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Sweating and Shivering

kevinquinnyo

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I've heard that sweating and shivering burn [a significant amount of]calories.

I looked it up, and confirmed it's true. Shivering is particularly effective.

I wonder, could this be an overlooked factor for obesity? Could it be that widespread availability of climate control is a significant contributor of the "obesity epidemic"? (that's what the media calls it, here in the U.S.)
 
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That's a really interesting concept except I gain weight every winter and I shiver like a mofo. So I guess that's out.
 
I say, throw all the fatties out into the cold...shiver their way thin.

(they surely aren't gonna sweat their fat asses thinner in those
wal-mart electric chairs)

fat-guy-on-scooter.jpg


/Hotlinked
//put that phat ssa in the snow and he'd get up and burn a few...;)
 
Yup. Turn down your heating. Lose a few pounds and save a few dollars.
Here's another tip. Walk to the shops. You buy a lot less rubbish when you know you have to carry it home.
 
Did you know that babies have 'brown fat'? It is fat with the unique ability to directly burn fats to make heat, no need for the muscles to shiver to make heat. It's all over their little bodies. As we age and grow, it reduces to an area at the back of the neck/between shoulders. Some people have an obvious fat pad known as 'buffalo hump'. It's a sign of a metabolic abnormality- IIRC, it indicates a cellular difficulty burning fat.
 
Sorry, kids, but shivering is not an effective way to lose weight, m'kay? It is an effective way to increase overall O2 demand and potentially stress the already frail heart of a morbidly obese person, m'kay?

~Dr. Imago
 
I always thought in the winter the body bulks up against the cold and hence we put on a few pounds and this is often blamed on the holidays that happen to coincide with this part of year, but that's just speculation on my part, I've never looked it up. I would just think that constant shivering would trigger something in the body to say "hey, it's cold, add fat to keep warm" then give you cravings for fatty foods.
 
Figetting appears to have a sigficant impact on obesity levels...




Fidgeting Helps Separate the Lean From the Obese, Study Finds
Strolling to the bus stop, fidgeting during a meeting, standing up to stretch, jumping off the couch to change channels, and engaging in other minor physical activities can make the difference between being lean and obese, researchers reported yesterday.
The most detailed study ever conducted of mundane bodily movements found that obese people tend to be much less fidgety than lean people and spend at least two hours more each day just sitting still. The extra motion by lean people is enough to burn about 350 extra calories a day, which could add up to 10 to 30 pounds a year, the researchers found.

"There are these absolutely staggering differences between people who are lean and people who are obese," said James A. Levine of the Mayo Clinic, who led the research published in today's issue of the journal Science. "The amount of this low-grade activity is so substantial that it could, in and of itself, account for obesity quite easily."
Click to expand...



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41897-2005Jan27.html
 
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It would be an interesting survey. Compare the weight of people with air-conditioning with those that do not. However it may be those with better education and higher incomes are more likely to have air-conditioning and less likely to be overweight.
 
rjh01 said:
It would be an interesting survey. Compare the weight of people with air-conditioning with those that do not. However it may be those with better education and higher incomes are more likely to have air-conditioning and less likely to be overweight.
Click to expand...

But the surface area of an object increases at a slower rate than the weight. A subject who weighs double another subject has only 40% more surface are to cool him. So overall, 20% less surface area per pound. So fatties are in need of air conditioning more.

And to confound your concept even more, generally people in a/c are not doing heavy work, where as people doing the heavy labor don't have a/c.

ETA: an aside: many drug doses are now based on surface area of the body's skin, rather than weight. SA is a better measure of rate drug metabolism than strictly weight.
 
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Dr. Imago said:
Sorry, kids, but shivering is not an effective way to lose weight, m'kay? It is an effective way to increase overall O2 demand and potentially stress the already frail heart of a morbidly obese person, m'kay?

~Dr. Imago
Click to expand...

The O2 demand is exactly related to the amount of calories burnt, correct?

And most overweight people (50% of Usans?) do not have hearts that close to failure. Those that do, probably know it.
 
The likely first fuel in a shivering attack will be cellular ATP, then blood sugar and liver glycogen, or even anaerobic means (protein breakdown and lactic acid processes). Only after some time will fats start to be broken down to add fuel. Appetite is also raised, causing the body to quickly replace the sugars and glycogen. That is why short, frequent workouts, while good for circulation and muscle growth, are not especially good for loosing weight.

Also, massive shivering (the kind that you suffer when a fever is coming on, not when your feet and hands get cold) can be massively painful. It is, after all, an extreme measure by your body, aimed at keeping your core temperature from falling to dangerous levels. It is pretty much the body's last effort to avoid hypothermic death, after goosebumps, surface capillary constriction, cold pain, nose breathing an other strategies.

I don't think sweating requires much energy at all. Mostly it requires body fluids.
 
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Dr. Imago said:
Sorry, kids, but shivering is not an effective way to lose weight, m'kay? It is an effective way to increase overall O2 demand and potentially stress the already frail heart of a morbidly obese person, m'kay?

~Dr. Imago
Click to expand...

And to add to this is also the possibility that being cold enough to shiver might increase appetite enough to more than make up for any calories burned.

I know I feel much more hungry when I've spent a few hours feeling cold. Which makes sense to me: if the cold makes you burn more calories, a natural response to seek out calorie rich food would certainly be adaptive.
 
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