 minutes a week, so what did this consist of? A lot of people say, okay, do I have to take an ice bath?

No, it is necessary to be uncomfortably cold for 11 minutes a week, that can be done with a cold shower, it can be done by getting into an ice bath, it can be done in the ocean, that can be done by getting into a lake which could be um, it's not important how you cool down, you could even put ice packs on your neck or whatever you have in your pants, it cools down, people do that thing that makes you uncomfortable. feel uncomfortably cold, the cold depends and people always say: I want to give me a number, well what is uncomfortable for you is not going to be uncomfortable for me and vice versa, it is so uncomfortably cold and then the key is that it must be safe , TRUE?

I mean, you're not going to jump into water at 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Your heart will stop at that moment, so you will try to get into cold water that you want to get out of, but you can calm down and stay. during that two or three minute period, sometimes it will be a little colder and other times it will be a little hotter, so you don't want to obsess over this. There's a study that was done with people submerged in water that was around 60 degrees, which is not particularly cold 60 degrees Fahrenheit, but they did it for 45 minutes, so it could also be kind of, you know, what you get into in a pool, it's not hot enough, it could be that, but you stay longer, but for 11 minutes it should be quite uncomfortable, ideally you want to get out if you want, why should I mention that there is not much science about cold showers because of the obvious reason that cold showers are difficult to do in a laboratory because then you don't know if people are under Are they under their head?

Are they facing it? Are they turning their backs? Most of these studies have been done with immersion, but the other day when I was in Boston, I woke up and thought I really wanted some cold exposure. It was cold outside so I just walked around in a t-shirt, walked to get some food, in short sleeves, everyone looked at me like I was crazy and I suffered 30 minutes of cold exposure just walking to the store and went home because it was cold. very cold, the wind chill was quite quite bad or quite good, I should say. I think you get those 11 minutes a week and that prepares you for this effect and it should be divided into several sessions, but it could be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and then you have four days off. it could be monday wednesday friday it doesn't really matter so don't try to do 11 minutes at a time in an ice bath probably not, I mean not at first, I mean some people can do that now there are other reasons to do it in cold exposure What happens when you catch a cold?

A couple of things vasoconstrict you and there is rebound vasodilation, so you get better perfusion and blood flow. The biggest effect is a large 2.5-fold increase in dopamine that lasts several hours. You know it's a significant increase. you feel mentally clear, you feel alert, it increases metabolism for the reason we discussed before and then there is the process of entering this cold water when you didn't want to and that is overriding the limbic friction, that is the top down control so that You develop resilience and It's no surprise that there are a lot of detection tools for special operations and other detection tools that involve forcing people into for people who deliberately force themselves, I should say, into cold bodies of water that they are really uncomfortable but not dangerously cold, so there are other effects.

Also, for example, if you want to improve fat loss and lipolysis, it seems that activating the shiver is key because when you shiver, the muscles release a molecule called succinate and then it activates the brown fat so that you increase the metabolism even more and still there's another oh and to activate the chill, sorry I stuttered why did I say chill, it almost sounds like I'm shaking. One of the best things you can do is get into the cold fountain, whatever it is, if you don't shiver while you're in it. If you are there, get out but don't dry out and stay there.

You'll start to shake pretty quickly as it starts to evaporate.