Making Your Neanderthal Genes Work for You When You Lose Weight

So, for better or for worse, if you are stuck with some ancient Neanderthal's genes for fat storage, how can you make them work for you to help you lose weight? The secret may be working with your genes rather than against them.

Brown Fat, White Fat, Working Fat, Storage Fat

Your body has two kinds of fat cells, white fat cells and brown fat cells. White fat cells primarily store fat. Brown fat cells primarily burn it. Your brown fat cells are activated by a signal from your vagus nerve when you experience cold. Without the signal from the vagus nerve, they don't kick into overdrive burning fat to keep you warm. Your vagus nerve has to be intact and functional to send the right signals for burning fat.

Brown fat is activated by your sympathetic nervous system, the part of your nervous system that powers your fight or flight responses, your conscious, intentional muscle movements. Your brown fat burns more calories when you are alert, awake, and calmly in control.

Cold to Trigger Fat Burning

How cold do you have to get to trigger fat burning? A series of clinical experiments have found that cold exposure just short of the level that causes shivering is needed to activate brown fat. This can be accomplished by cooling the skin without lowering room temperature; many of the experiments measuring fat burning in volunteers exposed to cold used chilled mattresses but kept room temperature relatively warm, 25 degrees C/77 degrees F. 

Exposure to the cold needs to be nearly constant. Just a few hours of warmth stops extra burning of calories by brown fat. But constant exposure to cold raises the basal metabolic rate and burns fat.

How Much Difference Does Cold Make in Losing Weight?

How much fat? One study found that applying enough cold to lower the temperature of the skin (not the body core!) 6 degrees C/10 degrees F increased basal metabolic rate by 7 joules per second. In terms of "calories," that's about 150 to 200 calories per day for most people. 

See Also: The Truth About Paleo Diets

For even faster results, become a polar bear, and make a habit of swimming in cold water. Or just splashing around in cold water. If you keep on swimming outdoors even as the weather changes, you almost certainly will lose weight easily. The author of this article once managed to lose 25 pounds over winter by continuing to swim outdoors all winter long in northern California.

Cold exposure will help you lose weight even if you don't have Neanderthal ancestors. It will help you lose weight even more quickly if you do.