Ch-Ch-Changes

We’ve just had an unseasonably warm week in my hometown. That’s not completely true, it happens this way nearly every year.  A week or two of cold and then suddenly, it’s warm.

For the last two years, I’ve been studying people and their reaction to the environment around them. Not with loads of data and analysis, but the more reflective, subjective type of observation.

The one take away is that most don’t realize just how adaptable the human body can be – if allowed.

When I was younger, I tended to walk barefoot a lot. When not barefoot, flip-flops were my shoe of choice.  I remember people dancing around on a few pebbles on the ground and saying, “how do you stand this?”  It’s simple, my feet were adapted to touching the ground. The soles were thick and calloused and the sensitivity deadened to the sharp points of the stones. Of course my adaptation was nothing compared with tribal Humans that spent a life barefoot.

Sparing the barefoot in Alabama jokes, the Human body is incredibly adaptable.

I’ve participated in many interviews over the last few months and it’s interesting just how many reporters, off camera, react incredulously to the idea that the thermostat in my house is set to 60F/15C.  “Brrrrrrr” is often the response with the evolutionary trait of crossing of their arms around themselves (this creates less surface area and you lose heat slower).

I’ve mentioned that 60F/15C is the air temperature most scientist studying thermoregulation use for inducing “cold stress” in extended metabolism studies on cold adaptation.  They essentially lock men and women in a room from a few hours to a few weeks, maintaining the temperature, and then look at respiration (CO2/O2) or total heat loss to assess calorie usage.

It seems that scientist and reporters agree on something and most people if asked about a home thermostat set at 60F/15C would probably agree and this seems to be reflected in a recent study by researchers at University College London U.K.  As one physcian was quoted saying in a recent ABC New Story, “Being cold is uncomfortable. Frankly, if people are willing to be that miserable to lose weight they might as well try eating well and exercising.”

I completely disagree, because he didn’t define cold and exercise. I did both thermal loading with diet/exercise and lost weight (comfortably) at the rate of nearly 5lbs/week.  This could also give a little more insight to a recent journal article on obesity and modern day living.

“Since the 1960s, a cultural shift in norms of thermal comfort and expectations of ‘thermal monotony’ have been driven by the widespread uptake of central heating and air conditioning,”  they reported in Obesity Reviews. (1)

They noted that in the U.K., average living room temperatures rose from 64.9F/18.3C in 1978 to 66.4F/19.1C in 2008 and bedroom temperatures increased from 59.36F/15.2C  to 65.3F/18.5C.

As many of you have learned here, this increased adaptation to overall warmer conditions, had no corresponding change in our evolutionary adaptation to cold – winter clothing or layering.  We still dress for the Arctic temperatures even though we’re  exposed to them at most for 10-15 mins in a walk from the house to the car.

Here in the US, it seems living room temperatures  remained stable, at 70.3F/21.3C between 1987 and 2005, while the average bedroom temperature increased from 66.7F/19.3C  to  68.36F/20.2C.

The authors go on to conclude:  “Establishing the significance and magnitude of the effects of both short-term and long-term thermal exposures on body weight could lead to the development of novel therapies to address obesity on an individual and a population level.”

I agree.

This brings me back to the “warm week” where I’ve observed people in shorts and T-shirts, acting as if  it were summer. In fact, the temperatures were about 60-65F/15-18C, but there was one big psyhological condition that allowed these people to forego the crossed arm, Brrrrrr, response;  Temperatures reached the 215F/-9C just two days earlier.

Look at the graph to the right and just focus on the trend or the shape the bars make just prior to those warm days. See it? Don’t worry with comparing numbers to your local condition, because the actual temperature is not really that important here. Two points to note is the 1) sudden rise in temperature and 2) the size of the temperature swing – high to low.

You can see we were skipping along in coat temperature for about 10 days and the BAM, it get’s warm. Not only that, but in the days before it was both cool AND the temperature highs/lows were not that different. The first thing you should be thinking is “didn’t you just finish telling me we are not outside as much?’

Yes, but in the few minutes that we are outside we take in tons of survival data in our little computers. These included the exaggerated blast of cold in the face, the fumbling with the keys as if we will drop dead in minutes, and the constant talk at the office about the “cold blast.”   All reinforce a notion that we are cold. In reality, if it were 250 years ago, I suggest that a week like this would have had far more impact on a Human compared to the modern conditioned spaces we live in today.

It wasn’t that cold as my members in Kopavogur and Reykjavik, Iceland will probably agree. As well, they would also agree that 60F/15C is balmy warm and a great day for shorts and T-shirts.

So how do we take advantage of this with Thermal Loading? Ironically both the blast and the slower transition. First, in the 4HB protocols, Tim leverages the blast or as he likes to say the bandaid approach – quick and effective. If you have significant BAT this will turn on those triggers to produce heat/burn fuel and increase muscle tone/shivering thermogenesis. If you don’t, then you still  get the muscle tone/shivering advantage.

The second is how I have lived during the winters for the last two years and that is predominately at 50-60F/10-15C with my inside environment. I have the advantage of no office workers to debate with, but everyone can sneak at least 12 hours a day of cool exposure if you get creative.

To do BOTH of these successful, you have to take a lesson from the “I can’t possibly do that” crowd that was, well, doing it this week.  You must trend toward the colder temperature over a longer time. That means dress a little lighter (carry layers in case) and try to just get more and more exposed to the colder temperatures around you so that these “cold stress” temperatures used by scientist to study metabolic rate – feel comfortable and warm.

A cautionary note: be careful of hypothermia in air temperatures below 32F/0C and water temperatures below 60F/15C.

The secret is all about managing changes and avoid the Hot -> Cold transitions, because for ALL of us, those tend to be miserable. Every person reading this can, ABSOLUTELY CAN, live at these temperatures, comfortably. It’s a sustained metabolic boost of about 20% and for the average Male that’s the equivalent of 2800 cal/week and for women, about 2100 cal/week; that’s just over/under the caloric requirements of  one marathon per week.

Now, what’s considered extreme? Running one marathon a week or living (miserably – LOL) at 60F/15C?  The choice is yours.

1. Johnson F, et al “Could increased time spent in a thermal comfort zone contribute to population increases in obesity?” Obesity Rev 2011