Cryotherapy puts obesity on ice: new weight-loss study

An unusual weight-loss treatment gives obesity and high cholesterol the cold shoulder, according to a new study.

Cryotherapy, which involves standing in a freezing-cold chamber for a few minutes to super-cool the body, has been shown to lower cholesterol and blood glucose levels while also reducing waistline measurements.

“Our results indicate that whole body cryostimulation is beneficial in the treatment of obesity,” said Dr. Jacopo Fontana of the Istituto Auxologico Piancavallo in Verbania, Italy. “The improvements in blood fats and glucose were particularly striking.”

Cold therapy, such as ice packs and cold-water baths, has been used for centuries to ease the pain of injured joints and by professional athletes to recover after strenuous exercise.

Cryotherapy chambers are a relatively new device. The machines use liquid nitrogen or electricity to chill a small enclosed space down to a mind-numbing minus 150 degrees Fahrenheit or even lower.

People step into the freezing chamber — with their head protruding outside the chamber through an opening in some cases — while wearing just underwear and shoes for two to three minutes per session.

Celebrities have been known to use cold therapy, too: Mark Wahlberg reportedly uses a cryochamber to stay in shape, and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey takes a regular ice bath.

In recent years, cryotherapy has been considered for treating a wide range of conditions, from fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis to multiple sclerosis and long COVID.

To test cryotherapy’s potential for treating obesity, Dr. Fontana’s team gathered 29 men and women with obesity and divided them into two groups.

The first group received 10 two-minute cryotherapy sessions at minus 166 degrees F over two weeks, plus a diet and exercise regimen.

The second group received fake or “sham” cryotherapy sessions with the diet and exercise program.

The results, presented at the 2023 European Congress on Obesity in Dublin, Ireland, showed that waist measurements were reduced much more in the cryotherapy group — a 5.6% decrease in the cryotherapy group, versus a 1.4% decrease in the sham-therapy group.

And both groups lowered their cholesterol levels, but the reduction in the cryotherapy group was roughly double that of the sham-therapy group.

Total cholesterol, for example fell 20.2 percent in the cryotherapy group, but only 9.4 percent in the sham-therapy group.

Doctors believe these results might be due to the subzero temperatures converting the body’s white adipose tissue — sometimes called “white fat’ — into brown adipose tissue, which breaks down sugar and fat molecules in an effort to warm the body.

Despite these promising results, some experts warn that cryotherapy is a largely unregulated and unproven treatment.

“Given a growing interest from consumers in whole body cryotherapy, the FDA has informally reviewed the medical literature available on this subject,” said Dr. Aron Yustein, a medical officer in the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, in a news release.

The risks of cryotherapy include frostbite, burns, eye injury and hypoxia or oxygen deficiency, which could cause a person to lose consciousness.

“We found very little evidence about its safety or effectiveness in treating the conditions for which it is being promoted,” Dr. Yustein added.