The 4-Hour Body_ An Uncommon Guide to Ra - Timothy Ferriss [57]
In a nutshell: cold stimulates BAT to burn fat and glucose as heat. Cold, as well as drugs called beta-adrenergic agonists,19 can also make BAT appear within WAT in mice and rats. In other words, cold might help you increase the amount of your “fat-burning” fat. This has tremendous implications.
In 1995, I began conducting experiments on myself using the powerful “ECA stack” discussed in the last chapter.
It was an effective thermogenic cocktail. So effective, in fact, that I suffered heat exhaustion three times and should have been hospitalized on two of those occasions. It doesn’t matter how ripped you are if you’re dead.
In 1999, four years of experimentation later and much the wiser, I had eliminated the contributing factors that led to heat stroke conditions (in my case, all exercise or sun exposure at 70%+ humidity) and began to combine ECA with timed cold exposure.
The outcome: in four weeks, I lost what usually took up to eight weeks with ECA alone, and I did it without the side effects. I used two different protocols, both of which worked:
PROTOCOL A
1. I consumed the ECA stack 45 minutes prior to cold-bath immersion on an empty stomach. Though the metabolism of caffeine (caffeine clearance) varies from person to person, I assumed that blood concentration would peak between 60 and 90 minutes post–oral consumption, which was based on the average pharmacokinetics of caffeine in white male subjects. Pharmacokinetics, usually in graph form, show the relative blood concentrations of a specific drug over time after administration. Caffeinated gum, for comparison with pills, shows peak levels at 15 minutes. Delivery mechanisms matter.
2. I placed two ten-pound bags of ice in a cold-water bath and submerged myself for a total of 20 minutes. Those 20 minutes were phased as follows:
00:00–10:00 minutes: Up to mid-waist, legs submerged, torso and arms not submerged.
10:00–15:00 minutes: Submerged up to neck with hands out of the water (sitting cross-legged then reclining makes this easier in a standard bathtub).
15:00–20:00 minutes: Submerged up to neck, hands underwater.
Sound painful? It is.
The second protocol, performed without ECA and tested separately, activated BAT and was far easier.
PROTOCOL B
1. I placed an ice pack on the back of my neck and upper trapezius area for 30 minutes, generally in the evening, when my insulin sensitivity is lower than in the morning.20
That’s it.
I tested protocol A three times per week (on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) and protocol B five times per week (Monday through Friday). The former caused grand mal–like shivering and the latter caused no shivering.
Nonetheless, looking at the bodyfat results, Protocol B appeared to be around 60% as effective as the torture baths in Protocol A.
Not a bad yield, considering that no convulsing is involved.
In 1999, amusingly, most researchers firmly believed that BAT, while abundant in infants, was nonexistent or negligible in adults. I was in the midst of my Guantanamo Bay baths21 at this time, and these conclusions did not square with my experience. It wasn’t until years later that better tools, most notably positron-emission topography (PET), became more widespread and were used to demonstrate that BAT is most certainly present in adults, particularly in the neck and upper chest areas.
That explains why the ice packs on my neck and upper trapezius worked.
In the May 2009 issue of Obesity Review, a paper was published titled “Have we entered the BAT renaissance?” I’d say the answer is yes. The abstract concludes: “These recent discoveries should revamp our effort to target the molecular development of brown adipogenesis in the treatment of obesity.”
Let’s start with cold. It isn’t fancy, but it works well.
Ice Age Revisited—Four