The experiment is still on: How long into the winter will I succeed to keep up my daily twenty-one laps in the pool?
So far, so good. The water is much colder now, but the days have been sunny and friendly – the fog lifted while we were at the East Coast.
Truthfully, lately it has been harder to face the pool: I am still battling a minor cold, and every day I have to decide if it is prudent to swim with the cold, or if I should just snuggle up in a warm blanket. But the exhilarating feeling after my daily swim – I seem to be addicted to it. I look full of vigor. My posture definitely is straighter. I am building up muscles where I never had any – on my back and my arms. Plus, the tiny belly I had is getting smoother (not smaller).
On the negative side is my skin. No outright rash or itching yet, but I have the suspicion that my skin looks a bit older, notwithstanding the coconut oil I slab all over me after each bath.
For a few days, I had been getting extremely cold after each swim, and couldn’t get warm at all. If you ever read my water book, you know that staying cold after water exposure is not a good idea. But with my inborn stubbornness (which might just get worse with age …) and medical curiosity, I kept doing what I should not have done: go swimming. And got colder and colder. In spite of the knee bends, blankets and hot tea with fresh ginger. Two nights in a row, I didn’t get warm all night – certainly not a healthy state!
Until yesterday. Shortly after I went swimming, had taken my short cold shower to get rid of the chlorine, had done my exercise, had rolled up in my blanket and imbibed the tea, I got really warm. Even my hands felt tingling with warmth. This lasted all night, and is still going on. I suddenly had the feeling that, for the first time in my life, that I was getting on the warm side in life. Like, where my husband always is.
Looking around for an explanation, I stumbled onto brown fat. Brown fat gets activated by cold. Brown fat is supposed to be healthier than yellow fat that just stores superfluous calories. Babies have more brown fat because it protects them from hypothermia – a constant threat for newborns.
Brown fat is not so much fat but is related to muscles. Brown fat is brown from the mitochondria and their iron contents; mitochondria are tiny energy factories. Brown fat has also more blood vessels for better oxygenation and is metabolically more active than yellow fat – it actually burns calories instead just storing them.
So, by swimming in the cool pool, I must have tapped into my brown fat – I can’t come up with any other explanation. And did you know? Brown fat is implemented in weight loss. Yes! Brown fat can make you lose weight – IF you have enough brown fat.
Sebastian Kneipp, the father of the Kaltwasserkur (Cold Water Cure) is famous for jumping into the wintry Danube River to cure his tuberculosis. Later, he modified his approach because he observed that some weakened patients were not able to withstand the bitter cold he himself had applied to his body. One could say he watered down his original approach … I had always repeated what I had been taught: that too much cold might be hazardous to your health. Which still might be true for frail people.
But I might be onto something here … I will let you know how this will work out.
P.S. After today's laps, I have very warm hands. Read More
Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.
Happy birthday, Sebastian!
May 17, 2010
Sebastian Kneipp (1821 to 1897)
Sebastian Kneipp (1821 to1897) celebrates his birthday today, May 17th.
He was born as a poor weaver’s son in Bavaria/Germany, destined to become a weaver, too. But he was a gifted child. Supported by the local teacher and his mother, he finally made it into priest seminary – only to get sick with consumption (tuberculosis). Given up by several physicians, he embarked on his own healing process, found a little booklet about the Cold Water Cure that had been inspired by the Staffordshire physician John Floyer. In case you think, Floyer was just another British quack: He introduced counting the pulse rate into medicine.
Sebastian Kneipp, without medical training, jumped into the gray Danube River in winter, three times a week, and cured himself. From there, he went on to develop his Five Pillars of Health (water, movement, food, herbs, order) and became world famous.
With World War I, World War I and the Holocaust everything German was despised here – and natural healing was replaced by scientific medicine, especially after the Flexner report denounced everything that did not come from modern medicine as “unscientific.” It took disgruntled patients (and the Internet) to return to the old truths.
My connection to Sebastian Kneipp? I grew up in Germany after World War II, and Kneipp’s principles were part of the landscape: We took cold showers, ate heartily and slept with windows open – but in medical school I found “scientific” medicine so much more enticing and scoffed at the old folk medicine that was way too much connected to the Nazis for my sensibilities.
Until I started practicing real medicine and realized that for chronic disease we physicians had not much to offer. The pills - because of side-effects - were often a worse cure than the disease. So, I read up on the old stuff, only half convinced, but always looking out for things to help my patients.
During a sabbatical year in my home country I did courses for a degree in Natural Medicine, and it was then that I spotted a reprint of Sebastian Kneipp’s most famous book (sold in the millions): My Water Cure. I took it in my hand, a bit curious how the old Kneipp would hold up to modern times – and I was immediately hooked. He understood the human body and the rest of the human predicament so well, I found, that on that spot I decided to write and bring his ideas again to the U.S. I say “back” because around the beginning of the twentieth century a “cold water craze” had already swept this country, with spas and doctors practicing natural medicine; they even had their own magazines and newspapers!
Of course, it is not an either-or – we need modern medicine and natural medicine, and both have to stand up to scientific scrutiny. But our bodies and souls are ancient, with ancient requirements. For acute diseases like infections, accidents, even some cancers, modern medicine has made great strife, and we are grateful for it. In chronic disease, modern medicine is still looking for that miracle pill – when only going to the roots and changing your lifestyle the old-fashioned way will get you to that glowing state of health that is your birthright.
Happy birthday, Sebastian!
You'll find an etching of Sebastian Kneipp on the "medical questions?" page. Read More