Weight Loss
This is by far the most misunderstood application of hypoxia. We have one of our competitors telling their website visitors:
“As a result of this lack of oxygen, which is more severe in hypoxic exercise, the skeletal muscle is forced to turn to anaerobic metabolism for energy production.
Thus, the body will burn calories in the form of fat stores in order to produce energy during exercise.”
This is simply nonsense and anyone with a small amount of human physiology knowledge would know that “fat burns in the flame of oxygen” and anaerobic (without oxygen) metabolism relates to the conversion of carbohydrate to energy within the human body.
There is evidence that the altitude limit for the maintenance of body weight in humans is 5,000 m. Acute transfer from sea level to altitude usually results in weight loss, but the rate of weight loss diminishes when the food supply is adequate. Reduced dietary intake is initially the result of a reduced meal size because of a rapid increase in satiety during the meal. Part of the effect of reduced meal size on daily dietary intake can be compensated for by an increase in meal frequency. At altitudes of 7,000 m, acute mountain symptoms result in suppression of hunger and the desire to eat, possibly related to a reduction in appetite through leptin, a key mediator in the neuroendocrine regulation of food intake.
7. Westerterp KR. Energy and water balance at high altitude. News Physiol Sci 2001;16:134–137.
8. Westerterp-Plantinga MS, Westerterp KR, Rubbens M, et al. Appetite at ‘high altitude’ (Operation Everest III (Comex-'97)): a simulated ascent of Mount Everest. J Appl Physiol 1999;87:391–399.
A more recent study also lifts the lid on the effectiveness of Hypoxia for weight loss
Just a week at high altitudes can cause sustained weight loss, suggesting that a mountain retreat could be a viable strategy for slimming down.
Overweight, sedentary people who spent a week at an elevation of 8,700 feet lost weight while eating as much as they wanted and doing no exercise. A month after they came back down, they had kept two-thirds of those pounds off. The results appear in the Feb. 4 Obesity.
“What is nice about this paper, is that it clearly demonstrates that there’s a lasting effect of decreased caloric intake, that people eat less even a month after they come out of high altitude,” said Massachusetts General Hospital anesthesiologist Kay Leissner, who studies high altitude physiology, but was not involved in the study.
Since a 1957 study, scientists have known that animals lose weight at high altitudes. Mountaineers also shed pounds during expeditions to 12,000 feet or more, though the exertion of climbing a mountain clearly played a role.
But the obese are more likely to suffer severe altitude sickness in which low oxygen pressure causes dizziness, nausea and more serious problems like edema or heart attacks, Leissner said.
So a team at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich wanted to see if the pounds also melted away with a safer, sedentary stay at somewhat lower altitude.
The scientists ferried 20 overweight, middle-aged men by train and cable car to a research station perched 1,000 feet below the peak of Germany’s highest mountain, Zugspitze. During the week-long stay, the men could eat and drink as much as they liked and were forbidden from any exercise other than leisurely strolls. The team measured the men’s weight, metabolic rate, levels of hunger and satiety hormones before, during, and after their mountain retreat.
After a week up high, the subjects lost an average of 3 pounds. A month later, they were still 2 pounds lighter. The sceintists’ data showed this was likely because they ate about 730 calories less at high altitudes than they did at normal elevations. They may have felt less hungry, in part, because levels of leptin, the satiety hormone, surged during the stay, while grehlin, the hunger hormone, remained unchanged. Their metabolic rate also spiked, meaning they burned more calories than they usually did.
A high-altitude weight loss strategy could be viable, though studies have shown peoples’ appetites bounce back after about six months at high elevation, Leissner said. “If you could do intermittent periods for one week, then go down, and then go back up, this might actually be helpful.”
Citation: “Hypobaric Hypoxia Causes Body Weight Reduction in Obese Subjects,” Florian J. Lippl, Sonja Neubauer, Susanne Schipfer, Nicole Lichter, Amanda Tufman, Bärbel Otto, and Rainald Fischer. Obesity, 4 February 2010.
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