Hacker News Reader

Comment by fasteo | Hacker News Reader

Reality Surpasses Fiction and this was close enough.

Inside the Paleo movement there is a "cold therapy" trend. Its main contributor is Ray Cronise. You can watch a TED talk [1] and visit his web site [2]. His latest contribution is a scientific paper, co-authored with David Sinclair (yes, the resveratrol guy). It is titled "Metabolic Winter Hypothesis" [3] and it is quite interesting.

In simple terms, the rationale is the same as for the food leg of the paleo movement: Food availability is hurting us badly; warm "availability" is doing the same, so we better get some time in a colder environment.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrQ_ldCwKUQ [2] http://hypothermics.com/home/ [3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24918620

View on HN

It's called shivering. Your body does it in response to early hypothermia. It requires energy to shiver, which burns fat.

This guy is a nut. Just exercise more.

Read the site. He suggests water temperatures that aren't cold enough to make you shiver. In fact, if you're shivering, you're way past the 80/20 point. This isn't woo woo crazy shit, he's done his research.

It's called cold thermogensis [1]. Fat burning could be one benefit, but apparently it can help your body get more adapted to changes in temperature. Some people who do cold plunges or cold showers feel that they can handle temperature fluctuations better, although most of that evidence is anecdotal. I personally switch to a cold shower after a hot shower and it makes me feel amazing afterwards. People have experimented with hot and cold temperature variations for years, like the Finnish with their saunas, and native Americans with sweat lodges.

[1]: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=%22cold+thermogenes...

Ha. I didn't know about that. Interesting.

Part of the problem of parodying some of this stuff is that it's self-parodying. I keep thinking about what would happen if "Brad Bradstone" tries Soylent.

He seems like the kind of guy that would have a farm-to-table-to-farm system set up for the whole company.

(Stolen from https://medium.com/message/new-york-city-after-global-warmin... )

I actually start every day with an ice cold shower and find that it helps to wake me up and put me in the right frame of mind for the day. I don't claim it's anything more than psychological, but it's been a big help for me.

What is the temperature where you live?

I bet it's not in Siberia.

Maybe it is [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5ihMP-I3l8

Screaming/not very dressed kid warning

It's near Toronto, so it depends. -25C in the winter, 35C in the summer. Around 30C right now.

Oh. Here in south of Brazil its 10C those days and I use hot water even to wash my face in the morning.

I enjoy cold showers from time to time. But as someone who just moved in to a new home and forgot to schedule gas turn on in advance leaving us without hot water, a true "ice cold" shower leaves you literally breathless.

I've never felt my body react in such a way.

I can second this. I spent 2 weeks in an apartment with no hot water. The first 30 seconds or so in the shower left me struggling for air. After that, it's a lot better. Not good, but better.

If you stay in it for a while, you still acclimate. Just don't try it during a cold winter.

FWIW, a friend of mine suggested doing that and threw a study at me when I made disbelieving noises: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17993252

Reply on news.ycombinator.com