Member-only story
The Nuance
The Surprising Benefits of Exercising in Cold Weather
As long as you take precautions, you don’t need to hibernate in the gym this winter
Every week, the Nuance will go beyond the basics, offering a deep and researched look at the latest science and expert insights on a buzzed-about health topic.
The World Health Organization (WHO) keeps tabs on every country’s HALE rating, which stands for “healthy life expectancy at birth.” HALE is a measure of how long the average citizen will live before disease or disability sets in. Worldwide, that average is about 63 years. But according to the WHO’s 2016 data, the residents of Japan know something the rest of us don’t; the average Japanese citizen will live without disability until age 75 — nearly six years longer than the average American.
A mixture of diet, DNA, and lifestyle factors likely combine to explain this. But cold-weather exercise may also be part of the equation. “Growing up in Tokyo, it was thought that winter training keeps you away from the doctor, and the Japanese often exercise in winter,” says Shingo Kajimura, an associate professor and lab director at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). “We can see now this makes a lot of sense.”
Kajimura’s lab at UCSF focuses on metabolism and energy balance, and specifically on the function of the body’s fat cells. He says cold exposure during workouts may be beneficial for a number of reasons. For one thing, shivering burns a lot of calories. “Shivering is a very energy-demanding and tiring process,” he says. If your goal when exercising is to lose weight, working out in the cold may help a bit.
“I highly recommend exercising outside in the early morning or swimming in cold water.”
Some of Kajimura’s research has also shown that spending time in cool or cold environments converts some of the body’s fat cells from unhealthy “white” fat to heat-producing, metabolically active “beige” fat. Kajimura says this conversion seems to help the body acclimatize to cold environments and increases resting energy expenditure — the amount of calories a person burns just sitting around. Research by Kajimura…
