In recent years cryotherapy has become the new health buzzword for treating all manner of medical conditions such as migraines and rheumatoid arthritis. However, it can also be a fantastic treatment to help kick-start your weight loss journey.

What is Cryotherapy?

Cryotherapy is the process of exposing your body to extreme temperatures of cold for medicinal benefit. For whole body cryotherapy you stand in a chamber which covers your entire body except your head. The air in the chamber is cooled to temperatures as low as minus 200°F to 300°F for a short period of time. Research suggests that experiencing extreme cold for brief periods of time can help you lose weight. This is because as your body temperature is lowered your body works hard to increase its internal temperature both through shivering, burning energy and calories. 

Fans of the procedure say you can increase the efficiency of your metabolism and burn up to 500 to 800 calories from spending just three minutes in a cryotherapy chamber set to minus 306 degrees Fahrenheit - the equivalent to running for a whole hour.

Another theory as to why cryotherapy is effective for weight loss is that it freezes the fat cells in the body and kills them off. This then causes them to be removed from the areas of fatty tissue the body by your liver.

One 2013 study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation discovered that regular exposure to cold temperatures (62.5°F or 17°C) for 2 hours a day over 6 weeks reduced a person’s total body fat by about 2 percent. This is thought to be because a substance in your body called ‘brown adipose tissue (BAT)’ will burn fat to help create energy when your body is exposed to extreme cold.

This seems to be supported by more recent research in 2018 in the Journal of Obesity which found that long-term cryotherapy activates a process in the body called cold-induced thermogenesis. Having regular cryotherapy led to an overall reduction of body mass in participants, particularly around the waist, by an average of 3%.

Another study in 2014 study looked at exposing patients to increasingly cooler temperatures and then increasingly warmer temperatures every night for 4 months. The researchers found that exposure to progressively cooler then warmer temperatures can make the body better at responding to temperature changes which in turn help your body become better at processing glucose (sugar). Helping your body become better at processing sugar can help you lose weight over time by helping your body process sugars which can otherwise turn into body fat.

Like any other therapy, whole body cryotherapy works best when it’s combined with other strategies for weight loss such as a healthy diet, regular sleep and exercise. However, if you’ve been trying to lose weight for a while whole body cryotherapy may just give you the edge you need to meet your weight loss goal.