Wouter van Marken Lichtenbelt

At a glance

• Wouter van Marken Lichtenbelt is a Dutch ecophysiologist and professor emeritus at Maastricht University. He studied how the human body responds to temperature.
• In 2009 his team reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that healthy adult men have active brown fat, which burns energy in the cold to produce heat. Until then it was thought to occur mainly in babies.
• He later showed that gradual acclimation to mild cold increases brown fat and heat production without shivering.
• With Patrick Schrauwen he found that ten days of mild cold clearly improved insulin sensitivity in people with type 2 diabetes (Nature Medicine, 2015).
• He argues that buildings need not always be kept at a constant, comfortable temperature, as some temperature variation can benefit metabolism.
• For longevity, his work presents cold as a mild, natural stimulus for metabolism.
• Takeaway: turn the thermostat down a little and don’t always bundle up; ice baths are not needed.