While a healthy, balanced diet and regular exercise are the most effective ways to lose weight, there are studies which suggest cryotherapy can help people shed the extra pounds. The concept of cryotherapy and being exposed to freezing temperatures has been around for centuries, from plunging into freezing cold water to coolant sprays for the face.
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But more recently, cryotherapy has become available in enclosed chambers, where an individual can be surrounded by cold air reaching up to -110C for several minutes.
While cryotherapy has become popular because of its ability to treat painful and chronic conditions like arthritis, many users of cryotherapy report its weight loss benefits.
Le Chalet Cryo is one of the many emerging companies offering whole body cryotherapy, and Director Lenka Chubuklieva said many of her customers have felt cryotherapy has been an aid to their weight loss journey.
She explained: “Because you’re exposed to such low temperatures your metabolic rate increases to keep you warm, and as a result you get the calorie burn and improved metabolism.
“So cryotherapy is useful as weight loss aid in combination with training and good nutrition.”
The scientific theory behind cryotherapy is that it freezes fat cells throughout the body and kills them off.
This then causes them to be filtered out of the body by the liver and permanently removed from areas of fat tissue.
One 2013 study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation found daily exposure to cold temperatures for two hours a day over six weeks reduced total body fat by around 2 percent.
This is because a substance in the body called brown adipose tissue burns fat to help make energy when the body is exposed to extremely cold temperatures.
The findings suggested the body may have mechanisms for reducing fat due to cold temperatures.
Another study published in Diabetes in 2014 exposed participants to increasingly cold temperatures and then increasingly warmer temperatures every night for four months.
The study started at 23.9C and went down to 19C, then back up to 27.2C by the end of the four-month period.
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It was found that exposure to progressively cooler then warmer temperature can make your brown adipose tissue more responsive to these temperature changes and help the body become better at processing glucose.
While this isn’t necessarily linked to weight loss, increased sugar metabolism can help people lose weight over time by helping the body better digest sugars that can otherwise turn into body fat.
Other research has demonstrated how cryotherapy can work hand-in-hand with exercise.
A study published in Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity in 2014 followed 16 kayakers on the Polish national Team who did whole-body cryotherapy at -120C down to -145C for about three minutes a day for 10 days.
The researchers found cryotherapy helped the body recover more quickly from exercise and reduce the effects of reactive oxygen species that can cause inflammation and weight gain over time.
This suggested cryotherapy can allow people to exercise more often due to a faster recovery time and experience fewer negative effects of stress and weight gain.
One of the main benefits of cryotherapy Lenka notes is helping with inflammation in the muscles.
She said: “If you do cryotherapy straight after training you’re not going to get any delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) or pain or aches the following day. You’re still going to feel like you’ve trained, but you’re not going to be in pain – the pain that normally comes with it.”
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