Transcription
Okay, maybe this is the email you've been waiting for. I'm going to start talking about the cold—yes, the dreaded cold of winter—and how you can start adapting to it to become more resilient to the cold. But also, by coaching your body to be more efficient at making its own heat when in the cold. So I'm going to talk a little bit first about my story with the cold. I used to be that person; when I experienced cold, the only way that I could heat up was from shivering. And that is a mechanism we do have to heat our bodies up; it's called shivering thermogenesis. Thermogenesis just means generating heat. So one way of generating heat we have is from shivering, because the movement of our muscles can shiver us—you know, can vibrate enough so that we start to generate heat in our bodies. But it's very ineffective. Have you ever tried to—like, I don't know if you've ever been in that experience, but I've been cold before, and it would take me forever to heat up with shivering. Um, in in ineffective, but you know, does the trick to keep us from dying of hypothermia. Basically, it turns out we have another way to heat our bodies up, and it's called non-shivering thermogenesis. And what that means is that we can generate our own body heat without making our muscles do it for us.
How does that work? Well, it works because we have a special type of fat, or adapost tissue, on our bodies called brown adapost tissue. It's brown because it has a very, very high concentration of mitochondria, and mitochondria have that brownish reddish color to it. So while the typical fat, or adapost tissue, that we think of is called white adapost tissue—like the the pinchable subcutaneous, like the subcutaneous pinchable adapost tissue that we have—that is white and it's very low in mitochondria. What I'm talking talking about isn't pinchable; right, it doesn't actually contain that same type of fat that we would consider, but it contains a high high density of mitochondria. And what those mitochondria can do is those mitochondria can actually take fat from our storage depot, from that white adapost tissue, and take the fat and burn it to make heat for us. And that brown adapost tissue lives in a very specific location on our bodies. It lives on the tops of our collar bones; it lives up on the tops of our neck here, right, um, you know, on the tops of the necks and the shoulders, behind the neck and all the way down the shoulder blades, between the shoulder blades. That's a very specific location for that um brown adapost tissue to be.
Now, guess what? For a while there, researchers thought that human adults don't have brown adapost tissue anymore. While it's been recognized for quite some time that babies do have it, babies are born with a massive amount of brown adapost tissue. And that actually makes sense, because what ways does a baby have to heat up except for um shivering, which is not efficient at all? Babies can't all of a sudden say, "Hey, Mom, give me a sweater, put a sweater on me," or babies can't go ahead and walk and get themselves a sweater. Babies can't go to the thermostat and, you know, dial up the heat a little bit, right? So it's babies have to be very efficient at regulating their own body temperature, and they are. Brown adapost tissue does this for them. And so it's been known for quite some time that babies can thermoregulate using this mitochondrially dense fat that they have located um in their upper body. And it was thought that adults just eventually lose it over time, because when they would try to measure it with different scanning and visualization techniques, adults would appear with none or very little, whereas, you know, babies would still appear with tons of it, right? Tons, a very active brown adapost tissue. And it turns out that we don't actually get rid of the brown adapost tissue as we age; we just live in a very temperature-friendly way that doesn't make our brown adapost tissue active anymore. So we actually don't activate it, so that it doesn't become available to us as a means of generating heat when our body needs it. And so in order to activate our brown adapost tissue, we specifically have to start to experiment and and play around with deliberate cold exposures in order to tell that the mitochondria that live in these areas, "Hey, now's the time for you to take fat uh fat from body fat, the white adapost tissue, and go ahead and burn it up and make heat for me." And so it's a really cool thing that we have built in. And so once I started to cold adapt, guess what? I can generate my own heat in the winter. I'm not just this person who's shivering all the time, freezing. I used to have the the very, very frigid fingers, very frigid toes all the time, and that's not me anymore. More um I'm actually warm all winter long.
So what are ways that we can do that? How can we stimulate and activate that brown adapost tissue? Well, one of the ways that we can do it is through air temperature. Another way that I'm going to talk about in a future video is through um cold exposure um full body cold exposure. I'm going to talk about face plunges. I'm going to talk about a couple of different means that we can cold adapt, but let's just talk about the ambient air temperature. So what is a the signal that those mitochondria need in order to start generating heat for us? Is number one, they have to feel the cold, and number two, we have to make an adequate amount of a chemical called norepinephrine in response to that cold. And we can do that with cold air exposure; we can also do it with full body plunging, but that cold air exposure can be enough to start this process. And in fact, I've had many of clients who, starting in this time of year, actually begin to um just sit outside more in clothing such as this. So a way to start experimenting with this would be: wear a lightweight shirt—this is a lightweight long sleeve shirt—feel free to wear a short sleeve shirt. I actually put my hair up like this, right? I'll I'll put it up so that I can expose all of those areas of that you know that have that brown adapost tissue; I can expose them all to the cold air. And if I just tell people, anytime can be in the morning, a lot of my clients like to do this at sunrise. I have a couple of my retired clients who are really buying into this and love this way of living that just decide—say, okay, they're going to sit outside at their sunrise, and they're going to wear a shirt like this and just stay out there until they start to feel cold.
