A Slightly Greener Thing
For Yourself and the Planet, Embrace the Cold This Autumn
Even mild cold exposure may mimic some of the metabolic benefits of exercise
Denis Blondin spends a lot of his time dunking people in cold water.
Blondin is an assistant professor at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec. He studies the human body’s response to cold environments, and he’s most interested in the effects of cold exposure and cold acclimation on insulin sensitivity and other markers of metabolic health.
“I fully subscribe to the idea that our bodies are too comfortable and not designed for the environments we find ourselves in now,” Blondin told me when we spoke this week.
For one of his studies, published in 2019 in the Journal of Applied Physiology, healthy men spent an hour a day submerged in a 57-degree bath. (For perspective, 57 degrees is roughly the water temperature of the Atlantic Ocean along the Jersey Shore in early November.) After seven days, the men’s shivering response to the cold water had decreased by 36 percent. Their “thermal sensation” — basically, how much cold they perceived both in and out of the frigid water — had also dropped significantly.
