If you are tired to follow all these obsessive diets and exhausting gyms to lose weight, maybe it’s time to try something else: to live in a high mountain, since, according to a new German scientific research, living at high altitude reduces appetite and speed up the metabolism of the body so the person loses weight.
In other words, the air of the mountain is not only generally healthy, but has a specific effect, weight loss. According to scientists, the mountain air contains less oxygen than air at low altitude, leading to breathing becomes more difficult and forced the heart to beat faster and your body to burn more energy, leading to loss weight.
Research in the gastroenterologist Florian Lipl Hospital of Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, published in the journal "Obesity" (Obesity), in accordance with "Science", studied 20 obese subjects, who spent a week in a station environment investigations at an altitude of 2650 meters, about 300 meters below the top of the highest German mountain Tsougkspitse, near the border with Austria. It was found that decreased appetite and lost more weight than they would if they had stayed at home.
The small sample size and lack of a second group of "control" for comparison means that they can not draw definitive conclusions, according to investigators. And others, however, studies have previously shown that the performance of athletes at high altitudes leads to weight loss.
The new study, first showed that a man can lose extra pounds just by living at high altitude without having to do extra physical exercise.
As F. Lipl said, "We know from experience that the hospital is difficult to mobilize for the obese subject. But if they go up there, the high metabolic rate will make the most of ’work’ one on their behalf" .
The 20 obese volunteers arrived on the mountain without fatigue, thanks to the cog railway, and there were no tedious program (walking, etc.). However, they did the same, up and down, sedentary life that they did at home. Just living at high altitude and were under continuous monitoring (taking of blood, control hormones related to appetite, such as leptin, weight measurement, etc.). Most importantly (for them) but ate like!
After a week, that obese at the start were on average 105 pounds, had lost a half pound each. At the same time, showed a fall in blood pressure, which was attributed to losing weight, while the level of the hormone leptin had increased (as opposed to diets that reduce the amount of food daily).
The researchers just can not explain the weight loss. Loss of appetite is a common phenomenon in those living at high altitudes and obese volunteers actually ate less than is usual - about 700 fewer calories each day. The smallest amount of food at the Lipl explains the loss of one kilogram and a half on average, declined.
The other half kilo probably related to increased metabolic rate.
The publisher of the journal "Obesity", Richard Bergman, physiologist at the University of Southern California (Los Angeles), called the research "interesting", although preliminary, and noted that Colorado, where many residents live in high altitudes, is the state with the least obese in the U.S..
Because there is virtually no way to emulate one in the city conditions of high altitude and low oxygen, the Lipl, half-jokingly called the obese, from now on, when they go on holidays to choose mountain and not the sea.