And so a couple of signals that your body would get that it's gotten that cold signal: number one, shivering, right? If you start shivering, you can go inside; don't have to push through it. But what you may find, as I and many of my clients have experienced, is that need to shiver or that sensation of feeling cold starts to happen after longer and longer periods of time, whereas maybe it was five minutes at first; all of a sudden I've got clients who, at the end of winter, are still wearing this type of clothing outside, and they actually don't get the cold signal. They can spend 20, 30, 40 minutes outside, and their body just becomes very efficient at producing that heat for for them. And so that cold exposure, just sitting out there, can be a great thing. And this is a time of year, potentially in your environment, to start doing this. For me, we're at about 50 degrees Fahrenheit right now, this time of year, and it just so happens that there was some really interesting research done using cold air exposure that showed that you can get a 300% activation of your brown adapost tissue using cold air at about 50 to 55 degrees if you do one three-hour bout. So if you're outside for three hours at 50 degrees—let's say I'm raking leaves, going on a long hike, working outside in this air—um, I can really, really um efficiently and in a short window of relatively short window of time activate that brown adapost tissue and then just continue to build from that. And so while you don't need that three-hour chunk of time every single day, if you have an extended period of time to expose your yourself to that ambient air temperature, do so, because you will start to get that brown adapost tissue very, very activated and make those mitochondria very, very efficient at making heat for you.
Um, another thing that I do is not just sit; I will I'll just walk, right? This will be the type of clothing I wear on a walk. So again, the hair goes up, and I just go on my 20-minute UVA walk. So I just talked about the importance of that window of time outside in the morning; it's a great time for me to ramp up my cold air exposure as well. So I'm not wearing sweaters or or or you know, cowl neck sweaters or turtlenecks or a big scarf or anything like that; I'm exposing this part. Now, there comes a time in the winter in Michigan—let's be honest—where I'm not just wearing this on a walk; maybe I want to walk longer than 20 minutes, um, but I will start with this, and then if I need to, the gloves go on. Obviously, I'm wearing boots on my feet at certain times of the year in socks; I'm wearing pants, or like I got my leggings on; I'm also at some point throwing on throwing on a jacket as well, but I find that I need that less and less the more I cold adapt. And so I encourage you to start experimenting with the cold air. Heck, right now, if you can go outside without a coat on with a lightweight shirt on—sure. If you want to throw some shoes on, you know, you I mean, that might be that that's not where the brown adipose tissue is; this is where the brown adipose tissue is that we want you to expose. So go out there and see what does it it feel like? How cold do you get? How long can you stay out there? And again, just like I talked about with the light exposure, it's about consistency over perfection. So I would rather you consistently do five to 20 minutes of this every single day than do just that one bout of three hours, because that bout of three hours can be beneficial, but we need the continuous activation and stimulation to maintain that brown adapost tissue efficiency all winter long. And so cold air is a very great way to start doing this. Now, it's going to take longer amounts of time to activate that brown adapost tissue, or longer duration of time to activate that brown adapost tissue using cold air versus using cold plunges. There will be a future video on cold plunges. I've had clients who do cold plunges for two to three minutes, right, and they can get massive amounts of brown adipose tissue activation that way as well. Um, you pick what resonates with you. For me, I will do some cold plunges, but then there comes a point in the winter months so where I don't want to put my body into cold water, and if I want to get cold, I just go outside. It's called na nature; it's called it's called our winter environment. And so while you may want to cold plunge all all winter long and that works for you, you don't have to, right? There's lots of ways we can work on that cold adaptation. And if this feels feels too intense for you, even if the idea like of getting into just cold air right now feels too intense for you, my next video tomorrow is going to give you another way that you can start to stimulate this cold adaptation and just the ability to start to tolerate the cold in a much simpler way that also to connects the cold with a calming effect on your nervous system. I think a lot of our hesitation to get cold is because we've got this mental aspect of it where it we think it's going to feel awful, and maybe it was; it did feel awful; it has felt awful at some point where, like me, you know, the only way you had to heat up was shivering, and that's you know, that's miserable. And so tomorrow I'm going to give something you can do um as a as a starting point to kind of reset that reaction to cold in your brain and in your nervous system. And heck, even if you love the cold, that activity I'm going to give you tomorrow is also something you can can do um all throughout the winter, even if you love the full body cold plunges as well.
Recapping here: go outside, start to allow your body—especially the clavicles, shoulders, shoulder blades, that area—allow it to experience cold air stimulation. Do it as long as you can; do it as frequently as you can; that matters when it comes to cold air because it does take continuous exposures to build this up. Um, and then there comes a window of time—like I said, I've seen it many times with me and with with all of my clients—where they reach this threshold where it's like, "Wow, I could be out here quite a bit and I don't have to experience that crazy feeling of, 'Oh gosh, I'm so cold, I'm so miserable.'" And so just give it a try; start now; start with what you can. But that regular consistent cold air exposure can make a big difference. And lastly, if this makes it feel better for you, put thick mittens on, put thick socks and heavy boots on, put a hat on, even, you know, tuck the hair up and put a hat on, and allow at least this part of your body to experience that cold so you can begin to activate this dormant tissue that's designed to generate heat for us, but maybe we just haven't given it that opportunity to do so in the previous year; near for me it was four decades, right? So so give it a try um and see how it goes, and stay tuned for that exercise tomorrow.