Chilling at the TOP of the world

The last few weeks have been an unbelievable adventure. Sorry to leave you hanging on calories, but we’ll get back to that soon.  The days have been full of travel ranging from an amazing party hosted by Tim Ferriss in San Francisco to hanging out with Wim Hof (aka iceman) and good friend Astronaut, Scott Parazynski.  It’s an honor to interact with all of these incredible minds and we are all starting to see a real momentum in the power of the chill.

My home state (and city) were also hit hard by a the tornados and on a brighter note, the 4HB prescription of beans and cold showers were an unexpected preparation for 5 days of no power.

Chilling Out

If you haven’t seen my TEDMED video, it’s posted on the right.  What an incredible opportunity to get the word out and it’s opened some fantastic doors.  I want to give you a sneak peak at some exciting work to come.  Many have asked for a “step by step” guide on how they can use the power of cool in their everyday routine and I’ve assembled an amazing team to bring that to you. You’ll see it posted here when it’s ready, but it’s extremely exciting to me.  It was great to finally meet Wim Hof and his son, Enahm in person. We’ve been in communication for a while over email, facebook, and twitter, but spending 2 quality days deep in discussion was amazing. I got to watch Wim do a 1 hour and 15 minute full body ice immersion and it was really incredible. Wim insists anyone can do it with training.

I also want you to consider contributing to our research.  On the right, I’ve asked a question about funding a thermal imager to document some of our crazy ideas. I put this up just after my last blog post (eeek –  almost TWO months ago) and it hasn’t had much input. Please take just a few seconds to vote. I really want to create a community here and you have my promise that this is not going to be another fad diet scheme. As you will see this site is dedicated to a thorough exploration of what the human body can achieve. We’re going to look at the best we ALL can be, not just focus on the extreme or elite. We do have an unbelievable research team and you can bet we’re not putting our life-long reputations on the line for junk science. We have a drive to understand this and help ANYONE that choses to succeed.

From Weightless to Weight Loss

So Today, I want to introduce a good friend, former “office mate,” and an die hard adventurer: Scott Parazynski.  He’s got the dream resume: Astronaut, MD, and Mountain Climber and that is just a START. Scott and I met in 1998 during a training session in preparation for his STS-95 mission along with crewmate, John Glenn. He was a backup to operate a science experiment I had proposed for the space shuttle on Aerogel; ironically, it was a extremely high tech transparent INSULATOR.

Scott and I spoke frequently in the time between his two Everest climbs, because he was the most knowledgeable person I knew on the subject of human adaptation and was willing to help me explain and verify my initial 2008  results.  I’m sure in the “heat” of being cold on Everest he thought back a time or two about our frigid fat loss conversations, but Scott has been in extremely good shape as long as I knew him. he didn’t have any body fat to lose.

So let me turn it over to Scott to tell you a little about his adventure and experience with cool…

…Take it away, Scott.

A summit climb up Everest conjures up images of raging winds, breathless exhaustion and bone chilling temperatures, but rarely does one think of fad diets and dramatic weight loss. I had the (dis)fortune of spending two climbing seasons on Mount Everest, for a total of 4 months at extreme cold and altitude. Both of these seasons entailed dramatic weight loss, to the tune of 25 pounds (12 kilograms) each Himalayan foray. In the frequent keynotes I’m asked to give, I often make reference to the future New York Times bestseller I need to write, entitled “The Everest Diet!”

My first trip to Everest in 2008 was the fulfillment of a life long dream. As a climber since high school and a 17-year NASA astronaut, I’d seen and dreamt of standing atop the tallest mountain in the world for many years. My early heroes were all great adventurers, including the pioneers of space, mountaineering and deep sea exploration. Years later, my photo of Everest, taken from 250 miles up during Space Shuttle mission STS-66, is still perhaps the finest ever captured from space: it was a cloud-free day in the Himalayas on November 3, 1994, and the telephoto image reads just like a topographic map (you should post the image if possible with the article, along with one of me on the summit?). Staring at Everest from space and the framed photograph of the peak I kept above my desk, it was perhaps inevitable that I’d one day travel to the mountain for the ultimate physical and mental challenge.

On the 59th day of my 2008 expedition to Everest, while at 24,500 feet above sea level on my summit push, I developed excruciating lower back pain. I later discovered that this was due to a ruptured disc in my lower back. Hobbling down outrageously steep terrain to base camp, and later flying in a medivac helicopter to Kathmandu, I eventually underwent surgery to remove a ruptured lumbar disc. With hard training and a personal inability to leave the job left undone, I returned to the mountain in 2009, and was successful in summiting on May 20th of that year.

The punch line of this story, however, has to do with the cold, and lots of it. BOTH of my seasons resulted in substantial weight loss, despite a concerted effort to consume mass quantities of calories, often in excess of 5000 each day. Granted, substantial physical exertion is required to climb the world’s tallest peak, and it’s difficult to choke down that many calories because of the hypoxia and poor appetite common at high altitude. That said, I certainly ascribe many of the LB’s I lost to the cold. To be clear, I went to the Himalayas each year a “hard body,” without much if any excess fat, so the pounds I ended up losing came from lean muscle mass. I’m convinced much of this loss was from the chronic cold conditions: shivering burns many calories, as does just keeping comfortable in less austere temperatures typical of mid-day and in-the-sleeping-bag rest on the mountain.

In closing, it’s no mystery to me that keeping cool means keeping lean. Not many people would go to the extreme of climbing Mount Everest to lose big time weight, but dropping the thermostat or swimming in cool water may just be the ticket to shed those unwanted pounds…

Thanks Scott!  We’ll be hearing much more from Scott as we dive into some great self experimentation on thermal loading and weight loss.

In mean time, if you want to learn a lot more about Scott Everest/Space adventures and your chance at private space travel, please take a look at Scott’s TEDMED talk here: