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posted by martyb on Tuesday October 12 2021, @08:00AM   Printer-friendly

Winter-swimming Scandinavian men can teach us how the body adapts to extreme heat and cold:

"Our data underscore that BAT in adult humans is part of the collective body temperature regulation system in collaboration with skeletal muscle and blood flow," says senior study author Camilla Scheel of the University of Copenhagen. "Regular winter swimming combining cold dips with hot sauna might be a strategy to increase energy expenditure, which could result in weight loss if compensatory increase in food intake can be avoided."

In the Denmark-based study, Scheele and her collaborators examined whether the Scandinavian practice of winter swimming is associated with changes in body temperature, resulting in acclimation to both cold and hot challenges. They also looked for differences in brown fat tissue, given its role in producing heat in response to exposure to cold environments.

To explore these ideas, first author Susanna Søberg of the University of Copenhagen recruited eight young male winter swimmers who had alternated several swims or dips in cold water with hot sauna sessions every week for at least two years. For the purposes of this study, winter swimming was loosely defined as swimming or sitting in open water and wearing only swim trunks or nothing. By contrast, the eight control participants did not use any cold or heat therapies during the study and had no history of winter swimming.

"We expected winter swimmers to have more brown fat than the control subjects, but it turned out that they instead had better thermoregulation," Søberg says. In preliminary tests, the participants submerged one hand in cold water for three minutes. While both groups responded to the cold exposure, the swimmers displayed signs of cold tolerance, with a lower increase in pulse and blood pressure. They also had higher skin temperature, pointing to greater heat loss as a potential adaptation to frequent sauna exposure. In another preliminary test, the researchers used an adjustable system consisting of two water-perfused blankets to control and lower the participants' body temperature. Here, the swimmers also showed a higher increase in skin temperature in response to cooling.

Journal Reference:
Susanna Søberg, et al. Altered brown fat thermoregulation and enhanced cold-induced thermogenesis in young, healthy, winter-swimming men Cell Reports Medicine, 2021 (DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrm.2021.100408)


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 12 2021, @05:47PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 12 2021, @05:47PM (#1186468)

    >> How about do this study with Finnish people.

    The high alcohol levels would be a confounding factor, and even if they controlled for it a significant proportion of the test subjects would kill themselves before winter was over.