Wearing an ice vest or taking daily cold showers could help people lose weight, according to researchers.
Despite the growing popularity of cold-water swimming and freezing plunges, to date there is minimal data on the health benefits of cold exposure. But a study of 47 adults with obesity or overweight has found that regular exposure to cold temperatures led to fat loss.
Researchers at the University of Nottingham and the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) in the Netherlands gave half the participants an ice vest and waist wrap to wear for two hours every morning, while continuing their daily lives.
The vests and waist wrap were worn on top of a thin T-shirt and contained gel-filled cooling packs that had been kept overnight in the freezer and maintained a temperature of 15C.
In six weeks, participants lost 0.9kg (2lb), made up almost entirely of body fat, whereas the control group did not lose any weight and put on 0.6kg (1.3lb) on average.
The lead researcher, Dr Mariëtte Boon, of LUMC, said: “This is one of the first studies looking at the impact of cold exposure over a prolonged period of time, involving people with overweight and obesity.”
She added: “Vests like this can be worn at home and so cold exposure could be a simple and inexpensive addition to lifestyle strategies for weight loss such as healthy eating and physical activity.”
The study, presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Istanbul, concludes that cold temperatures could help speed up the rate at which the body burns calories.
Prof Helen Budge, at the University of Nottingham and co-author of the study, said: “Daily cold exposure activates brown fat, which uses body fat stores to produce heat.
“It is possible that wearing a cooling vest trains brown fat to be more active and has a healthy effect on lipids, glucose and inflammation in the body. All those things are preventative in cardiovascular disease.”
The researchers, jointly funded by the Dutch Heart Foundation and the British Heart Foundation, are investigating whether other forms of regular cold exposure could reduce obesity, inflammation and prevent heart disease.
The authors are conducting a separate study of 34 women in the Netherlands to see if cold showers also promote fat loss. Half of the women will have their shower on the coldest setting for 90 seconds every morning.
“It is our hypothesis that cold showers and cold swimming could have the same effect,” Budge said, although she cautioned that cold swimming was not directly comparable as “there are lots of other things at play such as cold shock – jumping into a lake would have other effects on the body”.
“The cooling vest is a much longer period of exposure than the shower,” said Boon. “But on the other hand the cold shower is much colder. We will have to see if it has an impact on weight loss.
“We hope people can find a method of cold exposure that works for them and fits into their daily routine.”
