Shivering improves metabolic health in adults with overweight or obesity

Mild cold acclimation increases insulin sensitivity and previous studies indicate that some level of muscle contraction is essential for provoking this effect. Here, 15 adults with overweight or obesity, the majority of which had impaired glucose tolerance (n=9), were intermittently cold exposed for 10 consecutive days to induce 1 hour of shivering per day. Cold acclimation with shivering improved oral glucose tolerance, blood pressure, fasting glucose, triglyceride, and non-esterified free-fatty acid concentrations, and may thus represent a novel lifestyle approach for the prevention and treatment of obesity-related metabolic disorders. Overall design: Skeletal muscle biopsies were obtained from the m. vastus lateralis from participants before (baseline) and after cold acclimation (10 days, 1 hour of shivering per day), and subjected to gene expression profiling by RNA-sequencing.