Does Sleeping In A Cold Room Burn More Calories?

Researchers currently believe that the body’s reaction to cold weather helps burn more calories because it affects brown fat. In colder temperatures, brown fat is activated in order to produce heat that your body needs.

This is a politically correct way of saying that sleeping in a cold room can help prevent you from getting fat, and even help you with your weight loss goals.

As long as you feel comfortable, there are no health risks to sleeping in a colder room. Ideally, you should keep the temperature between 60 and 68 degrees to experience the maximum benefits.

In addition to the phenomenon of beige and brown fat increasing in cooler temperatures and causing your body to burn more calories, it also increases insulin sensitivity, which lowers the risk of type 2 diabetes. Colder sleeping temperatures also promote glucose disposal, another indicator of type 2 diabetes risk.

Why does the body burn more calories in cold weather?

Researchers currently believe that the body’s reaction to cold weather helps burn more calories because it affects brown fat. In colder temperatures, brown fat is activated in order to produce heat that your body needs.

Under the right conditions, being cold can make your body expend as much as 400 extra calories an hour. But research is still being done about the efficacy of using cold as a fat-burning method.

If however, you’re in extreme conditions and moving around isn’t enough to keep you warm, shivering will set in. Shivering for an hour can burn up to 400 calories, notes ACE, often on top of the calories you’re expending on your activity.

Winter weather isn’t automatically a reason for your body to turn into a calorie-burning machine. That’s especially true if you’re exercising. In fact, the American Council on Exercise notes that working out, by itself, is usually enough to raise the body’s core temperature to a comfortable level in lower temperatures.

It may even use other body fat as fuel to burn those calories. Mayo Clinic points out that exercise may also stimulate brown fat to burn calories, which is why exercising in cold weather is a potential one-two punch toward calories. Advertisement.

Why do we sleep in cold rooms?

The first and most obvious one is that since a cooler room improves the quality of your sleep, you’ll wake up more rested and feel better overall. No one will accuse you of needing a nap for acting like a grumpy toddler!

It’s an added bonus that cooler bedrooms can also help fight disease, slow down the aging process and put us in a better mood!

Another way that keeping your room cold can improve the quality of your sleep is by stimulating melatonin production.

As mentioned above, rooms between 60 and 68 degrees encourage the body to produce melatonin. In addition to promoting sleep, melatonin is also a powerful anti-aging hormone.

If you have an infant in the room with you, you’ll need to adjust your range. Infants should sleep in rooms ranging from 68 to 72 degrees.

Stick your feet out. Sleeping barefoot and sticking one or both feet out from under the covers will help keep you cooler. We lose a lot of body heat through our head, hands, and feet, so allowing your feet to breathe has a cooling effect.

Use a cooling gel bed topper. If you sleep on a memory foam mattress, you may find that it traps heat and makes you hotter. Fortunately, a gel topper has cooling properties in it that to keep you cool while also making your bed more comfortable. View Our Full Guide: Best Cooling Mattress Topper.