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.”
